Face lift

After almost 8 years living on our home, we noticed that there was a need for some maintenance (painting) on the outside of the house. Specifically the little wooden parts on the roof. We had that done (by professionals) because we did not want to go up on the roof ourselves. When that was done we also started thinking about changing the colour of the walls... Since we have been living here we have always though the colour was a little bit 'gray' (as not in the literal sense:-)):



We took some photos of the front, and started playing around with the colours in Photoshop. We ended up with a crème and black colour combination. After about 9 or 10 weekend days (and to be clear it was all Ellen doing the work, Peter just took the photographs) the hourse looked like this:



While the colour was much better now (we found out the house was actually never painted, the grey was just the bare 'concrete' rendering:-)) we had some hesitations... the creme with black was somehow missing a bit of colour. Especially in our WA climate we thought it needed some more brightness .. So after a couple of weeks trying to get used to the colour combination, we went back to the electronic drawing board for some more colour experiments ... We found a nice combination, and this time after 5 weekends days of work (having a nice think ground layer of paint made it much quicker the second time round:-)), this was the end result. The colour (which you may think is orange is actually called: "clay" (as in Australian clay. We especially like our letterbox:

Holiday in NL - Part V - Kinderdijk

Ok, it has been a while since spending time on photo-editing ... But as they say in Dutch: "Wat in het vat zit verzuurt niet" :-). So here is the next batch of photos of our Holiday in NL last year (Almost one year ago). A friend of our friends Peter and Lia is a volunteer guide at Kinderdijk, so we were pleasantly surprised with a 'solo' guided tour. The village of Kinderdijk is a Unesco World heritage displaying a Dutch windmill heritage ... For formal information (and in case you'd ever want to visit, look HERE) Here are some photos of our visit:










And what do you think of this one (typical?) Dutch water bird:



For all my other photos, LOOK HERE :-)

Holiday in NL - Part IV - Boswachterij Brand

On a somewhat fresh, but fairly sunny day we went for a walk in 'Boswachterij Brand'. This boswachterij is located between Oosterhout and Breda.

A few shots:









Here are all photos

Holiday in NL - Part III - This was why ...

... why we went for a holiday to the Netherlands a bit sooner than planned, and regardless of the lesser weather:



Celebrating the 80th birthday of Peters dad :-). Note that he came over from Canada where he lives especially for this celebration...



Here are some more photos of the party

Snow in Perth

Yes, snow ... although not what you might think ... After 5 years of highly enjoying C (see the C-day post on April 16th, 2008) Pete traded C (and some dollars of course) in for Snow....

Here is Snow's face:


And a look inside



If you want to see some more shots (virtual walk around Snow), LOOK HERE

Holiday in NL - Part II

(if you're not family, you might want to skip this post ... :-))

Our youngest cousin is a talented young soccer player, playing for DESK E2(the new Wesley Sneijder maybe ?/ :-)). Peter watched one match on a (cold!) Saturday morning in NL.

Some impressions:





For all photos, look here

Holiday in NL - part I

As most of you know, we have just (2 weeks ago :-)) returned from our Holland Holiday. As always (ok, second time in 7 years) the biggest part of our holiday consisted of visiting friends and family. Although we would normally not have chosen to go to Holland in April, Peter's dad who turned 80 in April had decided to celebrate that birthday in Holland (for those who don't know, my dad lives in Canada!). So we really did not have much of choice ....

Whilst the weather was not as good as you would hope (cold and some rain, a bit colder actually than the autumn here in Perth currently!) it was good enough.

When visiting Marijke en Geer (Peter's mum and stepdad) we made some pictures of Geer's hobby: model trains.

Impression:







For all photos of Geer's model trains, CLICK HERE.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

Phase 2 - Samaritans

Ok, phase two is completed:



Close-up of the actual rose (called Samaritan :-))

Phase 1 COMPLETED

And yes, Phase one is completed. The next phase(s) obviously will be to put some plants stuff in there. But that will have to wait till April / May when the weather is much more favorable to plant plants...





We'll keep you posted....