Animal farm..or something

I've been taking care of the animals of my uncle & aunt *and their house* for the last week and because especially the youngest cat is an incredible attention whore..I didn't want to hold back some photo's.
There are 3 cats, but one of them is so incredibly shy, I didn't get to take a pic yet.

This red one is a bundle of joy, energy, stupidity..oh and claws if he feels like it.
And he tends to sleep alot on my shoulders.


I've caught this one bumping into a wall, but I guess she grew tired of it. Next to that she can be a bit grumpy.


Oh and they've got chickens who bring me eggs :), well I've got to fetch em.


They've also got a bunch of fish, but I haven't taken a pic of them. I really should because there's a pirate fish..he's got only one eye ;)

Oh and check out this other rare animal, the Bulgarian Seahamster, that a friend and me sighted somewhere in Bulgaria *or so we'll make you believe*. The text is in Dutch so for the foreigners who suck at Dutch, just enjoy the paint images..erm..photo's, I said photo's!!

Photo's in my room

During the christmas holidays my dad helped me putting up this:

At first I only had 2 cables and 2 hooks on which to hang stuff, today I bought some more. Stupid thing is, I forgot I had just one more photo left, so I think I'll have to visit the local DIY store again soon. Oh and I need to get them hanging erm...not crooked but straight.

And because I'm too lazy to make 2 posts of it (even if it's been ages ago). Last summer we visited a museum in Assen (about 35 km south of Groningen) where they had an exhibition with the Chinese Terracotta army. Stupidest thing was, I didn't load my battery before going, and my dad thought..oh well, he's bringing his cam so I'll leave mine at home. These are two of the seven photo's I took there before my cam really shut down:

A recipe for 'pepernoten' / 'spicenuts'

First of all, I think I've said it before..but there's a difference between real pepernoten (peppernuts) and kruidnoten (spicenuts). Most people only eat kruidnoten but call them pepernoten nonetheless. This is a recipe for kruidnoten..which you guessed it..I always call pepernoten too. Confused already? Who cares, just eat them.

Ingredients:
- 200 grams self raising flour (this one's from a dictionary..so if it's wrong..ask)
- a little tip of salt (so really not much)
- 1,5 (eating)spoon of speculaas spices
- 100 grams of brown sugar
- 80 grams soft (margarine)butter (not molten!) Just leave it outside the fridge for an hour or so)
- 3 (eating) spoons of milk

Preparation:
Put all ingredients in a bowl, doesn't really matter in what order you do it (yes it's that simple).
It'll look a bit like below:








Mold this to a single big ball like (I didn't use enough butter, so it'll probably look better when you do it):


Let the ball rest for an hour. Now make small marble sized balls. Put them on a bakingplate with bakingpaper. Press them a bit so the bottom gets flattened a bit.
Pre-heat the oven at 175C and after that put the pepernoten in for 20 minutes:


Take the plate with pepernoten out and let them cool down a bit, YUMMY!!!-time:

Pics or it didn't happen..

I know I promised to post a recipe for stuff..and I wíll..but I won't without the pics which haven't arrived yet (which means I have to ask my dad again tomorrow so he'll send them).

So as a nice filler just 2 nice photo's I've shot in December.

From the roof window of my parents'house in Veendam. It looked like something burned in the distance.


Just a random bike left behind on the square in front of my university, taken around 8.30 am on a saturday morning so I think someone walked home after a long night in town. Almost feels arty ;)

Bouncing across the world

It was 4 Octobre (I dated the letter)!!! when I send a package towards Debbie and I already heard something went wrong on that end. To keep things simple..the package bounced. Just like a bounced e-mail..it got sent back! So today, 7th of January (a good 3 months! later) the doorbell rang: we've got a package for you.

I wasn't expecting any package, let alone some sweets & a letter I sent 3 months ago.
The eierkoeken were hardened like rock by now.


The liqorice looks a bit moisty but still edible and the foam blocks are still delicious.

*Thanks to myself, for sending myself some delicious sweets haha*
I hope future packages wíll arrive in the place where I actually send them too.

Some strange sights

As some of you might know, I live in a flat. When I look out of my window, the first thing I see are steel bars that should prevent people from falling down when they walk on the man-wide ledge just in front of the window (made so you can clean your window etc).

Living in a city, we got pidgeons, lots of these flying rats like to poop, and I don't know if this is pidgeon poop, but this sure looks like bird poop to me, at the moment,stiffly frozen:


Another sight that I saw today (the poop's been there for a month..yeah I'm to lazy to scrape it off the bar) was a bit of a MAJOR crack in my shoe sole.
I've had these shoes since July, shortly before I went to Rome because after I sprained my ankle the docs ensured me I would need good shoes, so I got a pair. The right-footed shoe has since been repaired because the sole let loose a bit and it's holding up fine. The left-footed shoe was having the same problem lately, so I was ready to get it fixed today untill I saw this other problem:

Yes, the entire sole's been torn across the width. I think I need a new one.