Tulips and photographers

A friend mentioned that there was a beautiful, colour coordinated tulip field somewhere in the North East of Groningen. So yesterday hubs and I drove up there to take some photos. The weather was beautiful. Sunny and warm and a clear blue sky. We took our convertible and the scenic route and felt like we were on holiday.

And we found the colour coordinated tulip field. And lots of photographers. Apparently this was a famous field. It felt a bit like being a bird spotter. You know, the people who text and phone each other when they’ve spotted the very rare Polifinario (a non-existing bird, made famous by Dutch comedian Toon Hermans, no longer with us, according to whom the Polifinario goes: “Krrrroot” and the Kroot goes: “Polifinario”.) and who then grab their cameras and incredibly large lenses and flock together to spot the Polifinario and take THE photo. We all spotted the tulips and tried to make the photo. It gave me the giggles.

  spot the photographer

No ghost in this shot. Just a cyclist passing by.

THE shots are on my photoblog. And they are really not that special. Because I preferred shooting the photographers. Actually the photo in this post, with the photographer in black, is my favourite.

Sunday Selections for Kim

This Easter Sunday my Selections are especially for Kim from Frogpondsrock, who also hosts this meme. If you have photos hanging around on your computer, doing nothing, and you’d like to post them but haven’t found a reason yet, you can always join the Sunday Selections.

So Kim… I hope this is sort of what you’re looking for… (it’s my ‘she’ and she’s called Naloma).

Do these help Kim?

My laid back Easter Bunny joined the mafia

One of my friends invited me to a workshop Cake Decorating. So Thursday evening we joined 8 other women and learned how to decorate a cake Easter style.

We had to cut the cake in three layers and then fill it with two different sorts of yummy stuff, using a piping bag. I managed to do that really neatly actually. No persons next to me, not even myself, got covered in the yummy stuff. Quite and achievement for someone who usually goes through life wearing clothes covered in all sorts of stains, without a clue how they got there and what they are.

We then had to roll out yellow fondant (I believe it was fondant, I’m sure it wasn’t marzipan.) in a circular shape to cover the cake with. A couple of cake decorating diehards who were on the opposite side of the table were amazed that a cake decorating novice like me could manage to do that so quick and accurate. And then we had to roll all kind of different sizes of balls from the brown fondant and create an Easter Bunny out of those.

I created a very laid back Bunny.  

We rolled out some more fondant, pressed flowers out of that and stuck it on the yellow fondant. Add some Easter Eggs in the form of tooth breaking candy and voila… My Easter Bunny Cake. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole cake decorating experience.

 

We put the cakes in boxes and took them home.

But when I opened the box, my formerly laid back Bunny seemed to have joined the mafia.

It definitely had that ‘You talkin’ to me?’-look on his face.

Not a happy Bunny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But hubs wasn’t afraid. He got out the big knife and said to the shivering Bunny: “No. I’m not talkin’ to you. You’re a fondant Easter Bunny. Why would I talk to you? And if you don’t behave I’ll be cutting off more than only your Easter Eggs. So you watch it!”

 

Easter Bunny covered his private parts with his basket and hubs cut the cake. Easter Bunny is behaving very well so far. And the cake is delicious.

HAPPY EASTER

100 Things I Love About The Netherlands #16

 

TULIPS

^{photo taken from here}

Although actually tulips originate from almost every country but the Netherlands – especially Turkey I believe, tulips are thought to be typical Dutch flowers.

And who am I to disagree. Nothing better than the first bunch of tulips in a vase after a long, grey Winter. Or those vast acres of red, yellow, pink, purple tulips that brightly colour the landscape in a stripy pattern. I haven’t made photos of that myself yet, so I used one I found on the internet. Doesn’t that brighten up your day?

We do have two tulips, yes, TWO whole tulips, in our own garden. First I thought we had the grand total of one tulip, but just now I’ve discovered another one. Tulip bulbs need to be lifted every year and then replanted again to keep producing flowers, but I’m too lazy for that. So our bulbs do produce leafs, I imagine they’ll stop doing that one day too, but no flowers. Except for those brave two tulips that is.

The first one:

 

 

The one I’ve just discovered:

See how it’s trying to grab my attention, hidden under the thriving raspberry bushes? It’s definitely waving. And if you listen closely you can hear a faint “help”. Poor tulip. But not ignored any longer.

Sunday Selections

Sunday Selections is hosted by the lovely Kim from Frogpondsrock. It’s an opportunity to post those photos that have been hanging around on your computer, waiting for a chance to be seen. (Awww, those poor unseen photos.)

Now, my Sunday Selections for this week haven’t been hanging around on my computer for long. I took these shots just last week. But before they disappear into the unorganized world of photos-on-my-laptop, I thought I’d share them with you.

‘t Was very early in the morning and this is what I saw when I looked out of the window. So I grabbed my camera and tried to capture that misty, early Spring morning, it-will-be-a-lovely-sunny-day, feeling.

And, since I was awake anyway, and I had my camera with me, I decided to take a little stroll around the golf course behind our house. I see roe deer there almost every day, but never when I have my camera with me. When I have my camera with me, I never see roe deer there. But on this beautiful morning…

… I’ve caught one on camera! Okay, admittedly these are not the best shots, but who cares. I’VE CAUGHT A ROE DEER ON CAMERA. OH YEAH!!!!

 

And then there was this tranquil pond.

I could almost be tempted to get up very early in the morning every day.

Almost.

Workshop horse-photography

Yesterday a friend and I attended a workshop horse photography. We had a lovely time and learned something too. I hasten to add that I unfortunately did not put everything I learned into practice, but some shots came out quite nice. The fact that the horses were beautiful, but which horse isn’t, and very well-behaved did help. They just stood still where they were told to. (Our own horses either decide to take a closer look at the camera and put their nose into the lens, leaving sand and drool everywhere, or they just keep looking the other way.)

The weather and location were beautiful too.

Very well-behaved horse. Ours wouldn’t have had time to pose for the photographers. They would have been too busy grazing.

 

Gorgeous horse.

 

Very relaxed horse.

 

This photo could have obviously been a lot sharper, but I do like the shot because of the moment captured.

And I have made lots more photos, but I shot them all in RAW, so I’ll have to ‘process’ them first, before I can publish them. It is clear that it’s difficult: to get the colours right, the sharpness right, the light right and to capture the action. I’ll just have to keep practicing. And practicing. Sigh. Good job I like taking photos.

Nearly dead

 

How many blondes does it take to change a light bulb?

Well, let me tell you.

From experience.

More than one.

In fact, it takes one blonde to nearly kill herself in the process and then one reddish guy to actually change the light bulb and then the fuses.

You see, I noticed that the light bulb, which is the only source of light in the laundry room, needed changing. It didn’t give light anymore, however often I flipped the switch. I flipped the switch a couple of times and then forgot in which position it had to be in order to not let the current flow (do you know how difficult the English language is if you need to explain something really simple and English is your second language? Anyway, you, my readers, are so incredibly intelligent, you know what I mean, I’m sure. Even if I sometimes write things that don’t make sense to English speaking people.)

Back to the broken light bulb; I contemplated two options. Either wait till hubs got home and let him change the light bulb, or do it myself. And I do know how to change a light bulb. I’ve even often done it, although I’m not to be trusted around electrical equipment. Usually electrical equipment does strange things when I touch it. The television remote control has a mind of its own in my hands. I press 1 and it goes to channel 8 for instance. Or I want to turn up the volume and it changes channels. Weird.

But I decided to do the brave thing and took it upon myself to bring light into the world of laundry again. I chose a new bulb from the cupboard that holds our private collection of light bulbs. I chose one with the same wattage as the old one. I removed the broken one and started to screw the new one in until I couldn’t screw it in any further. It didn’t give light. I flicked the switch. It still stayed dark. Hmm.

I started unscrewing the bulb. And then, while I was still unscrewing, suddenly, BANG! FLASH! SPARK!

From sheer fright I dropped the light bulb on the floor. Shit. Shattered glass on the floor in a dark room (no, not a darkroom. Nothing exciting like that going on in our laundry room.) and me on my socks. Hmm. This light bulb changing proved to be quite dangerous. I shuffled backwards, closed the door and went to get the vacuum cleaner.

Later that afternoon I discovered that the lights in the bathroom didn’t work anymore. The BANG! FLASH! SPARK! probably blew a fuse.

I decided to do the wise thing and waited until hubs came home to let him kill himself change the bulb. Of course he had no problems screwing in a new bulb and then he did something clever in the fuse box and there was light in the bathroom again.

Fortunately I’m better in solving Sudoku's.

Cold comfort.

Sunday Selections

 

Just some random, quite nice and calming shots from June 2009 in these Sunday Selections. Nothing spectacular, not worth stealing, but I’ve thought about copyrighting them. Something I often forget and that can be important to do in case someone wants to pay me an astonishing amount of money for nice and calming shots of Umbellatus. Yeah, I know, fat chance.

Sunday Selections is hosted by the lovely Kim from Frogpondsrock, so hop over to the rocking frog ponds if you want to see more or join in yourself.

I’m slightly worried and 100 Things I Love About The Netherlands #15

 

I love our well-stocked supermarkets. Oh I know that there is a lot to be said about supermarkets and how they make life difficult for smaller, specialist shops, and that is true. But there are lots of countries where people can’t go to a supermarket and fill a trolley with all the food they need and don’t need. So, in that sense I do love our well-stocked supermarkets that make life easy for us, consumers.

However, I’ve overheard some conversations between supermarket staff lately that left me slightly worried.

In the supermarket we know as ‘Germany’ (long story, something to do with not having been on holiday for years and the desire to go somewhere ‘exotic’ for once. I have posted about it here), but that is in fact Lidl, two employees are shouting their conversation across three isles and are therefore impossible to ignore:

Employee 1: “You know what they said?”
Employee 2: “No.”
Employee 1: “They want me to do my shopping here too!”
Employee 2: “What?”
Employee 1: “Yeah, that’s what I said. The boss wants me to do my shopping in this supermarket.”
Employee 2: “Oh?”
Employee 1: “Yeah. As if! Do they think I’m crazy? I’m not going to do my shopping here!”
Employee 2: “No, I wouldn’t either!”

In the supermarket we know as ‘France’, but that is in fact Jumbo, a couple of giggling cashiers:

Cashier 1: “Do you know if they caught the mouse yet?”
Cashier 2: “Mouse? What mouse!?!”
Cashier 1: “The one that was running around here.”
Cashier 2: “What? When?”
Cashier 1: “About half an hour ago. And then it ran towards the bread counter.”
Cashier 2: “No! Really?”
Cashier 1: “Oh God yeaheah. There are lots of mice running around here.”

In the supermarket we know as ‘Holland’, but that is in fact Albert Heijn, a couple of guys busy stocking shelves:

Guy 1: “Did you see the mouse?”
Guy 2: “No?”
Guy 1: “There was a mouse running around the cheese counter. The girls were really scared haha.”
Guy 2: “Oh. Did they catch it?”
Guy 1: “Dunno.”