Yes, I'll be moving soon. I'm leaving Typepad and I'm moving to:
Myrthe's new blogging place
So please update your bookmarks and follow me on Blogger from now on! I'm still figuring some stuff out, but hopefully I'll have it up and running soon!
xoxo
That's less than a month! Only 27 days until I start my new job, time's flying. I';m still working on my massive to-do-list, and today I can proudly tell you that I can cross off three more things:
~ first we did Royal Fiesta IV last Sunday and I believe we had 60 happy ladies. Everyone made such wonderful projects, I'm way proud! I'll show you my scrappies in this post. Look down! :)
~ The second thing is that we've chosen a date for Royal Fiesta V: september 13, 2009! Registration starts on June 1, so mark your calendars!
~ And the last thing I did was order four photo-canvasses, although I'm not quite sure yet where to put them. It's four wedding-pictures! A pic of my grandmother and grandfather, a pic of my inlaws, a pic of my parents and a pic of us. How awesome is it to have their weddingpictures in our house! Especially my grandparents' pic....they were so stylish when they got married about 50 years ago! I'll show you them as soon as I have a pic of them. Promise.
So here's some stuff we did on Fiesta (and I'll promise to show you the mini-album in a next post). Thanks for all your sweet comments and let me know what we can do to improve our workshop-days. Is there anything missing? Something we *really* need to do next time? Let me know!
Four random things before I'm heading back to work tomorrow:
1. Finally working on a digital Blurb-book about the wedding. Cannot believe that I still haven't anything finished, picture wise. Even my mum has finished a whole album about the wedding! Right now I have 23 Blurb-pages done and about 10 scrapped ones. Please tell me I'm not the only one who's still working on a wedding-book!
2. Posted another sneak peek for RF today. I totally love the colors: brown, cream and two tones of pink. If I could chose one color-combination for the rest of my life, it would be brown-pink-white. Or maybe brown-robin's egg blue-white. Or hot pink-warm orange-red-warm yellow. What would your color-combo be? :)
Oh, here's the sneak, before I forget it:3. Thinking about those 2, maybe 3, weeks I have off in the summer. I know we'll be going to NYC in June, but now I'm really leaning towards booking a second holiday. But I have no clue where to go for two weeks! I'm not really into camping (anymore), I'm willing to fly long distances and it should be a combination of cultural stuff and nice weather. Any ideas?
4. I won't be much online this week: tomorrow night is cropnight and I'm staying at my parents, Wednesday evening I'm having dinner with Barbara, Thursday night is office party and I'll be home late and Fridaynight I'll probably be knackered!
Hope you're having a great day! Thanks for stopping by :)
This has been a lovely week! I was so ready for a few days off! This week I:
- spent 4.5 days in pj's
- slept for about 80 hours
- watched 17 episodes of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 6 episodes of Samantha Who *and* we finally took the time to watch Memoires of a Geisha (loved it)
- made two mini-albums (tossed one) and a home-decor project. And brainstormed with Jennie about upcoming workshops and Camp-projects
- took 194 pictures
- bought presents for Merel, Barbara and *none* for myself. The Paypal-people mailed me if there was something wrong! (j/k!)
- discovered a new green tea with orange blossom and drank gallons of it
- drew out a new design for the website. Marijn liked it.
- tried not to think about work. I failed. I logged nto my work-email about 14 times.
- sent 73 e-mails. After that I cleaned up all sent items and deleted items....a whopping total of 5783.
- gave 48 people access to a special forum to join Royal Fiesta IV. Bet it's going to be awesome.
- saw Marijn more in the past seven days than in the past seven weeks
- managed to get a total of 135 feeds in my Bloglines
Here's another sneak peek of RFIV.
I can't believe that in 6 weeks, I'm starting my new job! It'll be my birthday in 8 weeks and a day later we'll be leaving for New York, again. Still so much to do, and so little time. But man, did I enjoy these past few days!
Vacation is here! Yay! I'll be home the next 10 days, working on my ever-growing to-do-list, so I can start my new job in 51 days. Man, time's flying by. Today, Marijn is going plant-shopping with his mum to pretty up our balcony. We're in serious need of some greens, flowers, fruits and vegetables. This afternoon we're going to my parents to celebrate my sister's 17th birthday!
I'm at home, doing some household chores and trying to make some preparations for a mini-album I'm making for Fiesta IV. Here's a sneak of the layout I did:
As you can see, I've been very into yellow and orange lately. I have no idea where that's suddenly coming from. I bought some great digital kits from TwoPeas and Designer Digitals, and they're all yellow/green/orange-toned. It's even been a while since I used pink! *shocker!*
Mmmmm. So what do you think is the best thing about having a few days off? And what do you like to do when you don't have to work? Inspire me!
My top-3 is:
1. pj's. all day, every day.
2. afternoon naps
3. scrapping and making a mess
Happy Easter!!
Today I want to:
1. spend money on useless crap I technically don't need
2. be all alone at home, no noise, no nothing
3. lay in bed and generally feel sorry for myself
Today I get:
1. whiney co-workers who apparently have issues that I should solve
2. just too much on my to-do-list
Hmmmz. I think I'm ready for a vacay. Only two days of work to go and then I'll have a total of 10 days off. :)
First of all, a special shout-out to Rachelle and Henri, thank you for reading my blog, I never knew! I'm sure by now Rutger has found this place too, so hi to you too! It's a bit odd, knowing that coworkers read your personal musings, but also kind of fun :)
Thank goodness the weekend is here! Today was creating-while-wearing-pj's-day. I still have to finish up three projects for Royal Fiesta IV, and I managed to finish one layout. Tomorrow I'm working on the mini-album. Here's the invitation to RFIV. Lots of ladies have already signed up, so feel welcome to join us on National Scrapbooking Day 2009! (Click on image to make it larger)
Some other random facts of this week:
1. I downloaded my first (ever!) audiobook and I must admit that I like it more than I thought I would! I'm going to figure out how to add it to my iPhone. Nice distraction while commuting.
2. I'm *mad* that they cancelled Lipstick Jungle. Loved that series. So many great series are being cancelled! Which cancelled ones were your favourite?
3. My little sis turns 17 next week! Insanity!
4. Marijn made pork tenderloin with brie tonight. Tomorrow he's making salmon. I love not having to cook during weekends. Actually, I love not having to cook, period.
I think I haven't shown you these projects yet. They were part of RFIII. Hope you'll like them!
Have a great weekend! :)
Thank you for all your sweet comments on my last post! :)
Today I'm at home, working of course. I'm working on one of the final three university newsletters that I'll be making. It's strange, knowing that everything will change in only nine weeks. On the one hand, I'm scared shitless. On the other hand, I'm so ready to move on.
One of the things I'll likely miss most, is being home (nearly) every Monday. Mondays are my work-from-home-days, but in my new job, I'll have to be at the office five days a week. I'll miss being able to walk around in miss-matched clothes, with my hair messy and bare feet. I'll miss being able to open the balcony doors and let the sunlight and spring-breeze fill our tiny apartment. I'll miss the absence of sound. I'm a fairly loud person, and I'm always surrounded by sound, noise, laughter and people talking. But Mondays are my quiet-days. No people around, no music, no distractions. I really value my quiet-days.
Last weekend I've started on my to-do-list-before-new-job-starts. I decided to tackle the mess in my scraproom and I must say, it felt good to be tossing and decluttering and re-arranging. I also started working on the workshop-examples for Royal Fiesta IV, which will take place on National Scrapbooking Day (May 3rd). Jennie has been working on her scrappies too, and hopefully tonight we'll be able to open registration. I'll keep you posted.
Here are two sneak peeks of what I've been making. A layout about meeting my awesome FRO-friends while I was in NYC and three cards.
Oh, and because I have only posted it online at the forums, here are two pics of the fabric/felt-album we did at ScrapCamp XII. It turned out awesome, I love sewing on my scrapbooking-stuff. The topic I chose was ' ten years of selfpics', since Marijn and I have been taking selfpics since we started dating (in April 10 years ago!). I think there are still some kits for this album for sale, so if you're intersted, email Jennie at her Royal Lemon-addy and she'll get back to you.
My lunchbreak is over and there's a newletter to be finished.
xoxo
M.
OMG! She's not dead! *shock*
Naaah, she's here and still alive. ;)
I think I have the mother of all updates, so here goes:
1. New job. Yes! I've been asked to join the p.a.-team of the Board! Holy ^%%^@#! Things have been madness the past two weeks. An informal first interview, followed by a week of waiting, then a second interview and a salary/benefits-convo and I'm in! It's so nice to know that people actually know who I am and what I'm capable of doing. I'm flattered, scared, overjoyed ... and I can't wait to get started. Only 9 weeks before I'm transferring from Tilburg to Eindhoven. 9 weeks! Can't wait. *sigh*.
2. 9 weeks...man, that's scaring the bejeezus out of me! So Marijn and I have made a list of things that I (or: we) definitely need to finish before I'm starting my new job. There's just so much on my mind lately and so many things unfinished. I don't think I'll be able to give 200% when there's always a little voice in the back of my head 'still so many things to do, still so many things to do!'. Top priorities: finish new website, decluttering at home and getting rid of tons of stuff, finish wedding-album and NYC-album, organize finances for the rest of 2009, give balcony a make-over and some finishing touches at home (art on walls, pictures in frames etc).
3. Royal Lemon is doing well! ScrapCamp #12 was a great succes and we had tons of fun. The fabric/felt-album we made was a huge hit. Thank god we decided to make some extra kits (btw the first time we've ever done this!) because the first 15 have been sold already. Right now we're preparing for Camp #13 (in August), Royal Fiesta IV (in May) and some other ideas that we've had for a while now. Jennie is my rock. Without her? well, let's just not think about that ;)
4. Other lifesavers these days: Marijn (who's always there to help), my family (ditto), my iPhone, my old boss Astrid (who couldn't be more supportive, she's awesome), Bloglines (for decluttering the interwebs, one click at the time), the mail-delivery-people (who keep dropping off packages that make me smile), Paypal and my creditcard (obvious reasons, hee hee), Royal Lemon-members (who keep coming back to support us), a closet full of new clothes, the FRO's (who have taken me in like a long lost family member, even though I'm the only Dutchie amongst all American and Canadian ladies), 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night and last but not least pajama-pants (because nothing makes me feel more relaxt than pj's).
I just want to say thank you, thank you for never giving up on me. Love you all.
xoxo. M.
An update for you :)
1. This must be one of my favourite pics from our NYE-party. And yes, those booze-faces are Marijn + friends. Makes me smile every time I see it.
2. I am swamped in work, Royal Lemon-stuff, a billion creative ideas (and no time to actually make stuff), family-things and so on. Time is flying by so fast! I cannot believe it's almost february.
3. I got the new catalogue from Douwe Egberts and they have new Oilily-stuff! I already have some things from their collection (8 small cake-plates, 8 small coffee-mugs, 8 teabag-plates, 2 sugar-bowls, the large cake-stand and the teapot). I'm showing you the teapot, isn't it just too adorable?
Well, to go with it you can now order a lovely teapot-cozy
and a cookie-jar!
So together with the cappucino-cups ( I already have one, only 7 to go hee hee), it's going to be the best set of funky china one has *ever* owned. I'm in love *sigh*
4. Marijn and his band are getting back together! How cool is that?
5. We went to the WinterEfteling last week. It was still very cold and it rained all day and to top it all off it was swamped with people, we had a great time. We hardly ever take time anymore to do stuff just the two of us. We're always working and working some more. Not good. But here's a pic of us:
6. And here's how my view from our living room was last week when I got up really really early to go to work:
7. Our new uber-chique shower will be installed on Saturday! Yay! I'm so looking forward to it! It's almost a month earlier than expected. It's the last thing (besides hanging some wall-art) that this house needs before it's totally finished. I'm thrilled!
8. I watched the finale of Korenslag (Battle of the Choirs) last Saturday and I'm very happy to announce that Fontys won! Yay for them and for me, since I'm a proud employee of the same organization. This season of Korenslag has been fun, because my ex-boss has been watching too and we've been texting a lot during the shows to comment on their songs, their singing, the horrible host of the show and so on. Ex-boss's-friend was in one of the other choirs that made it to the finals, so it was double special for her. Loser that I am, I even took a pic of the tv:
9. This is the current state of our dining table. Isn't it sad? I cannot remember the last time we were actually able to have dinner at the table. Oh wait, I *do* remember. It was January 1st, when I hosted a newyear's brunch for my MIL and SIL who managed to show up late and eat nothing and when Marijn halfway through brunch had to leave the table to barf. Fun times. I think I'm going to leave all my scrapcrap on the table. It's not that it's been put to good use anyway.
10. As you can see, I'm trying to get back into the blogging-game. I'm also starting to visit other blogs again, so leave me a note and I'll be sure to stop by at yours! :)
My blog is all prettied up :)
Do you like it?
1. Dinner tonight w/ Marleen in Den Bosch. Fun!
2. Going to the WinterEfteling tomorrow w/ Marijn.
3. Opening the special forum for Royal Fiesta III and finalizing workshops/administration on Sunday-morning
4. Going to my dad's birthday, Sunday-afternoon/evening
5. Work on project voor ScrapCamp XII
6. No time for housekeeping, groceries, finances and other duties. Feel like undomestic goddess on Sunday-night and promise myself I'll do better next week.
Just an ordinary weekend. No time to get bored. ;)
You can still sign up! Right now we already have 30+ ladies joining this third fiesta. It's going to be fun! One day, 10 hours, 5 workshops, challenges, prizes and tons of fun!
1. I need to confess something. I hate snow. With a passion. Snow and ice....yuck! The past week have been torture for me. I don't mind it being cold, I just hate snow! It looks all lovely and fairytale-y for exactly 1.7 nanoseconds and after that you're stuck with grey goo that will freeze and turn your street into an icy slip-n-slide. Everyone loved it, of course. Throwing snow balls, ice-skating, winter wonderland...oh puh-lease. Snow is *so* last season. ;p. I'm waiting for sun. Lots of it.
2. I've been working a lot. Not much to tell about it. Same old, same old. Oh, but I do have a new boss. He's nice. He likes Thailand and he does muay-thai. Awesome.
3. Dirty Dancing was fun! Very authentic, with parts of the film projected on stage and everything. Even Marijn liked it. The guy behind us, not so much. He started snoring! (I kid you not!).
Next month we're going to Tarzan.
4. We're hoping to decide on a vacation some time soon. There are some great deals on flights to NYC. I'd love to go back.
xoxo M.
1. We have a tree. It's beautiful. We bought it the day after Christmas during the sales. We also bought enough ornaments to decorate about eight trees. :p I'm in love with our tree, I always said I wanted a tree that looked like it belonged in a magazine. I think we succeeded. Here's a pic of all the tree-crap we bought and a pic of the tree itself. It's decorated with white, silver and pink. Next year I'm hoping to buy more pink!
2. I'm working on the newsletter, which makes me give the feeling that I don't have a Christmas-break at all.
3. We're going to Dirty Dancing tonight.
4. We're hosting New Year's Eve at our place. And people keep RSVP-ing. Even people we didn't invite. That's kind of strange, but also fun. We're also hosting a New Yeear's brunch on Jan 1st. Thank god for dishwashers.
5. I spent the weekend @ Jennie's and it was fun, fun, fun. We came up with a whole plan for a third Royal Fiesta, which will be on February 8. Invitation to follow! ;)
1. All the Christmas-cards have been sent. I cannot believe that I (almost) finished them a few weeks ago and it took me this long to finally send them. I see a New Year's Resolution!
2. My Secret Santa-gift arrived safely! And the package sent to me arrived last monday. It's so pretty! My Secret Santa has gone out of her way to make the cutest giftbox ever, with Barbapappa and a pic of me and Marijn (why is it that people are always snagging pictures from my blog ;) )
3. I've been watching/listening to Serious Request for a few days now and it's been great! Today I'm planning on sending a couple more text messages to them. I'm hoping they'll reach the 2.5 million euro's for the Red Cross today! So let's all send an extra text message to 3333, they only cost 90 cents per text and you're sponsoring a great organization!
4. I saw that Scenic Route is having a warehouse sale and I ordered one of their paper sents. 100 sheets for around 40 euro. That's a good deal, and SR is always great paper to use for cards and projects. Two weeks ago Maya Road had a warehouse sale too, and I decided against ordering, but now I'm glad I jumped the warehouse-bandwagon. Hope my SR will arrive asap! :)
Byeee!
Hey all!
It's finally here, two weeks of semi-vacation! Yes, semi, becaue there's still some workstuff to be done at home. But still! I don't have to go back to the office until January 5th. I have a very random update for you this time. Not that interesting, I've just been working very long hours. Everyone was so stressy at work and so ready for the holidays, that it wasn't even fun anymore.
1. Me and my coworkers did a very fun cake decorating class! I had searched the web for some cute decorating ideas, but when I was ready to start, I had no clue what to do! I didn't bring the right cutter-shapes, I didn't have the right color marzipan and frosting. Disaster! So I kept it quite simple and not that attractive. Here's a pic: 2. It was my SIL's birthday last friday, so yesterday we went to a restaurant to celebrate. It was awful! Pretentious, overpriced food that was supposed to be all culinary shizzle. I didn't like it at all! So never go to Plaats1 in Nijmegen, it's just not worth it.
3. Some adorable tape found it's way from Singapore to my home! I ordered them from Etsy and they are just too cute! I'm not even sure what I'll be using it for, but when I saw it, I knew I had to have it. *sigh*
4. I've finished two books, and one of them (Shoe Addicts Anonymous, by Beth Harbison) was great! I can totally recommend that one. A fun read that I just didn't seem to be able to put away. I have three more books waiting to be read this Christmas-vacation: 'PS, I love you' (Cecilia Ahern, although I haven't been a fan of her books, I've heard good things about this one), ' Swimming Pool Sunday' (Madeleine Wickham, again) and 'TheTrouble With Marriage' (Debby Holt).
5. Marijn went to a Buddhist-sand-mandala-ritual-thingie with his friends, and although I'm still not quite sure what it meant, he made some great pictures. Here's one of them (and yes, those are the original colors!):
6. I did some major online grocery shopping last week and everything will be delivered today! That includes all Christmas-food and ingredients for meals that will feed us for three weeks. Awesome! No hassle in an overcrowded supermarket for me this year, and yay for Albert.nl!
7. We're going to my mum's on Christmas Day (she even invited my MIL and SIL, that's....well...new) and Boxing Day at home. We've decided that since we're our own family now (I'm still not used to saying that), we're using Boxing Day as the perfect opportunity to spend some quality time together.
8. Last year we've bought lots of eggplant & turkois-colored Christmas ornaments, because I was sure those we're going to be 'our colors'. Guess what, I don't even like eggplant and turkois! So this year we're starting all over and we're having white, silver and pink! But since I don't have enought ornaments yet to fill a tree, I've just been decorating the house with it. The curly-wurly-lamp was my first victim. Didn't he turn out pretty?
9. My boss Astrid, who I adore, has left us last Friday. She was asked for an amazing new job that will totally fit her, so we had two farewell-parties last friday. I cannot even express how much I'm going to miss her. Four months ago, my other boss left us when she moved to Spain, and I'm still not over that. These two women *needed* me, as their secretary. The uberboss has my collegue as her PA, but the other two bosses were mine to take care of. And now they're both gone and I feel like nobody needs me anymore. The man who replaced my boss who left for Spain, doesn't need anyone. I hardly see him and he hardly ever asks for assistance or help or input or whatever. That's okay of course, but it makes me feel so useless :(
10. I made a cute mini-album for Astrid, with notes and pics of the whole management-team and us three secretaries in it. It turned out pretty cute. Here's a pic (albeit a very bad one, I forgot to take proper pics of it):
That's all for today! I'm going to take my cans of spraypaint (white and pink) and spray some Christmas-ornaments and see how they'll turn out! Have a good day everyone!
Yes, yes, no need to worry, I’m still here. It’s just been so awfully busy the past two weeks! Here’s a little recap:
I'm so sorry guys, I don't have the time right now to do a larger update. I'm working so hard for ScrapCamp XI (which starts friday!) that it's not even fun anymore. I'll try and update later this week. For now I'm leaving you with my favourite wedding-party-pic. See a pattern? I don't mind if pictures aren't clear or sharp, as long as they are taken of the perfect moment, nothing else matters.
My week off is officially over! Tomorrow I'm going back to work again. Thank you for all your sweet comments on my last post!
Here's the week in recap:
1. Jen and I went to the Kreadoe on wednesday. I stayed with her on Tuesday-night and we did some scrapping with Danielle. I don't think I'll go to Kreadoe next year....those 3D-cards-people....well, let's just say not my type of people. It was just too crowded and although I did manage to score some nice scrappy (and non-scrappy!) stuff, it's just not worth the hassle. Did have fun with Jennie though!
2. I downloaded the first season of Lipstick Jungle and so far I love it! Adding it to my ever growing list of fun series. Other suggestions always appreciated!
3. I’ve been working hard on the examples for out first Royal Class and it’s turning out so great. We have a whole bunch of girls sign up for the class and I hope everyone will like it. Jennie and I have some new superfun projects lined up for another class, so stay tuned for more!
4. I did *no* Sinterklaas shopping. At all. Of course I regret it now, but I still didn’t quite know what to get everyone. I loved some of the suggestions you gave, but I still haven’t bought anything. Oh that's a lie: I did buy those cute fabrics from Etsy, and guess what arrived last week! Yay!
5. I did however work on my Christmas-cards. Why, do you ask? I don’t know! I have a Camp album to finish, a workshop to finish, a large card-order (that should have been done roughly two months ago) to finish, but nooooo, I manage to start a completely irrelevant project, just because I felt like it. I’ll post a pic as soon as they’re done. They’re cute! J I use all Be Merry papers (I *heart* MME).
6. Went to the city on Saturday with Marijn and had a great time. Bought some stupid stuff like socks and mittens, but generally had fun. Then we got home and spent the afternoon surfing and gaming and reading and just relaxing. Here’s my favourite Saturday-snack: icetea with overpriced-fresh-fruit-salad. I also had fried fish that day, but this pic screams ‘ health-freak’, which is better for my image (hee hee ;) )
7. Marijn brought me breakfast in bed. He’s the best. J Now where’s that heart-smiley when you need it?
8. On a sadder note: my niece’s husband passed away. He was only 40 years old. It breaks my heart to know that he’s leaving her and their two little girls behind. I’ve been thinking about it all week, you know, this is my biggest fear. I don’t know what I would do without Marijn, I just cannot imagine him not being here. Death has always scared me. Marijn has a teacher at his Zen-course who is not afraid at all of dying. He says that he’s curious if everything after death will be as he imagines it to be. Scary. Scary stuff.
Anyway, here are some cards I made for my neice, her sister and my aunt and uncle. They’re not very special, unfortunately.
9. Today is our friend Janna’s birthday! We’re celebrating by going to the movies on Friday. I was hoping to see Burn After Reading, but she’s already seen it. Other recommendations are welcome, because I have no clue what’s in theaters right now.
10. Oh and the bunnies were too sleepy to say ‘hi’, but they didn’t mind having their picture taken. As long as I kept supplying carrots and other bunny-snacks. Look how cute they are!
Have a great week you all!
Illustration of bird by Andre Jordan
