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.

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!)