Birthday party!

My birthday party on Saturday was GREAT!

The weather was really nice and we could sit outside behind the church. The food was great too. Almost everybody made something special. Eventhough not everybody participated in making a treat there was more than enough, even too much!

I was a bit dissapointed to find out that 11 people couldn't make it. They phoned me the day of the party. But with the people that did came it was a lot of fun. My auntie Maaike, who will be 101 years old in July came with her daughter and son in law Mieke and Melle. And my other aunt Rens(ke) made it too. She is 84 years old, but she is not as healthy as my aunt Maaike. I found out that she has Parkinson.

A neighbour took some pictures with her camera and her husband put them on a cd the same evening. So here are some of the more than 80 pictures she took.

1. Me
2. Zander (my neighbour told me that every time she wanted to take a picture of him he put on faces)
3. Arjan, Helen (she works with my son) and me
4. Me, licking my finger
5. My brother, cousin Steffanie (laughing out loud) and me
6. Sannelis, Suzanne (neighbour and my walking instructor) and me
7. Minke (other daughter of Suzanne), Jonas (in the background, new neighbour) and me
8. Table with food (not all of it)
9. View of the terrace
10. My aunt Maaike
11. My mom (left) and aunt Rens

Almost 50!

In a few days I will be celebrating my 50th birthday! I'll be giving a big birthdayparty on Saturday april 28th in a conferenceroom of the church. I'm very excited about it. At first I wasn't in the mood for a big party but because of Finding You I realized that it's only once that I will become 50, and I don't know about you but 50 has some magic ring to it. In the Netherlands we say that at 50 you see Sarah when you're a woman and Abraham when you're a man! Family and friends can put a large woman/man doll sitting on a chair in your frontyard, place signs with 50 and ask people to honk a couple of times when they pass your house. All kind of weird things can happen! Once I have seen a doll filled with air that was larger than the house! LOL To watch this at somebody elses place is okay by me but I'm not sure I like it in my front yard. I suppose I would feel a little bit embarressed. I'm kind of shy and more of a background person.

The latest news is that there are almost 50 people coming to my birthdayparty, kids included!

Even my 100 old aunt Maaike is coming! Isn't that great! She was so pleased that I asked her. She is quiet a lady. Still living on her own in Groningen.

I hope I can take some pictures of her on my birthday and then I will post them on my blog.

The picture of me was taken by my neighbour Esther. I really don't look like almost 50, don't you think? It runs in the family, my aunt doesn't look like 100 either (or is it neither? I always get confused over this!)!

Trip to McDonalds.

This afternoon Zander and I went to McDonalds near Assen on our bikes. It's not very far, maybe 6 km. The weather was nice and I didn't feel tired.
At first we decided just to take some drinks but when we arrived at Mc we were both hungry. I tried the Mcmenu with ciabatta for the first time. Much better than the regular spongy (?) bread!
I took some pictures of Zander. The one he took of me wasn't that great so I will not publish it.
On the way home we stopped to take some pictures of 2 storks. One was on the nest and the other one on the roof of a caravan nearby. It's 4 or 5 years in a row now that the same couple visits this particular nest. I took the picture from a long distance with the 12 x optical zoom. With my old camera it wasn't possible to see what was on the picture from such a long distance. If you click on the picture you can see the stork even better!
I also took some pictures of Zander when we were still riding on our bikes. Zander is always very talkative when we make these kind of biketrips. I'm feeling a bit tired now, but it was nice spending some qualitytime with my son!

My goals

Finished my third layout for Finding You!

A very simple layout and not very original I suppose but what the hack! I enjoyed myself making it! LOL

Supplies: pp and rub-on letters enjoy (SR), cardstock (Bazzill), journaling stamp (Autumn leaves), paperclip with letter a and figure stickers (OTC), letter stickers and ribbon (market), blue clip (Wibra), felt butterflies (Zeeman), letterstamps (Image Tree), sewing-thread, black DVD pen.

I am who I am.

Just finished my layout for Finding You the second week.

Can't tell you anything about the assignment.

Just want to share with you that it was hard work and that this layout is filled with symbolism and that I made it on intuition.

The Dutch words "Ik ben die ben" on the wooden egg in the picture says: I am who I am. These are words from the Bible. I got the egg as a gift about 10 years ago after I had spend 3 months in a religious community to try and come to peace with a traumatic event in my life that happened a few months earlier. This was my message from them to me and told me to do something with it. But you know what: it is still actual! (big sigh, hihihi)

Supplies: pp (BG, SR), felt butterfly (Blokker) altered myself, red foamletters (self made), holder + brads (OTC), red clip (Wibra), ribbon (market), embroidering thread, sewing thread, black pen for DVD.

Dutch Dares challenge

Finished this layout this morning. It's a challenge for The Dutch Dares weblog. I'm not sure if I'm in time to mail it to them. Lost track of time a bit. Too much on my mind.

The dare was to make a layout about one of your favourite Dutch songs. I used a French song though, which was sung by a very passionate man: Jacques Brel. I have a thing for French songs. Love the language too. I worked as an au-pair in Paris for 18 months and a few years later during the summer I worked near Cannes at the Cote d'Azur. Loved it!

Loved working on this layout too! Used a lot of glass Chrystal stickers or do you call them rhinestones? They represent all the tears I shed for the guy on the picture. He was the love of my life and is the father of my son, but he found another love.

Here's a link to the lyrics of the song in French/Dutch! And here in French/English.

Supplies: pp Dasher (BG), cardstock (Bazzill, Action), glass Chrystal stickers, embroidering thread, letter stickers ( Pebblesinc.), white souffle pen, foamtape.

Scrapchallenge HMITM

Finished this layout yesterday. It was supposed to be a scrapchallenge for HMITM but I was too late. I didn't have any die-cuts so I used coasters instead. I cut them in half to make the borders.

I have to concentrate on my layouts for Finding You so I suppose there will not be enough time left to do challenges for the next couple of weeks! And besides that, I'm feeling a bit tired lately and I'm having a lot of pain due to the fibromyalgia.

The next assignment for Finding You is a tough one. I'm not going to tell you anything about it. Corinne asked us not to do that anymore because there's another workshop of Finding You coming up in September.

I will show you the layouts though!

Because I'm doing the workshop I finally made a bucket at 2 peas. There's only one layout in my bucket. So I'm a PeaWee now. Very funny all those different names! I wonder what my next name will be!

Supplies: pp (MME), coasters (Imagination Project ), rub-on letters (OTC), rub-on flowercorner (American Crafts), stickers 94 (market), black pen (Pilot DVD), sewing-thread.

Autorai 2007

Here some of the 124 pictures my son made at the Autorai in Amsterdam. He had a blast but was very tense when he returned home. A bit overloaded with impressions!

More pictures!

Took some more pictures with the new camera this afternoon. The weather was nice and I wasn't inspired for scrapping at all! :( So I took the dog of Esther with me, his name is Scotty, and took a nice (not too long) walk just outside my village.

This is what I saw!

Love the picture of the white blossom!

Quiet day!

This morning my son went to the Autorai in Amsterdam with one of his former homeschool teachers. I just phoned them and they had just arrived and were looking at all the most expensive cars. Zander has a thing for cars lately and he told me about a week ago he would really love to go to the Autorai. So we asked Jozias if he would like to go with him. Walking all day is a bit to much for my muscles and besides that I'm not a car loving person!

He was very excited about going to Amsterdam again with Jozias and to be able to see all the cars he already had seen on television, but this time for real!

He has my old camera with him so that he can take a lot of pictures. I will show some of them to you in a next post.

He took this picture of Jozias with my new camera. He asked me if he could take my new camera to the Autorai. What do you think my answer was? LOL

I'm going to leave you for now. Have to do some tasks (I know there's another word for this, but don't know how to write it) and than it's ..... scrappingtime!

Isn't this just gorgious!

Took a picture in macro of some blossom in my garden with the new camera. Isn't this just gorgious!

Love the new camera! I only have to find out how I can make the pictures easier to download for the internet. It is taken quite some time to publish them on my blog.

New camera!

Bought myself a new camera yesterday! It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 with a 12x optical zoom and 7.2 pixels, image stabilisation (?) and a Leica-lens. It's a real handy camera and not to expensive. I can even pay it off in 10 monthly instalments without paying interest.

I'm still figuring out how everything works but it's not very complicated. There's only a lot of new information to install in my old brains!

I took the picture of me and the camera in my pj's. And because I didn't have make up on I was clever enough to hide my face behind the camera LOL.

First layout for Finding You!

I have just finished my first layout for Corinne's online workshop Finding You.

The first assignment was to name 10 positive qualities of yourself. At first it was hard to find some possitive things to say about myself but with a little help I came up with more than 10!

For this layout I have looked for things I like and that represents me. For instance the colours, the fabric (jeans), the felt border, the embroidery, the sewing, the butterfly, the curved lines, etc. it is all a reflection of me.

Oh yeah, the black background is not paper but the floor in my livingroom and the blues in this layout are a bit darker in reality. I really need a new camera!

Supplies: patterned paper (MME, SR), cardstock (Bazzill), felt border and Butterfly (Xenos), brads (Junkitz), chipboard letters (selfmade), letterstamps (Image Tree), embroidering thread, sewing thread, jeans fabric, distressink voor stamping, dymotape, blue clip (Wibra).

Wormfree!

Just to let you know that my computer is wormfree again!
If you have visited my weblog the past days (maybe the past week even) it's best you download Hitman pro. This is free and it can free your computer from all kinds of problems, even worms and trojans!

My neighbour Esther has made some beautiful pictures of me this morning. She made them with her camera so I can't show them yet. Her husband has to put them on a disc. I need the pictures for the workshop Finding you! So funny, I have a lot of pictures of my son but just a few ones of myself. What does that tell you about me? LOL