Welcome/Welkom

This blog is about my friend Jeanne and me. I met Jeanne on the internet years ago and since have kept contact with her through emails and common interests. A few years ago I was lucky enough to meet with Jeanne in person and it has made our friendship closer. Recently Jeanne bought herself a camera and we decided to create this blog and share some of our photos and hobbies.

You will notice this blog is in both English and Dutch.

Thursday, 23 August 2012

Back to work again . . .

Yes they were here to do some more work on our 'new' house.  We have had dry weather for 5 days so they finally could work on levelling and packing the ground to be able to build and pour the footings.
But first a picture of what our 'new' house will look like.  (we hope).  (Remember you can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them)

The brown coloured part is our current house and the white coloured part, on the right only, is going the be our addition to our current house.  The white underneath our current house is already there just not coloured in.  It will give us a lot more space once it is done.

But first things first.  After they dug the hole we had nothing but rain.  Not all day long but a shower or thunderstorm a day and it was enough for our contractor to say that he could not do anything until the ground dried up a bit.  Well we finally had a week of sunny dry weather and the construction would start again on past Tuesday.  But of course the weatherman predicted it would rain again on Monday.  Leo and I decided we needed to make an umbrella for our 'hole'.  This is the result of our umbrella.

 A plank here and there to hold up the tarp so the wind could blow underneath.  
 Try and get it all in the right place.  It all took lots of patience and time.
Have to dig a gutter and dike to make sure the water would not run underneath.
But it did not rain so they were able to start with levelling off the ground again on Tuesday.

First we have to use up the gravel they dumped earlier.  New gravel is coming as this just was not enough to level all of it. 
 Pretty scary the way the little bulldozer is working here.
After we dumped some of the gravel we now have to pack it.  
Oh is that a truck I hear with more gravel!!!

 As you can tell a pretty big truck.  Almost too big to get into our driveway.
Here he is dumping the last load of gravel we hope.
 More gravel to play with.
 Oh the guys are here to make the footings for the foundation but before we do let's clean up the tarp so they can work.
 We have to do a bit more packing as well so now it is the helper's turn.

 Here they build most of the forms for the foundation.  Is that the 'supervisor' standing in the back?
 The forms are ready just have to raise them to the right level.  Which these days is done with a laser.  We sure get to see how things have changed over time and how it is all much easier to do.
But then there still is the old fashioned way of keeping the cement from running out at the bottom.  ROCKS!!!
Now we are ready to pour the cement for the footings.  But that won't happen until the next day (Wednesday).  Unfortunately it rained (poured) overnight but they said it did not matter so the pouring would still happen.  Rain or Shine!
6:30 in the morning our cement truck arrived.  Beep, beep, beep!  Yes it was backing up our driveway at that time.  Out with our cameras and video camera to capture more action.  This cement truck was not like your usual cement truck with the big rolling drum.  It had the gravel and cement in separate containers in the back of the truck and water (tank behind the ladder) gets added on site.  It has a little mixer on the back of the truck.  We had never seen this before so a new experience again. 

 Here you see the top of the truck with the 2 compartments for gravel and cement.  The truck driver is opening up the water tank.
 Out comes the cement into the wheelbarrow.  But because of the rain it was not easy to wheel the wheelbarrow around.  It took 2 guys to move it.
 And then dump it in the forms.
 Here is where they put some boards down so it would be a bit easier to wheel it around.
But even that was not easy at times.  Notice all the water standing there.
 Finally they were able to pour the cement right into the forms.  That sure was a lot easier but they did have to help it along with a shovel and by hand as you can see.
 Every one hard at work except one?  Actually he is working too.  He is the cement truck driver and controlling the remote which controls the mixing and the flow of the cement.
 Last little bit and we are almost done with the filling of the forms.
 Here we use a plank to smooth out the top of this form.
But the boss gets to put the final touches to it all.
 Now comes the clean up.  First the cement flutes need to be washed off and their shovel as well.
Next are the planks, shovels, trowel and what ever got dirty.  
But we are done for today and the footings are in.  Now the cement has to dry and the building can start.  But before this happens we have to fill the 'hole' in the middle with crushed rock as a foundation for the floor.  Our contractor had emailed us to say that this truck would come on Friday but it showed up today so again out came the cameras.
This again was a new experience for us.  We had never seen a gravel truck which could 'spit' gravel.

 This is the truck ready to go to work.
 Truck has a conveyor belt which depending on the speed and the height of the belt can 'spit out' gravel a fair distance.  It is all controlled by a remote being operated by the driver of the truck.  He told is later that he can even drive the truck back and forth with this remote.
 Still spitting away in all corners of the 'hole'.
 Just a little left to do and another step done in the construction.
 But no job is done without a little BS-ing at the end.
And this is what the mounds of crushed gravel look like close-up.  Now all they have to do is remove the forms and spread the rocks to make it all ready for the next step.  The walls!!!

Hope you enjoyed this part of the building.  It is somewhat longer than I intended but everything happened all at once and starting next Monday the real building is supposed to start, there will be more to post then.

Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Dagje uit


We ( Nolly  een kennisje en  ik) zijn eindelijk een dagje uit geweest.
Met de trein naar Maastricht. Het was een zonnige,
soms erg warme dag, maar we hebben genoten.


Hier is Nolly, staand voor een winkeltje, vol religieuze
voorwerpen. We hebben alleen de etalage gezien.


                                     
                                         Bootjes, liggend tegen de kade, te zien vanaf een van
                                         de bruggen over de Maas.

Hier tegenover zaten we even uit te rusten.
Gewoon een paar stoelen op de stoep, met
als uitzicht dit piercing winkeltje! 

Een van de vele kerken. Monumenten van de
oer religieuze tijden  in de stad Maastricht

Een torentje, zomaar ergens op een hoek van
een straat!

Wat een geveltje en dan een zonnig terras ervoor.
Genieten maar.

Een soort paraplu als plafond voor een doorloop
naar een winkelstraat 

Het bouwwerkje nog even met een grotere lens.

In de verte weer een andere brug over de Maas.

En weer het station, begin en einde van onze stadswandeling!

Thursday, 2 August 2012

While we are waiting!

Yes we are waiting for the workers to come and build our house.  But with all the rain we have been getting the ground is too wet and too soft to do anything so we have to wait for a week or so of nice dry, sunny weather.

So what are we doing in the meantime?  Well first of all we are involved in a multi-family garage sale at our friend's farm in Delburne.   The garage sale is being held from Thursday through Sunday 3 weekends in a row.
This is what it looks like,

This is a look at some of tables.  These are not our tables they are more at the other end of the 'garage'.  But as you can see there is lots and lots for sale.



This is our table with our junk we are trying to sell.  As you can see the customer (white shirt) is interested in the clock and not in our stuff.  Ah well we did sell some of our stuff but not a lot.



These are some of the books we have for sale.  We had way more books but we donated those to the Big Book Sale in Calgary.  We also have some sewing and knitting patterns for sale.  


And what does a person do when there are no customers?  Which was most of the time it seems like.  We work on our computer.  Leo luckily was able to pass his time by editing his photos while he 'manned' our table.


I was given this rose because I looked after Blondie (the dog) during the garage sale so she would not bother the customers.  I just had to take a picture of it.

Kent and the girls came to visit us as well and Kent remembered (from when he was little) that we had frogs in our yard so he had to catch one and show his girls.


See girls just a small little frog nothing to worry about.


Oh no!  The frog is going to jump!  At least that is what Kinsey is all excited about.


Jayla is now brave enough to let the frog sit on her hand.  Pretty good for a 4 year old.

Remember I showed you my tomato a while back.  It was green and very small.  Well this is what it looks like now.


Pretty nice right!  Well so far I have been able to eat 3 such tomatoes of my 3 plants I have left.  I hope to get some more but so far there are no new tomatoes growing.  Lots of blossoms though!

And what did I do today?  I baked, I walked,  I cleaned a bit and for the rest I watched the rain come down and once in a while I was able to see the sun shine through the clouds.  But overall it was a pretty nice day.
What did I bake?


Yes 2 loaves of bread.  A small one and a large one and a carrot cake baked in the microwave.  (een worteltjes cake in de magnitron).  Yes I know that the Dutch don't make these kind of cakes but a carrot cake is pretty popular here.  This one has raisins and pineapple in it as well.  I just have to ice with some cream cheese icing but I won't do that until just before we eat it.  I plan on taking this with me to the garage sale tomorrow for the other sellers.  You see I had a cake pan made for the microwave for sale but no one wanted to buy it so I took it home again and promised I would make a cake in it to show them that you could bake in a microwave.  

Well this is it again and I hope that I will have more building pictures soon.