Getting some rest...

It's done!

The Oranje Ball 2008 was a great success: the weather, the food, the decoration, the ambiance, the fairy-tale like garden, the amount of money we collected for charity (http://www.sitioagar.com.br/ or http://www.sitioagar.nl/). It all turned out so amazingly well, you can't imagine. I'm so happy with the results...

So, 'the day after' (yesterday), I got some rest finally...

The pictures I made turned out extremely bad (sorry!), I will show the only acceptable one:




Fortunately, we hired a professional photographer, so pictures will definitely follow later!!

Almost ready for the Oranje Ball 2008

Preparations are still going strong. The food is nearly ready (you really don't want to see my kitchen right now...)!

But today is absolutely the nicest part: decorating!
And the pictures will follow soon :-) , I promise!

And please, keep your fingers crossed that it won't rain tonight, that would really ruin the whole party... (and all the decorations).

Talk to you soon, gotta go now: party time

Enjoy your weekend!
Love, C.

Time to bake??

Once again, I pampered myself (you can't do that enough in life, that's my opinion!!!). I ordered two books at Amazon.com and they arrived within two weeks in Brazil! Now, isn't thát amazing?

Here are my new treasures:

The latest Martha Stewart: Cookies

The next thing to do is to find time to really start baking.
At this moment I have a lot of cooking projects going on: coming Saturday there's an international day at my son's school and I'll be presenting the Netherlands, together with a Dutch friend. But the Dutch goodies are not te be found here, so we have to make them: boterkoek (a cake with flour, sugar and butter, very tasteful, very light...) and speculaas. Furthermore, we'll offer some real Dutch cheese with grapes on top... ánd some 'rookworst' (a kind of smoked sausage).

Yummie!

Apart from that, on April 12, we'll be organizing a party for the Birthday of the Dutch Queen.
This is celebrated in the Netherlands on April 30 and it's a public holiday.
In Brasil, it's not a day off of course, but we do celebrate her Birthday (unfortunately, the Queen cant attent the party this year...). The food we'll serve during this party is Indonesian. The Indonesian 'rijsttafel' offers a wide variety of dishes (we have about 9 fish and meat dishes and about 7 side dishes). Guess who needs to prepare this for 100 guests?? Yes, me, together with 4 other ladies (bless them!). It's a lot of work, the logistics, the actual buying, the chopping (guess we'll use over 200 onions, can you imagine??) and the cooking, but, I'm sure it will be a marvellous evening.
Glad I already found my cocktail dress, don't need to go shopping for that anymore, so I can dedicate all my time to cooking...


But when will I have time to prepare Martha's cookies or a recipee from the other book I ordered:

Doesn't it look delicious? Can't wait to start!

I'll keep you posted on the parties, will publish some pictures in the coming weeks!

But I gotta go now, time to start chopping...

Have a great week!

Love, C.

9th Birthday

Sunday, it was Thom's 9th birthday (already... wow... time flies really!).

Just a little bit impatient... first the card!!

We didn't have a real birthday party... this will only be on May 17 (too busy agendas for the 3 of us), but we went to a nice restaurant on Saturday night (Thom invited a friend to join us). And on Sunday, he choose to play tennis and liked to have a BBQ during the afternoon for which he invited some friends (+ parents).

A tennis bag, empty...

Of course, he's spoilt too much with presents, but hey, we just have one!
Have a look at the pictures, and you'll see: he is extremely happy with all the attention, the presents ánd the cake!

A trip to... Disney!

Table ready for the BBQ

There were some candles left to blow after the BBQ (and make a wish!!)

Promised!

My cupboard after the shopping trip down town...

The pillow case I made

(awful picture, but somehow my camera didn't want to foucs anymore)

Finally put the letters on the wall in my son's room

(next to his bath room that sometimes looks like an ocean...)

Internet problems...

How addicted can you be???

After 4 days without a functioning internet connection, I feel reborn now! It looks like it took forever, but it were only 4 days... and thank God (or Telefonica...) it's working again now!

The good thing about it is that I finally got down to do, organize, make things that I already wanted to do for a very long time... but surfing the net, looking for interesting decorating ideas kept me from that (yes, I admit: I'm addicted to internet!).

So I saw, I painted, I did some long waiting adminsitration, started organizing a tennis tournament, organized my sons birthday party, went shopping, etc. What a lot of hours a day has... Felt so free!!!

free

I promise, I will show you some pictures of the things I made and/or bought tomorrow!

Have a nice evening!
Love,
C.

Easter preparations

Egg dye

The eggs need to be done!!

Boil...

Dye...

Paint...

Glitter...

Pearls...

Beeds...

Bows...

Decoupage...

...

And what's more fun than to do this with a bunch of kids...

We're almost ready for Easter!

From dartboard to art...

Work in progress...

Some time ago we got a dartboard... but of course... I don't like to hang it on the wall outside like a dartboard as it is, as it's too ugly for that (I apologize to all the darters, but hey, this is my garden!).

Besides from that, it could get wet with the tropical showers...
So we decided to make a nice little case for it. The whole family, we're just 3 :), worked on it.

Case ready! But too white in this exotic environment...

We turned the dartboard into a small piece of Brazilian art with a little Dutch (orange!) touch... (another Baiana in the house!).

Painting the doors

Let the dart tournament begin (in style of course)!!

Enjoy your weekend!

Love, C.

The life of a... Brazilian dog!

Our little lady Senna went to the beauty salon today. She had a bath, nails were done and teeth were cleaned. The treatment took about an hour and a half and she's got a nice perfume now. This is what she looked like when I picked her up:

(can you imagine, there are 24 hour pet shops in São Paulo, dogs have a 'banho' almost every week and still there are many people living on the streets, no home, no food, no nothing... the contrast is too big to be honoust)

Love,

C.

Easter is entering into our house too!

Easter is only two and a half weeks away... time to prepare!

As I'll be hosting a coffee (informal get-together of dutch and belgian women) this coming Friday, I did some decorating last night. And as a nice hazel tree doesn't exist here (or at least, I can't find one), I made my own version of the Easter branch...