High five for Friday!

I’ll stop counting the Friday posts. It annoys me I can’t do this every Friday, so I don’t like counting it anymore. 

Anyway, how was your week?

These are my highlights from the past two weeks:

1. Beauty and the beast.

I saw this performance by kids we used to teach. So proud of how good they’ve become! Don't have a pic, sorry!

2. Christmas decoration.

It’s a bit early for the Dutch, but I’m so in love with al those Pinterest ideas that I got the boxes from the attic and started decorating.

Don’t you just love it?

At daytime.

Thankful Thursday.

Today, I’m thankful for music.

All kinds of music.

Thankful for those songs that go straight to your heart.

Thankful for romantic ballads.

For happy songs to dance to.

Songs you can sing loudly in the car.

Music in movies.

Cute songs sung by little kids.

Dramatic songs sung by men with great voices.

Musicalsongs.

Thankful for the songs that help you when times are rough.

Thankful for songs that make cleaning the house a fun job.

Thankful that I can sing those songs. At least, I try to :-)

Thankful for a husband who I can sing with.

Thankful for musical friends.

What would life be without a song?

(And yes, I just quoted Abba.)

Linking up with Sarah Grace again!

High five for Friday, no 11.

Happy Friday everyone!

How are you feeling now the fall is really here?

I don’t like the rain and the grey skies, but I do like to relax at home and watch movies with a cup of tea. 

Here are my highlights of this week:

1. A day at the spa.

Sauna, steambaths, bubble baths, fresh fruitdrinks, a massage and my husband.
I could breathe. I could relax.

And nope, I don’t have pics of ourselves swimming around in our naked butt!

2. Grandma and grandpa’s 55 year anniversary!

We went to church with the whole family and then had a nice dinner together. Here’s the happy couple:

I know, I look a bit different on this pic, right? It’s because it’s my sister :-)

We’re not twins, but we could be! 

3. Working on my home office.

I’ve been drilling holes and hanging stuff on the walls and it begins to look nice. Not quite there yet, but here’s a sneak peek:

I love color!

4. Polishing our weddingrings.

Looking all shiny again! This is a pic from the wedding.

Photography Erick Kicken @ KVX.nl

5. My crazy husband.

Sent me a sweet postcard.

Plays the dog Sandy when the kids are rehearsing a scene from the musical Annie.

So funny, the kids always look at him thinking,
"What is he doing?!"

  

I linked up with Lauren from From my grey desk.

Happy weekend everybody!

Thankful Thursday.

I’m not the most committed blogger.

I write whenever I feel like it, but I don’t do it very often. Therefore, I like doing the Fridayposts, just so I keep writing. 

Via these Fridayposts I found Sarah Grace, blogging on gracefullymadedesigns.com. She left me a comment on a blogpost and I took a look on her blog. She’s cool!

A couple of weeks ago she started a linking up party, Thankful Thursday.

Every Thursday she posts about what she’s thankful for. I love the positivity of it, it gives me a nice feeling. And I believe blogging about gratitude will help me being more positive, so I’m joining Sarah Grace and am being thankful today!

Here we go.

I’m thankful for our great business.

I love teaching kids how to dance and sing. They are so joyful, loving, funny, warm. Whenever I have a bad day, there’s always one who says something really funny. Or gives me a hug without knowing I’m sad.

I’m thankful for those kids.

I’m thankful for their great parents, who help us set up our musicalproductions. Who can’t wait to start making costumes, collect props and building stuff we need. We can’t do it without them!

I’m thankful for friends who help us.

For my best friend who is always there.

For our parents who support us.

For our lovely, new teachers.

But most of all, I’m soooooo thankful for my husband.

I could tell a thousand reasons why, but it would make a very long post.

I’ll just give you today’s reason why I love him.

This came in the mail:

He sent me a postcard :-)

Are you linking up too? Let me know! Love to read your posts.

Oh and before I forget, I’m also thankful for Sarah Grace, who makes the world a little bit better with her great Thankful Thursday!

Doing the Kate.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a hairstylist and make up artist.

The plan never made it though. I became a musicaltheatreperformer/teacher, and I’m loving it, but I’m still very interested in doing hair & make up.

My good friend (who is a make up artist), likes to experiment on me and teach me all kinds of stuff. Sometimes I whatsapp her a pic when I’m getting ready for a performance and she comments with “more eyeliner” or “nice blending”. She's lovely. 

Via Pinterest I came across the fabulous blog from Kate Bryan, The Small Things Blog. I know how to curl my hair and style it, but I’m learning so much from her video tutorials!

So lately I’ve been doing a couple of Kate hairdo’s. I’m doing the Kates. And everytime I thought, I have to make pics for my blog! But you know how it goes. No time.

Lots of questions on Kate’s blog are “Can you do it on longer hair?” and she always answeres yes, but there’s no example. Well, that’s where I thought I could come in. :-)

A week ago I went to the great concert of Scott Alan, and I did a Kate too. Again, no time. But I hurried and got my (hubs) camera to take a few shots. Very fast. No tripod. Bad lighting. But it’s something!

So I’m sorry for the poor pics (I’ve been playing with the white balance as the original photos were yellowish, but I wanted my hair to be well seen, so the pics still have a weird colour), but here’s my result:

I know. The camera is in the photo too. And an orange towel. *rolling my eyes and not believing I'm posting this*

What did I do?

I curled my hair doing this tutorial:
I don’t do a lot of teasing, ‘cause my hair just won’t stay up. It’s heavy, long and smooth, not the best combination for big hair.

I also did a little knot, as seen in this tutorial:

Again, not a great pic, but just enough to see it works on longer hair too.

What I did different:
My hair ends tend to get fuzzy when I comb through it, so I don't do that. (Sorry Kate...)
And I used a curling iron that's a bit smaller than an inch. I really want a bigger one!

So, next time I'll try not to hurry and take some good photos. And I'll do a Kate on straight hair too.
But now I'm curious.
What do you like to do with your hair?

High five for Friday, no 10!

My 10th Fridaypost!

I’m linking up with Lauren again, from the From my grey desk blog.

My high fives for this week:

1. DIY-ing my home office.

I suck at finishing projects. It’s a miracle I finish blogposts. My DIY projects are mostly never finished. For my Dutch readers, remember this? It has two coats of primer and a colour on it. But it’s not even near to what I want with it. And remember that cute apron I was sewing? Still has pins in it.

Anyway, I started decorating my home office and it’s going to be awesome. In like 2014.

The supplies. I admit, all from Ikea. I live three minutes from one.
Hello addiction.

Seeing Scott Alan live. Wow!

Yesterday was exciting.

Scott Alan was here, in Holland.

And I got to see him!

I know what you’re thinking. Who is Scott Alan?

Well, if you’re in a musicaltheatre world, you’ll know him. He writes incredible songs that tell great stories and has all kind of musicalstars singing it for him. Awesome.

Yesterday he gave a concert in Amsterdam with three amazing musicalsingers, Willemijn Verkaik, Renee van Wegberg and my dear friend Freek Bartels. Scott Alan announced the concert last Thursday on Twitter and the concert sold out in 24 minutes! Luckily, Freek had a ticket left and I got to see the concert.

And I really wouldn’t want to have missed it.

It was an evening full of beautiful written songs, sung by these amazing people. An evening of emotions, a gay audience and the great Scott Alan.

What I loved about it, was how personal he got.

He likes to talk, so he announced every song with a story. And even though he has a lot of humour and he’s a cheerful person, you can feel his pain and see his soul in his sad stories.

He wrote a song about coming out of the closet. And about being bullied. But, and there’s the humour, also a song about his dog. That last one turned out to be a great lovesong for weddings. Funny how it’s really about a dog, right?

Anyway. I consider myself a nice writer. I think I’m good at it. But I’m still so full of emotions, because of yesterdays concert. I can’t write today.

So I’ll stop talking.

Just listen to this. It’s one of my favourite songs of him, sung by Willemijn Verkaik:

High five for Friday, no 9

Yep, Friday is here again.

I don’t have lots of time to blog, but I try to keep up the Friday posts. High five!

My highlights of this week:

1. A couple of students dressed up and scared people in a park here in The Hague. So much fun!

The audience could ride through the park on little trains, so we had to try that too of course.

How stupid I'm the only one doing "yay". Thanks kids.

High five for Friday, no 8.

Yay, Friday is here!

How was your week?

Mine was themed Halloween! My hubs and I run a team of twenty actors in a themepark here in Holland and this fall break has been a full, exhausting week, but so much fun!

This is already a highlight of the week :-)

Here are the other highlights:

1. Franks birthday!

We had a lovely lunch, just the two of us, and then had a nice party for our family and friends.

Have I mentioned I love him? Well, I do. LOVE him.

2. Katie’s gluten free apple pie.

Lovely Katie (the girl from the art jars) made Frank delicious little apple pies for his birthday. Frank has recently discovered that gluten free food is better for his health. But we’re not really into baking gluten free. Cooking is not that difficult (though we’re not that strict since he's not allergic), but baking is something different! Here are Katie's pies:

Cute and delicious!

(I’m such a bad photographer. I pimped this photo using Instagram. I promise I’ll get better.)

3. The Little Mermaid.

This is my ultimate favorite Disney movie EVER! I watched it a thousand times when I was a little girl.

Tuesday we went to the musical. It was lovely to see the mermaids flying, to hear the fantastic music and to see the great costumes. But I didn’t like the things that were different than the movie.

For example, in the movie I loved Flounder, who’s always around and so darn cute! But his part was quite little in the musical. And he was anything but cute...

But, I did enjoy this musical! 

Funny thing, we ran into two of our students that evening. This is me with student Daan!

4. Dinner with friends.

I love having dinner with friends. So we do it often. With lots of friends. Sometimes we cook, sometimes they cook, sometimes we go out. This time our friends cooked us a delicious meal!  

Dessert was really funny. Our cooking friend saw these little cakes at the bakery and they had such funny names, he had to take them with him.

“Recession cakes.” Cute little cakes for a nice price. So everybody can afford it. Recession cakes. I can see the humour of it!

What it is exactly? Two hazelnut merengues with a cream of
coffee inside and on top whipped cream with a little snow of cinnamon.
Yum, yum, yum.

5. My brand new DKNY watch.

I am so in loooove with my new watch! I’ve never bought a watch before, because I always take them off when I’m teaching, rehearsing or performing. But I find it annoying to pull out my Iphone to check the time when I’m teaching of in a meeting, so I bought a watch.

A beautiful watch.

I was searching for a small elegant one, it had to look like a bracelet and I wanted some bling. Check, check and check!

Cute, right?

 I first wanted the silver one, 'cause I liked the bling on it. But this dark coloured one was so much better on my brown skin.

Anyway, I'm linking up with Lauren as usual.

Have a great Friday and a happy weekend!

High five for Friday, no 7

It’s been a while. Things have been crazy around here and I skipped TWO High fives for Friday…

But though it's in the middle of the night here in Holland (and therefore Saturday), here I am, giving you my five highlights of the past week! 

1. Our one year anniversary!

I wrote about our beautiful wedding here, and wrote about a surprise lunch and our visit to Dutch wineyards here. (Is it wineyard of vineyard?)

Frank in the wineyard

2. Our nephew Nino.

Nino and his parents were here a couple of weeks ago and we played the whole afternoon with him. I got to babysit him this morning.

He’s so cute, the pics speak for themselves.

Don't give up!

So I read this blog from a guy. That’s actually weird, ‘cause I usually read blogs from crafty, DIY-ing, organizing girls.

But I came across this fascinating blog, internetmiljonair (it means internetmillionaire).

It’s a blog from a guy who tells how he got his “bizz” (as he calls it) up and running. And now he’s helping others to get the best out of their business by writing inspiring blogs and linking to great websites and other good stuff. I really like that he shares his secrets and tries to inspire people. He gives a lot of good advices.

I’ve been in a rollercoaster the last three weeks. From being overjoyed to being very down. The down part sucked. And by that, I mean really really really sucked. I had to do and tell a lot of bad stuff, I got to suck up even more bad stuff and people were hurt. Everybody got hurt. So no, not the best thing that happened.

But, the show must go on right? Right. I had no idea how. This rollercoaster was dragging me into all this pain and I didn’t know how to get through.

But then, this internetmillionaire guy emailed. Not personally to me, it was a newsletter. But so inspiring.

Our one year wedding anniversary, part two.

I promised a part two about our fantastic anniversary weekend.

So here it is!

The anniversary was on Sunday September 30th. A day before, our friends surprised us with a lovely lunch with even more friends and our parents. How cute!

Surprise!! #HowcouldInotseethatcoming... 

One of our friends is also our photographer for our school, events and other stuff (like the wedding). So I can show some nice pics instead of foggy Instagrams!

Thanks Erick!

Our one year wedding anniversary, part one

The last weeks were crazy, so I didn’t post… Shame on me... I even skipped two (!!) High fives for Friday :-(

But after a begging FB post from my biggest fan (read: my best friend), I’m now catching up and will throw some new posts on my blog tonight! But let’s start with this one.

Frank and I got married a year ago, on Sept 30th.

Before I tell you how our lovely anniversary weekend has been, I have to brag about our wedding.  Because it was a wonderful wedding, full of love, happiness, music, laughter and more of that.

So this is part one of my weddingblogposts :-)

Compliments.

Compliments are such nice and warm gifts in life. I love the warmth and love in a compliment. I love that people want to tell you something sweet. But most of all, I love those compliments about things you didn’t do “on purpose”. The ones that are hidden in a message. And I love it even more when they’re from a kid we teach.

I love our kids.

Last week, a mom came up to me. She had just brought her 9-year-old to our musicalclass.

“Sabrina, I couldn’t say it in front of him, but he is really ill. His stomach hurts and he has been on the toilet the whole day. But when I said to him he couldn’t go to his musicaltheatreclass, he looked at me with this sad face and said: “But mom, musicaltheatre is the móst important thing in my life! You can’t take that away from me!”

Aaaaahhhh, how cute!

A hidden compliment :-)

High five for Friday, no 6.

This week was a hard one. The fall wheather arrived, I didn’t sleep well and I’ve had some tough talks to do for work. I don’t like this rainy, cold wheather, I get annoyed by missing hours of sleep and I don’t like to tell people bad news. So it kinda sucked.

But that’s life. And in this life, there’s still a sunny thing in all this rain, which is High five for Friday!

How was your week? Tell me in the comments below!

These are my highlights:

1. Dinner with friends.

Remember when we had a nice vacation in France? The cute house belongs to friends. To thank them, we cooked for them last week. Frank made some awesome pasta with sardines and I made tiramisu. We talked so much I forgot to take pictures!

2. A lovely postcard.

These days not many people send postcards. Except one of my aunts! She loves to send sweet cards. Every birthday or holiday I receive the cutest cards from her. Today this one came in the mail:

High five for Friday, no 5.

Happy Friday everyone!

After a weird week of not sleeping much and lots of coffee, it finally became Friday.

My high fives of this week:

1. About me.

I worked on my “Meet Sabrina” page! It’s not yet what I want, but it’s a start. I’ve read a lot of blogs and their about me’s, but I can’t figure out what I want to be online and what not.

It must be personal, but not too. Colourful, but not a chaos. What do you miss in my Meet Sabrina-page?

2. Body rock.

I hate sports. Don’t get me wrong, dancing is sports too. But I mean the gym, anything with a ball flying around and running around in teams or alone. But I have to stay fit, so I have no choice.

I used to go to the gym, but I got bored. Then I started running, but I got bored. I’ve tried classes at the gym. Boring.

Too much coffee.

Last week I told you how I drank a cup of delicious cappuccino and then couldn’t sleep.

Well, now it’s the other way around.

I am not sleeping and have to drink a cappuccino.

I don’t really know why. I’m in a happy place with my life right now, work is going well and there’s nothing going on that annoys me.

But I’m not balanced. I háve to be balanced.

How to not fall asleep.

So, I took a picture of my lovely cappuccino.
Freshly made by our new espressomachine. And then I drank it. At 10 pm. And I never drink coffee.
The result? It's now 2 am and I'm still awake.

I've been putting a lót of photos in albums, I've cleaned the whole kitchen, I organized some stuff in our huge room of chaos, a.k.a the living room, and did some DIY-ing. I had an unfinished DIY project (well actually, I have tons...) so I decided to finish it.

High five for Friday, no 4

Oh gosh, how the time flies!

Yet another Friday.

Since the schoolseason has started quite busy, I haven’t been able to write about other stuff, but I’m sure I’ll write more later.

Here are my high fives of this week:

1. A day off!

It’s rare in our life that we have days off. We (hubs & I) work lots of hours to achieve our goals with our company and constantly move forward. Especially when everyone’s in this economic crisis, you have to outstand to survive. Luckily, we survive. So we must be outstanding, right?

Anyway, a lesson I’ve learned the hard way, is that you have to take a break sometimes. And there the day off came in.

I welcomed it. I loved it. And the next day I went back to work with a smile!

High five for Friday, no 3.

It’s Friday! Tell me, how was your week? What were your high fives of the week? 

We had our first week of the season at Boss Musical. Great students (old& new), lessons full of joy and excitement and a very happy mr & mrsBos.

My high fives of this week:

1. Open house at Boss Musical.

This was truly amazing! We gave three musicaltheatreworkshops, all very succesfull. (Is “succesfull” a word, or am I justliterally translating from the Dutch word…?) 

And our Boss Kids & Grown Ups did a great performance, I’m soooo proud!!

High five for Friday, no 2!

What a lovely week it has been. It deserves a smiley.

:-D (Yes, I'm a smiley nerd. I use it in every text message. And email. And probably this post)

My five highlights of this week:

1. Food!

I went to this great Italian restaurant, named Terra Sarda. A true Italian guy owns it and throws his heart in it. So does his daughter. And the Italian chefs in the small kitchen. The food is so good!

Here’s my appetizer:

A delicious carpaccio di manzo (beef carpaccio).

2. Hmm... also food. Well not really, it's a drink.

High five for Friday!

(Okay. Before you go ballistic on me. This is part of a project I’m trying. And the people who join this project can’t read Dutch. So there it is. I’m now blogging in English too! (I mean… I’m trying to. Don’t shoot me.)

Remember when I told you I wanted to do a weekly project? I wanted something nice and cute to blog about every week, but it couldn’t involve a lot of work so I won’t quit after two weeks would have the time to do it.

Well, I found it!

I like reading blogs from all over the world and I saw this great blog from a woman named Kate. A hairstylist who posts videotutorials for your hair and writes about stuff like home, food, beauty and lots more.

Really great to read for the girly girls among us, check it out here.

Then I saw she posted every week a High five for Friday.

And in that post, she mentioned five highlights of her week. How cute!

In the end she said you could “link up” to Lauren too, her sister, from another blog.

I’m a total newbee in the blogworld, so what is this linking up thing?

So I clicked. And there was Lauren, at her blog From my grey desk, doing the High five for Friday posts. And having a huge list of women who linked up to her blog, who are also posting the High fives! It’s so funny to read what everyone has been doing, what things were special that week for them and to discover new blogs.

And so, here are my five favorite things of last week!

1. La douce France!

My hubby and I went to a cute little house in a nice and quiet place in Normandy, France this week. This house belongs to friends of ours, and is so cute you’d wanna hug it!

Take a look:

Isn’t that adorable? I loved this vacation. (Thanx H, D senior & D junior!)

2. Instagram.

I told my readers in my last blog how I lead a busy working life and still easily bore myself on any break. So then I try to discover new interests. (Those of you who can’t read the Dutch post, I discovered Pinterest. And DIY-ing. Did I mention I’m not a good DIY-er? Btw, you can use the Google translate bar to read the post in English, but it translates litterally. It's ugly.)

My discovery of this week has been Instagram. Taking pics with your Iphone and then screw them up give them a nice effect with Instagram. This whole post is filled with Instagramphoto’s, so you can see for yourself.

And yes, I know, I’ve had Instagram on my Iphone for months. And everybody said how great it was. It just wasn’t love at first sight. Again, don’t shoot me.

3. Food!

This will probably be one of my favorite things every week. I love food. I just do. I’m not gonna tell you more, ‘cause it will be obvious after a couple of weeks.

This was my favorite meal this week, steamed mussels with some French bread and a good glass of wine:

Although… “It’s a bit crunchy”, I said to my hubby. First I thought it was just sand, but then I spit something out... It was a teeny tiny crab!!

As a really good husband, he laughed at me. But then he spit one out too. Ha!

Turns out, lots of mussels in this pan had a tiny crab in their mouth (if anyone knows why, please tell me!). I guess this was just a sign of very fresh mussels?!

Anyway, I loved them too much to stop eating. I know, it’s gross.

But mussels are one of my favorite things, so I just threw out the crabs and kept eating. Here you can see the crabfamily, and one of them still inside the mussel.

4. The American Cemetary in Omaha Beach, Normandy.

Very impressive. So many graves. So many men who died fighting. Over 9000

men lie there. 

(That's my hubby btw)

We walked around, reading all those names and touching gravestones. It’s amazing how they all keep it clean and tidy. The white gravestones are still bright white. The grass is green and healthy. It screams out, this place is important, we have to take good care of it.

Good work people.

But then I wondered. Who are these men? How did they look like? Where they scared? Who is the serious one, who loves to make jokes, who’s everyone’s friend? Are they tall, short, blonde? I took a picture (yep, an Instagram) of a stone. A little yellow rose lies in front of it.

I took a picture of this one.
Ernest W. Kneeland.

Who was this man? I just can’t imagine. And yet, I’m so rude to take a picture of his grave. So now, curious as I am, I wanna know who this is. I’ll probably never know. And that’s okay.
But this man fought for us. Is it that much trouble to just show some respect before we step on this man’s grave and take pics?

The yellow rose was one of the very few flowers I saw there. So many people who visited, but so few flowers at the graves. I am probably just being my weird me. But I stepped on this man’s grave, and took a picture of it, without even knowing him. Isn't that weird?

5. High five for Friday!

I don’t want this first post to end dramatically. I was just so touched by this amazing place where all these men rest.

So, number five of my favorite things this week is this post itself. My first High five for friday. (And a huge high five for Lauren too, for this incredibly fun idea!)

Happy weekend everybody!

Wanna write your own High fives and link up to Lauren too? Go to her blog From my grey desk.

(I promise my post won't be this long every week!)

Project 52

Ik kwam via een Facebook op een website.

En op die website schreef iemand elke dag een blog, over een glazen potje wat ze had versierd met mooie spreuken, vintage plaatjes, bloemen etc. Elke dag kunst in een potje. En dat zo'n potje zette ze dan elke dag ergens in de natuur. Degene die het vond, mocht ermee doen wat diegene wilde. Het houden, een nieuw potje maken, of gewoon er voorbij lopen.

Het bleek van mijn leerling Katie te zijn, die zichzelf voor een 365 dagen project had gecontracteerd. Elke dag een potje maken, uitzetten in de natuur, fotograferen en een blog erover schrijven. Geweldig!

En wat een discipline. Ik raakte gelijk geïnspireerd en riep uit dat ik ook een 365 dagen project wilde doen! Na wat googlen kwam ik erachter dat je helemaal niet ingewikkelde dingen hoeft te doen. Sommige mensen maken gewoon elke dag een foto van een bepaald onderwerp, bv een groeiende plant of een persoon. En ze bloggen er elke dag over.

"Dat kan jij niet", zei mijn man, "Dat moet je dan echt él-le-ke dag doen Bien."

Das waar.

Maar vorige week kwam ik nog een blog tegen. En deze dame deed ook een project, maar dan wekelijks. Project 52. Dat klinkt al beter! Zij beschrijft elke week een levensles die ze aan haar kids wil meegeven. Niet mijn ding.

Maar goed. Ik weet nog niet wat mijn wekelijkse project gaat worden, maar een uitdaging wordt het zeker!

Kijkje nemen op Katie's site met kunstpotjes?

Je vindt haar op www.scharrelkunst.nl

DIY project (Do It Yourself)

Als ik vakantie heb, heb ik iets nodig om te doen. Ja dat klinkt gek, want ik heb zoveel rust nodig na al die hectiek in zo'n jaar. En die rust zoek ik zeker hoor. Heerlijk dagenlang op de bank mijn favoriete tv-series weer eens kijken (want de zomer startte toch niet zo zonnig), boeken lezen (heeft iemand het ook al warm gekregen van Vijftig tinten grijs?) en vooral lekker niets hoeven doen. 

Maar daarna begint er alweer iets te kriebelen. De ik-moet-iets-doen-kriebel.

Vorige jaren was dat cupcakes bakken, maar ik wilde iets nieuws.

Nieuwe hobby nr één begon in de bankhangfase. Pinterest. Ongelofelijk leuke site waar je een digitaal prikbord maakt. Je kan andere prikborden en mensen volgen en zo raap je allerlei plaatjes bij elkaar. Klik je op het plaatje, dan kom je bij de bron uit. Zo is Pinterest dus ook een enorme berg van tutorials. Van haren vlechten tot jurkjes naaien, je vindt het op Pinterest! Echt een vrouwending geloof ik, want mijn man vindt het niets, en één van mijn homovrienden werd er ook niet enthousiast van.

Maar goed, zo kwam ik op nieuwe hobby nummer twee. Naaien.

Ik zag een onwijs schattig schort wat ik wil maken. Ik kan alleen niet naaien.

No problem! Er was ook een plaatje wat directe linkte naar een site met basistechnieken. Dat kan ik, dacht ik. Dus hup, met wat oude lapjes, de handleiding van de naaimachine en de laptop ernaast ging ik aan de slag. 

Eerst het ding uit de doos gehaald (en afgestoft haha).

Wacht, hoe gaat dat ding áán eigenlijk?

Oh, kijk, er zit een stekker bij. Dat was al een snugger begin hè, zeg ik hardop tegen mezelf.

Goed, dan moet dat draadje dus met een mega omweg naar het naaldje. Dat het een mega omweg is, weet ik, maar de weg zelf? Geen idee!

Handleiding erbij. Draadje via 1 naar 2, naar beneden naar 3, dan weer naar boven naar 4, en weer naar beneden... Ohhh HOE gaat het naar nummer 4?! Dit kàn niet!

Nog een keer. Nr 1, naar 2, omlaag naar 3 en... pfff. Hoe hoe hoe. Er was hier toch ook een lampje?

Ik pak de handleiding er weer bij. Hmm. Het lampje hoort aan te gaan als je de machine aan zet. Hij staat aan. Het lampje niet. 

Lampje vervangen, zegt de handleiding.

Dacht het niet, antwoord ik. Met mijn Iphone belicht ik nummer 4. Ik gris boos de handleiding er weer bij. Ahaaaaaa, ik moet eerst aan een grote knop aan de zijkant draaien zodat nummer 4 naar boven komt. Zeg. Dat. Dan!

Goed. Draadje gedaan. Onderdraadje zit er gelukkig nog. Ik kan beginnen.

(Ik zal maar niet uitwijden over het moment dat dat onderdraadje er ook niet meer was en ik díe moest vervangen. De meesten van jullie weten toch niet waar ik het over heb, dus ik zal het ook niet vertellen. Maar het ging ongeveer zoals het andere draadje. Alleen duurde het een halfuur. En was ik minder aardig.)

Braaf heb ik de "how to sew" gevolgd, en het ging niet slecht!

Ik heb natuurlijk al tig projectjes die ik wil naaien, maar ik ben een Ram. Ik ben creatief, maar slecht in dingen afmaken. (Ik heb ook duizend blogs die nooit het daglicht hebben gezien. Ze hebben geen einde. Maar actueel zijn ze ook niet meer, dus waarom afschrijven?)

Dus wat deed ik? Ik startte nieuwe hobby nummer 3!

Nog een DIY project. Do It Yourself. 

Eigenlijk is het een project dat ik al jaren wil doen, maar nooit aan begonnen ben.

Ik heb namelijk een oud buffetkarretje wat ik graag wil pimpen. Manlief vindt het een afschuwelijk ding. Dus nu hij staat al drie jaar in de schuur, maar we hebben nu afgesproken dat ik het mag verven en als hij het dan nóg lelijk vindt, zet ik het op Marktplaats. Zo niet, dan komt het in de huiskamer.

Anyway, dit is de vòòr-foto:

Leuk toch?? Ok ok. Beetje ouderwets. Ook best een beetje lelijk. Maar ik ga er een superhip likeurkastje van maken. Hij wordt wit met een gekleurd chevronpatroon op de bovenkant. Onder komen de likeurtjes en ik schroef zo'n rekje aan de onderkant van het bovenblad (snap je 'm?), zodat ik leuke glaasjes ondersteboven kan hangen. Wordt helemaal leuk!

Stap 1. Haal de benodigdheden. Het is nogal een uitdaging om in een Praxis de juiste verf uit te zoeken als de medewerkers de motivatie van een banaan hebben. Maar ik kwam met de goede grondverf, lak, en schuurpapier thuis. (Natuurlijk vergat ik spul om het ding vetvrij te maken, maar daar hebben we het niet over).

Stap 2. Schuren. Wat een rotwerk. Als je nu even terugscrollt naar het plaatje, dan zie je dat de pootjes nogal vervelend zijn om te schuren. De wielen ook. En die minipootjes van dat ding onder zijn ook niet makkelijk. Ik begrijp nu waarom mijn schoonmoeder altijd zegt dat ze een hekel heeft aan hout verven! Ze noemt daarbij namelijk altijd het schuren.

En voor een zeer onervaren DIY-er als ik is het echt moeilijk in te schatten hoe "diep" je eigenlijk moet schuren. Het is blijkbaar zo'n domme vraag dat ik het op Google niet vond. Zie je het voor me, ik op een krukje in de tuin met schuurpapier in mijn ene hand, en mijn Iphone in mijn andere, googlend naar "hoe hout schuren"? Genant. Nu ik dit schrijf had ik mijn schoonmoeder beter even kunnen bellen.

Maar goed, eenmaal geschuurd was ik drie uur verder. Als rasechte Ram wilde ik het ding alweer terug de schuur ingooien, maar ja, ik wil het karretje echt graag houden, dus ik moest doorzetten.

Stap 3. Stofvrij maken en ontvetten. Ohw ja, daar gingen we het niet over hebben. Iets met een ritje naar Praxis. 

Stap 4. Grondverven. Eindelijk die kwast in mijn handen! Pff. Wat ben ik hier slecht in. Strepen, soms dik, soms dun, kloddertjes. Die rotwielen. Waarom deed ik dit ook alweer?

Stap 5. Drogen. 24 uur. In mijn geval is dat al, uhm, 96 uur. Oeps. En daarna volgt laagje grondverf twee, dan de echte kleur en dan pas (waar ik me op verheug) het leuke chevronpatroon. 

Ik kan dus nog lang geen na-foto laten zien. En de tussenfase laat ik ook niet zien. Zo lelijk.

Maar ik publiceer deze blog, dus ik moet het nu ook afmaken.

Alleen deze week moet ik elke dag werken. Musicalworkshop week. Elke dag. Dus wordt het volgende week. Oh wacht, kan ook niet.

Dan... 

Ach. Volgend jaar wordt het ook weer zomer. Tijd genoeg.