A chair for Mischa

Mischa and his mum are finally home from the hospital!

We going over there tomorrow and bring the chair that we bought for him. In the meantime a very nice polarbear is using it and liking it very much!

A present

My friend Mascha just moved temporalily to another house because her own home is being renovated. And today I'm going to see her new place and wanted to bring something with me.

It's difficult to bring something when I don't know what colours she's using so I decided to make her a cake. I got the recipe from Smitten Kitten and got to work. First I tried it out last sunday to see how it looked.





I used pears because the supermarket didn't have plums. So it came out looking like this:



It looked ok but the pear was quite hard so S suggested by making it the next time, use oven pears which he made last monday. So I did and it ended up looking different but I think better.



Knowing us, the cake will be finished tonight during our hours of conversation!

Ramsey's stew

I was looking through the cookbooks of S and found a great recipe from Gordon Ramsey. I like his shows but have no idea how he cooks because you don't see him actually cooking, just giving advice to others.

But then I saw the recipe for the stew and decided that it was going to be a experiment because like I said earlier, I'm nog the best cook in the world. But I feel bad for S sometimes that he has to do all the cooking when we're eating together.




So at 9 am I left to get all the groceries and started. I had to be 2 1/2 hours in the oven and it's just ready and immediatly made pictures!




I already tasted it and it's good but I'm very curious what S has to say and if he liked it. It's for tomorrow because we're eating together then. I'll let you know!

Amsterdam

This blogs says that I'm from The Hague and that I'll tell you about living in this wonderful city. But to be honest, there's a city that I love even more and if I had my way and S would agree, we would move there: Amsterdam.

If you ever been there, you'll know that I'm talking about. The energy the city has is just great. We love the area around the Albert Cuyp market. In future blogs, I will tell you more about my love for Amsterdam but for now, it have to do with some pictures:







As you can see from the pictures, I especially love the architecture of the buildings, also known in Dutch as grachtenpanden. Next week, we have a week off and hopefully we'll go for a day to Amsterdam and I'll have new pictures to show you.

Talk to you soon!

My chef

A lot of the blogs that I read are about women who like to cook and make the most wonderful meals. I wish that I could tell you that I'm one of those women but the truth is that I'm an everage cook. It's fun to make the desserts, cakes or a good pasta dish but that's about it.

Thankfully my dear boyfriend S does most of the cooking when we eat together. That doesn't happen often because he works in a restaurant and makes dinner for all the guests that eat there!

I know he hates it when I proudly talk about how good he is because he thinks it good to be humble but I think that doesn't do him justice. Last week I photographed him while he was creating a new menu.




I can't wait to try his new menu. I think I'll ask my parents to go with me to eat at the restaurant.

In the meantime, I'll eat the leftovers from a typical Dutch autumm/ winter dish, named boerenkool that he made for us yesterday.

For the autumm feel, I'll leave you with a picture of the tree that we see from our bedroom window. I realy like this tree because it shows the time of the year in a big and busy city.



It almost has a small town feeling to it which makes me feel safe having grown up in one...

Enjoy your day everyone!

Flu

I've stayed home the last couple of days because I wasn't feeling very well. Probably a flu and a cold so I didn't do much the last couple of days. Even eating wasn't something I was in the mood for. And knowing me, then I must be really ill... The only thing I like to eat when I'm ill is soup. So I made homemade vegetable soup and it tasted pretty good.



At least it's healthy and it made me feel warm when I drank it.



I'm going back to work this afternoon but I still don't feel well but try finding a replacement on a rainy sunday evening... Maybe I'll stay at home tomorrow but I really hope this darn flu will disappear.

Have a nice sunday everyone. If the weather is a bad where you live, I recommend a nice movie, maybe Made of Honour. That is, if the partner agrees. I watched it together with S and he liked it too...

Welcome little man!

On friday, Evy gave birth to a beautiful babyboy. His name is Mischa.

Dear Mischa, welcome to the world!

The name Nicegirl: where does it come from?

About 9 years ago, I watched the movie You've got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and it immeditaly became my favourite movie! In that time, I really wanted to own a bookshop and it was my dream that it would look just like the store in the movie. After watching it for numerous times I started noticing other things such as which locations they used of New York (they talk about that in the special features on the dvd), the funny dialogue and the fact that there's no violance or bad words used.

The charactare of Meg Ryan has a screen name online which is Shopgirl and when I started to go online (in 1999, Internet was rather new, for all you young people), I wanted to have Shopgirl as a screen name as well. Unfortunately, so did a lot of others so I had to think about another name and made up Nicegirl because I'm a girl and I'm nice. Some things are better when you don't think about it that much ;-).

See here for the trailer of the movie for those who have forgotten or those who have never seen it (shame on you!!!)

Starbucks

I'm a huge Starbucks fan which is really strange because I don't like coffee all that much. But the first time that I tried the Caramel Machiatto, I was hooked. That was in Berlin, Germany and I fell in love with the logo, the atmosphere, the locations, everything. In the Netherlands, there's only 3 Starbucks shops and all at the airport Schiphol. Allthough I live about 45 minutes away by train, it's too much of a hassle to go there. There's a coffee shop around the corner from where I work, but it's not the same...

So whenever I see Starbucks, I immediatly have to go inside to experience the atmosphere and try a coffee or tea. Here's some pictures I've taken in Berlin and Madrid of Starbucks:







In two weeks, we're going to London for a few days and Starbucks is naturally on the agenda. I can't wait!

I'm back!

Hi Everyone,

It has been too long since I last posted something on my blog. To be honest with you, I'm having difficulty to be creative, especially when I see other women's blogs, I just get jealous, ha ha.

What I really wanted to show you, are pictures of our holiday last September. We went to Andalusia, Spain. We rented a car and drove around to see as much as possible. I especially liked the accommodations where we stayed and I just wanted to show you:







We stayed a few days in Ronda, a town that's about 1 1/2 hours from Seville. Conchita Kien is the owner and she has three suites (small cottages) on a hill with spectacular view. You can book a suite on her website: www.fincanaranja.com. If you really want to relax and enjoy peace and quiet, this is a beautiful place to go to!

Another place we stayed at during our holiday in Spain was Caseta Castana. This is in a small town called Iznajar which is about 2 hours drive from Seville. We stayed with Margot and Graham who have a small but beautiful cottage. They started this year to rent out this cottage to tourists and it is just beautiful:







To make a reservation, the website is www.casas2let.com.