When we decided to stay in The Netherlands for so long, I knew my house/porch plants would suffer. It was an offer I was willing to make, but with a bit of pain in my heart. I overwatered them as much as I dared (rotting roots are even worse than no water at all), moved most of them inside, in the shadow, and hoped for the best.

So when we came home, I was surprised and relieved to see how many actually survived. Just a few were beyond saving, but most of them were doing okay, or at least not too bad.
These three though… They looked like they weren’t going to make it, but I was not ready to give up on them yet. So I gave them some love, water and time.

And look at them now (three weeks after we arrived home): new leaves!

I know, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But small victories need to be celebrated too, don’t you think?

I thought I would do an “in my kitchen” post today, but I realized that I never even showed you my new kitchen. When I last posted about my kitchen, it looked like this:

I was actually quite happy with it. But last year, in June, T. decided it was time for something better. We went to Building Depot to look what they had and I fell in love with a conveniently cheap solution almost right away (after talking myself out of a beautiful kitchen that would empty out our bank accounts completely).

But first we had to demolish the old kitchen. That sounds easier than it was. It was build with concrete blocks, so we definitely needed that sledge hammer.

And then it was quite easy to install the new closets. It’s metal, so easy to clean and durable (particle board would swell up within a year or two in this climate, wood is only available custom made, so incredibly expensive). I love that it looks vintage and I am thrilled with the amount of storage. They even sold a pantry solution, so my open shelving (remember the old shelves on concrete blocks?) is gone now.

I’m so, so happy with it!

In the (messy) back ground of the last picture, you may notice that the iron gate is gone (as seen in the last picture in this post). The month before we did the kitchen, T. built a little hallway, connecting the kitchen to the main building. That was such a game changer! Before we had to open two gates (that we locked with padlocks) to get from the house to the kitchen (getting a cold drink or a snack at night was really hard and made a lot of noise). Now you can just walk through! We chose to use a big glass folding door, so the kitchen still feels as open as it did before.

And now that I’m looking at those pictures: we also finally found chairs that match our table. The plastic ones were breaking up (as everything not wood, concrete or iron seems to do in this climate), but these (solid mango wood – we found them at a secondhand shop) will be just fine.

So that’s another (triple) house update. Trying to get the blog up to speed with our house makes me realize we actually did make some big changes over the last year, even though it feels like we didn’t accomplish that much.

So fun to see!

A few weeks ago, Chris asked if I had any house updates to share. Truth to be told, I’m not sure where I left off and my archives… well, that’s a whole other story (in short: I thought I had saved them, but I lost a lot of my pictures).
But when I was writing this post about the guests in our pool (see below), I remembered that I never really told you about that pool, even though it has appeared in some of the pictures lately.

So I thought I’d do a little update about that while I was going to talk about our pool anyway.

We’ve been thinking about if and how we’d want to add a pool to our home for… years, I guess. We do have a beach very close to our home (a 7 minute walk), but to get home, you have to walk up a steep hill. It is fun to swim in the sea, but it doesn’t help for a quick cool-down. So we decided we wanted a pool and started looking around. We had some experts tell us that what we wanted was hard to do (although we’ve seen it in many modern homes) and we’ve made calculations that would have taken all our savings.

But then T.’s brilliant out-of-the-box thinking mind got to work.

We had a few men that we know are great with building make us a level concrete base.

And then we ordered a simple Intex pool that was just the right size.

T. had made calculations that had made sure the pool was at just the right level to build a deck around it that is level with the porch, so we can walk into the pool straight from the house. He built the deck all by himself, making up the construction as he went.

And now it looks like this:

We’re so, so happy with it! Since we filled it up (last year October) we may have skipped two or three days, but (except for our months abroad, of course) we’re usually in it multiple times a day. Especially right now, since we’re in the hottest period of the year. It’s so great to be able to just jump into the pool when we start to feel overheated.

We’re not the only ones who think that way, it seems. We’re constantly saving bees and wasps. Wasps can actually swim and get out themselves if their wings stay dry, but bees just jump in and drown if we don’t get to them on time. It adds a whole new dimension to our swimming moments, but we try our best.

And last week we found another swimmer:

Yes, that’s a crab. A land crab to be precise. It must have walked in at night, so it drowned before we were able to get it out of there. I have to admit though, we weren’t too sad about that, because we both find them pretty scary. They’re rather big and those shears look impressive when they raise them. When they enter the house (they do!) we use a broom to push them out of the door. One of our builders said they are very tasty, but we haven’t brought up the courage to try yet.

The same goes for these guys, by the way. We both tried them (in a restaurant – they do taste like chicken), but we’re not eager to catch them. And come to think of it… I so hope that he sticks with eating the leaves of my moringa trees. I really don’t want to try and save a panicking iguana from our pool…