When a piece of clothing is good, I often want to replicate it in several colours. Which is what I did with a green top I bought in Rome. The tailor created an orange and a pink top with kimono sleeves for me after the green example. I used to wear the top long over trousers but now I wear it tucked into trousers.
Ron and I were searching for another lamp for above the dining room table which caused us to go to the beautiful old city of Alkmaar. In the post of two weeks ago I gave you several links to previous posts featuring this city.
Below: Alkmaar has many canals, just like Amsterdam, Delft, Leiden…nearly every old city has.
Below: Like every old city has a church (or several). Alkmaar invested in keeping their monuments in pristine condition.
Below: Part of Alkmaar’s city hall. Not too shabby.
Below: Close-up of the lions on each side of the stairs.
Below: City hall was too good to pass up as background for my pink top. These trousers are a bit too short to be wearing them with a little heel but I couldn’t resist the bookending of the pink shoes with the top. Also, these shoes are comfortable. No blisters.
Below: I am wearing two small belts in different shades of pink/red.
Below: Lovely husband.
Below: Ron wanted to create a fun photo by taking it with a ‘fountain’ in the foreground. I was still trying to keep my balance on the slope, my face in deep concentration.
Below: It was time for lunch, which we thought we’d find in one of the shopping streets.
Below: And we were right. We had a delicious lunch at De Koffiemolen and I managed not to get stains on my clothes for a change.
Below: Across the street from the restaurant were examples of old houses I would have loved to show you without heaps of bicycles in front of them. Alas, bicycles are everywhere.
Below: The sitting down pose. On the stairs leading up to a cute crockery shop. You can see the pink shoes with ankle straps in their full glory. They were a present from my friend Marjolein.
Below: My, my, what do I spy with my little eye? Ice cream. Only the cart was just for advertising.
Below: But the shop across from the cart did have ice cream. In one flavour haha, no more.
Below: Sitting next to someone means I am chatting away.
Below: Time to put a spotlight on the earrings by Lara Design. I have had them for a couple of years. They are my summer earrings.
Below: My car was parked in a posh area with beautiful old houses, shielded from prying eyes by a lot of greenery.
It was in this area that Ron took the photo at the top of this post. After I had ‘modulated’ my hair (below). 😂
Below: An artistic flower arrangement, spotted in a shop window.
What happened in my life this week
Let me start by saying A HUGE THANK YOU to you all, my dear readers. There were so many comments on last week’s post, it took me quite a while to reply to them all. But it was a delightful task. I read so many sweet things. And I got so many feathers up my butt, it still hurts.
The outcome is, of course, I won’t change a thing about the blog. Only this part of the blog, my weekly ‘adventures’, will be told as a story and not as a diary anymore.
It will take more effort on my part as the writing will be more important, but I can get rid of nonsense things like “nothing happened today, I just did errands”.
Writing in a language which is not your mother tongue is challenging. I cannot express myself as well as I would be able to in Dutch. Then again, I seem to get across my humour and that is the most important thing I want to convey.
Last week I told you about the white cowboy boots. I went through my whole wardrobe to find clothes I could wear them with. Luckily, my blog has a section ‘Outfit Gallery’ at the top, which enables me to look at all my clothes and do some ‘desk research’ as we called it in marketing.
Then I had to get all the selected clothes out and try them with the boots. It may come as a surprise, but I hate that. And I have to do it so often.
Being really proud of all my styling achievements, I showed Ron the photos I took of the outfits with the cowboy boots. He said: “I don’t think they are beautiful”.
WHAT?? You were the one who encouraged me to take them!
When I asked him why he did not find the outfits beautiful, he answered: “I cannot tell you why not. Just as I cannot tell you why you are”. You have to love the man.
I asked a few friends their opinion of the boots, distilled what I thought was relevant to me, and bought them (in the sale). I stopped on the way to the shop to pay and had an iced coffee on a terrace in the shade. My idea of a good time. See the little video below.
Then, the next day I wore the cowboy boots with a dress and when I walked into the living room, Ron said: “Ohh…that’s nice!!” Aaggghhh.
Below: I met Misja over coffee on a terrace and took a photo of her near the library. You know we were having a great chat etc etc. The usual stuff.
As we were saying goodbye, a woman came up to us, kindly requesting us to go and stand somewhere else. We were blocking the view of a video they were shooting haha. Something I can relate to. I often want to shoo people away during my photo shoots.
Below: The video scene they were shooting was about a guy who sees a girl and then falls sideways. He had to do it several times.
Ron and I were busy one evening creating a ‘shadow play’. He cut a silhouette of an old woman in a rocking chair and we filmed the silhouette behind a sheet while he ‘rocked her’. He is going to project the video in the shed. A blue light will be flickering next to her as if she is watching TV. He calls her Mrs. Van Vleuten (below).
“Why?” you may ask. Because he is creative and he thinks it is fun. And to amuse our next-door neighbour who can see “her” through the shed’s windows. He is also making up stories about her, mailing them to his friend Peter, who in turn, makes up the same kind of nonsense and mails back. The stories are quite funny but alas for you, it is in Dutch and it doesn’t translate.
Below: This is how our neighbour sees Mrs. Van Vleuten watching TV in our shed while knitting.
Last week I got the advice of the woman in the hair salon to put big curlers in my hairpiece overnight to create more volume at the top. I washed the hairpiece first and panicked. The hair was all twisted together and I pulled quite a lot of hair out while brushing it. In the end I was able to blow-dry it and I put the curlers in.
Below: The mannequin that holds the hairpiece.
It is such a shame I forgot to take a photo of the curlers’ result. It was hilarious and ridiculous. Had to make it wet again and blow-dry the bits that had ballooned to great height LOL. I managed in the end (see below).
I met Eefje (below) one morning who is often in Italy and leads a busy life. She was in the Netherlands for a fortnight and found the time to see me. Lovely woman. Love her to bits.
Another great day was the day I spent with Ayen (below). The weather was fickle with many showers but that didn’t bother us. We hopped from her house into the car and from the car into the restaurant and vice versa, being outside for only a few seconds. Food and cappuccino were plenty and as we had a lot of catching up to do, we weren’t interested in the ‘outside world’ anyway.
Marjolein and I did another photo shoot and the result you will see next week.
Greetje
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