http://www.ilsesjournal.com/ Welcome to my Blog. Here you'll find everything about my daily life! en Copyright 2007 Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:47:08 +0100 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Hey all, After having been ill for several days it's back to work again. Not that I'm in the mood, on the contrary. There's nothing I'd rather like then staying at home now and just do a lot of fun things, but no work...... Do you have these kind of days? Lately I've got more of those days then days in which I really want to go my work... And that's not good. I think I'm in great need of a holiday. But for that I'll have to wait about four weeks......... And after that holiday I hope to have a new job. I'm gonna make some phone calls for that today. I hope I will have some success today. I really want a new job.... Well, I'll talk to you later! See ya! http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/12/back_to_work_again.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/12/back_to_work_again.php Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:47:08 +0100 Hey all, Sorry for not being here. I've been kinda busy with all sorts of things. My course for jobcoaching is almost complete. Just a few more weeks and then it's finished. I'll have to wrap a few things before the end, though. Otherwise I won't get my certificate. I think I'm gonna work on those things tonight and tomorrow. I hope I'll be able to finish it all by then...... In the mean time I'm looking for another job. Right now I work as a traffic engineer, but you can't do jobcoaching there :) Although lots of companies ask for jobcoaches (or similar people), I don't have the experience in that field.... so it's a tough one :( I really hope I'll have a job starting January 1st, 2008. Cause I really can't imagine going on longer as a traffic engineer.... Well, it was short, but I promise I'll be back with more later on. See ya! http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/11/ive_been_very_busy_sorry_for_n.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/11/ive_been_very_busy_sorry_for_n.php Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:14:20 +0100 Puzzle Pirates Let me tell ya everything about it! Jobcoaching Unfortunately I couldn't start my course in April, so now I'm starting it in September. However, I could walk along with a few jobcoaches these last few weeks and it was fun! I had a great time. I'm sooooo looking forward to this new profession! It so different from my current job. I can work WITH people and really help. I like that :) Scrapbooking I have to be honest and admit I haven't been scrapping much lately. However, with this new game (I'll tell you all about it, I promise!) I can Scrapbook as well for a contest :) This is soooo much fun! In a few weeks time I'll have a two weeks holiday and I'll go scrapping then. I really want to finish our Switzerland album and I have so many other photos I still want to scrap. Puzzle Pirates I told you before I was hooked on the various versions of the game Tradewinds. Well, I still like this game, but I missed a few things. Once you had done all the assignments, there was not much to do but make a lot of money. You couldn't buy a house or anything else, you couldn't get more assignments, nothing. And I wanted to do more than only get my scores up. Someone told me about Puzzle Pirates and I decided to give it a try. I didn't expect I would love it this much. Granted, you don't get assignments, but you're playing with a lot of people together. After all, it is an online game. Like they say: a massively multi-player online roleplaying game. You can choose whether you want to pay or not. Although, if you're not paying, there are several limitations to the game. I started with a free account (you can always upgrade it to a paid account) and tried it at first. As I said I didn't expect much of it. As far as I had understood it, there were no assignments to fulfill, nothing. But as it turned I fell in love with the game and subscribed. Let me tell you more about this game. Starting your pirate's life First, you have to choose on which ocean you want to play. There are two subscription ocean (on which you can also play if you have a free account) called Midnight and Cobalt. Midnight is an ocean which has been developed quite a lot already. Cobalt is a fairly new ocean (only two years old). Then there are three Doubloon oceans (Viridian, Sage and Hunter). Here you have to pay for doubloons to be able to buy things and to get certain ranks. I haven't played on one of these oceans yet, so I can't tell you anything about it yet. There's also a German Ocean and a test ocean. I chose the Cobalt Ocean in the end. Once you've chosen your ocean, you first need to "make" your pirate. This means choosing the gender, the hair style, the hair color, the skin color and the name. If you choose a male pirate, you also have to choose a facial hairstyle. After that, you can begin. You'll land on an island with nothing more but rags. You're lucky, 'cause the governor of the island will also grant you a shack to live in. And then, everything's up to you! Missions It's fun to start with learning more about ye'r pirate life. You'll get a special mission called "Loot yer home" in which you'll get a bedroll and a slated crate. And you can pick the rat that scuttled in as your pet. After that, it's all up to you! There are several more missions to choose from. But you can also decide to work at a shoppe (three contracted jobs is the maximum) or go on pillages. However, if you want to go on a pillage, it is wise to start with a few missions with the navy to get some piracy skills. Piracy Skills If you're not interested in getting a rank above Pirate (subscribed), you might not worry about your piracy skills. These skills are often used by crews to see if they can promote you. BUT, practicing these skills will also help you be a better (part time) crew member on the ship on which you're on during a pillage. So, all taken together, it is wise to practice your Piracy skills. And what are those skills, you may ask. Well, there are several. Let me start at the beginning. When you don't have any experience at all, you can start with sailing, bilging and carpentry. The better your skills get, the more options of piracy skills practicing you'll get. There's also gunnery, navigation and battle navigation. These are all puzzles (yes, puzzles) you can play by yourself. There are two puzzles for Piracy skills you'll play with more people and those are swordfighting and rumble. Your Piracy skills are "judged" on experience (how often you play the puzzles and how good you are with these puzzles) and standing (in regards to other pirates on the ocean of your choice). It's not always easy to get a good experience and standing, but it's soooooo fun to play the puzzles and slowly see your skills getting better and better! And this all brings us to the goal of the game. Goal The main goal is just to have a lot of fun. You're not playing this game to end (reach the last level) it (like with many offline games). Instead you're playing this game for yourself and you can set your own goals. In example, you can decide to play it and become one of the pirates with the best piracy skills on the ocean. Or you can play it with the goal of having as many successful shops as possible. Or you can play it with the goal to form your own crew. Those are just a few of the many goals you can set yourself. You are totally to reach the goal you want. And the beauty it, you define the goals. There are no given goals, there are no levels to reach, nothing. But how do you reach these goals? And I was talking about shops. "What's this all about" I can hear you think. Let's elaborate on that. Shoppes I know, normally you'd say shop and the plural is Shops. But, in pirate language, you'll use shoppes. There are several shoppes / stalls you can buy (I won't go into details right now), like an apothecary, a weavery, a tailor, a shipyard, a distillery and more. Of course these are all fictional, but it's all fun! Before you can buy a stall, you need to earn money (Pieces of Eight or poe). You can earn poe by participating in pillages and blockades, working with the navy or by working in shoppes. And you may sometimes win poe in a tournament. And it's completely up to you which way you choose to earn the poe you need. Once you've got enough money, you can buy a stall. But that's not all. You also have to buy commodities (the ingredients). And you have to make sure you've got enough pirates working for you (the labor you need), so that you're able to make all the products which are ordered. believe me, it's fun discovering it all. Houses, ships, crews And the shoppes are not all there is to discover. I told you, you get a shack once you start. Well, look at it as a small one-room apartment. But you don't have to stick to that throughout your entire pirate life. Once you've earned poe, you can buy new and bigger houses. There are 10 different type of houses to choose from, each varying in price. And not only can you buy houses, you can also buy ships. And that's where your piracy skills come in handy again. Cause buying a ship is nice, but if you don't know how to navigate, you can hardly use it. And an officer can do a lot of things, which a Pirate can't do. Having your own ship is nice, but it's even more fun if you're actively participating in a crew. After a pilly many captains will ask if you want to become a full member of the crew. That's nice, because this will give you the possibility to grow in rank (only officers and above can promote someone). And you'll have several people you can ask for help Maybe it's just something you don't know that you want to ask them, or maybe you'd like to set sail with your own ship and you want people to help you on the journey, you'll find it easier to ask your crew members then when you're not in a crew and you'd have to figure out everything for yourself. When you've got enough experience, you can also start your own crew. But, you'll need at least narrow experience in several piracy skills, as well have a deed of a ship (proving that you are the owner of that ship) and you have to be subscribed. I would advise you, though, to first participate in an existing crew, so that you can learn everything you need to know about how a crew works. Conclusion I think this is about all I can tell you about it. I know that I love it! And that's also why I haven't been here for a such a long time. It's an addictive game! Go and give Puzzle Pirates a try. For now this is it. I'll be back for more! Have Fun!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/08/back_again.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/08/back_again.php Games babble scrapbooking Sat, 11 Aug 2007 13:04:58 +0100 Hey all, As I told you before I'm looking for a new job and I know what I want to do. I want to become a jobcoach. Because I was so ill last April, I couldn't follow the training for jobcoach which started then, so now I have to start the training in September. I'm already looking forward to it! In the meantime I'm looking into a practice time (in Dutch it's: stage) with a few companies, so that I can get an idea already. And since I'm not working in this field of expertise I also have to find a place to have practical period for about four months (next to my training) to get the experience I need. So, this summer period I'm going to talk to several people to see what I can arrange. I can't wait to start with something new! Can you imagine that you're going to do something completely different? At first I couldn't imagine it, but now I'm totally at ease with the idea and I can hardly wait to start with a new job, where ever it may be. Just a quick update for the rest: I'll post photos for the Photohunt this weekend (I'm hopelessly behind as you can see) and I'll show you some new layouts I've made last weekend. I'll also post the Scrap-a-Ganzaphotos later on too. I can't show you the photos from the album yet, because I still have to have all the SAG photos printed and I still have a few projects to finish of which I want to include photos too! Have fun and Talk to you later! http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/07/becoming_a_jobcoach.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/07/becoming_a_jobcoach.php babble jobcoach Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:19:05 +0100 Hey all, It's been a while since you've heard from me. I'm sorry for that. I've been quite busy with several things, including a conference in Germany. I hope to have more time later on this week, 'cause I still have to let you catch up with everything from Scrap-a-Ganza, the conference and many more things! And I'll post some new photos for the Photo Hunt again! Talk to you later! http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/long_time_not_written.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/long_time_not_written.php babble Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:26:33 +0100 Scrap-a-Ganza Wrap up Part 1 Hey all, I thought I'd tell you about the rest of the weekend, so here goes. I'll continue from Friday afternoon. If you want to read about everything that happened before, please click on the link Part One above. Afternoon & Evening After collecting everything from the registration desk, we decided to put our goodie bag in our room and go and find a place to eat. We hadn't checked the goodiebag yet, because we had no time…….. Diner Last year we had eaten in the Bistro bar from the hotel and around 5pm we decided to go there again for our diner. It's a lovely little place. We did warn the waitress it was possible that several people would come to eat there and they all needed to be finished before 7pm. Last year they really had no idea what happened! This year it went great! Mom, Bianca and I took the same dish (Chicken sate, for me without the sauce: allergy for peanuts). All in all we didn't have to pay much and it was a very good meal! AND, we were lucky, because when we left everyone else was told the kitchen was closed. Can you believe that? Oh well, for us it worked out okay! Speed Scrapping After we'd had our diner, mom and I need to be in the workshop Speed Scrapping at 7pm so we went upstairs to get our bags. Although it would take some time, we decided to wait a little for the elevator instead of hoisting everything downstairs. Jodi Holbrook and the other Jodi (I'll tell you her name later on. Can't think of it right now....) hosted Speed Scrapping. And Jodi Holbrook did this in a very speedy way! Okay, she told us she'd first explain several things and then we could work on the four layouts, because we had the examples in our workshop description. But she went very fast! It was fun though! We learned to work with the Making Memories Punchers. The die cuts you get out of them, can be perfectly used in the rims you can use with the Making Memories Tag Maker. Because these tags literarily made the layout, this is indeed a very speedy way of scrapping. It's fun to do too! It wasn't at all what I had expected when I choose the workshop. I expected we would be working with precut borders, photo mats and more things like that. This was a very nice twist! Although I found it very fun and indeed very speedy, I don't think I will be using these things a lot! It's just because of the fact I'm always using a lot of photos in my projects and a lot of interactive things. One (or two) of these tags is funny to include, but it's usually way to little to cover everything I need. And guess what? Both Jodi's signed my album and my mom and I had our picture taken with them. How's that? I'm so happy they both wanted to sign my album! And they thought I had done a great job with the album too. What better compliment can you get? I was very happy with that compliment. In Between After we were done, we had some time left before we had to attend the workshop "About Me". We couldn't enter the workshop room yet, because there was still a workshop going on, so we decided to go and sit somewhere else. We had a nice chat with a few people. About me This workshop was being held in the biggest class room. As it turned out, the big class room was really necessary. There were a few hundred people participating in the workshop. I think it was a lovely workshop! All the kits were handed out and then Lisa told something about how the kit came together, what everything means and much more like that. I loved her story! It really gave me an insight in the kit, one which I wouldn't have had if I had only bought the kit and nothing else. I know there were people who thought this was more the "About Lisa" class, but I think they just didn't (want to) understand the whole story behind it. She was telling things about herself, because she wanted to explain things. After she had told everything, she explained things about a few pages. The kit that comes with an album in a box and lots of extra goodies! I didn't mind the fact that I had to pay another 10 euros for this class as extra fee. It was well worth it. At the end of the workshop Lisa wanted to take some time to meat all the participants and shake their hands. Because I also wanted my album to be signed by her, I just waited, together with Bianca and my mom. There were so many people who wanted to meat Lisa, have her autograph and a picture taken with her, that it took quite some time, but I didn't mind the waiting. In the meantime I met Lisa's sister, Angela, who's a very lovely lady! She had a great deal of patience with everyone and was really interested in people, just like Lisa. She even signed my album. By the way, she can start as a designer right away! I'll definitely remember her! I also met Kerry (I can't remember her last name right now, I'll give it later), one of the designers for Cricut. Kerry signed my album too! Angela and Kerry both signed on "the last page" because I didn't have a page for About Me. After all, I didn't know if I even could do this workshop. I'll make a special page for these two autographs. Finally around 12PM we had our chance to have our picture taken with Lisa and to have her sign my album (on the page for "My simple Truth"). This was so great! Just like Angela and Kerry, she was impressed with my album. It's fun to see that something I'm not particular impressed by, others think is wonderful. I mean, my album is okay, but for my feeling that's it. For me it's not outstanding or something like that........ Maybe I just expect too much of myself. Anyway, I'm glad they all signed my album and I'm very glad I waited for it! The rest of the evening I was supposed to meet several members of the Scrap-a-Ganza Forum to exchange our friendship cards. However I was just to tired, as were Bianca and my mom. That's why we decided to make a quick round by several shops and then turn back to our hotelroom to go to sleep. There were several good shops and I saw a few things that I had on my wishlist. I didn't buy them at that moment, however. I decided to wait and think about it for a day before making the final decision to buy them. After all, the Crop-a-Dile and the Xyron Design Cutter are not cheap. All though the cutter was now relatively cheap for half the price. That was interesting! This is it for the Friday. I'll let you know more about the rest later on! BTW, photos will follow later on. I still have to upload them here :) Thanks for reading and Have fun!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/scrapaganza_2007_wu_fridaypart2.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/scrapaganza_2007_wu_fridaypart2.php Events Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Jodi Holbrook Lisa Bearnson mini album Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:21:32 +0100 Friday. Early morning After I had had breakfast with James and he had left for work (at 06:30 am), I started working on the SAG album again. I wanted to finish that before I went for grocery shopping. I was lucky and had the album finished around 09:00 am. Now that that was done I could concentrate on other things. Last minute photos I had taken two photos from myself one week earlier and had sent them, along with photos from my scrap studio, to Pixum. These two photos were especially for the forum friendship cards. Remind never to wait for the last minute to do this! Really...... It's not worth all the trouble. I can guarantee that! Why? Let me tell you? Although the package with my photos should have been sent on May 28th (according to their system), it wasn't sent until May 30, so it hadn't arrived Friday morning. Because of that I had to to take the two photos for the cards with me on a CD to have them printed. I had never worked with one of those printing machines in a shop and now I had to learn how to work with it while I had to do all the other things too! I went to our local supermarket, cause I knew they have such a printing machine. I thought it couldn't be hard, right. Just put the CD in, give the order and have everything printed. Right! Note to self: Read instructions properly before asking on of the employees for help!!!! Anyway, I started up everything and put the CD in the place where I thought it had to go. And surprise, surprise, it wasn't working! So I called one of the employees to see if she could help me. Well, no surprise there, she didn't quite know how it worked either. In the end she managed to have my CD getting stuck in the machine and she had to call someone else for help. So, someone else came. She explained me that the machine had been put there without a proper instruction for all employees, so she didn't knew much either, but she'd try to help me. First she got the CD out. Then we started the process all over again. Right then I happen to notice I hadn't read the instructions correctly and instead of putting the CD in the DVD-Rom drive I had tried to put the CD into the whole where the burned CD's would come out. Can you imagine? Anyway, continuing, everything seemed to okay, finally. I could order 12 prints of each photo, I paid and I waited. To my horror I discovered there were only 6 prints per photo printed. Can you imagine??? Not only had I had paid for 24 photos in total, I really needed those 24 photos too! So I called the employee who had helped me last time again and ask her to fix this. She started calling the service desk from the machine and in the meantime she checked the machine. It turned out, to my shame, there are two compartments where the photos are coming out. How the hell was I supposed to know?!?!?! Anyway, in the end I had my 24 photos and I could finally started my shopping. Just to be sure I bought a roles of double-sided too, so that I'd surely had enough and then I went home at 10:15 am. I stored away all the groceries, took a shower, packed my tool-tote (read: suitcase) and backpack (with my clothing and other things) and lastly I prepared everything for lunch. After all, my mom and Bianca were coming over for lunch and then we would leave for SAG from here. The Afternoon The trip After our lunch we packed everything in the car and we went to Egmond aan Zee where SAG would be held. At such a time you check everything three times and you still have the feeling you're forgetting things, but we decided to ignore that feeling. According to our checklist we had everything, so the whole event should go well for us. The trip took us two hours. We expected to have traffic jams, but we were lucky. We hardly had any and we could easily continue to Egmond aan Zee. The only thing we regretted, was the fact we had forgotten something to drink for in the car. But we got over it :) Checking in in the hotel We arrived around 15:30h. Last year and the year before that we could easily park on the parking lot from the hotel. After driving around the upper parking lot we saw no place there. We hoped there would be a place on the lower parking lot, but someone else came from there and told us there was no spot either. So, what do you do then? We had quite some luggage and we wanted to park the car for the weekend. That's why I went to the hotel reception to see if they knew where we could park. The girl at the reception told us there's a temporary parking lot ("laden en lossen" in Dutch, it means something like packing and getting things out) where we could park the car, but she advised us to regularly check if there was a spot on the parking decks left. I told her there was no way we could do that, after all we would be in workshops all weekend and we simply wouldn't have time to check for a new parking place. She told us to take our chances and that's what we did. We parked the car on the temporary parking lot and got our things inside. Unlike last years the registration desk for SAG was downstairs instead of in a desk we passed on our way to the hotel reception. So we decided to check in in the hotel first, so that we could leave our luggage in our room and then go to the registration desk from SAG. We got a nice three-persons room (it looked the same like the one we had last year) and we put all our luggage inside. And just to be sure, I immediately checked the window to see if we could properly open it. Well, we could, but it wasn't ideal. We decided to keep it shut for the moment and see what we'd do in the evening. Checking in for Scrap-a-Ganza Last week I had been thinking about following one extra workshop. I had seen the About me Book kit from Lisa Bearnson and Lisa was at SAG to give exactly that workshop on Friday evening. It's a two-hours workshop. In the end I finally decided that, if there would be places left for this workshop, I would follow it. I had mailed Scrap-a-Ganza to ask if I could reserve one extra ticket, but they told to take my chances at registration, because I couldn't register online anymore and they couldn't register me for that workshop through e-mail either. So while we were walking towards the SAG registration desk I was keeping my fingers crossed for the possibility to follow this workshop. Downstairs there was quite the line for the registration desk. It turned out most people in line needed to check in before they had Karen Burniston's workshop that afternoon. Thankfully it didn't take really long, so it was our turn to check in. I got lucky cause although I was told I had to pay another 10 euro's for paying through Paypal, apparently their administration wasn't in order and I didn't need to pay it. (TELL NO ONE!!!) No complaints here :) Of course we got our goodiebag and an envelope with all the tickets for the workshops, the make & takes, breakfasts, lunches and diner. After that we checked for extra workshops. Bianca wanted and extra workshop for Saturday afternoon and mom decided to take the "About Me" workshop too. Bianca already had booked this workshop, so the three of us hoped we would all be able to follow the workshop. And guess what? We got lucky! Mom and I got the last two tickets for About Me and Bianca was able to do one workshop extra with me!!! We were really happy with this! Of course we had to make sure we had all the necessary tickets, so we sat down besides the registration desk to check our tickets. They all turned out to correct, so no problem there :) Okay, I think this is enough for now. I'll get on in another post! Talk to you later!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/scrapaganza_2007_wrap_up.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/scrapaganza_2007_wrap_up.php Events Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Lisa Bearnson mini album Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:15:11 +0100 Hey all, I'm back from Scrap-a-Ganza. I've had a wonderful time, did about 11 workshops (I included one extra Friday evening) and had lots of fun. I'll tell you all about it later, cause it's going to be a very long story! Last Friday morning I did manage to finally finish my SAG album, so I took it with me too. Didn't journal in it yet, but all the teachers signed it! Yeah for me! Once I've included all my photos I'll show it to you! Talk to you later! http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/back_from_scrapaganza.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/06/back_from_scrapaganza.php Events Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking mini album Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:43:56 +0100 Photo Hunt Theme is Colorful. There are different ways you can see this theme. I decided to take a few very colorful things from my Scrap Studio that inspire me every time I'm working there.
The M & M 's are my treat for when I've finished a page. The jar with Foam has lots of different shaped foam pieces in a great variety of colors. Now that I can actually see everything, I'm slowly starting to really use it. When I first started filling the jars with fibers, I wasn't concerned by selecting them on color. I just wanted everything cleaned and so I put everything in the jars. Later on I was looking for a matching fiber / ribbon. At first I thought I should have divided everything by their colors, but as I continued looking I found several fibers and ribbons from different colors that I could use. And I found them because I had to go through all the jars to find something matching with the layout. And that's a very fun thing. So I decided to keep all the fibers and ribbons mixed up. The fun way, I think, is that it does look more colorful compared to putting everything from one color in one jar. When Is tarted collecting the eyelets, I started with them all sorted by color. But since I have those little jars especially for all the small embellishments, I knew I had to mix them. Looking at them gives me so much pleasure. It's so fun to look at! Have Fun and thanks for looking! If you want to know who participates in this hunt, have a look here. If you'd like to participate, please go here. Talk to you later! ]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/photo_hunt_59_theme_colorful.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/photo_hunt_59_theme_colorful.php Blogs Photo Hunt Photos Photo Hunt photos Thu, 24 May 2007 11:03:27 +0100 Hey all, I haven't done much scrapping this week. I've been working on getting things printed with the Creative Lettering Delights companion. However, I'm having troubles with that. Either the transparent alphabets are not printed correctly or the transparent Journaling Delights are not printed correctly. With this I mean that when printed (if printed at all), I get a print like I've zoomed in too much, so it's not looking sharped, but rather pixelled. And that's of course not what I want. I've contacted technical support about this already. I hope they'll have a solution for me, cause I'm all out of ideas...... I've been working a little bit on the SAG album again. I've gone shopping for bigger screws. I've found something in the hardware store. I'll show you that later. And last but not least I've been working on a new layout again, but that's not ready to show yet. I'm going to ask James if he can take a few pictures of me, so that I can finish the Forum Friendship cards. After that I'll order those online and also photos from my scrapstudio. I already have a rough idea for the album. But before I begin with that album, I want my SAG album to be finished. Once that's done, I'll work on my Scrap Studio album....... Talk to you later! http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/what_did_i_scrap_sunday_4.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/what_did_i_scrap_sunday_4.php babble scrapbooking Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Sun, 20 May 2007 08:16:52 +0100 Eurobookings. I found this site while looking for hotels for someone else. I think it's a wonderful opportunity to book a hotel without to much hassle! You can book immediately on the website and you don't have to pay a reservation fee. And they have a lot of other benefits! Easy booking You can easily book from the homepage. Just fill in your destination or choose one from the list. Once that's done, choose the check-in and check-out date and hit the search button. You'll be presented with several hotels to choose from. And you can immediately book a hotel by clicking the Book Now button. What more can you want? Hotel Guide As I told you, Eurobookings has more benefits besides the No Reservation Fee. You can also find an extented Hotel Guide. This your place to read reviews about hotels in several countries. You're not only getting the basic information about a hotel, but also more information of the surroundings and places to visit. That way you can start planning your vacation easily. Especially if you're like James and me, trying to find fun things to do and visit during our holiday. And we're taking the "The Pleasure starts when your start planning" part serious! This site is ideal for these extra tidbits! More features I guess you don't want to go without a car. I know James and I don't. If we can't take our own car, we'll rent one. It so happens that you can book a rental car through Eurobookings too! As with booking a hotel, booking a rental car is as easy as 1-2-3. And this helps planning your holiday so much! If you know you have a rental car at your disposal, you know can afford to go sightseeing a town or castle (yes, there are still several castles in Europe!) or something else which is not in the place where you are staying. And it's all because you have the luxury of a car! And to top it all, those of you who want to book all activities in advance, you can do do that too through the Things to do feature. You'll have an extended list to choose from! Go and have fun and don't forget to let me know how it turned out! Talk to you later!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/do_you_have_a_holiday_in_europ.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/do_you_have_a_holiday_in_europ.php babble Holidays Fri, 18 May 2007 20:09:35 +0100

Crop-a-Dile

Book Binding Tape

Chipboard figures

Chipboard Alphabet letters

At least two pizzaboxes filled to the brim with Scrapbooking stuff (maybe even more......). I am going to give myself a strict budget, otherwise I'll be spending and spending and spending...... And we can't have that, can we? Oh, for those of you who haven't / couldn't read my post about last year, the pizzaboxes are something special. Scrapbookmate (a distributor of scrapbook supplies) is the big sponsor of Scrap-a-Ganza. They'll have (older) supplies with them that we can buy. BUT we don't have to pay for them by item. No, we can buy a pizzabox and go into the room where all the supplies are and fill the pizzaboxes ourself to the brim. As long as the pizzabox can close normally, it's okay. The pizzabox costs about 25 euros. But it's very well possible you'll have supplies in it which are worth a lot more! And this I like!!! Do you happen to have any suggestions of scrap supplies to buy? Things you think are great and at least worth to have a look at? Let me know! I'll keep you informed about the progress I'm making with the mini albums :) I might break the night tonight and just keep on working at the SAG mini album. I really want to have it finished this week! Luckily I have a few days this week, so I have four days to work on it. Should be enough, shouldn't it? Talk to you later!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/15_days_till_scrapaganza.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/15_days_till_scrapaganza.php Events Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbooking Scrap-a-Ganza scrapbook supplies scrapbooking Thu, 17 May 2007 12:41:11 +0100 Photo Hunt Theme is Cooked / Cooking. I always intended to make a recipe Scrapbook album. However, it has not yet come to that. I have made one recipe mini album, though. It's about Chocolate Mousse (Or as we in the family like to call it: Heavenly Mud). In the mini album I've covered every step you have to take to make this Heavenly mud. This is one of the steps: Here I've mixed the melted chocolate with the egg yogurt on the right page of the layout. This is really a fun and very addictive desert to make. If you want to view the entire process, start here for all the images! Have Fun and thanks for looking! If you want to know who participates in this hunt, have a look here. If you'd like to participate, please go here. Talk to you later! ]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/photo_hunt_58_theme_cooked_or.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/photo_hunt_58_theme_cooked_or.php Blogs Photo Hunt Photos Hemelse Modder Photo Hunt photos Thu, 17 May 2007 10:55:43 +0100 free recipes. The Site Their site is looking very attractive to me. They have nice colors and all the most important parts are easily reachable from the menu. You are greeted with a photo with a nice meal (in my case I saw the meal from the Japanese Cuisine), they have a weekly poll and you can choose from a great variety of categories to search for free recipes. Your account You can register at the site to get a free account. If you want, you can also subscribe to their newsletter, so that you recieve recipes on a daily basis. One of the big advantages is that you can add every recipe you find to your own recipe box. That way you don't have to go looking between the thousands of recipes they have. Instead you can immediately access the recipe again. You can also add your own recipe, which I think is great! This could be your online recipe box. And for those who don't want a mess in their house (like I have right now......), this is a wonderful way to keep your house clean and your recipes in order. The recipes With every recipe you'll get the following information (where necessary of course!):

• Servings
• Preparation time
• Cooking time (yes, there is a difference between the two :) )
• A list of ingredients
• Instructions

Added to this list, you'll notice at the bottom of the recipe that you can change the recipe to fit for more or less people for you want to make the meal. This is great way to get a list of ingredients of what YOU need, instead of the standard. And for me as an added bonus, after all I am from the Netherlands, I can convert everything to metric scale, so that I don't have to wonder about the US Standard scales. Extra features The above is not all. What to think of a shopping list? For people like James and me, this is ideal. We usually do our grocery shopping in the weekend for the entire week. By adding the recipes to the shopping list, you'll have a complete list ready. How handy is that? And one of the things I also really like is the forum. You can exchange experiences and ideas and much more. What's better than that? And to top it all, you can also look for coupons. This always comes in handy! Conclusion I think this is a very neat website which I will visit frequently! I think this site will be a wonderful resource for all the recipes I'm going to use in my cooking scrapbook(s) Let me know what your experiences are! I'm always curious!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/looking_for_recipes.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/looking_for_recipes.php cooking scrapbooking cooking scrapbook Wed, 16 May 2007 07:59:33 +0100 André Rieu Tickets My mom and dad already had tickets for BZN (a famous dutch band). When dad gave the tickets to mom, she said, she'd even more like it to go to André Rieu. Little did she know that we were giving her tickets to one his concerts too. Now they're going together to both concerts. Scrapbook supplies Mom has become an avid scrapbooker, just like me. Although she know how to find things on the web, she's not used to look for digital things you can also use in your "normal" scrapbooks. Personally I don't scrap digital either, but I've found several marvelous digital things to use in my scrapbooks. I thought I could let mom enjoy these things too. James and I gave here 5 printed alphabets from Lettering Delights (Ahoy, At the Beach, Compass, Dockside and Seashells). She got these specifically because she's working on a scrapbook for dad about our boats and more currently the boat dad and James are working on right now. These alphabets are perfect for that particular scrapbook! On top of that we gave her a scrapbooking stack about dogs. I believe it was from Dejaviews, but I'm not sure. And we gave her dog tabs from Making Memories. So she can scrap again :) Weekend in a hotel Mark (my brother) and his girlfriend Kim gave mom and dad (for father's day already and for thanking for keeping their dog, Tess, for two weeks while Mark and Kim have a holiday in Portugal) a weekend away in a hotel of their choice where dogs are allowed (after all, mom and dad have a dog too, he's called Mick). I think that was a really nice present. Mom and dad were very happy with it! Diner Instead of my mom cooking a large diner we had a gourmet diner. I'm not sure what it's called in English. It's like where you are all cooking in these little pans on a grill instead of in a fondue. Am I making any sense here? We had a very good meal! My mom was very happy with everything she had gotten. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Talk to you later!]]> http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/mothers_day_wrap_up.php http://www.ilsesjournal.com/2007/05/mothers_day_wrap_up.php babble Mother's Day scrapbook Mon, 14 May 2007 07:00:42 +0100