There isn’t much on the table these days. Just some place mats, a candle, a couple of crystals and a tray where I keep paper napkins and a box of matches.
Sometimes there are flowers too. And food at certain times of the day. But in the morning there usually is a journal and a pen.
Accompanied by a cup of tea.
Take a wild guess where we went today!
I had to borrow Harold’s phone to take this shot, because I had left my phone at home by mistake.
Had a fun time, saw loads of beautiful, goofy people (gay AND straight) and very, very grateful to live in a country where events like this are possible.
Susannah Conway is hosting the August Break again… You can sign up here if you’d like to join in!
Day 5: Monday July 21th, 2014
On Monday morning I got out of bed, hit the shower, got dressed etc. and opened all the windows to let some of the cooler air come into the house.
The tea was already waiting for me. I boiled a couple of eggs, but didn’t feel like eating one so I grabbed leftover blueberries and a banana instead:
Then I grabbed my journal and wrote for a while.
I had to do some folding, because the laundry I did a couple of days ago was still sitting there…
It was almost 12.00 by then and I had to get ready for work. I made an egg/cheese sandwich and ate it in a hurry:
And then I couldn’t find my work keys, so I left the house without them. It was raining… I saw a lot of people shelter under trees and rooflets, but I had to keep on cycling to get to work on time.
At work I discovered that I had my work keys in my (new) bag…
Again no photos from work. Monday is administration day, so that’s what I did. I also took care of ordering and of course I helped customers.
At approximately 15.15 the power went out. We could see that the lights in the stores across the street were out too. Our register is power operated, so my manager decided to close the store. She talked to some people on the street. Other stores were closing too.
One woman had called the electricity company and they had said it would take at least two hours before the power would come back on… So my manager sent me home. Through the rain… again.
Harold had the afternoon off work, so he was already at home when I arrived.
I put another load of laundry into the washing machine and we decided we’d better take care of our weekly grocery shopping right away:
For dinner we had a summery bean dish:
Watched the news, followed by Harold reading a book, me checking Facebook and stuff online. I also watched an episode of Eastenders. Then I went upstairs to take care of the laundry and to prepare for a 4-day illustration summer course, before heading to bed.
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This was fun! My conclusion after 5 days of sharing my life? I seem to do a lot of laundry… LOL!
No, that’s what it looks like, but I know better. I had to do things in advance because I knew I would not have time for them this week. My household chores are on hold this week because of the summer course. Besides: when you have irregular work days like I have, you need to do stuff when you can do them and that means that sometimes I do a lot of chores in a row.
I also think that this was a funny week to document because the temperatures were very high. I have a feeling things might have been different if it had been cooler. Anyway: it will be nice to do another ‘5 days in the life of…’ in the future!
I still need to nominate someone… And this time I’m nominating YOU. I’m inviting you to play along and document 5 days of your life in photos. If you accept the invitation, I hope you share your photos with me! I would love to learn more about your life!
Day 4: Sunday July 20th, 2014
I woke up at 5.30 and could not get back to sleep. So I went downstairs and had breakfast at 06.15…
Then I went upstairs again and thought I would take care of my messy craft room.
I had already started going through boxes of memorabilia last week, so I thought I might as well sort another box. It was a fun one: things like cards and messages that were sent to my parents when I was born, cards that we sent my grandmother from various vacation addresses, Christmas cards that we created and sent as a family.
I’ve put them in sleeves in a binder for now, so I can find them in an instant when I figure out what I’m going to do with them.
I took a break from sorting to drink coffee and to watch the two episodes of Eastenders that I missed last week.
Returned to the craft room to finish the job!
Harold woke up and decided to fetch a couple of croissants from the train station. His breakfast. My lunch.
Once again back into the craft room, but this time to do what it’s intended for:
This is the page I shared here yesterday.
We didn’t feel like cooking or eating much, so we had melon & serrano ham for dinner:
After watching the news (we’re still following everything MH17), I didn’t have to water the plants because of the rain. So I went back upstairs to continue playing with watercolour before going to bed!
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Today I’m going to nominate Denise. She’s part of the One Little Word DT. She’s an incredible scrapbook/mixed media artist. She was the one who inspired me to pick up my watercolours this Sunday. And she created the Spotify playlist I’ve been listening to all weekend (fact: it’s still playing)!
See you again tomorrow for the last day of my ‘5 days in the life of… !
Day 3: Saturday July 19th, 2014
Saturday was a workday so I had to trade in my flip-flops for more sensible shoes. Got up at 08.00 h, got ready, had breakfast, prepared lunch and dashed off on my bike:
I took the scenic route to work, it goes through a pretty park!
Sorry, no photos of my work place. You can see my lunch, if you care:
I work at a local craft supply store, usually three days a week. This week I worked there on Monday, Tuesday and Saturday.
It’s always busy on Saturdays, but it was 31 degrees Celsius inside, so there were definitely fewer people around than usual. Besides: the schools in our part of the Netherlands have started their summer break and a lot of families are already away on holiday.
When I got home, Harold was preparing a surprise barbecue:
We made this salad to go with the meat. It was way too hot to sit outside, so we ate our barbecue dinner inside…
After dinner I watered the plants again, cleaned the kitchen and then we drank coffee together.
I lurked around on the Cocoa Daisy forum afterwards. There was a Summer Crop going on and it looked like a lot of fun. I decided against participating that evening because my craft room was in a state and it was too hot to do anything about it.
So I wrote yesterdays blog post instead, edited the photos for this one and went to bed way too late.
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Today I’m going to nominate my artist friend Willemijn. She specializes in beautiful, intricate mandala-type drawings and paintings. She loves to photograph too and although she’s not a scrapbooker, I think she might have a lot of fun documenting 5 days of her life in detail. I hope you play along Willemijn!
See you tomorrow!
Day 2: Friday July 18th, 2014
I was up bright and early. The weather forecast said that it was going to be a hot day, so I decided to go to the gym first thing. My goal is to go to the gym at least twice a week, sometimes I only manage to go once, sometimes I can squeeze a third time in. This week I was happy to meet my goal.
I usually leave my phone at home when I go to the gym, because I don’t have any use for it there. I took it with me this time, but decided to leave it in my locker. I just don’t feel comfortable taking photos at the gym. When I was done (after an hour of fitness), I found myself alone in the dressing room and I took a quick selfie in the mirror, just for you:
I rode my bike back home, made myself a cup of coffee and read up on the latest news about MH17:
I felt so sad, seeing the photos on the front pages of the Dutch papers that morning. I kept thinking about how most passengers (families!) on the plane were supposed go on vacation and how happy they must have felt going on that dreadful plane.
After a second coffee I did household chores on the ground floor:
I made myself lunch, ate it, took a shower, got dressed, put a load of laundry in the washing machine and went to work on a couple of blog posts:
One load of laundry down, two more to go:
Onto photographing pages that were previously published in Scrap365, snack time, checking e-mail, editing photos:
Dinner time is approaching. Harold is coming home. There is a napa cabbage in the fridge that needs to be used up, so I improvise some kind of stir fry. We eat in front of the TV, watching news about MH17:
Harold goes out to buy us ice cream. I make him a cup of coffee:
Cleaned the kitchen, watered the plants outside, put the last load of laundry in the machine, browsed the internet, worked on yesterdays ‘5days’ blog post whilst listening to 3FM on the radio and put the last load of laundry into the dryer before heading off to bed.
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Today I nominate Sandra because she’s one of my most loyal blog readers. She’s a scrapbooker, a wonderful story teller and I love the clean and simple pages she makes about her kids!
See you tomorrow!
My awesome friend Revlie is doing a series of blog posts documenting 5 days of her life and on her third day she nominated me to follow her lead. How could I say no to her?! Besides: her 5-day series is a blast to read so I kind of begged her to continue the series after the 5 days are over… Let’s hope she does!
Anyway, I agreed. I think the rules are that I also have to nominate someone to play along each day. I didn’t get any more rules, so… If I’m doing it wrong, you can complain to Revlie about it. I’m just making up things as I go along!
So here it goes…
Day 1: Thursday July 17th, 2014
It’s a non-work day so I allow myself a slow start. As usual Harold has left me a pot of tea on the kitchen counter:
The rest of the morning looks like this:
Writing Morning Pages, making lists, drinking tea: I don’t journal every day, but I try. Most mornings are just too hectic.
Cleaning the bathroom.
Coffee and Facebook (and some blogs and some Instagram…)
My bike is my transport and I remembered it needed a little bit more air in the tires!
And then I did my make-up and took my bike to meet up with my friend Hellen for lunch:
After lunch Hellen went back to work and I ran some errands in the city centre. I bought a couple of make-up brushes, some incense, a couple of ramekins and then I cycled to a supermarket in my neighbourhood:
This isn’t my usual supermarket, but I like to go here every once in a while. The only problem is that I don’t really know my way around this store, so it took me a looong time to find everything I needed. I saw an interesting display in the meat section… Yes, those are shawls. In fact: there is jewellery too. Hmmm!
When I got to the cash register there was an elderly lady in front of me. She was giving the cashier a really hard time and she was holding up the queue that was starting to form behind me. She was genuinely being a p… in the b… Some elderly ladies are like that. I just hope that I don’t end up like that when I’m twice my current age… I can hope, right?!
Anyway: I rode my bike home. And found the contends of a pack of blueberries at the bottom of one of the bags on my bike…
I put the groceries away, washed the blueberries about three times and then decided to relax for a bit because I felt a headache coming up:
I treated myself to some strawberry and banana sorbet, made with the Yonanas. It doesn’t look as nice as real ice cream, but it tastes wonderful!
When I noticed a message about a plane crash on Facebook I decided to turn on the TV. I had planned chicory salad for dinner. Harold came home a little early so we ended up preparing the salad together.
After dinner we hopped in the car and we drove to the city centre to shop for a pair of new glasses for me. We went to a new-to-us store and I got to try on more than a couple designer frames:
Harold apped all these photos to my brother so we could have a ‘second’ opinion. I’m not going to share which one I’m going to get just yet… You’ll have to wait and see!
When we were done, we walked over to the Italian ice cream parlour to get some real ice cream!
Harold also bought a new pair of jeans and then we celebrated the wonderful summer evening with a drink at the terrace of one of Harold’s favourite local clubs.
We turned on the TV again the minute we got home and we waited until the press conference about the plane crash aired:
Chills went down my spine when the spokes person mentioned the count of Dutch people on the plane… We went to bed with a heavy heart. Such devastating news.
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Now I have to nominate someone! My first nominee is my dear friend Riikka. Who else! I think I have an inkling of how she spends her days… But I might be wrong. I hope I get to find out!
See you tomorrow!
