The sale of Feather dusters increased 10 fold!

I woke at 4am to an errie yello twilight looking world piut my window...
And it just kept on coming... We got yellow and orange but Sydney got RED!

Crazyness! Thought a big storm or aliens... Just incase I jumped on the roof with a sign saying "Exploit me for your sexual eperiments" !!!!

Book Love and Book Not So Love

There are some books that us in this house totally love...and some books that we read and review in a not so great light. One of these books we loved. The Clever Stick by John Lechner was beautifully illustrated and cleverly written. It was all about creativity and being who you are and loving it. I especially love picture books that have a great message behind the simple text. This was one we loved.
This other book looked fun on the outside, but showed us that you cannot judge a book by it's cover...ever. The story was dull and aside from one or two funny pictures it's not one of our favourites. I am always reluctant to say things like that about a book. It takes the author so long to write and obviously they used a lot of their creative juices to write it....so I say good work on writing and publishing a book.....but it just wasn't one that will join our bookshelf.
Books are lovely. We are definitely book people in this house.

Swippity Swap

Just finished our clothes swap. Our photographer will probably post photo's. It was awesome. Wish you all could have come and tried on some terrible and not so terrible and absolutely fabulous clothes.
Work coming to an end and I will be back. I am so tired.
Pobj off to Indo next Sunday. We are off on a road trip with a wonderful Mumma and Grandpa....I am so excited. Hopefully we will get to listen to Psalty songs and go through Dunedo looking for toilets...ahhh reliving those glory days. We will do some jumping and take photo's, hopefully of a giraffe dribbling on one of us, yep look out Dubbo here we come.

The Last Hurrah

I found evidence that Autumn is on it's way.  That, and the ice cream headache I got cycling home from a friend's last night.  Goodbye beautiful Summer, you were wonderful.

Herman

Today I met a man.  He was sitting on these steps smoking and drinking wine.  He offered me a drink, if it wasn’t too early in the day for me.  He didn’t mind that I would have to drink out of the same bottle as him.  He didn’t mind that he had to move from the steps so I could join him on the deck.  He didn’t mind interrupting my study every few minutes for a chat.  He did mind if I upset the sickly pigeon he was carefully tending.  All he wanted was a small piece of bread for his feathered patient.  All I had was cashews.  Too big, he said.  And my name didn’t suit me, not pretty, not like Ilena.  Ilena, that’s what he would call me.  He had trouble remembering names, he’d had 3 strokes, but he could remember Ilena.  And he’d fallen a little bit in love with me, but that wasn’t my fault, he said as he kissed my hand and walked away.

Grumble-Grumble

The other day I had a moan, a B.I.G. moan that I had to spend my holidays at home doing uni work, grocery shopping and cleaning the house.  I wanted to load up the beetle and go find some deserted national park to camp for a few days.  That's all I wanted.  But I live in Amsterdam, with a bike, and not a whole lot of campable national park.  So the next day I packed myself a picnic and went off on a city adventure instead.  And I found a big old rambly park.  Not the same, but not too bad either.  And then I jumped.  Cause no matter where you are, who you're with, or where you're wishing you could be, you should jump.

What to do...

On a Saturday night in Amsterdam:

You could always go for a leisurely 16 kilometre run like these boys. 

Or you could opt to be the one taking photos of these boys going for that leisurely 16 kilometre run.  Along with taking the gratuitous naked post-run shots (although I have to say that Andrew wasn’t naked to begin with, he only did it as moral support for Jono ;)).  

I’m not sure what got into the boys, I think it may have been the lack of oxygen, we are, after all, 6 metres below sea level here in the Netherlands.

 

Oh, and congratulations on the nipple cripple post boys, you’re officially the most commented on post ever (except for when there was free stuff up for grabs, maybe next time we can offer a free nipple grab?).

The Process

I don't make cupcakes.  Except for when I was a kid in the kitchen with mum.  There's good reasons too.  I can only bake 8 at a time.  Which means making 1/4 of the batter.  And that means getting my math brain on.  Not always a good idea.  

Then there's the fact that I live in The Netherlands.  The Dutch aren't known for their extravagance.  And that equates to only being able to buy red food colouring at the Chinese supermarket and very few other cake decoration type thingies.  So telling our friends we'd help out at the wedding, and then agreeing to make cupcakes meant big steps for me.  Or small ones, as I waited for the oven to finish making the 6th batch of 8 cupcakes.

There were lots of trial runs.  And lots of cupcakes thrown from our window into the canal.  There were moments of frustration, as Andrew and I sat separating hundreds and thousands.  No, really we did.  Until I realised how RIDICULOUS that was and dyed them with food colouring.  Then there were icing practices.  I'd decided on a design, and then changed it the morning of the wedding.  Thankfully it changed from the poo-inspired design to something a little more palatable and more true to the magazine picture that was requested.

In the end, I didn't make the exact cakes that were requested (Red, how hard is it to make red icing?  Hard.), but considering the issues I had going on (and only a few of them had to do with the cupcakes-can't you see my bedhead above?) it went pretty well.  And the bride and groom loved them.  Phew.   Oh, and Joshua.  But what food doesn't he like?!

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Andrew pointed out the other day that this has been the year of four weddings and a funeral for us.  Hopefully nothing will happen to change that in the next few months, although weddings would be allowed.

The first wedding was Phil's in Chester: ceremony approx 1 hour.  We helped out with stuff on Thursday and Friday (I never want to iron another shirt in my life) and then Andrew donned his grey penguin suit and best-manned it up on Saturday.  The best part of the wedding was that Phil and Helen jumped the gun and got to the kiss quicker than the vicar.  It meant that they got a second shot at it!

The next wedding was Al's in Essex: ceremony approx 1.5 hours.  We missed our turn off the M25, and the next turn after that as we were too busy talking about setting up a boutique catering/events company (cause that's more important than reading the map) but luckily we had plenty of time.  Another beautiful wedding, and an awesome reception venue.  And the seriously best reception band ever-they were dressed up like 80s rockers (think tights, wigs, sunglasses) and played a whole medley of songs ranging from Eye of the Tiger to Thomas the Tank Engine.  Nice.

The last wedding, Hugo and Karlien's, back in Dutchland: ceremony heading towards 2 hours (I'm hoping the next wedding we go to breaks the trend of getting longer each time).  This was the cupcake wedding.  Cupcakes were made (with the minor mishap of ending up pink and bright pink as the red food colouring didn't go red) and dispatched on Andrew's bike only to end up smooshed all over the place by the time they made it to the venue, oops.  The wedding was a military wedding as Hugo is in the navy, they did the whole arch thing with the swords as they walked out.  So mega-cool.  And I wore my cowboy boots for the third wedding in a row, which I love cause I get to wear my Mum-made socks underneath!

Wedding season over for us.  Thank goodness, cause I was running out of clothes to wear.  And that's important.

While I've Been Away...

Sorry sisters, I said I'd be back sooner, but I've been too busy taking pictures like the one above.  Life is not boring in these parts.  Especially seeing as I'm still trying to figure out who the guy is that's getting his jollies from feeling up my husband.

Caught Red-Fingered

I'm back from the UK but I'm up to my neck in cupcakes, red food colouring, assignments, sprinkles, washing and colouring pencils.  I'll be free in less than 48 hours (I hope, although putting that in cold hard words has freaked me out) so I'll post pics of lots of things then!

Let there be light

I found this light at an op shop and bought it home and redid it. I spray painted it and put the printed paper on the glass. Now the kids enjoy it in their room. It is a lot less girly than the pink umbrella, but still pretty I think.