I'm back!

The summer vacation has been long over. Somehow my daily rhythm is messed up after some time away and I tend to take long to manage to get back in the day-to-day routine. Obviously I was already back to work and the normal day cycle but I have been avoiding doing certain things. For one I have been avoiding going out jogging. I did manage to go once since back but that's definitely less than planned. I've also been eating like a pig and if left alone in the evening I start scavenging the cupboards for anything that can satisfy my need to pig out.

Now I think I want to take control back and that means also updating here.

The trip to Malta was jam packed with activities. With a wedding of a close friend who lives in Holland, a lot of beach days, good food and family. I won't go into much details since photos can explain better.

Lately we're flying with Ryanair since Air Malta flights are ridiculously expensive. This means that our luggage is limited. My skills of packing have improved dramatically and we managed to take only one luggage of just 15kg between us and a couple of carry on bags. I'm proud of myself!

The view from my sun bed in Ghadira bay. Not first row to the sea but that's because we prefer to have more space. We spent so many days at this beach since it seemed to be the cleanest this summer.

My boyfriend celebrated his birthday while in Malta. I think it's great to celebrate your birthday while on holiday. Mine usually is just another normal day at work in freezing weather.

We spent lots of time with my parents. Here's the boys.

And here's the girls.

Malta by night is just spectacular. This is the view of Valletta from Tigne' Point.

 Here's the most important men in my life. My boyfriend looks like he towers everyone in Malta!

I'm looking forward to be back in less than 2 months!

Greece revisited

These past couple of weeks have been quite relaxing. Wouldn't mind if life offered more of these type of weeks. The vacation was great and was just the enough amount of summer I needed to be able to handle a northern European winter in the coming months.

Here's some pictures of the trip, because I'm sure my words cannot describe the colours and tastes of the trip better than pictures.

Beaches

Each morning we tried to head to a different beach than the day before. We got to see quite a number of different beaches.

Food

The food was really tasty, I loved being able to eat all different types of fresh seafood and fish. The big range of grilled meats was also fingerlicking good. After 10 days though each menu looked the same as the previous one and I was starting to want to taste something different.

Travelling

During the trip we went to a different island, Patmos, with the catamaran. We were slightly unlucky since it was very windy on the day and I was really sea sick. It was basically 3 hours from hell for me. Luckily going back the sea was calmer and I really enjoyed the trip. On the islands we decided to rent a moped and a quad bike. It was enough to go around to different beaches and to explore all the little towns on the islands.

Diving

On every trip at the sea we try to go Scuba diving. This year we went for an afternoon on a sailing boat from which we dived from. The dives were not the most impressive, but what can one expect if the previous dive was done in the Carrebean sea!

Back to business

My vacation to Malta has been over for a couple of weeks already but my blog stayed on vacation for a little while longer. It was decided to spend my free time away from my laptop.

This is what I have been up to a month ago on my trip to Malta.

Quality time with family.

Mostly with my niece who was the spotlight of this trip

The weather wasn't always what we expected but we did manage some days at the beach.

On the days when the weather was not perfect we spent our time finding places which offered good Mediterranean food.

Week Snapshots

What made my week good?

 Us girls enjoying the time at the family house warming party.

Having a presonal beer draft machine at home for a couple of weeks. I pour a crappy beer our of the draft so I left it in the hand of the boys.

Cheese platters. Do I need to say more?

Spring time and summer time are lovely in the Netherlands. The sun starts setting really late, as late as 10:30pm in summer so we spend a lot of time in the garden. Thus this weekend we headed to the garden shop and got ourselves an outdoor lounge set. The set will be delivered next week but in the meantime we've got these couple of cushions to remind us of the purchase.

We spent some time going through photos to put onto the wall clock. I think it looks great, even though we're still missing one slot!

Week Snapshots

Last weekend while us girls went to the spa the boys prepared dinner on the grillk8rv
. Prepared in this case means buying the meat and chopping up vegetables since we had to cook our own food anyway!

This week we said our goodbyes to winter. The weather wasn't what I consider pre-spring weather but somehow the temperature kept coming up, leaves are slowly starting to appear on the dead-looking trees and flowers are just budding everywhere. And finally we had blue skies to welcome the change of seasons.

Seeing that it was the bi-annual restaurant week I tried a couple of new restaurants. The food was delicious and the service was great in both cases. The wine arrangement though was a bit too much for me and I felt spaced out on Sunday morning.

This weekend I had my first indoor climbing experience. We went to this massive (massive for me possibly not for experts) climbing wall. I was hooked up to the safety line and somehow I managed to be spider man for a couple of hours! I loved it and even though I was doing the baby routes I felt that I was challenging myself to do better each time.

Work has been rather busy with very tight deadlines. Somehow we toughened it up and now have a product which seems that will manage to make it in the real world.

Week Snapshots

Here's what made my week more than just a busy working week.

Spring is definitely on it's way. Finally I am getting home before it's dark and I can enjoy the last moments of natural light.

I'm still amused at all the different types of birds that swim along the canal at the back of our garden. This time I looked out and saw a couple of swans. They did manage to scare me when they hissed at me when I got close to them. They sounded like angry cats!  I'm also fighting the urge to feed all these birds in case they keep coming.

 

Having a delicious dinner cooked by my boyfriend is a nice way to relax in the weekend after a busy day. Below we have meat cooked in a Belgian beer jus with freshly made pommes duchesse which are baked mashed potatoes and filled tomatoes with peas.

Spending the Sunday afternoon listening to Blues and Jazz music.

Since I live in a flower country I am making more effort to keep flowers in the house on a regular basis.  Flowers just brightens up the place and also my mood! Visit Cultuur Podium Boerderij for these type of events.

Making home-made coconut ice-cream. It was the first trial of my birthday present and it was a success. It was so successful in fact that I actually forget to take a photo of the ice cream before we finished eating it!

Week Snapshots

The last week of February is over, spring is not so far away. The weather though was very gray and wet. Here's 5 things that made this wintry week more bearable.

Another room at home is taking shape. We now have a proper place for the beer bottle collection.

Finally I got myself over at the car wash to clean my car.  My car hasn't been so shiny in ages. Needless to say it hasn't stopped raining since!

Trying out new recipes during the weekend.  I love the angle of this photo.

My ice-cream maker has been delivered! Looking forward to preparing my homemade ice-cream from now on.

I'm a techie but my expertise is in software. To say the truth I'm not really knowledgeable in hardware. So I was pretty excited to help set up the network and wire the wires in the cables. At the end of all the work I re-confirmed my love to software!

Reasons for a good week

These are the reasons why last week was a good week.

Putting up lights in the house

The lights are up!

My first 'auntie' card

Breakfast delivery for my birthday

My 30th birthday and all of its surprises

Ducks swimming next to the garden

Flowers for the house