Voilà, the loveliest fresh weather and sky! And I headed back to rain, office and the usual supermarket.
Wednesday 31 August 2011
Wet Weekend at the Belgian Coast
You would think that august is a nice time to go to the beach. But apparently not in Belgium: I went to DEHAAN, or as the french say, "Le Cocq" - more than happy to get a bit out of town, rain and computerprogramms.
And then, finally on my last day....
Voilà, the loveliest fresh weather and sky! And I headed back to rain, office and the usual supermarket.
Voilà, the loveliest fresh weather and sky! And I headed back to rain, office and the usual supermarket.
Friday 26 August 2011
Bed and Breakfast in Brussels
Brussels is a city full of hotels and accomodations - of all sorts of colours. But if you ever have felt not at ease in a hotel in Brussels and craved for the luxury and privacy of some more unique settings - especially concerning quiet, green surroundings and a wonderful breakfast, than I would highly recommend you to book into "La Villa".
I got the address from friends and, as we all know, the best publicity is always mouth to mouth - at least you know whom to blame, if the place is not up to your expectations! And the word is true - a friend of my friend is my friend as well - I have been welcomed as an old friend and felt at home the moment I entered the beautiful garden - this house is a jewel, lovingly renovated and comfortably settled in the middle of one of the lesser known, very green parts of Brussels. Not in the tourist area, but not far neither. You have even a private parking lot - if you need a car - otherwise you just hop into the Tram or a little bit further on in the Metro and dash off to all destinations of your choice in Brussels. The Best of two worlds - a quiet villa in a quiet and green garden, very kind hosts, good food, even better talk and a lovely comfortable room. As there is only one room to be rented out, it has a very private atmosphere - you get your key and have your own little sitting room with a TV, books and magazines. Breakfast is served here, or, if the weather allows it, in the garden - the top of luxury being to be acquainted personally with Mesdames Les Poules, whose eggs you are eating in the morning. They are called Marina and Samatha.
But best is, to let Nicolas speak for himself and describe their home and the idea behind.
"Petrus, mon compagnon, et moi avons ouvert une chambre d'hôte dans notre maison il y a exactement un an. Au départ, c'était à vrai dire plutôt mon projet: mes enfants ayant pris leur envol depuis quelque temps, j'avais l'impression qu'un certain silence pesait parfois un peu trop sur notre grande "villa", comme on l'appelle dans le quartier. L'idée d'ouvrir une chambre à des hôtes de passage est alors venue assez naturellement; nous aimons chacun le contact, nous avons tous les deux un emploi du temps relativement souple et la maison et son jardin fraichement rénovés ne demandaient qu'à être partagés. Pour ma part, je pense aussi que ce projet plongeait ses racines dans des souvenirs d'enfance liés à l'hôtel que tenaient mes grands parents au bord de la Lesse. Un endroit aujourd'hui disparu qui me paraissait ,enfant, immense et extraordinaire. Un lieu associé à tant d'émotions et de sensations que je ne peux m'empêcher parfois d'y penser sans un peu de nostalgie je l'avoue....
Au bout d'une année, le plaisir de bien recevoir, de partager avec nos nombreux hôtes de petits ou de grands moments d'échanges mais aussi de préparer de savoureux ( j'espère!) petits déjeuners est resté intact. Il faut dire que nous nous sommes limités à une seule chambre, autant pour pouvoir procurer un accueil qualitatif et personnalisé que pour ne pas nous sentir nous-même débordés. Une garantie en quelque sorte de rester dans une certaine forme de disponibilité et surtout de plaisir ce qui est essentiel. Qui plus est, nous avons aussi fait quelques belles rencontres, la dernière en date étant celle notre chère "bloggeuse", Jola pour ne pas la nommer. En deux mots, arrivés à l'heure de l'évaluation que nous nous étions fixée au bout d'un an, la réponse s'impose d'elle-même: on continue !"
Nicolas & Petrus
Karrenberg, 64
1170 Bruxelles
1170 Bruxelles
Nicolas and Petrus have opened this little jewel just some short while ago - so it is still a secret, told by one friend to another. Strongly recommended!!
All pictures by Nicolas.
All pictures by Nicolas.
Tuesday 23 August 2011
Dogs...
Our dogs are growing old - and are more and more beloved.
An old dog is like a member of the family, you know his likes and dislikes, his naughty habits, like making pipi always at the same place of the curtain ( this means he is furious about something) - the cost of dry-cleaning...
Or the way they eat: in the morning one, in the evening the other - polishing off both portions of food, if we do not take care. Best incentive to eat is to provide a tiny piece of Paté with the food. This does the trick for Plop to take his medication. He looks like a happy child, waiting for his favourite vitamin-sirop in the morning.
If you take one on your lap, the other will immediately awake from his snoring depths and sit longingly at your feet. Then you get the very-sad-pug-look. Makes you feel awful. And you end up with two pugs in your lap and covered all over with tiny little hairs. Not for the faint hearted, indeed!
If one starts looking busy, prepares a bag or rustles along with keys, there are two happy chaps sitting tail wagging at the door. If you do not take them for a walk, be aware of hurt looks piercing your back...
They are both such personalities - very distinct different and very kind. The kindest dogs one can imagine.
And very hairy - we should get one Vacuumcleaner "Cats &Dogs" for free!!
 |
| Ploppy |
 |
| Mick contemplating Life |
An old dog is like a member of the family, you know his likes and dislikes, his naughty habits, like making pipi always at the same place of the curtain ( this means he is furious about something) - the cost of dry-cleaning...
Or the way they eat: in the morning one, in the evening the other - polishing off both portions of food, if we do not take care. Best incentive to eat is to provide a tiny piece of Paté with the food. This does the trick for Plop to take his medication. He looks like a happy child, waiting for his favourite vitamin-sirop in the morning.
If you take one on your lap, the other will immediately awake from his snoring depths and sit longingly at your feet. Then you get the very-sad-pug-look. Makes you feel awful. And you end up with two pugs in your lap and covered all over with tiny little hairs. Not for the faint hearted, indeed!
 |
| Plop feeling lonely |
They are both such personalities - very distinct different and very kind. The kindest dogs one can imagine.
And very hairy - we should get one Vacuumcleaner "Cats &Dogs" for free!!
Thursday 18 August 2011
The less you diet, the more you lose
Finally a word we can trumpet out without hesitation!
A good friend asked me to promise her NEVER to write about diets - well, here I will not write about a new diet which will make you lose those 15 pounds in 3 hours, but will share with you the wisdom of yearly aquired pounds and old age. I do hereby postulate, that all the talk about diets and how much you should weigh and how much you may not weigh gets increasingly on my nerves.
Not that I am immune of the sporadically emerging feeling of utter and complete desperation concerning the numbers on the scales, or even worse, the feeling in my favourite slacks - oh, here we go again and cannot breathe as we should. There is always a choice of "fat clothes" in the wardrobe, carefully hidden in a corner and only refered to in deepest distress as "safe clothes".
Well.
Let´s face it: if you are NOT belonging to the Rubens section, the fun of buying dresses and frocks, decent fashion and even shoes is much more fun. This is a fact. It is just more easy to find a dress in 38 and look tremendous, than a dress in 44 and have the feeling of being elegant, crisp - in short: CHIC.
Is it possible to be chic in dress size 46? Not in the eyes of the fashionable - funnily enough being more of the compact party, you are disregarded as someone who has no will power and is too lazy to lose those 10 kgs with an iron regime.
Believe me: WE ALL have tried ALL the iron regimes, and here ist startes to get interesting.
Experience, commonly aquired in many a last try to get back into the cothes you were wearing 24 years ago, will let it dawn on you, that this is not a walk in the park. Not the loosing, but keeping the pounds out of creeping back on those hips I mean. After 45 you are prone to get some "pneus" round your rib cage, if you want or not ( ha, finally life is just - even the skinny ladies get them!).
And then there is the saying of choosing between two alternatives: to do look nice and have a bottom, or to be thin and have wrinkles in your face and no bottom - up to you to decide.
I therefore decided now and here, that I will give up the horrible habit of dieting and trying to be 13 pounds thinner than I am.
I will enjoy my life and eat and drink and have fun.
I will not chew on a salad leave 45 times to look more like Wallis Simpson - no thank you. ( But she looked good in those Mainbocher dresses - let´s admit it once again)
I will smell deliciously and have always my hair in good order - at least here the issue of weight is neglectable.
I will be properly dressed: no tent dresses and no sausage dresses neither.
I will refer only in extremis to my favourite diet: the Peach Diet. You can eat and drink everything you like, three times a day, but NO peaches, never! Attention: It never worked for me, as I love peaches...
The old wisdom of the last century applies still: The less you diet, the more you lose.
After all it is all in our mind....
A good friend asked me to promise her NEVER to write about diets - well, here I will not write about a new diet which will make you lose those 15 pounds in 3 hours, but will share with you the wisdom of yearly aquired pounds and old age. I do hereby postulate, that all the talk about diets and how much you should weigh and how much you may not weigh gets increasingly on my nerves.
Not that I am immune of the sporadically emerging feeling of utter and complete desperation concerning the numbers on the scales, or even worse, the feeling in my favourite slacks - oh, here we go again and cannot breathe as we should. There is always a choice of "fat clothes" in the wardrobe, carefully hidden in a corner and only refered to in deepest distress as "safe clothes".
Well.
Let´s face it: if you are NOT belonging to the Rubens section, the fun of buying dresses and frocks, decent fashion and even shoes is much more fun. This is a fact. It is just more easy to find a dress in 38 and look tremendous, than a dress in 44 and have the feeling of being elegant, crisp - in short: CHIC.
Is it possible to be chic in dress size 46? Not in the eyes of the fashionable - funnily enough being more of the compact party, you are disregarded as someone who has no will power and is too lazy to lose those 10 kgs with an iron regime.
Believe me: WE ALL have tried ALL the iron regimes, and here ist startes to get interesting.
Experience, commonly aquired in many a last try to get back into the cothes you were wearing 24 years ago, will let it dawn on you, that this is not a walk in the park. Not the loosing, but keeping the pounds out of creeping back on those hips I mean. After 45 you are prone to get some "pneus" round your rib cage, if you want or not ( ha, finally life is just - even the skinny ladies get them!).
And then there is the saying of choosing between two alternatives: to do look nice and have a bottom, or to be thin and have wrinkles in your face and no bottom - up to you to decide.
I therefore decided now and here, that I will give up the horrible habit of dieting and trying to be 13 pounds thinner than I am.
I will enjoy my life and eat and drink and have fun.
I will not chew on a salad leave 45 times to look more like Wallis Simpson - no thank you. ( But she looked good in those Mainbocher dresses - let´s admit it once again)
I will smell deliciously and have always my hair in good order - at least here the issue of weight is neglectable.
I will be properly dressed: no tent dresses and no sausage dresses neither.
I will refer only in extremis to my favourite diet: the Peach Diet. You can eat and drink everything you like, three times a day, but NO peaches, never! Attention: It never worked for me, as I love peaches...
The old wisdom of the last century applies still: The less you diet, the more you lose.
After all it is all in our mind....
Thursday 11 August 2011
Little Pause
I am busily learning loads of new things, adapting to working hours, new environments, new computertools, new "speak", new people and faces - and I am really well and happy - it is great fun!
After 20 years of children, dogs, kitchen and gardens there is still some life in my old brains - but the multi-tasking is in the moment abundant - so writing posts is right now out of the question.
Therefore not really much news here and not really interesting new posts... Apologies to my faithful readers - please do not give up on the Red Handbag! Just right now too busy.
But the adventure will continue and ideas are abundant...
Jola
After 20 years of children, dogs, kitchen and gardens there is still some life in my old brains - but the multi-tasking is in the moment abundant - so writing posts is right now out of the question.
Therefore not really much news here and not really interesting new posts... Apologies to my faithful readers - please do not give up on the Red Handbag! Just right now too busy.
But the adventure will continue and ideas are abundant...
Jola
Saturday 6 August 2011
Thoughts and pensées
"Ausdauer wird früher oder später belohnt, meistens aber später."
Wilhelm Busch
"Holzhacken ist deshalb so beliebt, weil man bei dieser Tätigkeit den Erfolg sofort sieht."
Albert Einstein
"Die meisten verwechseln Dabeisein mit Erleben."
Max Frisch
"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."
Aristotle
"Wirklich gute Freunde sind Menschen, die uns ganz genau kennen und trotzdem zu uns stehen."
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
"Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway."
John Wayne
And last but not least something I learned only recently:
"La vie est nulle sans bulle."
Wilhelm Busch
"Holzhacken ist deshalb so beliebt, weil man bei dieser Tätigkeit den Erfolg sofort sieht."
Albert Einstein
"Die meisten verwechseln Dabeisein mit Erleben."
Max Frisch
"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."
Aristotle
"Wirklich gute Freunde sind Menschen, die uns ganz genau kennen und trotzdem zu uns stehen."
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
"Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway."
John Wayne
And last but not least something I learned only recently:
"La vie est nulle sans bulle."
Thursday 4 August 2011
Back to work - follow up
Day 4 of ny new life: I am still alive, the head full of loads of new information, mixed with the exiting of learning new things all the time, meeting new people ( just to remember ALL the names...) and having to adjust to a very different rhythm of my life is really a full-time job.
The children are at home and have taken over ( until now) the household chores - and the nicest thing of all is, that we now start to spend time again round the dinnertable. Which is nice, as this is now for the time being the only moment we are all together at the same time at the same table.
To see to it that they are ok and happy is my greatest "stress" right now.
My new collegues are great - very helpful and kind. And as it is august and most of the people are in holidays, I have enough chances and time to get myself aquainted with all the new computerprogrammes and all what I need to know. I have to learn the "speak" - abbreviations without end and everywhere.
So, please don´t be too astonished if one day a post will be appear and you understand nothing. Then I am truly and really a part of THIS new life!
The children are at home and have taken over ( until now) the household chores - and the nicest thing of all is, that we now start to spend time again round the dinnertable. Which is nice, as this is now for the time being the only moment we are all together at the same time at the same table.
To see to it that they are ok and happy is my greatest "stress" right now.
My new collegues are great - very helpful and kind. And as it is august and most of the people are in holidays, I have enough chances and time to get myself aquainted with all the new computerprogrammes and all what I need to know. I have to learn the "speak" - abbreviations without end and everywhere.
So, please don´t be too astonished if one day a post will be appear and you understand nothing. Then I am truly and really a part of THIS new life!
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Back to work
I did it!
Starting a new job today and am exited as a young 20 year old, entering a new stage of my life.
Up to now, all seems to go smoothly and people are very nice - have two days of "welcome" and introductions, then off to the real thing.
I feel elated and full of energy. Will make that work. And I proved to myself, that it is, after all, possible to get a good job after the saintly age of 45 ( will turn 46 this year - can´t belief it).
So. Here I am, I did it. Rejoice with me!
Starting a new job today and am exited as a young 20 year old, entering a new stage of my life.
Up to now, all seems to go smoothly and people are very nice - have two days of "welcome" and introductions, then off to the real thing.
I feel elated and full of energy. Will make that work. And I proved to myself, that it is, after all, possible to get a good job after the saintly age of 45 ( will turn 46 this year - can´t belief it).
So. Here I am, I did it. Rejoice with me!
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