Our very first home-grown radish! It was delicious!
I took some pictures of our friends house for AirBnB. Click here to check it out, if you’re ever in Haarlem or Amsterdam I recommend staying here!
My favorite picture of us. I’m thinking of framing it.
One of our dreams is to one day publish our own cookbook. Slowly we’re collecting recipes. As part of our research we rarely eat the same meal twice and we try to cook something new at least 4 times a week. This week we made this roasted parsnip and apple soup. Surprisingly tasty.
Every sunday a bunch of food trucks gather near our house and cook up delicious things. This sunday was curry, ravioli and quesadilla’s
Nick and the ravioli.
What do you call a food truck that serves drinks? A drink truck? A beer truck?
Nick never fails to make me laugh, even when I’m in the middle of a big gulp of beer.
This oversized wintercoat has been keeping me warm
We took some pictures for our friend who owns a vintage furniture shop
This store is great. Good food, awesome branding.
Somehow this bread took four hours in the oven before it was done.
Nick taught our dog to walk without a leash. Best thing ever. Hands free dog walking!
The ceiling of the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam and the National Maritime Museum.
Last year when we skipped winter because we were traveling in Asia, we missed it. The cold weather, the snow, staying indoors, short days. When winter came around we were incredibly excited, we bought winter coats, hats and gloves and we were ready to take this winter and love the hell out of it.
We waited and waited but no winter came. And now spring is already upon us. I can’t believe this was it! I didn’t even get to wear my gloves and the temperature went below zero on no more than two days. Not a single flake of snow!
And yet, spring feels like an awakening. The days are getting longer and when I ride my bike I hear birds singing their songs all around me. Nick said to me the other day “Babe, you’re like an excited puppy whenever there’s a sunny day” and I guess I am. I can’t wait for spring and summer and I’m already looking forward to next winter. Because who knows, we might get some snow next year.
My little maniac, running around on the beach and eating seaweed
That smile
I love signs like this
Yes, there is a giant papa smurf in the background
Our friends came over for a weekend of fun
We’ve been doing a lot of hiking in between work lately. We’re enjoying the amazing nature of the Frisian island of Texel until we move back to the city in a few weeks. We visited the beach, the dunes and the forest this past week, and the calm this island radiates works wonders for our creativity. Texel has a unique ecosystem in the Slufter, a dune valley where sea water comes in on the tides. All kinds of rare plants grow here, including statice and glasswort. If you visit in the right season, you can pick it and eat it right away, or use at home in a salad. Make sure not to stray too far, or you’ll disturb some nesting birds, and get yourself a fine to boot.
We’ve been super productive lately, and one of the reasons for it are these moments of blissful recharge. Also, we just got Basecamp, and it’s awesome. If you do any project-based work we can highly recommended it! (not sponsored by Basecamp, just really loving it).
Have a great weekend, take a walk, eat some plants and enjoy.
Lunch at our friends house. She has the best kitchen ever
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat. I don’t know what it is about waking up in the middle of the night but somehow everything seems so much worse.
In just a few minutes I convinced myself this was the worst I had ever felt. I started thinking about what could be wrong with me, because these pains could not possibly be just flu. I have had the flu and this was so much worse than the flu. After some Googling I was pretty sure this was a belated Malaria attack that would for sure be the end of me. Needless to say, I did not sleep well after that.
‘Yes I think I might have Malaria and I need you to tell me if I’m right’. On the phone with the doctor my craziness started sinking in a little, but I went through with it anyway. Because what if it IS malaria? I could be slowly dying and I wouldn’t even know. Turns out, it’s just a mild case of the common flu.
One of the reasons I worried so much: we never took any anti-malaria pills while we were traveling and we did visit some high risk areas. I also got a million mosquito bites. So there, I’m not completely crazy for thinking I have malaria. I’m just a little prone to overreaction every once in a while.
So here’s to crazy midnight thoughts and the flu! I hope you all don’t catch the flu the coming fall season!
Making an apple & pear crumble. Recipe coming on monday
You’re never too old to play with a frisbee
I can’t believe I live here now. So insanely beautiful
This dog is one of the craziest dogs ever
Working on the apple & pear crumble
The place we live is only 5 minutes from the sea
Our friend came over and brought a local buttercake
Do you ever feel like you do a lot but you don’t get anything done? I’ve felt like this all week.I feel stressed and like I should be working on something. But at the end of the day, I have nothing to really show for. Starting next week, I’m going to work more organised and efficient. I have complete faith in myself. This will work.
I always have lots of plans and ideas. My mind is constantly thinking about how to make things better.
Inspired by Color Overboard‘s Month of Effort, I decided to put my thoughts into action. It started with making a list of 10 things I wanted to achieve this month. Tomorrow is the end of my month of effort and I loved it. It gave me some perspective and direction. I can really recommend you to look into it and give it a try. It makes focussing on what you want to achieve a lot easier.
I get easily distracted and can lose sight of where I want to go. Nick calls this my ‘shiny problem’. According to him every time I see something interesting, I drift off. Like a crow, seeing something shiny (She does! It goes like: ‘Ooooh, shiny!’). Does this make sense? The joys of being in a relationship. You develop your own language and quirks after a while. When we started living here with Nick’s dad and brother we really had to adjust. While on the road we often only had each other to talk to and we almost became that weird couple that no one understands because they have too many insiders jokes.
Normally I have Nick edit posts like this, to make them coherent and so it doesn’t show how easily I derail. I started out with sharing about my Month of Effort. I end up talking about our own relationship language. I’ve got the ability to do this during any activity, at any time. Sometimes I just drift off. Or see something shiny.
What do you think? Are you trying a Month of Effort? Any tips for me to be less distracted all the time?
We made our own Pho from scratch and these were some of the spices. Recipe coming soon!
This gorgeous island with its blue skies
Fence covered in wool. There are so many sheep here.
Ice at the local ‘ice cream-farm’.
A tiny manual sluice.
All of the ice cream is made from cows milked on site.
This last week, we’ve been riding our bikes around the island, discovering little treasures like the tiny manual sluice (this does sound really Dutch doesn’t it? Who else has a sluice near his house?). These last day of summer are filled with bright days and cold nights. I hope they last forever.
Before we left home to travel, we sold everything we owned. We only kept a few boxes of really important stuff and our bikes.
It’s so weird when you have nothing, no possessions. In a way it is total freedom. There is nothing crowding our rooms and minds. I never have to worry about what I’m going to wear. I only have one pair of shoes. We own nothing except for some clothes, the few souvenirs we bought and some boxes with pictures and such.
It does make it difficult for us to really feel at home. When nothing is yours, it’s hard to make a place feel like home, even though we’re there. We were really looking forward to feeling at home again, something we never really felt while traveling. Don’t be mistaken, there were plenty of places where we felt awesome. But we were always looking for a home, and it seems we’re going to have to stick it out a little while longer. Or at least until we’ve got a place we can give the love and fill with the stuff a life needs.
Two brothers reconnecting and deciding if they want to swim here or not
Nick saving a dehydrated toad
Contemplating life at the Jägersee
Slovakian church
Vienna is pretty awesome
Resting with our dog during a hike
Awesome signage in Bratislava
Fortress in Salzburg
How are you? We’ve missed all of you! But we’re back! Back on the blog and back in Holland.
So, a lot of you guys have been asking what we’re doing back in Holland and if we have time to meet up. Yes, we do. Send us a message and we will meet up for beer and stories.
Why are we back in Holland? Well, as you know, after Indonesia we flew to Austria to go cruising around Europe for a while. In Wagrain, Austria we spent a week hiking up mountains and reconnecting with family and when they were leaving we just decided to tag along. After a long car ride, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by cows, sheep, windmills and wooden shoes (okay, no wooden shoes but we did see windmills). We missed being with family and friends and we can’t wait to meet up with everyone we have missed so dearly.
What will we be doing here in Holland? We are now living on one of Holland’s prettiest places, Texel. Nick was born here and we are living with his family. We have no idea how long we’ll be staying here, but we’re going to be really busy working on Sparrow in Space, blogging, building our portfolio, finishing projects for clients and expanding our business. We love being back here, eating cheese and sleeping in the same bed for more than a week.
What is in it for you? We will be blogging a lot more and we will be blogging more regularly, we will introduce a few new topics and you will see a lot more of us. Why is this good for you? Because we will entertain you, inspire you, make you smile and leave you feeling happy.
We’re so sorry for being so quiet lately. Nick’s sister joined us for a few weeks and we felt we needed some family time.
Coming to Bali, we were looking for a quiet place to have some downtime and just relax. We ended up taking a boat across a super wild ocean to Nusa Lembongan where we spent an amazing ten days. We will tell you more about that in a few days! In the meanwhile, if you can go to Lembongan, do it and see for yourself.
So this is what has been going on. We are leaving Asia and flying to Vienna, Austria in 8 days! We can’t really believe it but it’s going to happen! One of the major goals of this journey has always been to find the perfect place to live. We have known for a while now that it isn’t Asia, so we’re flying to Europe and see what we might find there. We’re sad that we’re missing out on Australia and New Zealand and everyone (that means you, Assa) we were going to see there, but we’re also very excited about exploring our home continent more thoroughly than we have ever before.
Europe will be great. I know I’m super excited to eat normal bread again. But it sure will be weird to not be surrounded by Asian people. Lately I’ve been thinking Asia just isn’t the place to be for me right now. But that was before Indonesia. Indonesia made me fall in love with Asia all over again and reminded me of why we’re traveling. It has been weeks of amazing experiences, friendly people, good food and an overall feeling of bliss.
There are more blog posts coming up this week so we will talk again soon. Have a great day, enjoy whatever you’re doing, whomever you’re doing it with and smile.
Have you ever been to Europe? If so, what place do you think we should check out as a possible place to live?
we picked up Nick’s sister, Marit, a week ago. She’s traveling with us for a while.
we left our Kuala Lumpur home, took a bus to Melaka where we stayed for a couple of days and are now in Singapore.
in a few days we fly to Indonesia and we couldn’t be more excited!
ever since Thailand we have been spending a lot of time together, which we love but we’re ready for change. We are looking forward to spending a lot of time with some great people in the next few weeks. Monday we’re meeting up for sushi with the lovely Julianne from Curious Jools and her boyfriend Deepan.
we were interviewed by the amazing Steph and Tony of Twenty Years Hence. They asked us about our love of food and why we eat mayonnaise with our fries (because it’s frikkin’ awesome).
The next part of our website is almost done, making our website more of a portfolio. Our blog will be moving to blog.sparrowinspace.com. We’ll let you know when this is going to happen!
What are your plans? Do you have something planned this summer? Or tips on what to see in Indonesia? Let us know!
on a ferry boat crossing the river to go to Bangkok Medical Museum where we somehow (unintended) ended up in the mortuary
exploring the city, I love finding patterns
there are scooters everywhere
all of a sudden, a million tanks and nobody seemed surprised
one of Bangkok’s best cafes, here are more nice places to have a coffee
Korean barbecue with Pema, a beautiful girl from Holland, teaching in Thailand
malls malls malls
We have launched part one of our new website and we couldn’t be more excited. There are still some things to adjust but we love it. And we hope you do too.
I was looking through our pictures, trying to find good shots for a post and I stumbled on these pictures from Bangkok. It’s been a while since we last where there and I really miss that city. Bangkok has it all. Except for the weather. The godforsaken, everything melting, scorching heat that Bangkok is so notorious for, sucks. Kuala Lumpur is still a really hot city but it rains here every couple of hours (must be the season), cooling it down it bit.
We hope you have a great weekend with nice weather! (the thunder here in Kuala Lumpur is so loud at the moment, I can’t even hear my music).
