i made chocolate

Because I am a responsible person who knows her own limits I decided to make only the chocolate bars and to skip the idea of the scented satchels. I made three variations:

-White chocolate with exotic dried fruits. (I added some grated coconut to the melted chocolate. Yummy!!)

-Milk chocolate (with a hint of white) sparkled with cake decoration.


-Dark chocolate with nuts and raisins decorated with white chocolate. (My favorite!!)


It was pretty easy to make, but make sure to buy a LOT of chocolate! You can add various spices to make it even more delicious. I really enjoyed the experimenting!

Now they are in the fridge and in a couple of hours they will be ready to be packed.

Coming back soon!

winter magic

The park looked almost magical today.





But it did not prevent us from having some winter fun!!

weekend recap

So many thoughts, but so little time to blog. We had a quite lazy yet exhausting weekend which is perfectly possible around our home.

Lazyness involved:
-an amazing book on lofts (a surprise from my husband, thanks :-), reading blogs and drinking some wine

-kids playing with PlayStation Move which is an amazing alternative to 'just sit in front of the screen and pushing buttons' kind of games. So much fun! Here is Daniel brushing the teeth of a crocodile :-)

-this happened to my hair. Still unsure if I liked the result... maybe I will show it to you later...

-sale finds: Sessún boots from Yoox and some stripes and greys from COS and Toast

-a temporarty lighing solution for the entry...

The busy part involved going through our stuff, organizing, decluttering, recyling, giving away, selling on e-bay during which process I realized how much I hated most of our stuff. We had some BAD-BAD shopping habits before and that has to come to an END!!!

I am really busy right now, more inspiring and less bitter content coming soon!!

a big thank you to BODIE and FOU

The lovely Karine from the gorgeous store BODIE and FOU has just informed me that I won the Living etc giveaway organized on their über-inspiring blog. Could you believe it? I have never won anything in my life! And now I will receive one of my favorite decorating magazines for a whole year!!

Thanks a milion to BODIE and FOU!!!

easter in france no. 1

first destination: colmar, alsace, france

it was like a fairy-tale...
I am in love with france more than ever...

easter in france no.2

next destination: strasbourg

an utterly beautiful, vivid city with a charming historic downtown and a good laid-back french atmosphere

just lovely!

small measures

The process of making our rental friendlier and more interesting is under way. This is what I have accomplished this weekend:

I started a herb garden. (please forgive the dirty windows, shame on me) As our kitchen is the most basic thing ever with the cheapest laminate flooring+cheapest white IKEA cabinets+cheapest grey laminated worktop, these two wooden pots with the herbs in them add real warmth to this place. Some more changes are foreseen here and I hope that the herbs will survive.

I said good-bye to the ugly brown plastic pot and our (so far) one and only plant was transferred into a lovely grey terracotta planter and found a new place next to the French doors.

Recently I scored three really old almost antique school posters on e-bay and one of them is now in my sons' bedroom. I have to tell you that the other two are in much better condition and are far more interesting and attractive (one of them is the anatomy of a sheep while the other one is a photo of Reykjavik), but Marci wanted this one. And he loves it. I'm afraid that he is becoming a nerd...

I think their bedroom is looking very cheerful now, but they just do not like being here. I think the simple reason is that it is on the first floor while the living room where we usually are is on the ground floor. And they just love being around us.

So this is a rather rare moment...

Notice the giant Bumblebee car on the table. That's what we bought on the flea market today. That place is filled with lovely vintage toys, but they wanted transformers...

Marci and I made this artwork. I bought him a craft book and he dyed paper towels. (Yes he has a flair for maths and art...) These are his color choices... afterwards I tried to display them tastefully with more or less success. Plus I bought a succulent!!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

simple moments to remember #1

Animal Jazz Band Fountain in sunset, Tervuren, Belgium

When we were walking to the kindergarten with Daniel this morning a lovely woman stopped me. She told me how much she admired me. In that moment I felt truly shocked. For what reason could anyone admire me, I thought. It turned out that she saw me every morning walking with my son hand-in-hand and she thought that I always looked so calm and peaceful. Me? Peaceful? I have never thought about using the words 'I' and 'peaceful' in one sentence. No way. But you know what? She was right. During that ten-minute walk I am really peaceful. This is actually the best time of the day. No rush, no noise, no worries. Just a mother and a son hand-in-hand. This is our quality time. We always walk very slowly stopping often to admire snails, birds, worms. There is something very simple and old-fashioned about it. I have never thought about it before, but this is a great way to sense the changing of seasons, something that we could never do if we were going by car. It was a great reminder for me to see how truly lucky I am and how sometimes the simplest things bring the biggest pleasure.

more doubt

It is hard to come up with a clever and interesting new post today. I feel like I probably need some time to clear up my mind after yesterday's post. (Thank you for your kind and clever comments! I really appreciate them!)

Currently, I am trying to figure things out and to make some plans. Not necessarily about our rental, but in a broader perspective.

I desperately want to know whether our life as it is now makes any sense. Whether we really enjoy the way we are living now? Whether it is good for us as a family? Is everyone in our family really happy with our situation? Does this whole living as expats thing lead to anywhere?

This is a topic that we are discussing with my husband almost every day, but we never seem to find answers.

And then there is the question whether I need to think about this at all?

Q: What do you see yourself doing five years from now?.
A: I have no idea. I've never had a career plan and never will. I just always make sure that I'm doing something I love at the moment, and find out where it takes me. I float down river, then I wake up and say, “Oh, here I am. I've had a swell float.”
- Diane Sawyer, interviewed in US magazine, Sept., 1997

if you can't change it, make it work - honest thoughts about our rental home

This has been our mantra since we moved into our rental home 2 years ago. Before we had been living in a small moldy apartment on the 2nd floor of an old building in a Flemish town near Brussels and when our contract expired we wanted only three things: no mold, a garden and being closer to the city centre. After (at least we thought so) careful consideration we found a house that ticked all the right boxes.

And how I see it after living here for two years?
We live in a house

-that is old and only superficially renovated with the cheapest materials possible=looks cold and unloved,

-that has an old electric system=certain appliances can not be used at the same time safely,

-that has no dishwasher=and it is not possible to install one,

-that has an oddly shaped garden=it is more about maintenance than fun,

-that is not protected at all=we had a break-in during the Christmas holidays when we were away and the destroyed door is still not changed=the owner of the house is totally negligent,

-we have mold= we had to invest in a dehumidifier to keep the bedrooms dry and mold-free,

-which is owned buy a person who had cared for stray cats in the garden=even if she is not living here any more, there are always at least 5 strange cats in the garden (fed by some kind neighbours).

And I have a son and a husband who are both highly allergic to cat fur, mold and dust in general…

God, it is even worse to see these written down.

To be honest, we hate this house and it costs us a fortune because it is situated in one of the most popular districts of Brussels and it has a garden and a private garage. And we have to stay here until March 2012 or we can leave but we have to pay indemnity.

I made a lot of effort to make this house more comfortable and I wanted to make it work. We made a pretty guest room, we rearranged the living room three times, we tried to add personal touches to it, we switched bedrooms with the boys and we try to maintain the garden. But I feel that until there are serious problems with the basic living necessities like health, safety or comfort, my efforts are aimless.

I am not sure if I can make anything work as I stated in the title. And I feel really lost right now…

P.s. I know that many of you would probably say that as a tenant I have certain rights and I have to turn to the owner with my complaints. I tried it several times. But my French is not good enough and she is really hard to communicate with anyway because whenever I complain she always tells me she understands, but now she has serious medical/personal/work-related problems.