A BIG surprise!

I know I've been gone for about a week I think but we've been SO busy and I've got a very good excuse: We bought a house!!!

It's amazing that we could buy this beautiful house with a BIG garden with just one income! It surely is a blessing from our great God... Because after we agreed on the price someone else came and placed a bid almost 25.000 over our price!! The amazing owner of the house told him that he was sorry but that we were first :)
Isn't this amazing? I still can't believe it...

A house like this is fairly uncommon in Belgium. Most houses are terraced houses (I hope that is the right translation) with a small garden. I guess this was just a very big blessing!

I feel like my dreams are coming true :)
My dreams of being a SAHM in a nice house with a big garden where my kiddos can play all day. I'll make them all kinds of fun stuff (with ideas I steal from Natalie) and make my own bread, maybe even grow my own veggies.
There's a place for chickens, bunnies and even for a pig!! Not too sure if we'll ever have a pig but I think some chickens would be fun (and we'll have or own free eggs!).

The house still needs some more work but we are totally fine with that. It has everything I love (big garden, enough room to have some babies, did I say big garden??) and everything Jeff loves. He really likes this typical old flemish style of houses, with some little buildings outside and old tiled floors. It looks a bit like a mini farm! We can definately make it work :)

We can move in by September which means maybe in less than a year I'll have a dog, right?! ;)
And then a year later a baby?!
But I'll just let Jeff get used to the idea of having our own house first hehe...

Houses and Babies

Tonight we're going to look at a house that's for sale!
I'm so so so excited! It's one of the few houses Jeff and I both like from the pictures. It's only a bit over our budget but we can still try, yes?

 A house like this would be perfect! 

But sadly, not possible in Belgium haha!

(so no, this is not the house)

The house has a big garden, one of my MUSTS because I want my kids to be able to play outside in the garden all the time while I grow some vegetables and our (future) dog is running around like crazy! I think a garden is so important. But because of all this I've started to think about babies too! All those baby bumps or momma's with a stroller don't help either...
So if we would be able to buy this house, I'll be getting some baby fever, that's for sure!!!

I guess it's also a good motivation to work hard for my studies, I want to get this degree as fast as possible! Let's get it on with!

Bye Bye 2011

This past year has flown by!
One of my favourite bloggers, Jenifer at Sweet Blessings, did a '11 recap kinda post and I loved it so much that I'm going to give you my very own '11 recap!

Januari:
Januari is one of the 2 most hated months in the life of a student in Belgium: We have exams for the whole month!
My sweet fiancé (he was still a fiancé back then hehe) bought me this big bouquet of flowers and had them delivered to my door! I still think of it sometimes!

 

Febuari:

I went to London for the first time! This trip was also my first trip with friends... Weird isn't it? I'm just not that much of a travel person and I guess they just talked me into it :) 

I loved it very much though!! 

March:

I feel like March was such a boring month... I didn't blog and my agenda tells me that I only had a take-home-exam, so maybe that's why I didn't do anything exciting??

April:

In April I went with one of my friends to a Thai Massage salon. Not to get a massage but to talk to the women that work there. A lot of them don't work there because they want to but because they think they don't have another choice! Ofcourse we didn't get to talk about that but still, very weird to have been inside a brothel!

More about that here

May:

I had my bachelorette party in May!

I had a blast with my sweet girlfriends and enjoyed every moment of it :)

They dressed me up as my very favourite princess and made me clean streets... Because I'm a princess and I love to clean ofcourse. They know me too well I'm afraid...

June:

June was the month that I got to take my wedding dress home!!!

I was so excited! The lady from the store didn't want me to walk around in it, so I felt a bit bummed, but still, it's such a precious memory :)

July:

This one needs no more explanation I guess

August:

I cut my hair! I didn't like it at all so I'm happy that it's growing pretty fast :)

September:

We stayed at Jeff's parents' for two weeks as a little holiday while they went to Gran Canaria! We had so much fun together, still learning to live together but not in our own apartment. We love the region where they live, it's very calm and quiet there.

October:

In October we started our very first Marriage Course!

It's the one from Sila and Lee if you know them. We had so much fun together :)
We learned to talk about things we didn't talk about before... And we learned also that our marriage was (and is!) still pretty good!! I guess that's because we had only been married for three months at that point hehe!

November:

We went to Paris in November! Read about it here

December:

To prepare for Christmas, I gave Jeff every day a gift for the 10 days before Christmas! 

On day one he got one present, day 2 he got 2 presents etc... (Don't worry they were pretty cheap!)

Yups very crazy but I had fun with it! 

Come back tomorrow to read about my New year's Resolutions for 2012 and how I did with the ones for 2011!!

What are some of your highlights of 2011? Any expectations for 2012?

If you're ever in Belgium or the Netherlands...

Please don't book your hotel/rooms before you check out if there's a Hema around! The Hema is a shop with clothes, candies, just random stuff... But some cities in Belgium and the Netherlands also have a Hema Restaurant...

Most people will book a room with breakfast, BUT it's so much cheaper to just book the rooms and to go and have breakfast at the Hema :)

It's just 1 euro for a croissant, a piece of French bread with bacon and eggs, jam and a coffee (with little yummy cake)!

Since we've discovered this, it's become our weekly morning date on saturdays :)

We grab our breakfast and start our day by reading the paper :)

Any good tips for when we're in another country?
I LOVE breakfast :) It's my favourite meal of the day!