« June 2005 | Main | August 2005 »
July 31, 2005
Stop the world......
I was going to instigate "Queen Watch", a regular update on what the Queen (of the Netherlands) is up to. This temporary interest in royalty is motivatd purely by the knowledge that my request for Dutch citizenship has wend its way to her office and lies there now awaiting her personal attention, I'm sure.
However I'be been too busy to keep an eye on the queen. In fact I'm struggling to keep up with our own daily activities so have had to abandon that brilliant idea. All we do is work and sleep and drive to Berlin and back. One more week to go and then its two weeks holiday in Lapland. Oh the irony! You live in a country with a cold wet summer and choose to take your summer holiday somewhere even further north! Still, I can't wait!
In the meantime, to pass the time, here is some Jacob. We went to Berlin for three days and when we got back he was DIFFERENT. Visibly older. With a whole little world in his head that we don't know anything about. My baby, my baby!
Posted by Faith at 03:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 29, 2005
Photo Friday:Somber
Posted by Faith at 10:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 25, 2005
A flying start..........
While in Berlijn we stayed at The Propeller Island City Lodge. This was our flying bed.
We stayed there three nights so that was three nights where getting out of bed involved me taking a flying leap onto the floor because I couldn't reach it from on the bed. And I'm not tall but I'm not THAT short either! (1.65) Leaping onto a sloping floor is a feat in the middle of the night, never mind the graceful walk downhill to the bathroom clutching the wall.
It was only after we had been there a couple of nights that we realised that of course the thing to do would have been to stay in a different room each night. So slow........... We had devised a breakfast game that involved guessing which room the other guests had chosen based on their appearance. Unfortunately no one turned up to breakfast in S&M gear or other overtly kiny outfits, looking resolutely normal, which I suppose means we were dining with a bunch of right weirdos. Of course, thats probably what they thought about us.
Is this the only hotel that has to have a sign in one of the rooms that says. "Please No Sex in the coffins"?
Posted by Faith at 10:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 21, 2005
Your mission.....
...........its just TOO busy!........ we are off for the weekend to Berlin, on a mission to a mission, so to speak. Not all fun-and-games but I'll tell you more about it when we get back and have some breathing space, or not!
Posted by Faith at 02:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 18, 2005
Our favourite sheep
Posted by Faith at 10:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 12, 2005
Of all things icey
Undeterred by last week's cold snap I ventured into the world of cold desserts. I found a recipe in reliable old Steph's book of wonders for Lemon Granita that turned out to be absolutely delicious. I hadn't realised granita is so blindingly simple to make and the best thing about making it yourself is you can make it as lemony as you like. (I also added a dash of lime). As I like it sourpuss-lemony this is a great thing. It IS a pain to scrape though so I will be investing in one of those scraper things you use on your car windows in winter. Of course they are impossible to find in summer so I might have to beg one off the scharrel-ijs seller on the Albert Cuyp! I had more syrup than I had shallow dished for so I also made some icey-poles for Jacob's growing icey-pole stash.
While leafing through Steph's encyclopedia-of-lard I stumbled across a recipe for Strawberry and Balsamic Vinegar Ice-cream. I love balsamic vinegar and could quite happily drink the stuff and as soon as I imagined it with strawberries I couldn't get it out of my mind. Again, ice-cream is quite easy to make, its basically just whipped cream with flavourings, such as strawberries and balsamic vinegar and the resulting ice-cream was ABSOLUTELY delicious! My problem was that Ron doesn't like fruit and so all the bowl-and-spoon-licking had to be done by me. (Jacob found the balsamic vinegar flavour a bit too strong although he did like it once it was frozen) Four times the mixture of whipped cream and strawberries and vinegar has to be beaten, put in the freezer, removed and beaten again. Thats four times a bowl and spoon has to be licked. Before the ice-cream had even been frozen I was feeling just a tad overfull from the stuff! And rich! And then a litre of ice-cream that only Jacob and I can eat!'*
Of course living a fifteen second walk from Pepinno's, formerley-the-best-ice-cream-in-Amsterdam, all this may seem redundant but oh how the mighty have fallen! This summer is the first under the new ownership without the presence of Mr Pepinoo himself and you only have to look at the queues to see how things have changed. What queues? Exactly.
*Ron had thought he might eat the ice-cream as he often eats things where the fruit has been pureed and the fruit texture isn't evident. Alas, he tasted the mixture once and declared it 'too strawberry'!
Posted by Faith at 09:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 09, 2005
The class of 2005
Posted by Faith at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 08, 2005
Photo Friday:Candid
Posted by Faith at 09:47 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
July 04, 2005
I do *click*
A little bit more than a short time ago I was privileged enough to not only be invited to Steve and Fintan's wedding but also to be asked by them to take photos. This was a "kid-in-a-candy-shop" experience and I really enjoyed being able to harrass people with a camera all day. And I was reasonably happy with the results, although I must admit now I can see a lot that I should have done better/different/otherwise. Sigh.
It was actually a very long and exhausting day and the downside is that you don't get a lot of time to talk to other guests or enjoy the festivities. On the other hand you do have permmission to be obsessed with a camera all day and night and no one cam complain if you want to take their photo.
If you're interested you can see some of the photos here. The brief was "B&W and arty".
Posted by Faith at 10:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack