Inspirations...

Lately I have been keeping myself busy all the time. I don't know why I do that. Maybe because it makes me feel good to think that I have a lot of things to do. I know that might sound weird but if you have been a housewife and stayed home all the time for a (long)while you would know what I mean. To avoid ending up to be a desperate housewife, you got to find something fun to do. Well, I don't mean cleaning and tidying your home of course!!

Anyway I had a nice weekend though. Something funny and incredible happened on Saturday when we went shopping in the supermarket called Jumbo. We bought an apple tart and some other groceries. After paying, we checked the receipt and found out that a cashier girl probably keyed in a wrong price and we were overcharged 10 cents for the tart (it was supposed to be 4.99 euros but we paid 5.10). My husband told me to forget about it ("it was only 10 cents!", he said) but I didn't want to forget. LOL! So we went back to the service counter and informed them about it. But instead of giving us back our 10 cents they gave us 5 euros and said "That's the rule. You get the item for free if we make mistake with the price." Wow, that's a good policy, right? I really like Jumbo!!!!

OK, now let me tell you what I did in the weekend.

First, I just finished my painting!!
"The broken heart flowers"

Two years for not having painted anything and my hand and fingers became a little stiff. So it took me a bit to get my mind(and my hand) into painting again. But once I did then everything went smoothly. The result could have been better but I am quite satisfied anyway. I plan to do another painting and after that I will hang both on the wall in our livingroom.

And I bought a few magazines to read on the bed. I am the kind of person who cannot sleep that easy. My husband for example, he lays himself down and two seconds later he already falls asleep. I can't just do that unless I am really really tired. I have to read something before I can sleep. This condition was worse when I was younger and struggled with being sleepless. I remember I used to keep television on every night so I could sleep and that helped! But now instead of TV, I use a reading.

And These are the magazines that I talked about. Three of them cost me 7 euros and I think they are worth the money.


I like Libelle magazine and have followed it since I moved to Holland 3 years ago. There's everything in this magazine -- fashion, home decor, holiday tips, food, etc. I used to borrow it from my mom in-law but now I buy every issue myself. And not being able to understand Dutch well isn't a problem because I can already enjoy just by looking at the nice pictures.

By the way, although there are a lot of interesting and inspiring home decoration ideas in these magazines but somehow I wonder how practical it would be when you have to use some of those really-worn-out furnitures in real life (I saw one sofa that looks completely ruined and its seat burst out). It of course gives you an artistic impression but to sit on it or use it daily I don't think it would be comfortable. Or when you leave all the kitchen wares on those open shelves, wouldn't they collect a lot of dust? I have my stuff in the closed cupboards and I do clean my house regularly but still the dust finds the way to get in anyway. Maybe if I want to have open shelves someday I should clean the house more often. :-D

Nonetheless, I admit that the room certainly looks kind of charming and unique with those lovely open shelves instead of the expensive shiny cupboard or the old-and-worn-out-wooden table instead of a new polished one (but no matter what I wouldn't pick that wrecked sofa). Maybe it's just like 'art' that to appreciate its beauty you have to look beyond its reality (and practicality).

What more to say here... Hmm (thinking). Oh, I left this indoor plant outside the house since a few months ago because I thought it was dead.

Today I noticed that it came back alive and started to grow again, so I put it back inside. Unfortunately I don't have a proper pot for it so hang on there tiny little plantje. The pot is on its way!!

Oh yes, I almost forgot that I wanted to show some lovely things I found today. After spending some time on internet going through a lot of nice decor websites, I found this lovely and nice and inspiring home. The owner of the house is Nancy Fishelson and she is a designer in California I think (didn't read it well because I couldn't stop looking at the pictures of her lovely rooms!). Hope I don't break the copyright if I put the pictures here.

I love this kitchen!!

Using the wood panel on the wall instead of conventional tiles makes the kitchen look more beautiful, don't you think? I think I will keep this idea for my future kitchen too. No more tiles!!

Lovely old furnitures.

I love the white furnitures

(all these lovely pictures are from http://www.countryliving.com/)

And say goodbye for today with the picture of Tobey lying nicely at the sun spot in our livingroom.

Lovely (old) lamp

I just got an old stand lamp (or floor lamp?) with two lamp shades from Tante Sinie, the sister of my mom in-law (they know who they can go to when they want to get rid of their old stuff, lol). Though it's a bit old but it's still working and I like it. But the lamp shades are a bit dated and damaged also. So the moment I saw them I thought right away that I needed to do something to make them look better.

Here are the pictures of how they looked before...

The lamp stand and two dated lamp shades

Anyway I decided to work on the hideous black leather one first. And for the white one, I will do it later when I can find another stand to put it on.

This is how the black one looked when I put it on the stand.

Guess what I did with the lamp shade?
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I put the leftover wallpaper from my bedroom on it. :-D

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And this is after I have dressed it up.

Really easy job but it does make the lamp look much better, doesn't it?


It stands just nicely on the corner of our livingroom.

Lovely!!!!

OK, that's it for today. Really short because I don't know what to talk about. Though it has been another rainy grey day but I hope everyone had a nice day anyway. :-)

New bedroom

The good thing about being able to do stuff by yourself is that you can do it anytime you want and don't bother to ask for the help from anyone. It's like you feel you want to change something and you just do it! LOL!

Simply, last two week my original plan was just about cleaning our messy and dirty bedroom (although I love descorating but regularily cleaning is not something I look forward to, lol.). But when the moment came, instead of cleaning, I just stood there looking at my dark blue bedroom wall, which I painted last year after we had just moved in this house, I thought then that I didn't want it blue anymore.


The idea of doing something with it suddenly turned up. Remembering that I had 3 unopened rolls of the wallpaper that I bought long time ago for putting on the wall next to staircase (never got myself to do it yet), so I went in the other room searching for the rolls and after that I started wallpapering my bedroom. Just like that! And now we have a newly-done bedroom... again :-D


So the blue is gone. I also moved the bed to the other side and put the chest there instead. I am really happy that I picked the white furnitures for our bedroom. Either the wall is blue or the wallpaper we have now, the white furnitures seem to go with all.




I am not a wallpaper master and never did something like this before. Plus, I always believed that painting is much easier. But honestly the result turned out quite really good -- better than I expected considering that I had no one else to help me. I struggled a bit trying to adjust it on the wall and it was especially harder around that big lumpy area of the wall (I think it used to be a part of a chimney or an open fire. And when doing this difficult part I wished I had more hands to hold each corner of the paper!). But to be honest with you, I now think doing wallpaper is much much much more fun than painting.


I think this wallpaper makes the room look much nicer, brighter, and bigger than it used to be with that blue wall.



I didn't even tell my husband that I was putting wallpaper in our bedroom. It was meant to be a surprise (and hopefully a good surprise as well, lol). Well, he was really impressed when he came back from work and saw what I did with the bedroom (phew!). I guess he is now used to seeing me moving stuff around without telling him first --- after having been living together for 5 years, he has to be, hasn't he? Hehehe... Lucky me that he never minded what I did. Oh, he even asked if I can also do something like this with our living-room. :-D

Ah, I really love my new bedroom!!!

First time here

It's my first time to write something here. Actually I have another account which I created 3 years ago and never used it. I didn't even know I had that one until I tried to create the name for this new one and it said "the name has been taken". Wondering who could be using that same name, so I checked and bingo! That was myself, haha. Unfortunately I can't remember from which email account I used to sign up that one (a new lesson; never have too many email accounts!). But never mind. I can start it all over again, here, with this new one.

That's it for my first blog. Hopefully more to come later on (although I have no idea what kind of stuff I will put here). Anyway, first I have to figure out how to make it look nicer here.

Bye bye for now!!

PS. That is my dog in the picture. His name is Tobey and he is about 1 year old. Isn't he so adorable? :-)