Hotel & Beach - mmmm :)

I'm really grateful to my in-laws for providing us with a great place to live. But it is so difficult not to have your own place! I'm glad that it's just for maximum 2 months longer, even though Jeff's parents are amazing haha!

We try to take trips to just be alone and give them some time for themselves... And I've just booked a hotel trip at the beach! So exciting!

Jeff went to a conference earlier this year and won a coupon to go on a romantic weekend, so we didn't even have to pay for this trip! So yeah, I feel so blessed right now :)
And an extra bonus: now we have something new to focus on before we can (finallyyyyy) get the keys to our house!

Anyone has some trips comin' up in the next month?

Fever

Last night we talked about babies!

No, don't worry, were not there (just yet!) as I still have to finish up my masters degree - which will take another year. But still! The last couple of weeks I've had babies on my mind and it felt really great to be talking about it with my husband :)

We even discussed some names! Well, he came up with names like 'Jos' or 'Guust' which are typical old-fashioned Flemish names that nobody would want to name their kids anymore...
But the great thing was that he said my names were "special" but that he kinda liked them. I already knew he didn't loooove them, he would prefer some plain easy names with nothing too fancy. I like names that are a tad bit different, special, precious. Maybe their names will be the only beautiful thing we get to give our children ('cause hey, have you seen those emotional movies where parents die very early on?!) so I need them to be special!

Now I just have to wait a year to really "plan for" babies and we'll be fine! :)

One Year of Marriage

A year ago I married my amazing husband!

I can't believe it's already been a year!!

This morning I got breakfast in bed and tonight we're going out for dinner :)
I have the best husband ever!!

They say the first year of marriage is the hardest because you still need to adjust to living together. If that is true, our marriage will be a breeze! We have SO much fun and enjoy being together a lot :)

A special night

Last night I decided I would pamper my man a bit. We needed some time off of these stressful days!

I made some home made bread, mushroom sauce, roasted chicken and a tomato mozzarella salad. After cleaning our living room and cooking, I dressed up and hung a shirt and tie in our hallway with a note "First dress up, then come dine with me"!

He loved our time together :)
I know he really appreciates these special dinners and it had been a long time since I planned one!

For dessert we had some chocolate fondue!!
Belgian chocolate, belgian strawberries (SO good!), a banana, kiwi fruits and an apple.

Yep, he was very happy :)
And so was I!

Thanks baby for the great night!
I love you!

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...

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?

5 months of marriage and PARIS recap!!

5 months ago (last friday) Jeff and I got married! It feels like it was just yesterday that I was lying in my bed with butterflies in my belly, dreaming of my beautiful princess dress and my handsome groom...

But when I look at my husband I also feel like I've known him all my life, that we've been together all my life, living together for ages! But it's just been 5 months :)

We celebrated our day by giving blood! We try to donate blood on a regular basis, but it has an advantage for Jeff: he gets a day off of work!! So we're both pretty happy now, and we feel like we're heroes too!! Saving people with our blood, hoorah!


So to make you guys happy too (especially Joke), here are some pictures of our trip to Paris!

 The view from our own private studio in Jeff's aunt's appartment in one of the better "quartiers" of Paris! It was so quiet and so beautiful there!

 The first day we discovered that Christmas had taken over Paris already...

 Ofcourse we loved that :) 

What's better than Christmas except for Christmas in Paris?? (Or London!!)

On our first night we got tickets from Jeff's aunt to go see a show that's typical of Paris in the Lido. Don't know what that means? Think Moulin Rouge... Maybe slightly more decent... It's kind of a very fancy (and VERY expensive!!) circus in a night club.

If the tickets hadn't been so expensive and if Jeff's aunt hadn't said that we had to go because "This is the real Paris!!", we might not have gone there... 

We did got a nice dinner with champagne though ;)

And there were some great circus acts! One of the best clowns I'd ever seen for example! No pictures aloud there though...

 The next morning we went to go see the Eiffel Tower!

Jeff's aunt had made some reservations for this too, which was awesome because we didn't have to wait in line ;)

 The obligatory Eiffel Tower Kiss Picture :)

 My man standing on the Eiffel Tower, looking a tad bit scared!

It was very high...

I was glad we could come back down haha!

 On our last day we went to the Notre Dame. We even went in and there was a service for the first Advent Sunday. 

We sat on a little bench outside and made little films of ourselves (and the pigeons!). 

We both filmed a 'resolution' that we'll try to achieve in 5 years time :) I won't tell Jeff's resolution, but I promised myself I'd learn to play the piano!

Near the Notre Dame there's a gate with love locks on it... We didn't bring one, we totally stole one!

(I'm sorry if it's your lock!!)

We went to the Louvre again before we left... And yes, that's a Sephora bag in my hand :)

We don't have a Sephora in Belgium so my sweet husband let me choose something!!

I picked the Naked Palette from Urban Decay! Love it :)

And a little something for the way home...

Macarons, mmmm!! We both loved them :)

I hope you enjoyed the little recap!

We're already planning a trip back in februari with some friends. We're going to visit a guy that lived in Ghent but he's moved back to Paris! And Jeff's aunt wanted us to come back soon to go to the theatre or the opera with her! 

Aaaah, life is good :)

Date night & Breakfast in bed

The marriage course has taught us to have "marriage time" every week. About 2 hours that you keep free for each other, we write in our agenda's so nothing can come in between it. For the moment we use this time to make our homework: just talking through the questions we have to tackle together. But sometimes the questions aren't as relevant to us.

For example: we don't have major issues about things our parents did or said (we're so blessed with our amazing parents!) or things we did to each other (I guess we're also very blessed with eachother! hah!). Part of this is probably because we've only been married for 4 months ;)

But anyways, we didn't have much to talk about! So we just made it a date night!!

The wine is sparkling wine called "Il Vino dell Amore" (love wine!)
It was very sweet, kinda like a dessert wine.. Jeff got all of this ready and he even gave me some amazing flowers!!

Please excuse the mess in the background! I've been so busy for school... Clutter everywhere! Haha :)

So because Jeff had put together our little date, I gave him breakfast in bed! Some soaked oatmeal with yoghurt and some raspberries... Mmmm...

I love this kind of breakfast! So healthy and YUMMY!!

Any ideas to surprise the husband with? What have you girls done before or thing about doing?

Jeff and his Guitar

My husband plays the guitar. And he's good at it!
He can just grab the thing, sit down and make up songs or melodies...

I prefer acting "busy" so he doesn't start to joke around, but secretly I'm listening!
Tonight, I just had to stop being busy and look at how intense he was playing.
I enjoyed his music, the expression on his face and it made me cry because I'm such a lucky girl to be married to this amazing guy.
 

Baby, I love you!

Fall Challenge 2011 - music maestro!

This second week of the Fall Challenge over at Women Living Well is all about music!

Play soft music everyday in your home. Choose music that the family enjoys.
Then, focus on using peaceful words and maintaining peaceful relationships. Role model gentleness with your words this week and while you’re add it have a little fun.  Since the music is going,  grab your husband or children and dance!


I have been listening to soft piano music a lot already! I've started doing this last year during the same Fall Challenge... I love George Winston and David Nevue (I've discovered this last one over at Mrs Southern Bride!).

Yesterday Jeff invited some of his friends to watch a soccer game (He just LOVES soccer!) so I went upstairs for some studying. There was a "little bit of noise" because the upstairs room isn't completely separated from our living room so at first I felt a bit cranky for them not being sensitive to the fact that I was studying!

But then I thought "du-uh, they're watching soccer... I can't expect them to be quiet!" and I put on some beautiful music!!
I enjoyed it so so much! Didn't do all that much studying but it kinda worked :)

 I loved seeing him so happy :)

Even though we lost... Poor guys...

I haven't danced yet, but hey, who knows? ;)

Tonight we'll be going to our first evening of a 8week marriage course!
It's a candle lit dinner for two (there will be several tables, one for each couple!) with a DVD series and a handbook... I'm so excited!! Jeff and I will both dress up a little :)
I bought my first OPI nail polish just for tonight hah!! It's called "I'm Suzi & I'm a Chocoholic" :)

A dark red it will be!
I'm so excited!! Pictures will be posted ;)

Happy Birthday to da hubbs!

I had it all figured out: The best breakfast I had ever prepared:
croissants, freshly baked french bread with some yummy eggs, little sticks with fruit on, coffee the way he likes it, orange juice in champagne glasses, 2 cute candles to finish it off... I wish I'd taken a picture BEFORE getting upstairs!

I got upstairs safely with the tray and started to sing "happy birthday to youuuu"!!
Hubby didn't wake up (stupid ear plugs!!) so I had to put the tray down on the chair next to the bed...

But then...

The tray turned a bit (I hate that tray and I WILL buy a new one!) and the two glasses of orange juice spilled all over the tray.
Byebye freshly baked french bread...
Bye bye croissants...
(Luckily fruit stick can take some orange juice)

My whole plan was kinda broken now and I was SO sad! So instead of hearing a happy birthday song, my hubby woke up to me sitting next to the bed, crying (more like sobbing) because it was all ruined haha!

Luckily the croissants weren't completely wet, and the fruit sticks were ok...

 This is what we could save haha!

We stayed in bed untill noon (again!!) and now we're off to a little party with his parents, his sister and her family.
My family couldn't come but they called and sang Happy Birthday through the phone :) So sweet!! I remember doing this for my aunt when she lived in England: all of us so very happy and excited to be singing for her! Precious memories...

Have a nice day! If you've got a spare moment: pray for my birthday man :)

2 months into our new life! (+ first meet-up with a blogger!)

we're already 2 months married, woohoow!

A sneak peek at the pictures of our photographer :)


Today I have my very first blate (blogger-date as 2 of my favorite bloggers call it!)! It's so exciting!
Well, technically we knew the other person before we found out about our blogs, but we probably never would've become friends if we hadn't! (Joke, I'm already excited! See you soon!)

And we'll see what we can do to keep y'all posted on how our little meet-up went ;)

Smoothies and Movies

I've got the feeling that I've been eating too much lately! I've probably gained some weight since I got married (thank you desserts, pies and more of those things I've been experimenting with!) but this past week I've felt like I over ate every single day! And no, we've not been going out for dinner or eating really that much at all... It's the weirdest thing... For a moment I thought I might be pregnant (I've been thinking that since "our first time", lol - we use birth controll though) but then I thought "no, when you're pregnant you eat MORE!"

So I've decided I just needed to eat less and to eat more of the light stuff...
I've tried to make a smoothie and it was SO good!!! And so easy!
Yeah, I know, who hasn't ever made a smoothie yet? It was my first time... Shame on me!

I just put a hand full of frozen berries (all kinds of them: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, ...) in a blender, added about double as much of orange juice and blended everything together.
To drink immediately: refreshing and so delicious!!


Oh and I've watched Fireproof again! It's not our DVD but I've been thinking of buying one because I believe it's such a good reminder of how you should behave towards each other in marriage (and how not!) and that marriage is HARD work.

We're still very much in love and do things for each other all the time, but I do have a serious problem with my mouth! I'm one of those people that (think they) always know better, hah! I need to learn to shut my mouth and listen to what others (eg my husband) have to say, because to be honest? He's right a lot of the time!
Oh, and I need to learn to not speak negative words to/about him. That's day one of the Love Dare from the movie, and I'm not even that far, ugh!!

Have you seen the movie?
What do you think of it?