Preparations for Queen's Day

Today was preparation day for tomorrow. Tomorrow is our last Queen's Day for a long time. Our queen Beatrix has abdicated and tomorrow our new king Willem Alexander will be installed. This is truly the end of an era.

My girlfriends and I dress up for Queen's Day every year; one of those friends always make our costumes. Here's a small impression of what we will wear.

This is one of the underskirts, still waiting to be finished.

C. and I will wear this blue seventies dress, which is decorated with a lot of coloured pieces of fabric.

My sister and her eldest daughter came over to celebrate Queen's Day. We walked into town (Amsterdam) and saw the colours of our national flag everywhere.

Exhibition Jean Paul Gaultier

My friends and I went to the exhibition 'The Fashion world of Jean Paul Gaultier. From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk' at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. This is his first international exhibition.

The faces of the mannequins almost looked real and they moved their eyes and mouths. It appeared to be a little film projected on the mannequins' faces.

All those wonderful evening dresses, punk outfits, fantastic ideas and fabrics! This man has had so many out-of-the-box ideas about fashion.

JPG has such tremendous creativity; he uses unusual materials in his dresses and has ingenious designs. Very impressive and inspiring!

There was a room full of dresses inspired by the virgin Mary (madonna). Outside the museum I shot this real madonna statue.

Even in the museum shop there was eye candy everywhere: beautiful books, cards, bags and other small items.

Raindrops on cars

I took my usual lunch break after the rain. And it rained almost all day... But like I said a little while ago, raindrops are wonderful to watch, even on cars. These two pictures were taken of black cars

Glasses

These are my friend's glasses. He leaves them anywhere in his house and then forgets where he put them. They are lovely to watch in the kitchen, where they reflect on the surface.

Examples of April 2012

Our cat Fluffy

Seasonings in the kitchen

Knob and key of kitchen closet

Reflection of branch

Tulip on asphalt

Shadow of a tree

Cross eyed

Four tulips in a row

Bunch of tulips

One tree is not the other

One of my themes is to take a picture out of my window with the tree and the top of the church. I've posted one or two before, you can view them here. Everyday the light and the sky are different, so a whole series would be interesting. If I remember it, I will take more of these pictures.

If you look at the tree you can clearly see its buds, whereas in the other pictures the tree was bare.

This tree is a lot further in the process of blooming. Actually, it starts to shed its blossoms a bit and they are drifting away in the water.

Shadows on the wall

The pictures I took the past two days have one thing in common: shadows. This lovely little lady for instance, leaves a shadow as charming as herself on the wall.

And this play of shadows project itself on the bathroom wall of my friend's house. You can see the amaryllus that has bloomed and is now on its return.

Then there is this diagonal shadow and a triangle of light with a small shadow of a dreamcatcher.

This bearded man I saw this morning when I entered my living room. He looks a little overbearing with his protruding chin.

Beauty and the witch

My friend's garden is full of contrasts: sun and shadow, green grass and withered leaves, budding blossoms and bare branches. 

So are these two ladies, a beauty and a witch. Isn't she lovely this Marianne? She has long wavy hair until her waist and has wonderful moss growing on her skin.

The witch is equally impressive too. She points you in the right direction, whichever direction that might be. Happy travels!

Blossoms

It's sooo definitely Spring, there is no way going around it. And we were sooo longing for it, too! Temperatures are finally rising, trees are budding, the grass is becoming greener (after a little rain) and the occasional tree is blossoming.

How happy I am!

Chem trails

I saw these beautiful chem trails in the air last night when I took the train back to Amsterdam. They look so pretty, but they are not as innocent as you might think.

Raindrops

It rained some more yesterday. Heavy rain with a bit of thunder.

I waited for my lunch break walk until it stopped. After the rain everything was wet and I saw drops everywhere.

In the Hortus Botanicus drops were all over the place, it was like dropheaven!

Car hoods had the most impressive reflections with fallen drops and something else that fell from trees. I don't know much about nature and I'm afraid I don't know what the red stuff is in this picture.

Rain!

And then it finally rained last night and today! I must say it wasn't a lot of rain, but it rained. And we desperately need rain, because all the grass is yellow and the earth is so dry. The rain was refreshing, made everything moist. Surfaces became sort of wet and drops appeared. You know, those drops that keep on hanging on to something for a long while.

Lay in

I wasn't feeling too great this morning, I didn't feel like going out of bed and doing anything and the best thing was I didn't have to go anywhere. So, I had a lay in and read a magazine (Dutch magazine Flow). When I finally decided to get up, my stomach was rumbling and I made myself a large glass of juice with beetroot, apple, celery and a carrot. That did the trick!

Layers of milk

My friend likes his coffee in a large glass as you can see. He first pours in the hot milk, whisked in a Bodum whisker, and then adds the coffee. The milk makes layers in the glass and in this picture they match with the stripes in my friend's shirt.

Tree trunks

After lunch I came back with a few pictures of tree trunks, one a little barer than the other. Spring is very slowly coming to our country even though the night before last was measured the coldest ever since they started measuring.

These blossoms in our university courtyard have been like this for weeks. Now, temperatures are rising a slight bit and I hope these blossoms will survive.

The advantage of winter/spring: there are no leaves on the trees and you can easily see their curly silhouettes.

Sunshine

It's warming up a little bit, but I still need my hat during the day. The sun is out and that always makes me happy. The world changes completely when the sun is shining; there are shadows and loads of reflections like in the picture below. The sky is in the water, it really brightens up my day.