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.