Fingers Crossed

I absolutely love where I live.

Hopefully wherever we move to next will be able to give me sunrise views like this! 

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B.O.B the Trunk

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach"? Well...when it comes to me, it's "My eyes are bigger than my house".

If you saw my little love letter to my husband, you'll know that I was on a mission to pick up yet another trunk. Of course, the pictures from Slegers website didn't do it any justice......

.......I say that because it's considerably larger than I had anticipated. 

In fact, it's so large that I really had that doubting feeling of "should I really get this thing? It's massive!". Not to mention, I didn't think it'd fit in my Xterra. Lifting the lid is a bit of a struggle since the whole thing is made out of oak and iron. After looking it over, checking the wooden dowels, some minor repair work and what not, I walked around the warehouse to see if there was anything else that might catch my eye, but alas, I kept looking at the trunk wherever I was in the building. It was pretty hard to miss. 

I decided to bring it home since it IS an older piece that's between 142-162 years old (Mike, the owner of Slegers explained there was a twenty year age gap because lots of trunks within 1850-1870 were built the same by this particular builder) and it's an "import" from France. I'm only imaging the sort of things this trunk has lived through, especially with that sort of age on it. Honestly, I would've been an idiot not to buy it, especially because "the price was right!". So, the guys managed to get it into my Xterra (to my relief), and my friend and I rolled out to go have some cappachinos while enjoying some of the awesome weather we've been experiencing lately. 

I think I broke Mikes heart when I told him this was probably the last purchase I'll be making from him since I told Eric I'd stop buying stuff once I located a pretty awesome trunk. Not only did I get one awesome trunk, but I got two within two days of one another. So, I can't really back out on what I told my husband because, hey, my word is my bond. Mike on the other hand said "NO! Why?? Are you moving already?"....nope, not moving for another ten or so months, but promises are promises. Of course he tells me that I can always come in and visit while looking around without buying anything. Right. That's like asking a recently recovering drug addict to hang out in a unsupervised pharmacy and telling them to stay sober. Heh.

Not gonna lie...the trunk looked creepy in my truck. When you looked into the Xterra (from the front), the dome top from the trunk made it look like it was a coffin. Yeah, creepy. Then it dawns on me..."How the hell am I gonna get this out of here?". Normally, I grab my newly acquired treasure and hide 'em around the house like a little squirrel socking away nuts for winter, but this thing is so large that there is absolutely NO way I can get this out on my own. My second thought? Great, now I gotta deal with Eric being displeased with the size AND the weight. 

Luckily, I have a very supportive husband and he trusts my judgement when it comes to picking up various antiques. Given, this is larger than both of us were expecting, but it's still a gorgeous piece that'll fit in well with our collection. When I showed it to him, he gave a very heavy sigh and resigned to letting it sit in the truck till he got back from his appointment. Once he got back , we moved this beast of a trunk through the house and settled it down in my step-sons room since, well, that's the only space it can fit in, lol. 

Eric recovering:

For reference, this thing can fit all five of our dogs.... (sorry for the super blurry pic, but they were wiggling all over the place):

....and my fifteen year old can fit in it without a problem. 

Now I'm just looking forward to when we eventually move into our dream home and this can be used for the foot of our bed :) 

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Dear Husband,

Dearest Husband, 

      I have a problem. You know I have a problem. It's called "antique hunting". You've been amazing and supportive with all my buying adventures when it comes to finding cool "one of the kind" pieces for our home. Throughout the last three years since we've been in Belgium, you've trusted my judgement when it comes to our amazing kitchen table, oak wardrobes and decor that we know would cost an arm and a leg if we were back in the States. Despite thinking it's a bit crazy to buy some of the various things I've found, you've *always* supported my "problem"..and I love you SO much for that. I love you more than you'll ever know because it's fantastic to have someone, other than myself, who enjoys the older things that's been forgotten by time.

       On that note, I love you.........................................................................................

...............................................................................and I found another trunk. 

It's a French trunk and from 1870....and it's already on hold for me. 

LOVE YOU!!

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Early Bird Gets The...Trunk?

If you know me, you know I love my sleep...especially on the weekends because we like to stay in bed as long as possible. Welp, that wasn't in the cards for me this morning since I hit the road bright and early to a little town called Opwijk here in Belgium.  

Lemme explain...for the last few weeks, I've been on the hunt for a trunk. Yes, a trunk. Not like a footlocker style trunk you can buy in the store or whatever, but an antique looking one to go with all the other cool goodies I've found since we've been here. I've come across several nice ones throughout my search, but I'm not willing to pay the prices that some of the sellers are asking for. Think in terms of 400-1000 euro. Yeah, noooo thanks.  

A gal from here posted about a gorgeous fainting couch she found on a website that's pretty much a Belgian version of Craigslist. It's 2dehands.be . So of course I took an interest in the site because, hey, who knows what you'll find on there. Sure enough, I spotted a whole section that was dedicated to antiques of all kinds and trunks! Lots and lots of trunks!! After sifting through lots of ads and getting Eric's opinion on the ones I liked, I finally found one that we both agreed on because of how it looked AND the price was pretty reasonable. Thing is, it wasn't in the nearby area. It was a good hour and a half from here:

After emailing back and forth with the seller, today had to be the best day to run over there to snag the trunk since I'm not willing to deal with Brussels traffic during the week (who in their right mind WOULD??), especially since it'd be during rush hour, and we have plans to go to Germany next weekend. So, this was definitely a "smash & grab" mission. Eric wasn't feelin' the whole vibe of going since he wanted to relax, so I ventured off on my own and hoped for the best that the people weren't ax murderers or something along those lines. 

Luckily, they were VERY nice people and were thoroughly amused with the fact that I'm an American that was using a site that was in a completely different language. Then they picked my brain about the United States as well as California since they were wanting to travel there sometime for a vacation. 

When they showed me the trunk, it was definitely larger than I realized since it seemed smaller on the site. The size reference they used didn't match up with the actual piece, lol. While I'm checking it over, the husband starts giving me info on it cause I was curious about how they got their paws on it. Apparently, it was a gift from when they got married twenty five years ago and they were wanting to get rid of it since he built them a nice wine rack. They had been using the trunk all these years for storing their wine in a cool spot and since they completely remodeled & decorated their house, the trunk wasn't needed anymore. Benny, the husband, was VERY proud of his wood work because he gave me a tour around the house to show me all the stuff he built..it all looked professionally done, lots of clean lines like Ikea, so I can see how the trunk didn't fit in with their house anymore. 

Of course, I gladly purchased it even though there's a part of me thinking "How could you sell off something this cool that was given to you at your wedding?". Things come and go, I suppose! 

Cole gave his seal of approval on the new addition for our collection.

In all honesty, it needs a little TLC since the leather strapping's have dry rot and needs to be replaced, and then there's a hinge on the back that needs to be repaired. The exterior needs some elbow grease when it comes to polishing it up and I think I might fix the interior by sanding it down and staining it darker, maybe install a fabric liner since we intend to use this for our bedroom as something to store our throw pillows in. I dunno, maybe I'll see if I can find someone locally who can do restoration work on it since I wanna make sure *I* don't screw it up.  

Now, time for me to go enjoy the rest of my Sunday :)

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B is for...

Brussels!! 

Just kidding..not that kind of Brussels. I'm thinkin' more like the capital of Belgium. 

A friend and I headed up since she needed to conduct some business with the US Embassy. I had absolutely no desire to drive through Brussels with my Xterra (I don't care how many people tell me it's "easy"!) so we figured we'd make a day of it with the train..and I'm SO glad we did! 

Once the Embassy was all taken care of, it was only 10:30a ....we weren't expecting to be done that fast! Seriously, Belgians are insanely slow with processing paperwork, so we were shocked with how quick the whole process went.If you've ever seen "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", I genuinely believe they HAVE to be related to the Vogons..someway, somehow!

So, what to do? We walked over to Grand Place and did what any regular Belgian would do...we had a beer. B is also for beer, how 'bout that? :) I swear, my friend had one as well ..she was in mid sip when I took the picture, so, I'm not the only morning lush. 

Know what else Belgians do? They people watch while sitting at an outdoor cafe area. Hard life, right? We figured we'd give it a shot to see what it was like...I think we got the hang of it while soaking up some sun and watching tourists do their "thing":

It's been so long since I've had any alcohol (and I'm not really supposed to have any right now as is), I got pretty tipsy. To be fair, Belgian beer is pretty potent, so the Heineken got me drunky while the beer my friend got had her feeling fabulous as well.What happens to some people when they get drunk? Munches. 

Know what rhymes with Brussels? 

MUSSELS! 

We were originally looking for our favorite Chinese place, but apparently they went out of business (sadsies!), so, we opted to do the next best thing which was to have some Belgian mussels. Yes, Belgium is known for their beer, their chocolates and the waffles, but they also make some UH-mazing mussels (or so I've been told). After being here for three years already, it was time to have some! 

No joke, if you want your ego petted, you should walk down some of the alleyways throughout Grand Place, especially near the seafood area. All of the restaurants have outdoor patio set ups (at least during this time of year) and they have employees who stand outside and try to talk customers into a table to eat. Man oh man, we heard every compliment under the sun!  After dodging some Guido looking guys, cheesy one liners and some places that looked rather sketchy, we finally found a place where we wanted to sit down. Although I will say that the guy working the place we were at (we watched him during out entire meal) was hilarious because he was SO aggressive with the patrons, it was way over the top and scared people away!

After scrolling through the menu, we opted to get mussels in some garlic and cream sauce with a side of fritz. OH. MY. GOODNESS. It was absolutely out of this world! You just eat the meat and as you plug along, you toss the mussel shells in a second bowl they give you..it actually kinda reminded me of shelling crabs. Do all the hard work first and then savor the meat, lol. The sauce was fabulous and it tasted delicious, and it didn't have that overly fishy smell. Love love love! I'm tempted to try to make some mussels myself since I can get 'em from the local market...hmmmmmmm....

Once we stuffed ourselves silly, we strolled across the alley to the famous Delirium Cafe, which boasts a Guinness World Record certificate that states "The most varieties of beer commercially available was 2,004 at Delirium Cafe', Brussels, Belgium when counted on 9 January 2004". The only reason why we went there was to pick up some t-shirts for our husbands because, hey, the cafe is awesome and the staff is always nice in addition to wanting some cool shirts. Sure enough, the bartenders were extremely friendly (one of 'em even offered us some of his lunch, lol) and actually educated me on a mug I was really intrigued with:

It was designed by Charles Quint who was actually from Ghent, Belgium. After doing a lil bit of research, I found a picture explaining the story of the odd little mug:

Since I can't read French, I had to rely on Google Translate to gimme a hand with the story translation, and here's what I was able to get out of it:

A beautiful autumn day, after a chase has part of Walcot, Charles was wanting to quench his thirst. He went into a fine inn the boss offered him a pot of beer, holding it by its handle. Charles V was therefore obliged to enter the pot with both hands. Leaving the city, desiring to taste a new beer this wonderful, he ordered a servant to send the boss a pot with two handles, order for it to enter it in the future with one hand.

Some time after, Charles V and his retinue halted in the same Augerge. The madam presents him the pot of beer this time, holding the two handles together. Charles V did not lose heart and has ordered his servant to send a three-handled pot.

The following year, Charles made ​​another visit to the shelter. This time, the boss handed him the pot, holding hands in two handles, but the third handle turned to her. Once again, Charles was obliged to enter the pot with both hands. It was only when Charles V. had given the order to send a inn a pot has a fourth handle and the problem was solved. It is following a legend that this beautiful today, in many hostels have found beercans fitted with four handles. 

Someone sounds a little OCD to me! When you're an Emperor, I suppose no one will question something you want, right?

Anyway, we had a fantastic time in the Belgian capital, enjoyed some amazing weather and kept ourselves out of the house for a while! Gotta love living the European lifestyle :)

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Curl Up & Dye

Alrighty, so here's a follow up to my last post which was talking (debating) about my hair color and what I was wanting to do with it. 

I ended up getting a much needed trim last week since I had neglected my hair since November. Yes, shame on me..I'm just not very "into" the maintenance part when it comes to being a chick. The simpler, the better in my eyes. When I met my hair stylist for the first time (she was recommended to me by several people) and she instantly looked at my roots with disappointment, lol. Given, I had three inches of roots showing, so it looked pretty rough...not only that, she wasn't a fan of the black. I had the blackest black you can get. There wasn't any under laying color to it or anything..no blues or reds. Nothing. Just black. As she was cutting my hair, she kept saying "This color is too dark for you. It's ugly. You need something lighter", in which I kept telling her that my husband would prefer that I keep it some sort of black, but we want something "in the middle" so he'll be happy with the new color while I get something new done to it. After going back and forth a bit between her suggesting blonde, hazelnut, red, and every other color I was wanting to avoid, we finally agreed on a lighter black that had chocolate undertones and do some low lights throughout it with a brownie / caramel color. Of course, my main concern is the stripping process on my hair because I've had some problems with it falling out very easily lately. So, I'm not really wanting to do more damage to it than necessary, but, I NEED a change! 

Today was the day where I get my coloring done! The whole time I was driving to the salon, I kept thinking in my head "Please don't mess this up. Please don't make me regret doing this. If my hair gets messed up, I'm just gonna shave it off and be done with it"...lol. I really don't like people messing with my hair, especially Belgians (no offense to any Belgians who happen to read this) because they have a knack of being very...errrr...creative when it comes down to hair colors and cuts. 

After all was said and done, the whole process took two and a half hours between stripping, slathering, painting, sitting under dryers, more dying and then the final wash & blowout. Honestly, it's a very subtle change, but I can definitely see the color difference and the low lights. I couldn't see them when my hair was wet, but once it was all dried and styled, you can see them clear as day...especially when outside! LOVE!

Before:

After:

Oh, and Eric happened to pop in when I got home since he needed to pick up his gym clothes. MASSIVE thumbs up from him! YAYSIES! I was more worried about him liking it than anything since he really likes dark hair and was very vocal about me not changing it to something much lighter. 

So, there ya have it!  It may not seem like a big difference, but I definitely see the changes. I have an appointment again with them in May to get it touched up and have a few more low lights added (maybe a little chunkier?) since I'll be going to Eric's academy graduation ceremony a few days later. Gotta look good for the hubba!

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False Advertising

 In case you don't know, I'm a natural blonde.

I met my husband back in..ohhhh gosh...September 2006. Many many moons ago and yes, my hair was black then. I've always paid attention and addressed my roots when it comes to touching them up so I can keep the nice raven color that I currently have. Over the years, I've gone from blonde, to maroon, brunette, highlighted and then to black...which I've kept black since 2005. As time has worn on, I'm getting tired of black despite getting lots of compliments on the color. It brings out my eyes and I have very fair skin, so I suppose it's a complimentary color for me, but, I kinda want something to give extra shape rather than flat black.  

Whenever I talk to Eric about letting my natural hair color come back, he always tells me, "I married you under false advertisement then!". Given, he knew I colored my hair, but he's a fan of dark colors...not blondes. Even though my hair is now growing in as a dirty blonde, it's still lighter than he prefers, lol. 

Here's a pic from when I was swimming all the time, yet I was still pale:

...annnnd when my hair was a ginger color (he'd kill me if I even attempted that now)

At this point in time, I haven't touched my roots up since November. Yes, November. My hair grows insanely slow despite the various vitamins I take..it's a little frustrating! So, I'm on the fence in terms of what I wanna do. Part of me wants to see if I can do black "highlights" so my natural color can grow in, but I have the black still so I can get a two tone look going on. Another part of me thinks to just let my hair grow in and be done with it, but, Eric is really protesting that. Touch up the roots and see if I can have SOMETHING done to add some sort of highlights (like a copper tone). I dunno..I wanna switch things up a little bit! Plus, I've been really trying to get my hair long again since I chopped it almost two years ago. The only thing in term of styling I'm willing to do is long layers since my hair is naturally curly and I don't wanna deal with bangs again.

I dunno...any suggestions!?

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Stylish AND "Green"

Alrighty, so when we moved to Belgium back in 2009, we were informed that the grocery stores don't bag your goodies for you (say what??) and they normally don't have bags on hand that you can have..for free, that is. Even the little plastic baggies cost you money. You have the option of buying some nice re-enforced style bags, which I've done MANY times, but I usually forget them and end up having to buy another one in the midst of unloading my shopping cart. D'oh!

Or, there's the option of buying re-usable shopping bags from the Commissary made out of cloth. Don't get me wrong, I've relied on them for a while, but they wear out pretty fast when the baggers overload the actual bag and cause them to rip apart. Nothing better than picking up a bag that's full of canned food (or glass items), the bag rips and all your stuff is rolling down the driveway. That's happened quite a few times. NOT a fan of it! 

Recently, I've been re-introduced to "Thirty-One Gifts" by a friend who buys bags / customizeable things  from her sister who's a Consultant for the company. After seeing her use her nice, sturdy bags for grocery shopping, I was finally sold on the idea to take the plunge (and investment) to get some for me. Besides, who wouldn't want pretty bags? Uh..well..men..but you know what I mean! SO, since I was gonna buy so much, I opted to do an "online show" which was suggested by my friend :) 

Luckily, the monthly promotion at the time was "For every $31 you spend, you get 31% off the next item". Sounds like a good deal to me! Saving IS saving! After doing a lot of searching, picking my poor friends brain to death, measurements for comparison and finding patterns I liked, here's all the goodies I ended up with! 

I got four of the "Large Utility Totes" in a pattern called "Black Parisian Pop" since I reaaaally like the damask pattern. They're made out of a heavy duty canvas material with a re-enforced top so when you're putting stuff in the bag, it won't flop down. When it came to personalizing, I opted to not do that since I figured the pattern was pretty busy as is. Besides, if I did get it personalized, it would've been in hot pink...and it's enough as is for Eric to carry this pattern around when he goes shopping without me, lol. In addition to the Large Utility Totes, I also go two "Market Thermal Totes" since we buy a lot of Almond Breeze whenever we raid the Commissary. The whole "matching" thing came into play, so I went for the black ones since the other patterns would clash with the damask style way too much. I guess I'm OCD about that sort of thing, lol. Although, I had them personalized so they say "COLD STUFF!" so the baggers will see what they're for right off the bat without having to ask, plus, it'll help when we get home so we know to put the things in those bags away first :)

The best part? ALL of that fits into one bag! LOVE! 

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!

Due to the damask style being one of my fav's, I got a "Oversized Storage Organizer" to put on my side of our bedroom wardrobe. I love how it has a "window" on the front of it so you can see what goodies you have in there, ya know, just in case you end up wanting something out of it :) Mines already been filled up with all sorts of accessories like hats, scarves, gloves and anything else you can think of. 

I have a knack of leaving my hair dryer as well as hair straightener out wherever I can in our oh so space limited "shower room". It drives Eric absolutely nuts because they usually get in his way when he tries to shave for work, so, he'll stick them wherever he can, which is usually out of MY reach. After doing some more searching and more measuring, I ended up getting a "Mini Utility Bin" in a pattern called "Flutter" so I can store all of my "madness" in one convenient spot. Truth be told, I was a little skeptical about it since I didn't think it'd be deep enough to hold my stuff....

...and I was totally wrong to doubt it! My hair dryer, straightener, hair brushes and some of my hair care products fit in there perfectly! AND, it fits in our vanity storage area without having to squish it down to MAKE it fit. The cool part is that it looks like it's a square tote, but that's just the exterior. It's actually circular so it allows you to have more things in it. Verrrry clever! 

Last but not least, I got a Host Special item, which was the "XXL Utility Tote". Sorry that there's no link for it, (I couldn't find it on the site)...BUT...it's in the online virtual catalog on page 15. Three zippable / removable bags come inside a massive tote. It's HUGE! I'm trying to figure out what I'll use it for since it's larger than I /thought (totally not a bad thing!). I'm sure I'll use the bags for when I only need just a few grocery items from the local grocery store. Or maybe we'll use it for storage stuff. Ahhhh the possibilities! 

There ya have it! The cool goodies I got from Thirty-One! I'm gonna go through my pile of old shopping bags  and FINALLY toss all the ones that are barely holding together, which is almost all of them! I'm REALLY diggin' the quality of these bags, so I'll definitely be a returning customer for more Thirty-One stuff down the road :) 

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Wannabe Baker

Here in Belgium, I can get an awesome variety of loaves varying from multi-grain, seeded, sweet, extra crunchy,  sliced extremely thin, blah blah blah. But, no sourdough. Trust me, I've asked. All of the answers are "wablieft?", which means "what?"...when I ask again in a different way, they respond with "Nee nee nee". Apparently Belgians don't make anything that's remotely similar to sourdough. 

Le Sigh. 

After much debate and doing a fair bit of research, I took the plunge and attempted to make my own bread. I know it's not rocket science to actually make it. Like everyone else who routinely buys their bread from the store, you don't really think about the long process it *can* take to make something from scratch since we're used to the convenience of buying it whenever we feel like it. Since I want sourdough, that's going to take a little bit of time since I need to make the "starter", which involves several days of fermenting yeast before the "sour" flavor actually takes place. So, I figured I'd try making a regular ball of bread (minus the sour) since I picked up some yeast from the store the other day and just wanted to give this a shot. 

All the ingredients you'll need! SUPER simple! Bread flour, salt, yeast and water. I opted to bake my bread in my Le Creuset French oven, but you can definitely bake it in a regular loaf pan. 

After tossing all the ingredients together, I put the dough in a bowl, covered it with saran wrap and had it sit in the warmest part of the kitchen (right above the wall heater) for the day while I was out and about. In total, it sat for roughly eight hours. 

Once it hit the eight hour mark, I took the dough out of the bowl and put it down on the counter (which was prepped with some garlic olive oil)..lightly patted the dough ball with the oil, kneaded it for about five minutes then let it sit for another hour (covered in saran wrap again). In the mean time, I fired up the oven to 450* and had the French oven sitting in there so by the time everything was ready, the dough could be plopped in (while on parchment paper). The French oven WILL be hot while you're doing this, so be very careful! 

I baked it for thirty minutes with the lid on, then fifteen minutes with the lid off and this is how it turned out! I'm over the moon!! 

Eric was my willing guinea pig to try it out and he gave me a very enthusiastic two "thumbs up"! YAY!!

In all honesty, it was VERY easy to make. I mean...ridiculously easy! I think I'll make it a point to make my own bread loafs whenever we need some since it'll be cheaper to just make it myself. Hmmmmm...I think I'll test drive using this for French toast this weekend :)

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