Waking Up With The Sunrise

This week I was able to complete the following: - I completed my trip to Schilde. You can read all about it here .  - I completed my cookie challenge, but I failed it. You can read all about my horrible cookies here . - I did lots of research for my social media(Pinterest, Bloglovin' and Instagram), but I'll be placing the best tips and tricks I've found in some blog post next week. It's a lot, so I want to create some articles that get a bit more to point. - I'm almost done with my excel courses. I might make an article next week with some useful schedules you can download.  So this week was busy, but productive. I'm setting lots of goals for next month, which you can read all about here  

Last month I was able to accomplish most of my goals and some extra’s. I’ve got a bit more time on my hands this month, so I’m hoping to challenge myself a bit more with the following.:   -           Finish some reading: I want to read some classics(The great Gatsby and Pride and prejudice)and some classic children’s books(The collected works of Beatrix Potter). I’m hoping to read more, but let’s see how far I’ll get with these books first. -           I want to do some more national traveling. The NMBS (Belgian railway company) gave away a free ticket with 10 single trips to use for every citizen, so I will definitely be using this. I’m not sure where we’ll be going yet. I’m going to use an app to randomly select a city or village. -           For my French Goal: I want to focus on improving my grammar this month and I’m going to try and watch a movie in French, without English Subtitles. Since I’ve got a Disney+ subscription this month, I’m going to try and watch the Aladdin

This time I went to finish my trip to Schilde. The last things to visit there, were a castle and a bunker. So I was very excited for this week. We were lucky with the weather. It didn't rain at all, although the weather forecast predicted rain for the day. Everything was located in a green area, so another relaxing trip. 😄 The castle itself wasn't accessible as there were people living there. So you might already think these people living in Schilde and 's Gravenwezel might be rich, well...you're absolutely right. It's definitely out of our budget to live here, as it's full of mansions and castles. We somehow felt extremely poor, walking through these streets.😂  We also came across an old bunker. It was build between 1909 and 1912 between two forts to defend the 'Turnhoutsebaan', which is a big street not so far from the building. Its located on a very small island surrounded by a small ditch/canal. It was used during the first World War to defend the

This month I’ve been trying to learn how to bake cookies, with the emphasis on ‘trying’. I won’t consider this challenge as a success and I’ve marked it as failed on my day zero project account. I’ve tried different kinds and the only ones that worked were the very lazy cookies. You can read about them here . But I can't really count those. It was a ‘for dummies’ exercise with a ready to use dough from the supermarket. With every challenge, the dough was ok and tasted fine. But then when I bake them they turn out flat/hard and now with the last ones it was just molten cookie dough and chocolate. With the last one I think the main problem was that there was nothing in the recipe to bind the dough, so I didn’t get anything solid in the end. With the other recipes it was the egg that binds the dough, but I can’t use that in a vegan recipe. I’ve searched through several vegan recipes and I’ve tried two different recipes in total. I’m not sure if I’m going to share the links to th

This week I was able to complete following: - I finished reading Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). You can read my review here . - I finished the third part of my cookie challenge. You can read all about it here . - I've started decluttering my appartment. but I'll post a blogpost around this when everything's done. I was hoping to finish the third part of my trip to Schilde, but the weather got in the way. The day I was able to go with my family, it was too hot. It was around 26°C/79°C. For me that's too warm, I usually stay indoors with any temperature above 25°C/77°F, because I'm very sensitive for the heat. Summer is therefore my least favorite season. I'm hoping it'll be better next week, as I hope to finish this trip. Next week I hope to finish some more reading, the last trip to Schilde and the cookie challenge. I also hope my appartment is going to look a lot cleaner by then. 

Yet another part of the cookie challenge. According to my husband, it went a bit better.  But I think he’s just being nice to me.😂 I had another opinion. But lets dive into this quest. This week it was time for me to make the cookies completely from scratch. It think the cookie dough was ok and it tasted yummy, but again the cookies were too hard for me. The core was slightly soft, but it tasted a bit of caramel.   I’m not fan of caramel as it sticks to the teeth. I think the taste was ok, but not amazing. My husband thought otherwise, but in this case he can’t be trusted. He’s biased, because he likes me.😋 The sight wasn’t so great either. Hopefully I can make things right with my cookies next week, the vegan ones. It’s my last chance to get them right, so the pressure is high. I used the recipe from this website, so I won’t display it, but you can check it here . I don't think it was the fault of the recipe, that it didn't go so well this time, now it's probably

 One of my goals is to improve my French knowledge until I can speak it fluently. I already have a base, but I feel I’m still to insecure to start a random conversation in the language. One of the best things you can do when learning a language is to immerse yourself into it. And a good way for beginners with a minimum knowledge, is to read comics or children’s books in the language. So that’s what I tried this week to see if I already reached a good level of understanding for the book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The book cover of my e-book: Le petit Prince is one of the only children’s books I know that are written by a French writer (for now). I’ve read it before in English as a child and a couple years ago I read it in French, but I still felt that I didn’t understand everything completely and I needed a dictionary most of the time. The verbs were also often to difficult as it’s, like in many books, in the past tense.  But now a couple of years

 This week was ok. Some ups and downs: -         I did the second part of the cookie challenge, which failed miserably. You can read all about it here . -           I finished To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I loved it, you can read my review here . -           I visited ‘s-Gravenwezel, the second part of my Schilde trip. You can read all about here . -           I’ve read a bit further in the book Le Petit Prince (The Little prince). I'm hoping to finish it following week. And I’ve almost finished the level one lessons from the Duo lingo course. You can follow my updates here  .

Last week I started the trip to Schilde in the Province of Antwerp. You can read all about it here . This week we started the second part of the trip, as the town is divided in two submunicipalities: Schilde and ‘s-Gravenwezel. We visited the other site of the town (‘s-Gravenwezel). There’s one castle there, but it wasn’t accessible, I had a feeling there were people living there as it was all closed off. There was lots of nature, but lots of places were hard to access for people   who are on foot. If you want to visit here by bike, that would probably be more enjoyable and safe. My journey in photos:                                                                                                                         My lunch.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Sorry for the long review, but I now consider this one of the best books I’ve read so far, so I couldn’t help myself. If you don’t want to read all of this, then here’s my opinion: ‘It was very good is an understatement.’ My copy from the library:     One of my book challenges is to read a list of classics. The first one I picked, was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It’s a book I’ve been looking forward to read for ages. I know this book is often on the to-read list for many schools from the US. I always thought they were lucky, as here in Belgium, I had to read very boring Flemish (North-Belgian) literature to graduate. I still feel like sleeping when I think of it. This book is/was banned in lots of places in the US and I must be honest, that I was curious why that was. I can remember seeing the movie a couple of years ago and I couldn’t remember something worth banning for. But now after reading it, I’m slightly changing my opinion on that. I can understand it, but

 This is part two of the four part-blogpost, you can check out the first part here . This week I made the lazy cookies. Sounds simple?...Guess again, I didn’t do so well this week. The apartment burned down….No just kidding. But it turns out, I’m not going to be queen of the kitchen just yet. I failed miserably at this challenge, even though it was just a baking mix. Lol, somehow I feel so embarrassed to write that... 😂My cookies were burned and hard as bricks. At least, it was a fun experience… The problem was the recipe on the back wasn’t entirely accurate.   At the end, they said to place the cookies in the oven for twelve minutes. I thought that was a bit long and placed the timer for eleven minutes. But apparently even that was too long. It needed nine to ten minutes tops, if I look at it afterwards. There were a few instances were I had to do something different, than what the recipe said. Another thing was they only asked to add 30ml/ 1fluid ounce of water. But you need at