Sinterklaas festivities are around the corner.

So I’m busy sending out a package to my girl in Durham (UK), having my parents and my sister and her family over to celebrate tomorrow, cooking peasoup, baking kruidnootjes*, packing, rhyming, cleaning the house, and oh, so many things more. I love this time of year!

*if you’d like to bake them too, my friend Elizabeth converted the recipe for them a few years ago – I’m sorry for the unavailable pictures, that’s my fault, I moved them

I was sure I wasn’t going to make it this month. That’s why I skipped posting about it last week. So much other things to do… I even had a draft ready of a post stating that sometimes things don’t go as you plan them. But then I crossed off a few pressing things of my list-of-more-important-stuff and I did find some time and energy to tackle my Three Things.

First, the closet. Here’s what I started with at the beginning of the month.

Doesn’t look too bad, but that’s because the rest of our cloths wasn’t even in the closet…

Two weeks ago I did some decluttering, and stuffed some summer and too small cloths in suitcases, but this is where that ended.

Still no room for our cloths. So I did another round.

One of the suitcases went home with one of the girls (who has her own appartment now!). Those shoes (in the red boxes) I never wear, since I’m not the type of girl that goes upstairs before leaving the house to find the right shoes. I brought them downstairs to see if that helps (or maybe I’m a just-one-pair type of girl, we’ll see). There are also some hiking shoes in that closet that we hardly ever wear, so I’ll find a place for them downstairs too (those are out of the closet, but not really stored somewhere right now).

I sorted through the christmas stuff, put the Christmas books in the bookcase, the music and movies with the other music and movies (make sense, doesn’t it?) and threw some stuff out. I went from two very big boxes to one slightly smaller box. Succes!

Now we do have room for our clothes.

Left to right (sort of): three suitcases, containing summerclothes, too small stuff and bags, sleeping bags and boxes of old toys and my wedding dress. Hanging: his jeans and his shirts. Behind the shirts are a dress and a skirt of mine, and a leather coat that doesn’t fit, but that I want to hold on to for a little while. In the white drawer baskets: my trousers and sweaters, my t-shirts, bedlinnen and his t-shirts.

I still didn’t paint or buy fancy shelves, but it is a lot more organized.

Then it was time to tackle the cupboard that houses our photo albums and all stuff related to that.

I took everything out and started sorting. That didn’t help much.

But I didn’t give up, kept sorting and ended with this. One bag of trash (mostly paper – receipts and other memorabilia of our travels that on closer examination don’t really add to the memory), some things that need to be stored in our office (cd-roms with drivers and manuals) and an empty box that used to be on top of the cupboard and contained even more stuff (and patterns, that I put on my sewing table for now).

The thing that improved the organization of this still full and cluttered cupboard the most are in the middle of the top shelve. I sorted our papers into sex of these plastic envelopes. One for each of the girls and one for me and husband together (containing reportcards, swimming diploma’s etc.), one for family things (newspaper clippings – these girls have made a few public appearances, notes they wrote, things like that) and one for cards and small things some of my (blogging) friends send me. As I said, it’s still looking cluttered, but I know where to find everything now.

My last “thing” was to hang some curtains in the kitchen. It was a small thing to do, but I’m very pleased with how finished it looks.

Before:

After (never mind the color difference, it was too late in the afternoon to take good pictures):

So, I actually did finish my three things (mostly because I felt some pressure from blogging about it). Phew.

I went outside to snap some pictures of dead branches and dried out flowers, but much to my surprise I found some still blooming flowers.Such a wonderful gift on a cold, dark November day.

4 years

1400+ pages

350,000+ words

7 books

each new one feels like such a milestone… I wonder if it ever gets normal. I hope not.

 

Oh my, I’m not doing very well keeping up with this blog. Maybe it doesn’t feel like that to you, but I’m so close to giving up almost daily. But then I realize all I have to do is translate what I posted on my Dutch blog. I should be able to keep up with that. Or not?

I’m still not sure.

But as long as I haven’t decided what to do, here’s my Tuesday post 😉

I sorted through all our cloths. The summer cloths are now stored in the suitcase we will be using in February again.

The rest got sorted also. The big pile on the right is what doesn’t fit me, the pile left to that will be donated.

I’m still hoping to loose that weight again, so the too small cloths are stored in another suitcase for now. I am working myself up to donating it anyway, but I’m sort of attached to some of these.

And then I tried to get everything back into the closet. Uh… that’s not really what I was hoping for.

Still a lot of work to do…

My things for this month:

– organize closet (started, see above)

– declutter and organize photo-cupboard (ignoring this one for now)

– buy or make curtains for the kitchen (I bought one, but haven’t gotten to sizing and hanging it yet)

Let’s try this again. I’m ready to reconnect to our home (for as long as it lasts, we will probably go back to Curaçao in February) so I thought sharing some goals for the home would be fun this month.
Here are the three things I want to get done in November:

:: declutter and organize photo-cupboard. The albums are arranged nicely, but the rest is just shoved in there. I need to sort and try to fit it in there better (I can never find what I’m looking for in there)

:: organize my closet. Before we left I just pulled out summer clothes and piled the last loads of clean laundry on the baskets. And now there’s a mountain of clean summer clothes that need to be stored for three months and winter clothes that need sorting (I was in denial before we left).
Very scary before pictures ahead…

Oh, and that closet is the only bigger storage we have, so I need to get the Christmas stuff to the front and the suitcase has to find a home there too (hmn, summer clothes in suitcase?)

:: make or buy curtains for the kitchen window. I liked it bare in the summer, but now it feels cold. I’m not sure what I want there. I think something clean and simple like this.

So, there you have it. Three things I want to get done this month (among many, many other things, but these are the things I’m going to blog about).

I was a bit worried about how the garden would look after a month of neglect.
Well, it was pretty much as bad as I expected. Lots of weeds. But there were als a few nice surprises…
This lettuce does look pretty edible.

The leeks look great. We will enjoy a lot of meals with these.

I missed the coloring of the cherry tree, but luckily the strawberries did a bit of fall redness too.

The salad burnet is doing great.

The endives not so much…

And here (in the herb bed) is another surprise lettuce growing.

I don’t think the marigold will be able to have some flowers before it gets too cold, but we’ll just wait and see.

And I do have more than enough soup herbs (don’t known the name in english, it’s celery, but without the thick stems or the bulb). I think I need to freeze some, so I will actually use it.

We’re home, trying to adapt to the time difference and the change from full summer to rainy and cold fall.
I’d like to say I’m so glad to be home. Well, I am very glad to see the girls again and I love our home too but the truth is… I felt at home there more then I do here.
We plan to return in Februari…

For now, just one more picture of the sunset (this time over the Rif Fort) and a first for me: a video, showing the Emmabridge opening for a small boat (so sadly it didn’t open all the way).