Carnaval, cats and crafts

I want to show you a few more pictures.

The first ones are from Carnaval, when the kids had to be dressed up for school:




Today is the last day of the holidays, it was nice being a few days at home and crafting with the kids. We made these cards from 'filigraan', rolling up small strokes of paper. And with the help of my sister-in-law, the kids made this farm:




And finally, I want to show you some pictures of our cats, in a few weeks, when the weather is better, they will be going outdoors for the first time. The other two older cats are finally getting used to them:




Hope you had a relaxing holiday!

Fuerteventura

It's been almost two weeks since we got back from Fuerteventura, so more than time to show you some pics! I think the photos speak for themselves:

1. Under the palm tree, 2. Riding the camels, 3. Bananas, 4. Los Lobos, 5. Scenery on Fuerteventura, 6. Corralejo, 7. Church, 8. The swimming pool, 9. The beach, 10. Sunset, 11. Contemplating, 12. Making sand castles, 13. A rock with a hole, 14. The sand, 15. Shadows, 16. Under the water

Day trips

Last week, we took the children to Brussels by train. First, we visited the National Science Museum where there is a large exhibit of dinosaurs. After the museum, we did like we were tourists in our own country and took the kids to see the must-sees of Brussels: Manneken Pis, the Grote Markt and the Beenhouwersstraat (a little street packed with one restaurant next to the other).

A few days later, we went to the Middelheim, an open air Museum in Antwerp:

A trip to Ankara

I know it's been way to long that I wrote anything on this blog, but in the next weeks I will try to catch up, going through all my photographs...

A few weeks ago, I went with my husband to Ankara. He was invited to give a speech at the Bilkent University over there and we decided that I would go with him. It was the first time I had ever been away without my kids. I felt a little bit guilty in the beginning, but after a while, it went better and I could really enjoy our time together without the kids. We stayed in a guest house on the campus and visited the city itself, had a real Turkish brunch and then the four days were over. Here are some pictures I took in Ankara, the first two are from the Bilkent University:

We also visited the mausoleum of Atatürk:

And the old castle area:

Only negative thing about the whole trip, is that I have been 'enjoying' it for some weeks now, I've caught up tourista over there... and I can assure, that's not funny...

Holiday is...

taking long walks in the beautifyl countryside of the Voerstreek...





playing in the mud...



rolling down the hills...

enjoying the beautiful spring blossoms...

runninng into dino's in the woods...

enjoying walks in the evening sun...

Hope you enjoyed your Easter holidays as much as we did!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to everyone! Hope you all had a lovely day filled with lots of chocolate eggs!

My kids had fun decorating Easter cookies this morning... and no... I didn't make these myself. Even if I would have the time, I don't think I could, because I'm not a kitchen princess at all.

I know it's been a long time since I blogged anything, but I've been quite busy. I've also been very tired and overemotional, the result of an endless row of sleepless nights. I sometimes wished I wouldn't think so much, but I can't change myself, that's just who I am. Anyway, I'm not going to bother you with my emotional problems. Next week, I only have to work two days and then we're going away for a week to the Voerstreek, a beautiful area in the north-east of Belgium. A change of scenery will do us all good!

Summer plans

Spring isn't even here yet, and we're already thinking about the summer. Guess where we are going in August?

Autumn holidays

While cleaning out the attic, my son found some old Turkish money and an old purse. My daughter was very jealous, since she also wanted to have a purse! You know how children are! So, I decided to sew her a purse and this is the result:

I used the pattern from Amy Karol's Bend-the-rules sewing.

I also wanted to show you how beautifyl my Easter cactus looks. It's supposed to bloom in April, but hey, who can follow the seasons lately?

We have great plans for our attic! We want to make it our own private space, with a huge bedroom, a dressing and a small bathroom, a place for us to relax and wind down. As you can see from the photo, we have a lot of work ahead of us! At the rate we are going, it will take us a couple of years, but we don't mind, we are patient.

This picture is taken at our attic. You can see a beautiful old closet that we got from my parents-in-law. We will have no space for it anymore, but I've got plans with it! I'd like to paint it and put it in my daughter's room! The only problem is that I can't decide which color to paint it... I hope that in the next few months, I can show you an 'after' picture of the closet.

That's it for now, the kids have autumn holidays and I also got a week off from work, I hope we can do some fun things together!

The mountains

The second week of August, we went for one week to Nauders, in Austria. It is a lovely village in Southern Tirol. We stayed in a great hotel: Mein Almhof. The hotel has its own wellness center, where I had a lovely back massage and some foot reflexology. There was a nice indoor swimming pool and last but certainly not least, the hotel has its own kids club, with Dutch animation! The kids enjoyed themselves very much and we had some time to relax, read a book, take a walk,... What more could a parent want! I love Austria a lot. Everything is so clean and fresh and in those mountains you feel really small. Oh yes, something really funny happened the last day in the hotel: we found out that there was a classmate of my son staying in the same hotel! We spent the last day together. Unfortunately, we had to leave after that day. It's a cliché, but the world sure is small!

Almost summer holidays!

Only two days left of school and then the summer holidays start! The kids then have two whole months to play and have fun! Hopefully the weather improves fast, because now, it feels a lot more like autumn than summer.

I've made one more bag: it is made from a placemat and an apron... I would like to experiment with making bags a lot more, but for the moment, my living room, where I normally sew, looks like this:

Not a place to sew, isn't it? In July, we are going to lay a new floor in our living room, hall and kitchen. Now, every space has a different floor and I hate them all, they are all going to be replace with the same grey tile, I am very anxious to see what it's going to look like, but for the next few weeks, it's a bit like camping in your own house. Oh well, it's going to be all worth it, I'm sure!