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Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Stacking up fire wood for winter
My husband and his brothers own a piece of woodland (part of their late parents' farm).
Because the wood is for free, burning wood in the stove means substantial energy/cost savings during autumn and winter.
So this is what we are doing, stacking up the fire wood.
My husband was glad to have some help.
Seeing the wood piles and thinking about all the warmth they will give us this winter, makes me happy.
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Sunday, June 9, 2013
Mother's day in Luxembourg
In Luxembourg Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in June. I don't like the commercial side of this day, but I love it when the kids bring home small thoughtful gifts. I really appreciate the time and effort their teachers put into the Mother's Day craft project every year!
What I also love to receive is "time" (to take a nap, do some shopping...). My sons' gift was the promise to accompany the kids and me to the swimming pool. Our youngest son, who is 8 years old, cannot swim (after two swim courses), but he thinks he can. He already jumped into the deep part of a swimming pool twice during our summer vacation and we were lucky that we saw him jump. It really takes two adults to supervise him. Love that gift!
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Friday, May 17, 2013
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Article on expatmam.com
Nicole Orriëns asked me to answer some questions about my life as a mother in a foreign country for her interesting blog www.expatmam.com. On this blog she interviews mothers who have left the Netherlands to build up a new life in a far-away (or not so far-away) country. The interview is in Dutch.
*****
*****
Inmiddels is Natacha alweer 25 jaar met hem getrouwd, en hebben ze samen vier kinderen: twee zonen van twintig en tweeëntwintig die ondertussen op kamers wonen in Duitsland, en een negenjarige dochter en zevenjarig zoontje dat ze adopteerden in Zuid Afrika.
*****
You can read the rest of the article here.
Thank you Nicole, this was fun!
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
The best money spent in 2012
The very best thing we spent our money
on in 2012 were the washing machines we
gave our boys for their respective birthdays.
I did their laundry for 22 long years.
During the last years they either played basketball
or worked out every single day of the week.
They sweat a lot and my laundry pile
was getting higher and
smelling worse every year.
When they moved to Germany and started
coming home with these huge bags
of dirty laundry, I finally came to the point
where I had enough.
And honestly, who wants a man that
cannot take care of his own dirty socks
and underwear these days!?
We bought a no name machine on sale
for son number one and son number
two bought the machine
from the previous renter for a nice price.
For the first time in a long, long time
I feel like I now have my laundry under control
and it feels so, so good!
~
The second thing that was really worth
the money was my subscription to Audible.de.
We love audiobooks!
We listen to them in the car, sometimes
during lunchtime and almost every
night in bed. It calms them down.
Listening to German audiobooks
makes language learning so much easier
for my kids. I normally burn the stories
on CDs and they both have their own
CD player discman with headphones.
Downloading an audiobook never costs
you more than 9.95 €. Shorter children's
books cost less. It is really worth
our money!
~
~
The third great investment for my family was the
soy milk maker we bought in July.
I normally make fresh soy/rice/almond milk
two or three times a week.
I didn't make any during the Holidays and
after a couple of days the kids started asking:
"Why don't you make soy milk anymore?"
I normally soak my beans during the night and
prepare the milk first thing in the morning.
All natural, love it!
What was your best buy in 2012?
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Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Busy days
The past two weeks have been pretty crazy around here.
All the material for the new school year, winter jackets, boots, backpacks, sports shoes..... How did I do that fifteen years ago without the internet?
I was so shocked by the price of that Scout backpack (the one on the right). Because my son is rather small and these kids have so many heavy books to carry around every day, I wanted a quality backpack for him this year. Can you believe that I paid 130 euros?!
Hair braiding.
Primary school books are free in Luxembourg. And oh how my husband loves the day when they come home with all their new books and the request to plastify them asap. He does this so much better than I, that's why I let him do the job :-).
And there were so many trips to IKEA for son number two who moved out this weekend. He goes to college next week and found a really nice flat. Unfortunately it didn't have a kitchen and my husband had to drive to Germany twice to install a small kitchen and buy some cooking equipment. Now he can at least bake an egg.
Did you notice all the cleaning stuff I bought him?! I hope it gives him the inspiration to clean up every now and then :-(.
Yesterday night was his first night in Germany and although it isn't easy to let him go, I am not feeling as depressed as I was two years ago. It is just the way life is meant to be and you get used to the feeling of not having them around all the time. It makes the days when they come home more special!
I am really looking forward to normal, quiet days. I am feeling tired.
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Saturday, September 22, 2012
Apples
I am always looking forward to the apple season. The joy of cooking applesauce and pressing apple juice. There is just one slight problem.....there are no apples this year. I harvested 1 1/2 apples (as in 1 whole and one half apple.....) from our two apple trees. The really, really wet spring was followed by a period of extremely dry weather. My husband, who is a farmer's son, said that this happens sometimes. That is how nature works and there is nothing you can do about it.
It bought some apples and made some applesauce, but it just isn't the same.
Don't you just love my Bonne Maman jam jars!
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Monday, September 3, 2012
Rhodes - Greece
We have just returned from a one-week stay on the lovely island of Rhodes. Cloudless, blue skies all week long.
^ The beautiful village of Lindos.
^ We loved the pebble mosaics.
^ Breathtaking view from the Lindos acropolis. It was a long hard climb and very hot but the view was worth it.
^ We could have taken one of these "donkey taxis" but we really felt sorry for them and decided to walk up that hill instead.
It was wonderful to spend a week together as a family again.
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Sunday, August 12, 2012
Plastic
I don't like plastic and I like quiet colors for my home.
I prefer to use preloved objects to keep small treasures and crafting supplies
... such as old wooden cutlery trays,
... old wooden boxes,
... old leather collar boxes,
... and old cookie bins.
But I made an exception last week and bought this colorful set of plates, granola bowls and cups for the six of us. I'll tell you why.
Except for three bedrooms upstairs, our whole house is tiled. I really like my tiles because they are so easy to clean. The only disadvantage is that every time something falls on the floor, it breaks into a hundred pieces (four kids and a cat!). I stopped counting how many sets of crockery we dropped over the last 20-something years. This meant that we never had matching plates and cups, they were all single pieces from different sets. Last year we decided to buy plain white IKEA plates and bowls. They were cheap and we could easily replace them because we have IKEA just around the corner. What we didn't know was that the plates didn't fit in our dish washer. Isn't that strange!? I really don't understand why IKEA sells plates that are too big for a normal dishwasher! One day I took them all to the recycling center. I started searching online and found RICE from Denmark. Unbreakable, dishwasher proof melamine and the colors make me happy. Every family member chose his/her favorite color. I am excited that it really works for our family. I should have done this years ago. I used to have cups and bowls and plates all over the house. The children took a clean plate for almost every slice of bread. Dirty plates were left all over the place and it was always "someone else" who put them there. Now that everybody has his/her own color, they search for their plates instead of taking a clean one from the cupboard. And if we find a dirty plate, bowl or cup, we always know "who did it". I just don't know why it took me more than 20 years to figure this out.
... such as old wooden cutlery trays,
... old wooden boxes,
... old leather collar boxes,
... and old cookie bins.
But I made an exception last week and bought this colorful set of plates, granola bowls and cups for the six of us. I'll tell you why.
Except for three bedrooms upstairs, our whole house is tiled. I really like my tiles because they are so easy to clean. The only disadvantage is that every time something falls on the floor, it breaks into a hundred pieces (four kids and a cat!). I stopped counting how many sets of crockery we dropped over the last 20-something years. This meant that we never had matching plates and cups, they were all single pieces from different sets. Last year we decided to buy plain white IKEA plates and bowls. They were cheap and we could easily replace them because we have IKEA just around the corner. What we didn't know was that the plates didn't fit in our dish washer. Isn't that strange!? I really don't understand why IKEA sells plates that are too big for a normal dishwasher! One day I took them all to the recycling center. I started searching online and found RICE from Denmark. Unbreakable, dishwasher proof melamine and the colors make me happy. Every family member chose his/her favorite color. I am excited that it really works for our family. I should have done this years ago. I used to have cups and bowls and plates all over the house. The children took a clean plate for almost every slice of bread. Dirty plates were left all over the place and it was always "someone else" who put them there. Now that everybody has his/her own color, they search for their plates instead of taking a clean one from the cupboard. And if we find a dirty plate, bowl or cup, we always know "who did it". I just don't know why it took me more than 20 years to figure this out.
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Sunday, July 29, 2012
End of school year stress
So much has been going on here lately.
Son n° 2 graduated from high school. He cannot wait to start his new life as a college student. He'll continue his studies either at the university of Aachen (where his brother is) or in Cologne in Germany. Although I am not an empty-nester yet, we will miss him awfully.
Our baby, who isn't a baby anymore, "graduated" from kindergarten. He is very proud to start primary school after the summer vacation.
My daughter participated in this ^ show, organized every three years by her dance school. She loved being on that stage. When I asked her if she wasn't a little bit nervous, she said "no, why would I?".
We have a glass dome on top of the roof of our house. We have had some water leaking problems with the old one, so we decided it was time to replace it after more than 15 years.
This ^ is how they left my house at the end of the day.
And now it's time to relax: no homework, no dance rehearsals, no swimming and music lessons, no exam stress and no builders around the house. It was about time!
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Monday, March 5, 2012
Linen
When my mother-in-law passed away 5 years ago, we - her three daughters-in-law - inherited a closet full of real linen: bed sheets, duvet covers, table linen, napkins, pillow covers..... Today I started sorting out my share.
Such lovely little details, all handmade.
Such lovely little details, all handmade.
My mother-in-law's monograms A.H., all handstitched.
That old farmhouse held so many treasures!
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