Today was 92 F or 33.3 C! Can you say Hot Hot Hot? Thank God for central air!

It has been a while since my last entry, Memorial Day was here and that always throws me off, it takes me days to recover from a long weekend like that. Before that, isolation got to me and instead of reaching out and writing about it I draw back into my own private world.

Anyway, I finally took the bull by the horns and accepted the fact that we will not be moving homes anytime soon(not with these house prices!) and that if I want a house with a porch I will have to build one myself! Not with my own hands of course ha ha! Although many many moons ago I wouldn't have to think twice about that, I just did it.
Our neighbor's house has been on the market for 2 years and it finally sold last week. I don't know the details but my guess it is was for way less than they would have liked.

So we considered our options and as things go in our household we considered and considered but no action was taken. Last Monday I decided that it was time and jumped to Angieslist to check out the best contractors for the job.

Luckily we have a large area in front of the house that is suitable to build a porch.

This pic, taken last December when we had a pack of snow, shows the small front porch we already have and the 2 front windows, the right one is W. 's office the left is my office. The new porcht is going to run the whole length of the house which is 21 feet and will be about 6 feet wide with a white railing and ..... a trellis! (for my Dutch readers a trellis is a 'pergola'). The roof sticks out from the house and attached to that will be the trellis.

It will look something like this:

But not with those columns ;-) and no stairs either. ;-) Just wanted to show the railing and the trellis.
We choose nice composed material, that needs no maintenance and is surprisingly in the color of the siding. A greenish/gray for the deck, for the railing and trellis we choose white that goes nicely with the front doors and the windows.
It's going to be great, I can already imagine sitting there with my morning espresso or afternoon cuppa, evening coffee, in my rocking chair and the nice porch furniture I will need to find. I'd love to have some nice Adirondack chairs I think they will look great.
We'll just sit there and watch the world go by and have more contact with neighbors. At the back it's nice but isolated, very private, which can be a good thing but every now and than you just want to sit and watch and have some human contact.

The price was very reasonable and with this economy they are all looking for work and had competitive pricing, they can start next week and it will be finished in 3 days!

Will keep you posted how things are going and post photo's.
Next project will be the installation of tube skylights, the hallway is very dark because there are no windows, a few of those tube skylights will open it up and let the light in.

The very thought of realizing a small part of my American dream(having a home with a porch) has perked me up and I'm so looking forward to it!

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75F or 24C, sunshine but raining at the moment, pouring to be exact at 23:38 or 11:38 PM

The weekend promises to be in the 80's again!

Last week I was on a roll and started my experiment of baking with Weetabix. Weetabix is my favorite breakfast cereal. it's better known in the UK but foodies at Trader Joes will know it also. it's a very healthy yummy crispy cruspy bar. It's got 95% of Organic Wholegrain Wheat, so it is very easy to bake with.

I searched for some recipes and decided to use 2 and adjusted them to our taste. They turned out pretty well and very tasty!

The first one is a recipe for Weetabix Muffins that I used to make Weetabix scones. I don't have a suitable muffin pan but do have a nice silicone scone pan for making small scones.

The taste was very nice I used espresso to flavor them with a hint of vanilla. I always wanted to bake some scones with espresso and these ones will definitely be on my regular list. Half of them had cinnamon bits in them and the other half brown sugar on top which made them sticky. I used milk and yogurt which also gave them an nice texture.

The second batch I made in the Weetabix experiment where crunchy bars. They had an interesting consistency, soft with crunchy bits in the inside and a nice choc taste.(made them with cocoa powder).

They were a bit crumbly after a day so I might need to adjust the moisture a bit. They were a hit with W. also and the dogs went after the crumbs like crazy, of course we shared one with them, what's the use of baking if you can't share hmm? Anyway, they were gone before I knew it and I definitely make a new batch soon.

Next I will bake the scones with ginger and try my hand again at the fruit loaf, the fruit loaf requires soaking the Weetabix and fruit overnight and has been one of my favorites.

Project for next week will be this recipe I found about making Blondies(instead of Brownies) with white beans and lemon bars with silky tofu!

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If I Made a Commercial for Trader Joe's

I came across this video of my favorite store and thought I would post it here as a tribute. ;-)

Have fun watching it!

64 F or 18 C t the moment at 11:58 PM or 22:58.

What a hectic day today! Had a lovely visit from the mobile groomer guy, he's such a nice guy and always in for a chat. Real nice person, sometimes you just come across people like that, who are just real nice. Not nice because they have to but from the inside out. ;-) Of course our cat walk was the conversation starter that it is. He was amazed by it and quite frankly everyone is. We're already so used to it but I guess for people coming into the house for the first time it is a shock to see a cat walk high up in the air with cat condo's attached to the ceiling. We're already thinking of expanding to the kitchen and into the sun room.

In any case Lotte loved him and he did a great job with her. She looks a lot younger again. The cute little face is back instead of the old dog that she looked like.
Below is Lotte before her make-over.

Below Lotte after her make-over! ;-)

 

How cute is she? ;-)

What we discussed today was of course the horrible attack on the Queen of the Netherlands and the Royal family, where 5 people died and 8 are wounded.
It's sad to see this happening in the country we still call home, or home country.
However we do notice that we have become a bit resilient against this kind of violence, not a week goes by here in the US or some kind of lunatic feels he or she has to shoot a class full of students, shoot people outside a disco, kill his whole family, kills people attending a church. It's not that we consider this as normal behavior but still, it happens so often you build up a kind of tolerance against horrible news like that. If you don't you will become depressed and anxious.

It's horrible what happened in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, but not less horrible was the shooting of innocent teens in Portland here on an exchange program and celebrating their stay by going to a disco. A disturbed person went out and shot 2 girls to death and wounded 7 others.

Not far from us, horrible things happen on a daily base. What worries me is that it seems to happen so often, people seems to want to make themselves immortal by acting out like that. I can't imagine what must have gone through their mind before deciding that would be a good idea. Could they be stopped somewhere in the process if we were able to recognize disturbing signs earlier? Probably not, most are typed as being loners, quiet and not very social. I do recognize that though, I too am an introvert and more than often wonder about the fact that people are not able to read me better. Apparently are introverts masters at disguising that. Worrisome though.

I do hope people in the Netherlands realize that celebrating Queensday has nothing to do with the act of one disturbed person. As Dutch citizens you have a right to celebrate one day in the year that you're Dutch and proud of it, don't let one lunatic take that away from you! It's an unique festival of being a child again and play funny games, drink lots of beer and visit the flea markets! Not that Dutch children drink beer but you get the point. ;-)

Well, that's it for today, W. cooked us dinner of grilled salmon, grilled asparagus and gnocchi with spinach. YUM! Weekend forecast is rain rain and rain or as we say in Oregon, liquid sunshine. ;-)

Have a good one!

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52 F or 11 C at the moment which is 11:28 PM or 23:28 depending what system you use. My iMac screen says 23:28 because that's what I'm used to.

I call this blog my daily blog except is hasn't been too daily lately. If you follow my M.E blog you will know I have been down in the dumps again after a dr. visit. Where did the time go that dr.'s would make you better, cure you instead of making you even more ill after a visit ;-) Ah.. the good ol' days, when you also still believed in Santa Claus.;-)

Besides all this I have been up to not much so not much to share either. Days pass without anything noticeable happening. I'm still looking for that contractor to build my porch and haven't found the energy to go after it but maybe this weekend will be a good time. Today was busy with ordering stuff online, if you're chronically ill and have a non-functioning immune system you need to be very careful with any new virus that comes along and that might swipe you out. This H1N1 influenza is a nasty one for people with already bad immune systems and my physician has given me the advice to stay away from public places, which means house arrest for the time being but one can't be too careful. Tonight the Oregon University announced it will close it's Western campus due to the influenza being discovered there. If it's discovered at such a large institution with so many children attending it will spread rapidly.

I took a good look at my homeopathic box and saw I had to update it with the most necessary solutions, if push comes to shove I don't want to have to scramble for homeopathic meds I want to be able to grab something if needed. It makes me feel prepared for anything. I was so lucky to located a box of N99 and N95 masks also, I saw them sold out online at many places already.
Ordered cat and doggy food in bulk from Amazon and K9cuisine.com a wonderful company with healthy dog and cat food and free shipping with FedEx and pretty fast, they ship the same day! Excellent service. Tomorrow will order groceries etc. Unfortunately Alberstons stopped home delivery so we now have only Safeway and NewSeasonsMarket left, that's okay we're lucky to still have home delivery at all I think!

I have all my supplements and meds updated and in stock so I'm good to go ;-)

On other home related news Fynn puppy has been promoted to twice a week doggy day care because he was such a good social and well behaved boy! At the daycare they take photo's every day it's fun to see them play.
Here are some pics of Fynn in Doggy Day Care.



Our Lotte will have her spa day tomorrow, the mobile groomers will be here at 10:00 AM to give her her summer cut. Will post before and after pics!

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