Off to Dublin!

I'm off to Dublin for a few days, to see my friend Sarah. It's going to be great!

Popville

Our latest amazon purchases arrived with the mail today. I've been marveling at this book while Mart has turned into a PlayStation cowboy riding his horse through the far west. ;-)

Here is the song of the day - great pop up book in the music video!

A pink sky

Morgane, my friend from Switzerland, came to visit for a few days. It was so lovely to have her here with us!

Sunny Sunday

What a lovely sunny and lazy Sunday!

World cup rainbow

Love the use of colours in this ad from the BBC...

Bright stuff

It feels like summer again: yey! To celebrate I've painted my toe nails bright bright pink!

Pink and green

Pillow and scarf
Dish brush
Baby bottle
Umbrella
Wrapping paper
Fabric
Cupcake liners

Guys' night

Three guys shouting in your living room as they score on the Playstation? Mmmh...
Wonderful homemade Club Sandwiches made by the same guys? Mmmh!

Colourful US of A

Some more picture-pairing tonight.
Shots from our holidays in California and New York last summer.

Orange, almond and craisin cupcakes

I tried a new recipe from this book today - turned out delicious!


Orange, almond and craisin cupcakes

125 g butter, softened
2 tsp finely grated orange rind
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup (150g) self-raising flour and 1/3 cup (50g) plain flour (I use 200g of plain flour and a teaspoon of baking powder)
1/3 cup (40g) almond meal
1/2 cup (65g) craisins (dried cranberries)
1/4 cup (60ml) orange juice
2 tbs milk

1. Preheat oven to 160 to 180 degrees centigrade.
2. Beat butter, rind, sugar and eggs in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Stir in flour, almond meal, craisins, juice and milk.
   
4. Divide mixture among cupcake paper cases; smooth surface.
5. Bake cakes for about 25 min.
   

Joab the baobab

Please meet Joab, our new little baobab (or boab) from Senegal. We bought him in the new fair trade shop in Maastricht.
I wonder if he'll ever grow to anything like this one...?

Lovely couples

I love browsing my photos and finding some that go well together.
Today I present you with two lovely pairs: the building and the flora completes the couple.





Oh, and here is the song of the day. Mart played it while he was making dinner and it's been in my head since then. I can't help but play it again and again.

Feeling blue

Clockwise:

Navy stripe paper bag at mimimega.
Free colored shipping tag clip art at pugly pixel.
Spearmint large tear garland at this neck of the woods.
Frederika fabric at Ikea.
Japanese masking tapes at Uguisu.
Baby blue Pantone mug at Whitbread Wilkinson.

Liberty

I bought a very cute jacket in Zara last weekend. It's made out of a Liberty-type flowery fabric. Ah I love Liberty fabrics!

Screenshots from the Liberty website.


(1) La Sandra A, Tana Lawn Liberty Fabric
(2) Emilia's Flowers C, Tana Lawn Liberty Fabric
(3) Glenjade A, Liberty Fabric
(4) Eloise D, Liberty Fabric

Heatherwick Studio

When reading the paper today I saw a picture of the breathtakingly beautiful United Kingdom Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 Expo.
A quick bit of googleing brought me to the architects/designers' website, where I found lots of their other projects, most of them absolutely impressive!


Here are my favourite three:

(all photos are from Heatherwick Studio's website)


UK Pavilion, Shanghai Expo 2010
(click on the titles to get more info on the projects)


Olympic Velopark


Glass Bridge

Little paper pots

I was really excited by my little paper pots when I first made them during the weekend. They looked cute, were made out of recycled material, and most of all, enabled me to keep all the tomato seedlings that had grown in our little greenhouse. Each plant now has its own little recipient, and I will be able to give them away to colleagues and friends as soon as they will be a bit sturdier.



But after watering the freshly replanted seedlings, the paper started getting very humid (quite logical I guess). I didn't mind it so much in the beginning (I thought it might dry out after a while), but now that two days have passed, none of them have dried, they are slowly going browny/yellowy/yucky and are all looking... well... pretty sad!


I'm not convinced I'll want to give them away to anyone else than our compost bin now!

I'll wait another few days before I do so, though - who knows, maybe the tomatoes will love their new moist environment.

Happy Mothers' Day!

My mum would love to come and see the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken, close to Brussels, in Belgium. This won't happen this year as the annual opening closes today, but to make up for it, I sent her this for Mothers' Day:

Photos from PostCarden.


I can see you wondering what on earth it is I sent her... click here to see more!

New watch

Spent a lovely afternoon with Joanna and Kim today. The sun even came out to surprise us!

The watch is a purchase from last weekend. Mart and I are sharing it.

Lovely!

• 3 cooks (Nick, Mart and me)

• 1 yummy dinner

• 1 great evening spent together

Lovely!

Growing

Our little 'garden' is growing!
The tomatoes are getting bigger and bigger, and Claire's seeds are sprouting into lots of exciting plants!


(1) Dahlias
(2) Tomatoes
(3) Beetroots
(4) And outside, the first bean is coming out!

From Sicily

One of Mart's colleagues went back home to Sicily for a little while. When he came back, he gave us a huge orange which we had for dessert on the weekend. It tasted just perfect!

Fantastic Mr. Fox

We saw Fantastic Mr. Fox at the movies with friends last night - it was... fantastic!

All photos from IMDb

The amount of work that went into this movie is incredible (see here and here to get an idea). The result however is light, flawless and terribly funny!

Sundial

In one of the streets in Maastricht city center there is a funny drawing on the ground, around a road sign.

The very first time I saw it, I thought it was a clever chalk drawing.
The next time I was surprised to see it was still there (and understood it was permanent paint).
The third time I actually noticed it was in front of a watch store, and assumed it was some kind of advertisement for them.

Now, in this part of the world, the chances of having enough sun to actually cast a shadow are fairly restricted, and there is a big chance that it was overcast every other time I was there in the past, but how crazy is it that I never got the point of the drawing before today?!

We walked past the shop at 12h50.
And look at what we saw:


Isn't it clever?

Now, I know how sundials work (kind of)... but I opened this to try and get more insight into the topic, and... got rid of the new tab after, well... less than 26 seconds! Not something I want to try and master at 11:30 pm on a Saturday evening.