Waking Up With The Sunrise

This week was a bit less productive than last week, but it I still managed to get some things done. -           French: I’ve finished the first 3 Duolingo lessons. You can follow me here .  I’ve read a comic for children in French and I understood it. (Yes, victory. 😄) I’ve started reading Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A bit harder, but I’ve understood everything so far. I’ve also been learning how to e-mail or make a call in French. Do you want to know how to learn French for free, check it  here . -           Excel 365: I’ve been following an online course for this one. I already had a knowledge base on how to change the layout/formatting in Excel in order to makes lists/schedules. But now I’ve learned some basic formulas to calculate. Want to know how to learn the program for free? Check it  here . -          I’ve start...

Last week I visited the Zoo of Anwerp. I was able to do the trip very cheap because of a promotion. But with the pandemic there were some limitations. You had to make a reservation online and you could only stay for two hours. But I was glad that they’ve set these regulations in place as it made my visit really enjoyable and I felt safe the entire time. They made sure you could only follow one route so you wouldn’t pass too many people. Also because of the limited amount of people allowed in the park, I felt I could keep the 1,5m/4'11'' distance from everyone. So although I had to rush through the park a bit, I was able to enjoy my visit. Some nice highlights I saw Oooh, right in time for breakfast.😃 Lunch for me, nothing too fancy, but, yummy.😄 I was just too late with this picture. The penguin just jumped out of the water, he was fast.😮  It only were two hours, but it was lots of fun. They've been really working hard to create some bigger and more beautif...

I made it to a second round, woohoo! :D Last month I was able to accomplish all my goals and I was able to do a few more. So, I can’t complain. You can follow my progress of last month here . I’m hoping to accomplish a lot this month: -           A bucket list challenge: learn how to bake chocolate chip cookies. But I want to challenge myself a bit more with this and do a different kind every week. Every day would probably mean trouble for my belly and my wallet. Four full weeks and four   different ways to prepare chocolate chip cookies. But I’m going to keep it a bit of a surprise how I’m going to do this. 😋 -         For my goal of learning French, I’m hoping to complete the level 1 lessons in the Duolingo course online. They’re relatively easy, so it should be possible. I also want to finish a couple of the Duolingo French Podcasts. And I also want to create a to-be-read pile on Goodreads with French books. -   ...

As I'm tight on money right now, I have to be creative to learn this program.  The program isn’t free ofcourse. But if you look around you might find some deals to get it cheap. I’ve find my version on Groupon. It was a promotion together with an anti-virus program. I’ve found it a couple of months ago for €60/$71,4 There is a free version of Excel in the OpenOffice suite, which you can find here   But the tips shared here, will be for Excel 365.   The first place I start is YouTube. The best channels that I’ve found with useful information were: LearnitTraining Kirt Kershaw   Some great free courses on Udemy Excel 365 - The ultimate Excel updates course Practical beginner Excel 365   Great information by Microsoft themselves here       I hope these tips help you out a bit.:)

  I was able to accomplish the following this week from my monthly goals I cleaned up lots of digital files: - Cleaning up digital files on my pc .      - Cleaning up my e-mailinboxes .        This was probably the most work of the two. I didn't realize I had so much spam in there.😱   Visit ed d igital museum tours.   Update here . I had lots of fun with this one.   Make a list with 101 quotes that inspire me.   Update here .  Fun way to start pinning on Pinterest.   Set up a budget Update here   Set up a cleaning schedule Started to update my French, also with online courses.       Want to know my sources to learn the language for free? Update here I drawed a self-portrait for my about me page.       I don't think it's a masterpiece, but I had fun creating it and I'm recognizable on it. So good enough for me.😊            ...

 I've created a list in Spotify, you can listen to it here . You can listen to it for free, but you need to sign up, otherwise it only has the shuffle play option. I love listening in different languages and I love lots of different genres, so it's a very eclectic mix. If you don't want to click through, I've placed my top 10 below: Don't stop believing - Journey When the rain begins to fall - Jermaine Jackson Angel - Sarah McLachlan I've had the time of my life - Bill Medley, Dirty Dancing  Fall on me - Andrea & Matteo Bocelli  Macédomienne - Philippe Lafontaine Con te partiro - Anrea Boccelli Gone too soon - Daughtry J'ai demandé à la lune - Indochine Vlinders in haar buik - Niels Destadsbaeder What are songs you could never miss in your life?

  First look at the current situation As it probably is for many of you, it’s been financially very tight. I can’t really describe it differently than the law of Murphy (Everything that can go will wrong, will go wrong). A few events probably leaded up to this, it really felt like a domino effect. A couple of years ago we bought a cozy appartment, with some work. It was the only thing we could afford at the time. We took a loan for the building and one to cover the renovations, that part was planned and calculated. Lots of things went wrong, our upstairs neighbors had a big leak, which was right above our bedroom and everything was starting to get mouldy. Lots of builders messed up. We had to redo like 70% of the work, because it wasn’t finished safely or it went wrong somewhere. It went to a point where we needed to take another loan for those extra renovations. I got pregnant, which was like miracle for us, as we struggled so much on this road. But so the pressure to ...

A challenge was to make a list with quotes I find very inspiring. A great excuse for me to start using Pinterest. You can find my full list here . If you don't want look there, I've placed my top five here below: 'Just keep swimming.' - Dory, Finding Nemo 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' - Nelson Mandela 'Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.' - Les Misérables 'Don't cry because it's over, smile beacause it happened.' - Dr.Seuss 'Remember who you are.' -The Lion King

One of my bucket list challenges was to visit some digital museum tours. At first I just wanted to look at the ones from Belgium, but I thought it was so much fun, that I spread my wings a bit and searched for international ones too. Now with the Covid-19 pandemic lots of museums placed virtual tours,databases or podcasts (temporarily) online. So that's ideal when you love art and culture, but when you're in lockdown. It's also fun when you're just as broke as I am for the moment, as it's all for freeeeee....😀 I linked all the tours that I visited below. I tried to organize it a bit. The links are to the English tours, but they are also available in Dutch or French(On the Belgian websites). 💖 = my favorites Belgium Groeninge museum | Bruges Art Mas | Antwerp Multiple tours, mostly art Meathouse | Antwerp, Belgium Museum of old musical instruments💖   Nottebohm room | Antwerp Old library 💝 Plantin Moretus | Antwerp Books and printing presses Sewer museum | B...

Even though in these futuristic times we’ve got a lot of data hanging in the clouds of the internet, there’s probably still lots of files on your pc.                       Probably my best Paint skills 😂   I share my pc with my husband, so it can get messy. We don’t really see the need to create separate users, as it's easier and we trust each other not to mess anything up…most of the time. I work on a Windows pc so anything that follows will be around that. I don’t really feel qualified to give advice for a Mac computer as I don’t use it. I’ll probably receive too many complaints then.  1.      First I separated the files from my hubby  with 2 maps in my documents. There were a few remaining files that needed to say there, as they'e from programs on my pc. I also kept the finance map separately as my husband also looks into it. You can create a new map by clicking the yellow map on the sc...

One of my to do’s this month was to clean up the inbox of my e-mail. Oh boy…it was necessary. If that was my real inbox, I would have drowned already. Blubblub😱 I have an e-mail in G-mail and one in Outlook, so both a bit different. But I started with the first step:   1.       Unsubscribing from unwanted newsletters   This took some time, but it was worth it. I often sign up unintentionally as lots of websites do this automatically when you sign up to buy something. After a while it builds up. So I looked through the spam and looked which ones I didn’t want to have anymore. The process is the same for G-mail as well as for Outlook. In Europe these companies are obligated to place an unsubscribe button in there e-mail. In other countries you might need to log in to the website itself. The link is almost always placed somewhere at the bottom of the e-mail, often placed really small. The companies try to make it a bit harder to unsubscribe as they of ...

One of my Bucket list challenges is to improve my French until I can speak it fluently. I already can do the basics. Here in Belgium, French is the second language. In the North, where I live,   they speak Dutch officially, but they also often use the term Flemish. This is mostly because there’s lots of different dialects here and it’s slightly different than Dutch in the Netherlands. (It’s fun the Disney company is catching up on this and are translating their movies in Flemish now, which makes it more enjoyable for me). People from Belgium and The Netherlands can understand each other, with a few jokes here and there. In the South and in the capital Brussels, they speak French, with some slight differences from the French in France.(Mainly vocabulary. But I think they could survive in France.) There’s a small part in the Southwest where they speak German. With French being the second language here, I had the opportunity to learn French in school, but it wasn’t so great. Alt...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin  Here I’ll post what I’m hoping to complete this month from my bucket list or just my monthly to do’s. You can check my progress live on this amazing website here . (Not sponsored, promise😊) In my Blue Monday’s journal post: I’ll bring some weekly updates from This was list. But as I’ve just started today, I’m going to start this series next Monday. If something is done today, I’ll place it in this post. And then some blogposts with more detailed separate updates if I thought the challenge was extra fun. I try to aim to post all my posts on Monday, so you'll know when to expect my posts.    Monthly Goals of August 2020:          Create a blog on Blogger (As I’ve created this post, it’s obvious I’ve checked this box. )           Post my first blogpost.(Also already checking this. Woohoo! I’m on a roll🥳)          Start the challenge to blog once a week for ...