Baking & house....

Yay!! Finally our house is for sale!

That's the good news of today.

I'm really pleased with it.

Now we would like someone, that likes our house,

and then we can move closer to work.

The other good news of today is that i finally made a cake

that goes with the lovely elephants I made two weeks ago.

And this is the result:

Books....

Me being a daughter of two 'book lovers', hasn't stop me from becoming one too. This might not sound strange to you, but an overdose of something can also make a person decide against it. But with THIS 'love' Im rather happy!

My mum and dad decided when I was 6 years old, to start a bookshop. A great place to be, and I certainly have great memories of the place. Unfortunately they had to close the shop down 10 years ago.

The evidence of being 'book lovers' is easily to be found, if you enter the homes of my family.

My mum & dad have books everywhere around the house, and it's a big selection.

My sister is a manager of a bookshop, so imagine how her house will look like....

And my brother is in the book business as well.

Did I mention my house?

The good thing about all of this for me is, that when I need some advice about what I need to read next, I have plenty of people to ask. The fun thing about visiting family members is also that a lot of times we leave each others houses with a pile of books we want to borrow.

A lot of times it can even go like this:

"If you read it, then give it to your brother...ohh and after that your dad wants to read it too, and after that it will probably find it's way back again to me..."

Our family almost looks like a library sometimes!

Then... if my family members don't come up with good ideas... I can always ask my friends!

Many discussions took place in front of our bookshelves, recommending books, talk about books & be philosophical !

So you can probably guess now as well... I started up my own library exchange with friends (that we also do that with dvds...is another story)

At new years some friends stayed over and of course we ended up in front of the bookshelves again... they left with some books... (you must have seen this one coming), and i got some great advice.

We had the "If you liked this book, then you must read that one..." conversation, and she wrote down the books and writer for me. Ten minutes later she calls me and says... "You already have part three on your shelves!!" Well, things like this can happen in this household. I have so many books that I can't always recall what I already have. The strange thing however was, that the subscription she gave to me about the book wasn't familiar. Did I really have this book?? Didn't I read it yet??

This mystery will be solved very quickly...

When my boyfriend moved in, so did his books... So the mysterious book she was talking about belonged to my dear boyfriend.

When we looked closer to it, we found out that I already knew about the first part of the book. Because I have seen the film. I wasn't so keen on the movie, it was OK... but not extraordinary. But my friend still advised me to read it. Me, always in for new book ideas, decided to try this one. My boyfriend being my boyfriend...got the books for me as a surprise. (We love going to the Waterstones!) So i started reading it.

The first book already turned out to be SO much better then the film. And the second part totally got me sucked in... I'm so curious about the third book!

You all probably know about the first book.... the film they made about it in 2007 is "The golden compass" with Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Dakota Blue Richards & Ian McKellen as an amazing bear.

The first book is originally called "The northern light" and is the first book of the "His dark materials" series by Phillip Pullman.

The second book is called "The subtle knife"

And the last book is called "The amber spyglass"

I'm intrigued and almost at the end of part two... can't wait to start reading part three...but I'm also already sad about the fact that I'll finish the books... because that will feel like saying goodbye to a good friend!!

2 years ago today, I met the love of my life!

There was a train you could travel, by reading a book

there was a station

there where little houses and boats

a walk on the beach

nice food and music

....and a man!

And it turned out to be the love of my life!

Isn't life great???

More of a miracle

For the love of my life... we met 2 years ago...and it was worth waiting...

Deep in the dark,

the beat of your heart

Breaks through the silence like thunder

Soft on my skin,

you breathe out and in

We turn into one and I wonder how

Did I ever have the faith

To know you were waiting?

Think of the stars,

diamonds stuck in the sky

And the long lonely light years lying between them

Think of how hard real love was to find

In a world so wide we're even more of a miracle

More than a kiss, the warmth of your lips

Like some ancient fire still burning

More like a dream, there's nothing between

How I feel now and eternity

You're a treasure in my hands

And it defies understanding

Think of the stars, diamonds stuck in the sky

And the long lonely light years lying between them

Think of how hard real love was to find

In a world so wide we're even more of a miracle

Countless waves on endless oceans

Times the earth has turned

Think of the stars, diamonds stuck in the sky

And the long lonely light years lying between them

Think of how hard real love was to find

In a world so wide we're even more of a miracle

Even more even more even more of a miracle

Much more even more even more of a miracle...

(Mark Lennon-Venice)

Baking & working

On Monday I started my new job. I'm working now as an after school 'teacher'. So I take care of the kids till their parents come to pick them up. It's a fun job. My colleagues are really great, nice parents and the kids are really sweet. The kids here are so different from the kids at my old school. It's a bit of a culture shock haha...Not that the kids at my old job weren't sweet, they were... but really different. So yes I had fun last couple of days. On Monday my boyfriend and I decided we had at least 15 reasons for celebrating, so we went out for dinner. *smile* *smile* isn't life great? *smile* *smile*

On Wednesdays I have the day off, and this is what me and one of my friends did:



My friends clown & my love (birds) elephants

As you probably read, some weeks ago I made a marzipan cupid in a workshop for modeling. You can see the photo of this cupid in a post of mine. (scroll down)
It was so much fun, that I asked a friend of mine to join me last night in trying to make something else nice for a cake. Because that's the whole idea...this will be put on a cake later on. Of course I'll show you those pictures later!
It's fun to do... it does take up a lot of time... But with the music playing...loads of tea and fun & 'gezelligheid'... time flies!

Bread & Stroopwafelcake

Yay!! I baked my first bread! Since i've got the automatic mixer from my old job, i'm baking like crazy! So i've baked myself a bread, and a lovely "Stroopwafelcake" and it turned out really nice :D I'm happy with the result.

Earlier this week I also baked a carrotcake... that one was brilliant!! Thanks mum-in-law for the book with the recipe. My mum liked it as well. My boyfriend... he loved it!

So let's see what he thinks of my bread and cake when he comes home....

Carrot cake

It's been a while...

Hello everybody.... It's been a while!!!

I'm so sorry, but i've been busy with all sorts of things.

Baking, traveling, job interviews, real estate agents... But here's an update!

While I was busy talking to real estate agents for selling our apartment... the police discovered that one of the neighbors in our apartment building decided to grow weed. Normally you would think... 'a well happens everywhere!' But it's not convenient when you want to sell your place around the same time. The thing is... they put a big sign up, saying: "Weedbust!!"

As long as that sign is up there it's going to be pointless for us to put our house on sale.

So now we have to wait, and wait...and....wait. Because after phoning up the city council, I found out that the only person that can enter that house is the owner. Sounds ok to me...although unfortunately the guy that owns the place is also the guy that grew the plants! He has to go to the council, pick up the new keys to his apartment and get the sign off himself. Not likely to happen soon.... So selling our house is not an option at the moment :s

We'll have to wait and see what happens and maybe change our plans a bit...

In the meantime there's also happy news! I got myself a new job...yay!!! I'll start on the 1st of March. The job is where we would like to move to...so that's great news. I will have to travel a lot to get there at the moment. But I don't mind. I'll have to see how that will go. It's a commute of 1 1/2h. So let's say 3 hours a day... But hopefully not for long. The good thing about it is that I can pick up my reading again. Reading books on the train... because I still have a big pile of books I didn't have the chance yet to read. I'm going to work at a care center for kids of 4-12 after school. They really wanted to have me....and i'm curious to see if I will like this work :D It's a tiny bit different to teaching, and I'll earn a lot less... but we'll see!

We've just been to England for a few days for a family visit. Unfortunately my boyfriends Nan died recently, so we had to go there for her funeral. Not the nicest reason to visit my boyfriends home country, but good to be there. After the funeral we went to a pub to have a drink with the family. It was Nan's favorite pub and she would have wanted us to go there for a drink in her honor. After that, we stayed in a hotel for the night, and the next day we traveled back to Holland. The nice thing about this visit was to see that my boyfriends parents where doing fine. We had our worries, since my boyfriends mum was in the hospital for a while not feeling so well. But they were both feeling OK and that was a big relief! In a few weeks time they will come over to Holland to visit the Keukenhof and then we can have dinner with them one evening. That would be great!

As you already found out probably... I love baking!!

So after looking forward to this for months the day of the workshop "modeling marzipan figures" arrived!! I had waited for this so long, because the lady that gives these workshops is booked all the time. She makes such great thing that she could easily be called one of the Guru's in cake baking in Holland. So finally the day of the workshop arrived. Unfortunately that day it started snowing again really badly. The roads weren't brilliant, but I had to go. i've been looking forward to this for months!!! So I made my way there carefully... I left 2 hours before the workshop started. So I was there 45 minutes to early. Waiting in the car.... walking around a bit... but it was way to cold! After a cup of tea, and of course a piece of cake... we started the workshop. And this is the result!!!

I'm so happy with the result!!! It was so much fun to do and I learned some new things as well. It was a great evening. If you would like to see what else she does check her website:

http://www.4theloveofcake.nl/ Her name is Wendy and I love what she does!!!