KissKus

Wonderland

A few weeks back Michel, Linus and I, plus Michel's sister and her boyfriend went to a wonderful exhibition in Amersfoort. It was called Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass and showed a very diverse selection of imaginative art.

These paper figures seemed so carelessly put together and yet they were so life-like.

The two most impressive pieces were two incredible realistic creatures by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini.

I couldn't keep my eyes off them. It reminded me so much of when I first saw Ron Mueck's work a few years ago.

There were many more surprising and wonderful things to see there. I'd really recommend a visit if you live anywhere near. You can see some more photos here.

Michel's sister and her boyfriend fiancee went back home to Australia today. It's always sad to see them go, because we quite literally live worlds apart. However, even though it may take us a while, we have made definite plans to go and visit them in Australia!

In bloom

I took some photos while we were basking in the sun today (love this weather).

The garden looks wonderful right now, so fresh and green.

My mum put most of these plants in, she is the head gardener :)

We did, however, keep a lot of the plants that were already growing in the garden when we moved here.

Doesn't this photo look a little surreal?

Hey, three more pretty flowers!

Queensday 2008 & 2009

Left: Linus at Queensday 2008
Right: Linus at Queensday 2009

What a difference a year makes!
And although we don't use it very often nowadays, we are still very happy with our BabyCuddle!

You can read about previous Queensday celebrations here, here and here.

Fantasy Sunday

Last week we attended the Elf Fantasy Fair. It was my first time there and it was quite a happening.

As you can see the setting was spectacular and the weather was too.

Most people were dressed up; we just didn't look where to look first. The best thing was that you could stare as hard as you wanted :)

Michel and I were traveling with three darling creatures: a princess, a knight and a gnome.

I whipped up Amber's outfit at the last minute. A very simple skirt and a t-shirt with a royal application.

It got her approval, thankfully.

Linus, ofcourse, wasn't wearing his hat.

It was a fun day!

Sunny

Some random things yesterday that made the sunny day outside even more sunnier...

My new plates. I heart them. And ahem... I ordered more online. It's my birthday in a few days so I could justify this to myself ;)

Tulips. Can you spot the odd one out?

A fresh one-year old that makes  bfbfmmm-sounds when he plays with his new car.

I hope you'll have some sun today as well!

We party with cake

Oh yes, we do!
I decided that this year for Simon's birthday we needed to have a homemade cake.
It was a simple plan: chocolate cake, layers of whipped cream and on top a coating of marzipan. Oh, with the John Deere logo!
All credits go to Michel who -with blood, sweat and tears- created this:

Wow! We were all impressed and I've decided to make this a family tradition :)

 

We celebrated Simon's birthday for family and friends yesterday. He received lots of nice presents and he enjoyed his special day.

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On his actual birthday on Wednesday we went to a lovely, small theme park called Sprookjeswonderland. We had heard good things about it and it definitely didn't disappoint us! It was a very friendly place where we enjoyed a very fun afternoon in the sun.

There were fairytale creatures, cute rides, a pet zoo and playgrounds.

Certainly a day to put in the Happy Memory Box :)

Sand & water

Thank you all so much for thinking along with me about what might be going on with Linus! We have an appointment at the doctor's on Friday.

We went to the beach today.
The weather wasn't very beachy, but when you live in Holland you'll get nowhere if you have to wait for the right kind of weather... So we embraced the elements and had fun nonetheless.

Amber and Simon had a wonderful time chasing the (HUGE) seagulls and digging holes. Linus was happily being rocked in his pram by the strong winds. I collected shells and enjoyed the feeling of sand between my toes. Michel was the odd one out (he's more of a forest person) until the children persuaded him to build sandcastles with them.

Did you ever look closely at sand?! It's made up of all kinds of colours... beautiful! And shells? Aren't they amazing? One square meter of beach is enough to keep me entertained all day :)

Simon's sun bleached hair against the sand. Mmmm, sweet boy, kiss on that lovely head of yours!

I would really love to go to the beach more often. I always feel that it's a long drive, but really it's less than an hour. When we were in France we had to drive 30 minutes to the supermarket, so what are we talking about?! We should just do it! Yeah!

Chocolate-y breakfast

I thought I'd show you some Dutch haute cuisine today. Just joking of course... as far as I know nothing haute  can be found here, just cuisine!

But I would like to show you my typical breakfast: bread and chocolate.
Let's start with example A:

Vlokken = crinkly chocolate pieces

This is the dark chocolate variety. It also comes in milk, white, a combination of milk & white, orange & milk and banana & milk, but the dark chocolate is our favourite.

Example B:

Hagelslag = chocolate sprinkles

This is also the dark variety, but as you can imagine it also comes in white and milk, thick and thin. I really should have taken a photo of the aisle in the supermarket... the choice is enormous!

Example C:

Plakkiez = chocolate slices

This a new thing, so I thought I would give it a try. However, it's not really doing it for me... Still, the children and I had fun, coming up with three letter words.

So a slice of bread along with a nice mug of tea is my breakfast. Now I would love to know what did you have for breakfast today?

PS Although I'm a chocoholic and I love to eat, but I did not eat all these slices of bread today!!

PS2

We celebrated Queensday yesterday

Yesterday all the Dutch were merry, because we celebrated Queensday!! Hurray, hurray, long live our Queen!!!

Everyone is (almost) obliged to wear something orange, so the children were dressed appropriately.

We ventured out to the free market as early as we could (which was after 9 a.m. but still!) and already there were quite a lot of people there, but a little later it was so busy that at places the crowd was hardly moving anymore.

Luckily we decided to carry Linus around instead of taking the pram with us.

It was a very successful morning. We all scored some great bargains, the children payed games and Linus behaved very well.

It's so much fun to see that people sell the strangest things on Queensday... I just had to take a photo of this mountain of ugly dolls.

This was my modest haul:

Fabric (love the teapot fabric!)

And two adorable prints. I fell in love with the one on the left immediately. These will definitely be reframed and hung somewhere nice.

So all in all a very good day that we ended with an indoor bbq.

Read more about Queensday and what we did previous years here and here.

Hello winter!

After a very mild winter without any snow or ice at all, look at the view that greeted us when we opened the curtains this morning! Even though it was only a thin layer of snow, everything was white!

The children were very excited of course. We put on their clothes and at 7.30 a.m. they were already playing outside. They had a great time until noon when most of the snow had melted.

The rest of the day was very relaxing. I made wentelteefjes and even managed to take a nap. I also made a good start with the travelcot and a matching blankie. Hopefully that project will be finished tomorrow.

The day ended appropriately with a fire in the garden.

Oh, and the obligatory 39 weeks-bellyshot of course :)