Happy New Year!

What a whirlwind the last month of 2009 were for me and it appears that things are going to continue on through 2010.

First we had my birthday which was on the 8th. Arjan and I celebrated on the 4th when he came home for the weekend from the UK and he truly spoiled me rotten with many wonderful gifts; Three copper Egyptian statues for the living room, a new bone folder set, a beautiful wall clock, Cluedo and he made me the cutest wolf at build-a-bear complete with his own little wolfie bed. Way more than I ever would have expected.

Then his parents came on the 6th to celebrate with us and they spoiled me as well with some great gifts; Two books from the Cirque du Freak series, the Minutes to Midnight cd from Linkin' Park and both Bridget Jones DVDs. Then Arjan surprised me with an additional gift of an absolutely gorgeous 9ct white gold and diamond collier. Isn't he just the best? But he wasn't done quite yet, on my actually birthday the doorbell rang and there was the delivery man with a stunning couquet of 3 dozen roses with a card telling to go look in Arjan's office for another present. (he was back to work in the UK at point)

Arjan has been home since the the night of the 23rd and we've really enjoyed each other while he's been here. On the 24th we had to go do all of Christmas shopping for his parents and then opened our gifts that evening. I got him an iPod Touch, some iFrogz earbuds for the iPod, a book of letters that Jean-Philipe Augustine de Merode wrote to his lover, (has to do with the castle ruins that Arjan is a volunteer at), Dragon Age PC game and I made him an altered can for his tips and other money from the ruin tours that he saves up for more books on the castle and the surrounding area. He got me the "Pride and Prejudice" audio book, "Unseen Academicals"(the lastest in the Disc World series by Terry Pratchett, Blinky the snowman from Build-a-Bear, the cutest stuffed owl that he made for me at Build-a-bear, a bottle of CK One, a bottle of CK One Summer, a purse/pocket ashtray and the matching earrings to the collier that he gave for my birthday.

We had the most amazing Christmas both here at home and also with his parents in Heerhugowaard. I'm so blessed to have these amazing people in my life and can't wait to be able to truly call them my inlaws in June.

From his parents we each got a Bioscoop bon (movie GC), he got new fountain pen for left-handed people, some ink refills for the pen, a book relating to the castle ruins, and a tie and cufflink set. I also got "The Proposal" DVD, "The Open Door" cd from Evanescence and a jar of my favorite face cream. Then we had a wonderful dinner that his mom made for us, bell pepper soupf starter,deer steaks with homemade cranberry chutney, that his dad made, 2 kinds of potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and salad for the main course, and chocolate mousse with icecream and chocolate stars for dessert. YUMMY!

Second Christmas day we stayed home and had stone grill for dinner, which we both love but don't have too often, which was made even better since I got a new Christmas themed gourmet servies this year.

On the 28th we met up with some friends and their children for dinner at Etenstijd, a wonderful buffet restaurant, for 3 hours. We exchanged gifts, both for Christmas but also for Jeroen's, Floris's and my birthdays. We really enjoyed the evening and we plan on doing it again next year. We don't get to see them much now that Arjan is in the UK and I really miss them.

The rest of the week we just basically hung out at home and vegged other than a couple of trips to the grocery store.

Last we invited Anita, Michael and his brother Richard over to ring in the New Year and also to celebrate Anita's and my birthdays, since here's is today. Arjan got to light his fireworks and hopefullu I got a couple of good photos of them. They all left a little after 1am and we finally headed for bed around 3am.


I'm going to be really trying to get more productive with my scrapping and photography this year and I'm already signed up for a couple of courses that started yesterday over at BPS. I'm also going to do the project 365 this year. No trying, I'm doing, period! The new challenges at Sweet Shoppe Designs look amazing and I'm alo going to follow some paper challenges over at De Scrapheap this year.

Well I think this post is long enough for today. I'll be blogging more this year too. We're off to very good start to 2010!