I have to tackle all of this before I leave and somehow get a bag packed that seems to be full before I've put any of my stuff in there. Hmph. Looks like I should get off the computer and get to it.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Friday, 28 November 2008
Last Minute
Here's a gork at a few last minute gifts that I've been working on for people in Amsterdam.
These are a bunch of rocky road packs that I made with a lot of the wrong ingredients for our small group.
A pimped bib and dummy strap for Nafta (the bone wasn't part of my original idea but the glue leaked through and marked the strap so I had to come up with something and Dad always says to make a feature of any mistakes!).
And lastly, a chocolate cobbler pack as part of Ben and Rebecca's present. I'm not sure I want to give this one away though, it sounds so gooily delicious. I made my own packaging and changed the recipe a little from Lollychops.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
The Thankful Game
It's thanksgiving in America today so I thought it would be cool to join in the fun of gratitude. Here's a little list of the things I'm thankful for:- My spunk of a husband
- My incredibly beautiful sisters
- My amazing parents
- My crazy and fun extended family
- Seriously great friends
- A warm bed in this chilly weather
- A fridge of food to get through before we leave for Oz
- Leaving for Oz
- The promise of sunshine
- Airplane food (strangely enticing)
- Sinter Klaas chocolate letters
- Banoffee pie made by number one on my list (he's hot AND he can cook)
- Extra luggage allowance so we're hopefully not overweight to fly to Oz
- Seeing friends and family after 20 months
- That it snowed in Amsterdam so I get winter and summer in the same few days
- The time and ability to create
- And so, so, so many other things but I'm needing to be off doing stuff (and I'm also thankful for the ability to do stuff-any stuff)
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Ding-Dong Merrily on High
Christmas has come early in the Worthing household. Because we're leaving soon we're seeing many of our friends for the last time. Sunday was the last day at church. Last night was the last night of small group. And the next few days are filled with saying goodbye to people that we won't be seeing for 2 months. "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" are being said a month too early. It's kinda cool though, I feel like we're getting a cold, snowy Christmas now, and then we'll have a hot, summery Christmas in a month-the best of both worlds!
All the Christmas decorations and lights are up over here and have been for a few weeks. Christmas isn't as big here, the Dutch have something else called Sinter Klaas.
Sinter Klaas arrived in Amsterdam two weeks ago. He's a saint from Spain and he arrives in a boat with all his Zwarte Piets (Black Peters who are his slave helpers!).
He goes around doing good for a few weeks and then on the 6th of December he brings presents to the Dutch children. They leave their shoes out to be filled with goodies by Sinter Klaas. It's very non-politically correct and totally Dutch, I love it!
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Winkel
This is how we celebrate a returned husband. Amsterdam's famous appel gebak and warm drinks after wandering through the fabric market picking up bits and pieces. It was so mega nice to just hang out. And weirdly, we saw a guy in the shop that lived next to one of Andrew's school mates in Oman who a few weeks ago we spent 5 hours on a train with and went walking through Utrecht at 2am in the morning with. I think the UEF was high that night.
Monday, 24 November 2008
Rub a dub dub
Every body should take a bath at least once a week or if your name is Kenzi 3 times a day. I love our bathroom. A place where I can relax, reflect and blow bubbles - what beats that?
Change - a message for myself!
Everybody knows that I am not good at change. I don't like it. If Neverland were a real place I would set up in a tree beside Peter Pan and Tinkerbell - honestly growing up is overrated......However change happens and I have to deal with it. My babies grow every day - i cry and deal with it. My church closes - i rant and grieve and deal with it. My sisters all move to the other side of the world - I cry and blog and deal with it. My breasts sag and my bottom expands - I feel old and deal with it. But this...how will I deal with this, a landmark in my city being taken apart! How will I direct people to my place now that the mining equipment is no longer on the corner they have to turn left at? Hmmmm, change is inevitable,
Deal with it!
Inside Looking Out
I had a beautiful day today. Mostly because I knew my husband was coming home, but it was a great day nonetheless. I headed to church in the morning with some friends, had a meeting, went to the late service and then headed off adventuring with another friend. We went to some alternative market thing in an artsy place in the city.
It was mostly second had stuff and some funky made stuff. After that we went to a church. Weeeell, I had always thought it was a church, something to do with the manger. Like 'Church of the Holy Manger'. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The word that I thought said 'manger' was actually something more like 'menagerie' and it was a horse riding school. It's in this beautiful, big old building with stables on one side.
It's so weird to be walking in the middle of the city and smell farm animals. We went inside for a peak and ended up having hot chocolate above the riding area.
It was so nice, they had heaters above the tables and we needed a serious warming up cause it was snowy, snowy, snowy outside.
Afterwards I wandered home through the streets, snapping a quick picture here and there whilst trying to stay on my feet on the slippery footpaths.
I also scored a chair on the way home. I had to hang around taking pictures of an old, snowy Citroen whilst a guy put his rubbish out.
I thought I was going to score some cool big posters too until I realised they were big porno posters. I guess that's what I should have expected, I was stealing rubbish from the street with the red lights! I thought about taking another chair (an office chair with wheels) but after second thoughts I left it there. They're the kind of chairs that the girls in the windows sit on, probably not the kind of chair I wanted to take home.
(The chair is perfectly good, it's just my not-so-good photography that gave it that funny big circle mark on the top of it.) Home was a good place to go after all that, it was dark and around zero degrees, ch-ch-chilly. So now I'm just waiting for that boy of mine to get home. Looks like I'll be waiting awhile though, his flight was an hour late last time I checked. Sigh.
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