Or whatever it's called ;) But it's very, very nice and sweet!
Here's the recipe:
500 gram peanuts (I used salted ones)
half a packet of biscuits (+/- 120 gram)
2 bars of white chocolate (I used bars of 75 gram)
3 bars of dark chocolate (I used bars of 100 gram)
(you can always use more chocolate...)
honey, at least 150 ml
Cut the peanuts and biscuits in small pieces (1), add 1 bar of melted white chocolate, 1 bar of melted dark chocolate and the honey and stir it (2). Put it in a round baking dish or cake tin (don't forget the baking paper, else you will never get it out again). Then melt another bar of dark chocolate and pour it on top of the cake (3). Put it in the fridge for a while to cool down. Then turn the cake over - the dark chocolate layer will be the bottom of the cake. Melt the final two bars of dark and white chocolate to decorate the cake with. Again, let it cool down in the fridge for a while. And then.... yummy!
At the moment, we receive many guests who are curious and want to see our new home. A lot of friends and family came over already. Yesterday Martins colleagues had the chance to see our house and they all stayed for dinner. And because of occasions like this we bought the resizeble table, which can be this big:
Question: Thursday night, Rock4 is playing in Enschede. They're playing "A Night at the Opera", which Corine has seen twice already. Corine has choir rehearsal every Thursday night, also in Enschede. What would she do?
I attended the choir rehearsal! Never thought I would do that, didn't you? ;) But I just like singing so much and because I'm singing in a small choir, I don't want to miss it too often. Martin and his mother wanted to see Rock4 and because they needed transport, I had to drop them off at the theater. Man, that's a bit annoying, I wanted to go with them!
Singing with the choir was fun and I didn't regret. But when I got the chance to leave a little bit early, I left and drove to the theater, hoping to get the chance to sneak in... it was just after ten. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to get in, because I was told that "these men only sing, without music" and I would disturb the show. Ok, I could understand, I know I might disturb them, but I just wanted it so badly! *grrrr*
Ten seconds later, Jeanine came out (she's the manager of Rock4) because she had to prepare the CD stand. When she saw me, she told me to get in. They were going to sing one more song! Show must go on! Yeah! And so I got the chance to see Rock4 with their new man. Thank you Jeanine, you made my day! :)
Some people are interested in our home cinema, so here are some pictures. It will take a while before we can watch movies in this room, though. This room is also the place where guests can sleep. Because my family and many of our friends don't live close by, this room will probably be used for this purpose more often at first.
Here you can see Beddinge, which is a couch but also a bed for two persons, and Klubbo, which is the table (hurray for Ikea and its beautiful names...haha), and the beautiful "cinema-red" carpet:
Who wants to come over and be the first one to test Beddinge? ;)
I didn't expect it to happen so soon, but it happened today... When I drove home from work I took a wrong turn and ended up driving towards our old home hahaha.
Think I'm just tired and ready for the weekend :)
...and the internet is up and running again!! :D (the phone isn't yet, for those who are wondering why they still can't reach us.)
We've been busy the past few days, but the big, huge, enormous mess has changed into a normal mess and I'm sure it will be tidy one day. I don't understand how all our stuff fitted in our old house.
I'll post some pictures soon, for now I just wanted to say: We're doing great and we feel so much at home!
Moving-Day is coming soon! It's a chaos in the old house. Right now, there are no curtains in our living room, they are being cleaned tomorrow and then hanged in the new house. The hallway is full of boxes and every time we open the door to the hallway, it bangs into the boxes, because for some reason we seem to forget we've put them there time after time. Every closet we open is almost empty and all the pictures have been removed from the walls. A lot of boxes (at least 30) have already been moved to the new house and in the new house it's almost invisible that we've put them there, because the house is just too big and there are many closets to hide the mess ;) Today we also wanted to move some boxes to the new house, but we had some bad luck: Our car was standing on the parking with a flat tire! Damn! So first thing tomorrow, before going to work, is going to the garage to have it fixed. Tip for everybody: Make sure the air pressure of your spare tire is correct. I guess ours has never been checked before and the pressure seems pretty low. But it'll do. Next Tuesday our internet/cable is moving already. I'll probably be offline for a while now. Next blog-post will be from the new house! Keep your fingers crossed for us please, I hope everything goes well in the coming week. Biggest concern, because it's not in our hands, is the carpet that has to be laid on Friday... CU! X
I'm feeling a bit sick since Saturday and it's not getting better. There's an influenza epidemic in the Netherlands, maybe this time it will get me too? I hope not, there's too much work to do! The past couple of days I was free from work and I've been busy cleaning, packing and moving small things.
Things are really going on well, but I wish I could have done it without the headache, sneezing and sniffing... *sigh*. And tomorrow I need to work again... *bigsigh*
These are some of our books, now temporarily stored in a closet in the attic of our new house: I have to tell you that the pile of books in this particular closet has grown even more... I think we've got too many books. But as it fitted in our old house, it will easily fit in the new one.
The plasterer has done his work and this is the result:
And today we removed the floor protection and this is how our living room looks now:
The biggest thing that still needs to be done is the carpet in the bedrooms and on the stairs, but we have to wait for it another week. The next three days I'm free from work and there are many other things to be done as preparation before we can actually move houses. The only not very nice circumstance is the fact that I'm starting to feel ill... Think I'm going to bed to have a good rest now.
Dutch people love to complain about the weather. It's probably the number one subject for small talk. But when winter really is winter, like it is now, everybody loves it. I didn't hear any complains about it yet. Minus 15 degrees Celsius at night, wow! Snow and ice with blue sky and sunshine - it can't be better! Okay, it's cold and it took me about 20 minutes to get the car ready to drive this morning, I had to scrape the ice from the outside and the inside of the windows, the drivers side of the car was frozen and I had to get inside on the other side of the car. The windshield wipers had disappeared under 3cm of frozen snow. But who cares? It's winter! :) And eventually I arrived at work in time.
Of course, it is very clever to have the plasterer working in our new house in this week, exactly when the central heating has been removed. There are ice drops on the air vents in our house right now... maybe we'll have icicles inside tomorrow? And there's so much moisture in the house as well. I really hope it all ends well and nothing gets damaged because of cold or moisture. I'll be happy when the plasterer is done with his job! Not only because it will be so much prettier after he's finished, but also because Martin and I can't do much right now and we'd love to get on with our own work!
But instead of worrying about those things, let's enjoy the winter and its beauty. I just saw a beautiful report on TV with images of skating people on big lakes in the western part of the Netherlands, where I used to live. And although I never watch sport in TV, I'm longing, like many other Dutch people, for an "Elfstedentocht" (Eleven Cities Tour), a legendary skating marathon in the Netherlands which haven't took place since 1997.
Unfortunately the report I just saw, is not yet online... so I'll just add another video, which also suits the occasion. It's from my favorite Dutch cabaret artist (and it's in Dutch, sorry for those who don't understand).
Yeah!! Finally I had time to go ice skating today!! I love it :) Many people have been ice skating in the past week, but I didn't have time for it. This morning my sister-in-law and I woke up early to enjoy the last bit of ice. Afterwards it started raining and the ice is really defrosting now. But we really loved it!
Because there's not much work to do in our new house at this moment, and because we were a bit lazy from last night, we decided to start packing some things. By the way: we will probably move at January 24th!
Das Abschiedskonzert ist schon wieder 10 Tage her. Jetzt ist Clemens aber auch auf der Webseite der Wise Guys verschwunden. Neu sind die Gruppenbilder von den Fünf, diesmal mit Nils. Aber was mir beim anschauen auffiel war nicht die neue Besetzung, aber den Hintergrund! Das kenne ich! Von unserem Kurzurlaub im letzten Sommer! (Mehr Bilder gibt es hier):
Neu sind übrigens auch die Steckbriefe von Dän und Nils. Und wahrscheinlich demnächst auch die von Eddi, Ferenc und Sari.
Yesterday we visited the zoo in Emmen by night. Conclusions: It was cold, it was dark, 90% of the animals was not visible, and it was very cold.
Did I tell you it was damn cold?
To be honest, it was nice, but there were just too many people which made it too crowdy in the places where animals were visible. There was a beautiful laser show and a fire breather. The fire breather was very nice, mostly for the big flames that gave some warmth! The trees were beautifully lit in different colors. The little cup of hot soup was very nice and we enjoyed it fully - for it was 3,50 euro... We sat outside at a table which was frozen with ice *shiver*. One advantage of visiting a zoo in winter: no wasps around the rubbish bins!
Here you can see the home of the Nigerian Nightnosers, I guess... ;) and the pool with ehm... with many Dazzling Ducks. And, we saw See-lions! Oh wait, it were Sea-lions!
Luckily we could have a look inside some animal accommodations for the night, so we didn't leave the zoo without having seen an animal.
We received many, many Christmas cards this year, a lot of them were sent to our new house, with beautiful wishes for the new year. It's very special, to have so many people thinking of you :) Especially the cards from people whom we didn't expect to hear from. This morning, I decided to take a picture of all the cards. The window sill in the kitchen is full!
A couple of hours later, the postman delivered even more cards!
Thank you all for sending them :D
Now, we'll take two days off to celebrate Christmas. I'm looking forward to these two days more than in other years, because I think a break will do us good. We're a bit tired of all the working and planning. On Saturday we'll continue painting.
Yesterday we cleaned the house, together with my mother-in-law and our friend Marga. Most of the tools that were lying around have moved to our shed and the house is tidy and free of dust now. We were so busy cleaning, I forgot to make pictures until they went home. After a great Wise Guys concert in Essen, a short night and a nice breakfast together with Lena and laptops for music- and photo-exchange, we started painting baseboards and ceiling this afternoon.
