Peanut butter love: Weekly review

Hi everyone! I thought it would be nice to start a weekly journal on the blog. Since I don’t see daily stories on my whereabouts in combination with some more in-depth pieces, I thought it would be nice to not make that my goal (yet). I would love to be able to do that at some point, but for now that goal is out of reach, but that is ok. But, what I can do, is review each week on Sunday eve and highlight some things. So here we go:

Monday
First working day after my holiday, gave me new energy to kick some butt in my projects. Surprise: I got a new computer! Just like that, out of the clear blue sky the computer guys decided that our room was getting new computers. Really cool that they changed the policy on computer replacements at work. My desk is in the flex workers and interns room and we get all the hand me downs from the ‘real’ employees. But now we have the newest ones of the department!

Tuesday
Weird day where I found myself running around from appointment to appointment, having accomplished very little by the end of the day. Also got some very sad news…my parents’ cat died. He was only 8 months old, and they had had him for just 3 when he got hit by a car. Poor thing, but he really enjoyed it outside (he escaped once, and since then it resulted impossible to keep him inside). Here is Patser:  

 

Patser is Dutch and is said to someone who shows of his courage, sturdiness and toughness. He got the name because that cat was not afraid of anything! House remodels, fireworks, dogs, whatever. He would just check it out curiously.

Wednesday
Humpday….man, that hump was big today!! Tough day at work, tough time at physiotherapy, and a tough at the gym.

Thursday
Still not doing so well. Feeling horribly tired, but I finally figured out that that is because I sleep so bad as a result of my hay fever. It affects my lungs (new symptom this year) and I feel like I don’t get enough oxygen.

Friday
Finally doing better! And…I have  a new love in my life: Banana oatmeal with peanut butter! I had it before but found myself craving it this morning. I used to top my oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins. I had tried peanut butter before but did not like it very much. I guess it grew on me because now i find it delicious!

Saturday
Finally weekend! Did the standard things: groceries, catch up with the household. Nothing really special here.

Sunday
Thursday it was waffle day (don’t ask me where I got that from, I don’t remember), but I had no time to do something with it. So today I decided to give waffles a new try. Do you remember my last try at making waffles? Well, this time the result was still not good, but at least it looked a little like a waffle. Because it was still not really edible, I ended up making pancakes with the rest of the batter. A fun thing to do: waking up your boyfriend who has a very fuzzy mind in the morning, and tell him you made waffle pancakes for breakfast. :D

Have a good night!

A break at the beach

Hello everyone! Here I am again! I am trying to increase the amount of posts on this blog because I am trying to be a good blogger (lol) and having a short vacation really helps to do so. Let’s hope that I can keep it up, once I get back to work. But my time off has given me some ideas on topics to write about, so stay tuned for more random rambling by yours truly interesting stories from the life of Oxidaisy.

A while ago I gave the Boyfriend a dinner in his favorite restaurant as a present for his birthday. Because it is an hour and half drive to the restaurant, it included spending the night there too. Me having a week off of work gave us the perfect opportunity to go!
Wednesday left for Scheveningen, happily escaping the horrible noise the construction workers have been making for the past two weeks in our building.

Scheveningen is a village on the coast, right next to The Hague, an important city of the Netherlands.

We checked into the B&B first. The hostess was a really nice, she actually drove with us to a free parking space (what? we are Dutch, we are cheap) that was a little hard to locate. Then she dropped us off at the beach. It felt so good to be at the beach again! We had a drink to celebrate our little trip.
The weather was good: kind of sunny and not so freaking cold anymore! I went for a nice walk on along the shore,  while the Boyfriend played with his kite.

For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant. It is not cheap but the food is really really good. We sat together with some other people at a table. Each table has a baking tray and a cook comes and cooks your food – an 8 course menu – in front of you. It is really fun to look at the cook preparing dinner. They use all these spectacular tricks when cutting and seasoning the food and there is almost always at least one person who gets something that involves flaming the food.
And then there is the always fun part where they start throwing omelet at the guests: They use two spatulas to shoot a piece of omelet in a nice curve towards the guest who has to catch it in his or her mouth. If you fail, they try again. That is the easy part, but then….they pick one person at the table for the next phase: the cook launches the omelet parts in a straight line towards that one person. The parts go really fast so it is impossible to catch them in your mouth. And even if you would manage, you would probably choke in it, lol! And this time…I was the lucky person! Of course you try to catch them, but I ended up with egg on my cheeks and in my eyelashes, bahaha! You get laughed at by the whole table (including my oh so dear Boyfriend, but that is Japanese humor, so I did not mind and just laughed my ass off as well. All in all, we had a lot of fun and the food was very very good.

We were pretty tired after spending the afternoon at the beach followed by 3 hours at the restaurant, so we walked back to our room and watched some TV before calling it a night. I don’t know about you, but I am often exhausted after days like this, so I tend to go to bed early. Boring huh? Haha.

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast waiting for us. The hostess was not there and we had the whole house to ourselves. I woke up early, so I decided to go on a run and let the Boyfriend sleep in. I ran across the boulevard and ended up on the beach. Because the tide was low I decided to run along the shoreline. It was my first run ever on a beach! It was so lovely! The sun was shining, it wasn’t cold at all, the wind wasn’t very strong yet and the sound of the waves was really soothing. And the run really kick started my appetite.

After breakfast we packed our stuff and then left for the beach again. First we did some windowshopping on the boulevard. They had a cute store with chinese stuff. Then we went back to the same bar/restaurant we were yesterday. I guess we really liked it!
We spent the first half of the afternoon there. They had fires lit outside and together with some sunshine it made a for a lovely lounging place on benches covered in pillows. We had lunch there and we read for a long while.

Then we wanted to do something, so we went on the beach. The Boyfriend had some fun with his kite, though not too much because the wind was acting strange. I just hung around a bit, reading and watching the kite. A couple of hours later I was freezing, so went back for some hot tea by one of the fires inside. Man, that was cozy and hot!

By the end of the afternoon we got our stuff and started on our trip back home. We had dinner at McD. I love healthy food, but once in a while it does feel good to eat fastfood! I wish we had more choices, like in th e US. In Holland we are stuck with McD, Burger King and a sporadic KFC.

So that’s it, folks! I am leaving you with a pic of some relaxing I did today, on my last day of vacation. After going for a run I finally took some time to lie down with a relaxing mask. I hope it won’t cause y’all bad dreams now…Bye!

100 things I like

I think that we spend way too little time thinking about the things that we enjoy in life. I sure have those days that everything just seems so blah. That is why I made up a list of 100 things that make me happy. The list consists of simple everyday things that put a smile on my face.

1. Sunshine
2. Latin music
3. Warmth
4. Fireplaces
5. Exercise
6. Good food
7. Cats, my cats in particular
8. Sleep
9. Dancing
10. Toast with cheese
11. Vivid dreams
12. Reaching a goal
13. Being well rested
14. Hot chocolate after being in the cold
15. Beaches
16. English
17. Water
18. Reading a book
19. Burritos
20. A hot cup of tea
21. Hugs
22. Foot massages
23. Doing something nice for someone else
24. Being healthy
25. Back massages
26. The Boyfriend
27. Spinach
28. Picknicks
29. Spinach
30. Being with friends
31. Driving a car
32. Running
33. Clean sheets on my bed
34. Flowers
35. An unexpected day off
36. Spending the entire day in your pajamas
37. Baking a cake
38. Looking at the stars
39. Watching mindless tv
40. A kiss
41. Surprises
42. Painted fingernails
43. Watching a movie
44. Old jazz songs
45. Good memories
46. Slowdancing with my guy
47. Lounging in my boyfriend’s sweater
48. Making me look pretty
49. Wine
50. Trying new recipes
51. Breakfasts
52. Write
53. Daydream
54. Hammocks
55. Spanish
56. Old fashioned Jazz music, like from Ella Fitzgerald
57. Chocolate
58. Pretending I am really strong
59. Reorganizing closets
60. Going on a long bike ride
61. Sweaty workouts
62. Making lists
63. Baking pies etc.
64. Whirlpools
65. Being outside
66. Eating with chop sticks
67. Seeing the positive side off everything
68. Helping someone
69. Listening to stories and life lessons of old people
70. Treating myself to something small, like a specialty coffee.
71. Receiving and sending personalized mail
72. Doing research on something
73. Sewing clothes
74. Bright colors
75. Book stores
76. Words, especially idiomatic phrases and weird sayings
77. Spending time with my family
78. Shiny things
79. Chicklits
80. Watching the clouds
81. Sitting in a tent when it rains
82. Taking pictures
83. Psychology
84. Purple and blue
85. Chatting with friends
86. When I see that someone has actually read some of the blabbing I do on this blog
87. Shopping
88. Taking a shower
89. Starting on a new, different bodylotion, shampoo or whatever
90. Candles
91. Cactus
92. Wearing sunglasses
93. German
94. Wearing white clothes
95. my car
96. Doing things the old fashioned way, even when it takes more time
97. Learning new life hacks that make my life easier or more efficient
98. Putting on my favorite sweat pants after a long day at work
99. Drinking green monsters
100. Actually being able to think of 100 things I like without repeating myself (I hope).

Phew! That was hard! But it was fun to do! So what do you like? Let me know if you make a list!

Daisy Do: Glow!

Hi guys! I am back with a new focus of the month, as promised. Curious about what it is? Well, read on…

This week I noticed that lately I have not been looking my best. Dark circles underneath my eyes, pale dry skin, more zits than I normally have. I am going to a lot of stress at work right now (but it’s almost over) and I guess the exhaustion I am feeling at the end of most days is showing. My skin is not shining, it looks dull and I scared myself when looking in the mirror a few times this week: I look like I have died! Well, it surely isn’t that bad, but it IS time that I start doing something about it.

Introducing: Daisy Do Glow!

 

Daisy Do Glow!

 

My last challenge was quite simple: just drink less coffee and try to sleep enough. This new project will involve a few more aspects and it is partially based on Project Glow from Angela over at Oh She Glows. I have quite a sensitive skin, and I am sure it can’t handle daily scrubs. In addition, we don’t have all the skin care brands they have in Canada. So here’s the plan:

1. Face rituals: Clean face every night with mild cucumber cleaning milk. Apply night cream before going to bed. In the morning use day cream as usual. Scrub face once or  twice a week.

2. Hydrate: Drink more water! What I liked about the last challenge is that I started grabbing water more often. Because I do like my tea I am not going to make myself drink 2 liters a day for now. But 1L would be nice. The plan is to fill up a measuring cup with the required amount and drink it during the day. At work I will use water bottles.

3. Sleep: This time I am more serious about getting the right amount of sleep. I will try to stick to 8 hours a night. If needed I will have a powernap during the day.

4. Food: What you eat and drink also influences how your skin looks. I have not been drinking many green monsters anymore. Since they seem to do miracles when it comes to making your skin glow, I will go back to drinking one every day. I will also keep limiting the amount of coffee I drink and exchange black tea for green tea and herbal tea more often. I don’t eat a lot of junkfood, but I will watch out for that too.

So there you go, the plan for the next 4 weeks, starting today! I had my green monster and am halfway my 1L water and I also slept over 8 hours last night. I will leave you with the before picture of my face. Not sure how much you can tell about the condition of my skin from it, but it sure does show how tired I am. Ugh!

That is one ugly photo of me! But hey, I am all about showing reality on this blog. I don’t like hiding things, pretending nothing is ever wrong in my life. But of course I like showing off when things áre good! For example, when we went all fancy to the opera a while ago, or cheering on myself after my first race.

Ok, I am off doing stuff, be back later!

Daisy Do No Coffee Recap

Hello! Here I am again. Had a very busy month. At times it even was exhausting, so the no coffee challenge turned out to be a tough challenge at times..

The first two weeks I did really well. It felt a little bit weird at first, but after my 2 coffees I just grabbed water instead. My stomach certainly appreciated that! After the first week I could not treat myself to a ‘nice’ coffee because I had several appointments that day. The second week I went to a congress on Friday, so I decided to treat myself on a hazelnut latte on Thursday. I deserved it by then…. Overall I drank 1 or 2 cups of coffee a day, except for weekends.

But the second half of the month is when it got hard! Valentine’s day was not as romantic as it was supposed to be, because we got some bad news. I was quite upset and got really little sleep that night, so on Monday I felt like a zombie all day. I had 4 (!!!) coffee…so much for my challenge haha. But I did quite well the rest of the week. However, no special treat for me!

The last week was even worse… I was totally stressed out because work was messy. Monday I had 3 coffee, Tuesday I don’t remember but probably too many. Thursday I was exhausted (but less stressed :P) and had too much coffee as well…

So, in conclusion…I am perfectly capable of living on small amounts of coffee on regular days. The first two weeks I thought the challenge was way too easy, I could have gone without coffee! But as soon as I am too stressed out or tired I can’t resist the urge to drink sweet strong bad tasting coffee that gives me a kick so I can handle things better.

All in all I will try to keep up with drinking less coffee. I feel better when I don’t and I like drinking more water. I also plan on getting myself treats more often, especially when I finish something important without overloading on caffeine in the process.

Stay tuned…I have started a new Daisy Do challenge this month. Details will follow. But now I just want to get home.  I am on the road now, having dinner at McDonalds all by my lonesome after a late work thing.