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...

Valentines Day on my own

Jeff will not be home untill 10pm... He went to a conference very early, and even though I did set my alarm clock very early, he was already gone! It's a good thing I left him some chocolate on the breakfast table before we went to bed yesterday ;) And some freshly baked bread from my baking class! He loves it!

After his conference we're going to an assertivity training. Not as exciting as it sounds haha, but still, we're doing something together!

But because he won't be home all day long, we can't really do anything for valentines day... He doesn't like this day anyways, but I do! I love all the cheesieness and the pinks and reds haha! It's just once a year you can really do this kind a stuff even though your man doesn't really care for it ;)

Baby if you read this, I love you!! 

Happy Valentines Day Lieverdie!! 

My 23st birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday! And I had an amazing day, thanks to my wonderful husband.

I already got my "big" present, which is our sweet bunny Janneman.
He's so cute and funny to watch! He jumps around, sits on our lap and 'makes us' pet him, he's just the best bunny ever!

One of my readers asked me what the funniest thing is that he has done so far. He tried to jump the seats and failed twice! He looked a bit bummed about that and I really laughed SO hard! Jeff was very disappointed that he missed it twice because now Janneman is able to get on the seats so it's not as funny anymore ;)

Jeff also got me some earrings so I also had a present yesterday.

We went to eat breakfast in IKEA (1 euro! And so yummy!)
and we got some new bedding. My in-laws gave me a coupon for IKEA and I already knew which bedding I wanted!

Now I need some more BIG pillows to put behind those small ones! Haha!

After that we went to pick up some  stuff for the wedding cake I'm going to make this Saturday. It's so exciting but I'm totally confident it'll work out! It just has to!

We ate lunch with another coupon we got for our wedding. The place we went to was called "Caffè Caffee" and it was so cozy there! The food was very good as well and the service was great.
Definately a place we would go back!

In the afternoon we kinda chilled, got some more wedding cake stuff and then I had my very first baking class! We made cheese cookies (which I didn't like. I felt like they needed salt but the teacher told us it would be salt enough... Now they taste like something's missing... Guess what that is?! Yeah...). We also made croissants with a filling of ansjovies (nobody really liked that besides Jeff hah!) and a filling of mozzarella and sundried tomatoes which was very good! And one of the students made some cocktails and those were also very good!

I had so much fun in class and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

And then there's one more surprise I got!!!
About a week ago I got an e-mail from Kelly from Something Shiny that I won her giveaway!!! I was SO excited. When she sent me the package I thought it would take about 3 weeks to get to me, but it arrived yesterday! On my birthday! It was like she sent me an extra surprise birthday present :)

 These stamps are too cute!!
I love them :)


Now I'm back to my study for my last exam... I'm so tired of it! And it started freezing and somehow our heating went off! I'm hoping Jeff will be home soon 'cause I'm just freeeezing... :(

my crazy idea for a friend's wedding!

I guess I can tell the 'crazy' idea I had for the wedding of a friend of mine, 'cause I just had to tell the bride what I was planning...




I'm going to make her wedding cake!!



WHAAAT?!
Hihi...

I just asked one of the organizing people when I would be able to bring in a wedding cake and she looked at me and said: but I thought the bride wanted me to make a cake??
Haha! I was so sad!
The woman apparantly had asked the bride if she should make a cake (they weren't going to have one, but the bride was a bit sad about that) and that woman was going to make something not really wedding-cakey but different. She told the bride she couldn't make a real one.

But that woman (she's very sweet!) told me that she'd happily let me make the cake if the bride would prefer a real cake so we had to ask!!
And she looked at me and was so happy haha!

I'm very nervous now 'cause I can't go back anymore now...
So exciting!!

I'M GOING TO MAKE A REAL WEDDING CAKE!!!
FOR A REAL WEDDING!!!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!

I'll let you all know if it worked out the way I planned it...
The most difficult part is that I don't have a lot of time. I'll have my last exam on friday and the wedding is saturday! Buut somehow it'll all work out, I've got it all planned in my head :)

He's here!!

And his name is Janneman Robinson!

Janneman Robinson is the boy from Winnie The Pooh in the Dutch stories! I'm sorry I don't know the English name, does anyone know?
I just call him Janneman ofcourse, but Jeff calls him Jan hehe..

What do you think?
And how does the boy from Winnie the Pooh call in English?

Surprise Gifts!

I've been enjoying myself today with some Christmas gifts!

We usually never give gifts to my grandparents, but this year, I'll give them some pictures from our wedding and a nice picture frame! I know they've been waiting for pictures since the day after our wedding haha! So I hope they'll like it :)

And then I've started on something very special for my sweet husband! I'll explain it later because Jeff might read this post before he gets his first present hehe...
But here's a little sneak peek!!

This makes me happy just by looking at it!! I'll explain it all later, and I'll show all the details if possible ;)

In case you're wondering, yes, my love language is gift giving... Gifts and hugs are my two love languages, I'm bilangual haha! So this is just me loving all over my husband! Aaaah can't wait 'till tomorrow morning!!

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?

Paris!!

We're going to Paris!!!
Jeeeej!!

Jeff's aunt lives there and she invited us to come, as a wedding present. She'll get us tickets for a show, we'll stay at one of her flats and she'll show us around :)
SO EXCITING!
We've been there once for a day, but now it'll be a weekend!
Any tips??

I'd really would like to buy an art piece, a sketch of Paris or something like that!

We're going the last weekend of November... Just one more month of waiting haha!

Have you been there?
Any recommendations??

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 :)

New Hair-Do!

I just realized I didn't share my new hairdo!! And it's been over a month since I've changed it, hah!

So, this was when we returned from our honeymoon:

We had just landed in Belgium, haha :)


And this was about 2 weeks ago with one of my best friends, Caroline:

It's already a tad bit longer but still... SO SHORT!!
haha it was very needed because the ends were completely broken...

What do you think of it?

A lovely surprise on a beautiful morning!

When I opened Blogger this morning, I found a comment that has made my day!
It was in Dutch... I was thinking "huh? Dutch? How can someone write in Dutch in my blog comments?!" But than I actually READ the post and it turned out to be someone I know!

(look at all the exclamation marks... Yeah, I get easily excited over small things...)

Not only do I know her, her boyfriend lives across the street! Well he just moved in actually...

 You see the red door? And the windows above it? That's our place!! Photo taken by Joke out of her boyfriend's window!

She found me through Erin's post where Erin asked all of her readers to tell her where they live.
Her name is Joke, she's a student and lives in Ghent... And wanna know what's even more exciting?
She's a blogger!!! She started blogging about a month ago but she writes way more often than I do, and she can take some amazing pictures! Her blog is called South Africa meets Belgium

I read everything and loved every post!
You should all go check her out and leave her some love 'cause she's really such a sweet girl!

Oh and yes, it was a bit freaky to find out someone I know is reading my blog... I didn't really think about the fact that someday someone would find this little blog of mine, but now that day has come. And I'm fine with it, for now :)


Lots of Love for y'all,
Evelien