studyroom reveal (part I)

"Hi Joost and Marije! So, I'm gonna come by this weekend, and I really want to demolish something!"
That could only be one person: Joost's oldest friend Bram. He was ready to get the crowbars out!

Oh Duvet, where have you been hiding?

Hi friends, it's been a few busy weeks!

We celebrated a belated housewarming, and invited way too many friends with way too many kids to our humble house (we had a blast, though)

Since we live in the middle of nowhere (at least: to Dutch standards we do) I also had to arrange a few sleeping places for our friends, thus I took all our spare duvets and pillows from their hiding place, looked at how bulky they were and figured: 'well, that's a bit of a shame, filling my storing space with this!

short summer series: Hats off!

It all began with a hat. It always does.

short summer series. hot tub time (machine)!

This project began somewhere in March. Okay, maybe that is not entirely true: it actually began when I was sixteen years old, when my big brother -the most inventive engineer I know- crafted a wood burning stove with a water heating system to warm up our inflatable kiddy pool. Due to the enormous succes of the invention, he and my dad quickly replaced the inflatable pool by a more durable tub made from something that was previously used as a cattle watering tub, and hence the first DIY hot tub of our family was born.
When I first took Joost to my parents' house, and showed him the hottub made by my big bro and my dad, he immediately responded: "We should totally make something like that!

short summer series: we can be heroes ( not just for one day)

If you could be a superhero with any kind of superpower, what would it be?

short summer series: a miniature bride

I may have mentioned it before: my little nieces love absolutely nothing more than dressing up.

For the oldest one this means imitating her favorite Disney princess of the week.
For her little sister, it usually implies putting on her hot pink rain boots ( your guess is as good as mine on why she does that..), wrapping herself in whichever kind of fabric is at hand as "a dress" and skip off to chase the cat. So, when I had to think about birthday gifts, it wasn't a difficult decision: dress-up clothes!

short summer series: Traffic light tank top ( and how to sew stretchy fabric)

What do you have when you have a few short tops, and a spine that goes on for miles?

back with a backless shirt)

hey guys!

"How on earth is it possible" I muttured in Joost's general direction, "that all of a sudden it is summer? What happened to April, and May, and June for that matter? I was supposed to get work done in spring, get some rest, and you know... enjoy life, but all of a sudden it's almost summer holiday, and everything is still unfinished!"
Joost turned his eyes away from from his computer screen exactly long enough to look at me and indicate that he had heard me, knitted his eyebrows together, and hummed incomprehensibly in agreement. His screen showed at least 5 different projects that he was frantically working on. Ugh, I do love summer and summer holidays, but could it please not arrive in such a hurry, and be preceded by such an ungodly amount of deadlines? thank you very much!

But somehow we managed to survive the wave of deadlines and summer hols arrived in all its glory. So Joost and I decided to throw a tent in the back of our car, cue the (frankly awful, since we both have absolutely no taste at all) music, and head towards France for a few weeks of camping, hiking, paddle boarding and generally embarrassing myself with my not-so-smooth French language skills..

"l'art est amour, l'amour c'est la vie, la vie, il faut la vivre et non la subir", (Carrasco , the painter of this church)

baste-and-bleach.

As soon as I reach for my running shoes, it starts to rain. Not a gentle drizzle, noo... it's pelting down, as if the rain gods are laughing at my attempts to establish a proper exercise regime.
I sigh, withdraw my hand and stare at through window. A half-hearted thought crosses my mind to just brave the weather, and go for it. But my inner Shia laBoeuf  ("just do it!") loses it to my desire to stay warm and dry inside; with a cup of tea and my laptop, writing you all this post.

dress up, girl

It's past 10 o' clock in the morning, and while the rest of the world is already at work, I'm still sitting on my bed.Inky is fast asleep next to me, I'm balancing a plate with a sandwich with chocolate sprinkles (I know! How Dutch of me!) on my left knee, there's an enormous cup of tea on my night stand, and Nick Drake is playing on the background.
If there is a better lazy morning, I surely can't think of one.

blog-ception 

It all vaguely reminds me of the way we celebrated Mothers and Fathers day when we were young, when me and my brother would make breakfast in bed for our parents, which usually came down to a breakfast of boiled eggs with golfball-like properties, sandwiches with a mountain of chocolate sprinkles on top of them, tiny hand picked bouquets in coffee cups, and a trail of orange juice and tea on the stairs, where we clumsily and excited carried the breakfast upstairs to my parents' bedroom, who would always pretend to be still asleep and completely unaware of our surprise. ( and looking back, I can only applaud them for always eating everything).

But though I feel very motherly towards the cats and chickens, I'm not a mum, and this isn't mothers day, it's just a lovely lazy free morning, after pulling an all nighter for work, and instead of doing chores, I decided to write a bit. So, hereby!