woensdag 30 september 2009

Passing the flame

Yes! Internet is working again! Here is what I wrote yesterday.

Hello! Saturday was a busy day for me! Sunday was kind of busy too, but now I finally have some time to blog.
Saturday started off with Aunt-nieces day. My mom has one sister who has two daughters and a sun. A while ago, we decided that we should get together, all the girls in the family. Aunt-nieces day was born! My sister planned the whole day, and she did a fantastic job!


We went to a workshop on making glass beads! You know, those glass beads that make such pretty necklaces and bracelets etc. the place where the workshop was held was called  Passing the Flame. It is in a small village not far away.

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This is the burner we used. The coloured rods are the glass rods are used for my bracelet.

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My mom making a bead. The flame was 900C!! It would go all orange/yellow when the glass melted. But we had to wear purple safety glasses so it would protect you eyes and you wouldn’t be bothered by the coloured flame.

You had to heat the glass so it would melt, then you used another steel rod to wrap the glass around it. To keep/make it round you had to keep turning the rod around. So it involved a lot of turning

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My cousin is rocking the purple glasses!

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This is my aunt wrapping the green glass around the other rod.

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If you zoom in you see the red glowing glass around the rod. In this picture my cousin is about to add another layer of black glass to it (with some help of the instructor). It was also possible to use different colours in one bead, or making patterns like dots etc.

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Here I am, working on my beads.

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And another one where you can see that I am actually doing something, lol! Sorry for the bad pictures, but I noticed that I don’t feature a lot of pictures of myself on the blog and I always love seeing pictures of other authors on their blogs. So I thought I’d just share the only two that were made of me that day.

We had a lot of fun making the beads. At first I thought it was quite difficult, but after lunch I finally got the hang of it! Now, I don’t want to imply that I made the perfect bead! To be honest, none of them was even perfectly round! But since I am a bit allergic to the word perfect, that’s ok.

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These are all the end results together! My bracelet is on the arm with the purple sleeve at the bottom.

After the workshop we went for drinks and dinner in the village where to workshop was too. We had a great time, talking and bringing up memories.
After dinner we all went home again. Because my aunt lives so far away, we did not want to stay out very late. We are definately going to repeat this event!

I finally got home around 9pm, but then I had to just change my shirt, comb my her, spray a little perfume, grab the boyfriend and the present and out the door I was again! We headed to a friend’s birthday. We spent the rest of the evening there, talking and having drinks. At midnight everybody was going into town, but we headed home. I have been feeling exhausted for a couple of weeks now (hence my lack of posts too), and I did not want to waste the little bit of sleep I caught up going to bed early and taking powernaps after work. I don’t know about you, but I am really bad at staying up late. I can, but if I do, I feel horrible for almost a week!

Okay, so that was my saturday folks! I’ll be back with more soon, but now I really have to get to work.

dinsdag 29 september 2009

This blog is temporarily unavailable

Sorry guys! I have two posts almost ready to upload, but there have been some technical problems. Let me explain: we have a server which provides internet to a PC and a laptop. The laptop does not understand my camera so I have to use the PC if I want to write a post that involves pictures. Unfortunately our server crashed this weekend. The boyfriend totally freaked out..uhm, I mean, managed to fix the whole thing again. But somehow the PC does not understand the internet connection anymore. So now I am stuck with a PC that disconnects and reconnects every 3 secs or so. Try uploading the pictures of the-cool-bracelet-you-really-want-to-show-everybody-because-you-are0so-proud-of-it-and-also-managed-to-not-hurt-yourself-in-the-process!

But the Boyfriend has today and tomorrow off, and since it is impossible for him to game in a decent way I guess the problem will be solved pretty soon.

zondag 27 september 2009

Happy moment

Before I leave to meet a friend for a bike ride, I would like to share a happy moment with you:
Right now, I am sitting on the couch with my very own laptop! ! Technically speaking it is not my laptop but The Boyfriend's. But he finally got it working again (the hard disk died), so now we don't have to share our only PC anymore. This is a good thing on it's own because now I also get to use a computer that doesnt make as much noise, but I can also sit on the couch and read e-mails and blog etc! This is a first time in my life!
So, I am going to enjoy sitting on the couch with the laptop for just a moment longer, and then I will find my bike and leave! I'll be back later with, hopefully some pictures, and also a recap of yesterday's activities during my Aunt-nieces day.

vrijdag 25 september 2009

Funny kid

I want you to know that I am not a kids' person. Sometimes I find them cute and interesting, but more times I find them highly annoying. I am sorry, I can't help it, but I think I am just missing the mother gene or someting, or maybe it is not activated yet. I do consider myself kind of an average person, living my life like most people do: grow up, get education, get a decent job, find a partner, get married (still working on this, but at least I have the aspiration to do so). So I still expect to wake up some day wanting to have babies. But to this date no such thing has happened, nada, zip, nothing. To be honest, I get those freaked out feelings when I think about having a kid. I can imagine having them some day, but I can even better imagine life without them. So I guess I will just have to wait and see if some day I am ready for it or not. I don't have to decide yet, do I? Because after all, they say that even though you are not so fond of children you still always love your own and that at some point you have this biological time bomb etc. In the mean time I am just enjoying my kids-free world, especially when you encounter them in some hilarious situation. Below one funny moment that happened last week:

I am standing in the elevator, together with a couple and their daughter of about 3 years old. Mom and Dad are talking and Daughter is just looking around. Then when we almost reach their floor Daughter points to Dad's belly that is hanging over the waist band of his pants and out of the blue she says:
"Daddy fat belly!?!"
Dad mumbles something like "yeah, that is because daddy was injured and spent 3 months on the couch'' before they hurry out of the elevator...

I love it when kids speak the truth and just say what they think! It was so funny! Have you ever been in a situation where a child's, sometimes brutal, honesty made you smile?
And a more serious question: How do/did you know you want/wanted to have kids some day?

zondag 20 september 2009

Glowing in the kitchen

Today I finally could give in to my urge to bake. Ever since I saw Angela’s Glo Bites the other week I wanted to make those! But I had to wait since I did not own a muffin-bake-thing yet.

But today, after they switched the power back on (I don’t know who thought that it might be a good idea to cut the electricity on a sunday morning for maintenance) I could finally give it a try. They turned out delicious!!

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I had 2 of them while they were still a bit warm and oh my god…they were so good!! And they filled me up quite a bit. I am still not sure whether I like the ones with chocolate or the ones with jam best. I did not grow up considering it normal to eat PB+jam sandwiches. I don’t know why, but for some reason Dutch people seem to think that is weird, while eating chocolate sprinkles on bread is a very common thing…

Okay, I off cleaning up a bit and then watch ‘So you think you dance’ . I just love that show!

zondag 13 september 2009

The battle of the waffles

This morning I tried to make waffles…

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Let’s just say that this was not one of my best baking projects. I think I used too much batter. It was based on a vegan recipe so it had no egg, which didn’t help either…

Anyway, I ended up adding an egg all and baking pancakes of remaining batter. And those were pretty good! But I am going to use milk the next time instead of water ,it just tastes better.

I have to go now…got to find a way to clean this mess up…hahaha

woensdag 9 september 2009

Party at work

Wow, it has been way too long since I posted anything here! Ugh, so far my new goal to have a blog and actually write a lot of interesting stuff on it. And the worst thing is that I can’t even  promise I will do better from now on! Of course I will try, but in between work, sports, redecorating and who knows what it’s hard to keep up. (this may also mean that my life is just so uninteresting that I don’t know what to write about haha)

Anyway, this week we had our yearly fun activities thing at work. We went to some fancy hotel where we brunched. It was delicious! Then they came to pick us up in one of those carriages a la little house on the prairie. They brought us to a farm where a lot of activities are organized.
First, we went on a solex-tour.
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note: that is not me in those picturen haha.

It was hilarious! Halfway our tour it started to rain so we came back freezing but that did not matter. I just love driving around on strange engine driven things!
After we came back we did some bow and arrow shooting and some laser clay pidgeon shooting. I had a blast even though I was not very good at the shooting part. Ok, I admit it: I was able to hit NONE of the clay pidgeons!

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Then we went back to the hotel where we had a barbecue. Boy, was I hungry after spending the entire afternoon outside in the rain!

The food was pretty good and it was fun to hang out with my co-workers and just relax!

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Today was a good day: the boyfriend re-installed our bathroom door! Our bathroom is right in front of the walkway in our building, so now I don’t have to suck my tummy in when I am in the shower or pretend that waxing my legs does not hurt!