Five good things

As you may or may not know, years ago I suffered from an eating disorder called binge eating disorder, or emotional overeating. When in therapy trying to sort this out, my phsycologist asked me to list five good things that happened to me during the day, and to do this every single day. What a daunting task! Five good things! 5! My life was one big depressing mess, I never had even one good thing happen to me during the day, let alone five...

Or did I?

When I first started keeping this list, it was very difficult. I would list things like 'The cat jumped on my lap' or 'The sun was shining today', trying to make it to five. But then, I started to pay more attention during the day, knowing I had to fill out the list at night. And after two or three weeks, I also started listing things I had an active part in, not just stuff that 'happened to me'. So I would list that I had enjoyed a nice cup of tea in that same sunshine, or that I had given the cat a good brush and then had a nice cuddle with him.

This family lists five good things every evening at the dinner table, for a completely different reason: to share how their day has been. And they even developed a nice little booklet, to make it easier to keep track of things.

Try it out! You'll be amazed at how many 'good things' happen during your day!

New Art Journal!

Yes, yes, I know I still need to upload the picture of the Art Journal I finished, and I will, but I'm too proud of the new Art Journal or alterered notebook/ringbinder to not show it off now.


Started off with gesso-ing the covers. Not my favourite part, because it always seems to take forever to dry, and I just want to move on!


Then I painted the cover, added some hand painted paper strips, but I wasn't feeling it. I added the 5 in buttons, and 5 buttons on the back, but it still wasn't 'right'. And then I knew what to do...


I covered it all with slightly wrinkled tin foil. Yes, that was much better!


I painted it all in bright colours, but it wasn't finished just yet...


I added some black paint (water with black paint mixed into it, instead of the other way around...) which made that the colour was still shining through.


Then I finished the inside cover... Helloooo new Art Journal!


I already put cardboard boxes and old folders in it for the pages and have started with a little button on the first 'page'. I can't wait to really get started!

Has it really been that long?

Wow, I had no idea it has been this long since I last wrote a blogpost here. And I still don't have all that much to say, really. So here are a few pictures from the last month or so:


We decided to take our health more serious, and start swimming once a week. I started off with 20 laps, which I thought was pretty good for someone who hasn't seen the inside of a swimming pool in at least 15 years. The next time I managed 26 laps, and last week 30. I think 30 is a comfortable amount of laps, will try and keep doing that for a while.


Where were you when...? I was watching TV, like billions of others...


Sold out, but we managed to get a seat anyway! Yay!

My Art Journal is nearly finished, will be posting pictures very soon! Oh, and I'm working on a loose leaf ring binder that I will start using for my Art Journal. Makes more sense, it's more sturdy and easier to add pages to without it falling apart. Watch this space!

Lightening strikes

Yesterday we had a massive thunderstorm. At one point we thought it had hit something, at first I thought it was the school around the corner. This morning however, while walking the dog in the park, we saw this tree... Thankfully it had rained heavily before lightening hit it, so there was no fire, but the damage is severe.

Pet peeve

Warning: this will be a rant...

About an hour ago I wrote this on Twitter ('I tweeted'? 'I Twittered'?) :

'Pet peeve: Please please please make it so I can have the option of listening to the music on your blog!'

Don't get me wrong, I love music. I do! But I want to pick the music I listen to. So if you put something on your blog and say 'Hey, listen to this band, they are fantastic and I would love for you to hear this song' I will more than likely click on the link and listen. (with headphones on, but I'll get to that in a minute) I would. But for music to just start playing when I visit your blog... Ugghhh...

I like visiting new blogs. I sometimes go through all the links people have up in their sidebars to see if there is something I like. I tend to open a few of those links at the same time, so I don't have to go back to the blog I get the links from and keep going back and forth. (Does that make any sense? I hope so.) And if music then starts to play and I have to go through all of them to figure out which one it is and even worse: find where the damn player is, because they are never at the same place... ughhhh again!

What makes it even worse is that 9 times out of 10 my sweetie, who works nights, is fast asleep next to me when I'm doing all this. At night, when he's away, I watch Dutch tv online, and I sometimes forget to turn the sound off the next day...

So.. Please please please make your music player thingy optional, so I can click it if I want, when I want. It would make me so much happier!

Eurovision Songcontest

Tonight was the 2nd semi-final for the Eurovision Songcontest and Holland had to qualify to be in the final on Saturday.

Holland sent De Toppers, a group of singers who have been doing really well in Holland for the last couple of years, doing stadium shows that are always completely sold out. They were supposed to have suits that would light up, which went really well with their song Shine. Yesterday, during rehearsals, the suits didn't work, so they had to go with these shiny suits...

I was all ready to vote only to find out that the UK wasn't voting tonight...

Unfortunately, only Eastern European countries went through, as well as Norway, Denmark and Greece...

Guess now I will just have to cheer on Jade, who's the UK entry this year. Yay UK!

Oohhh, white out!

Sometimes a page can look... not done.... and you can't figure out what to do with it.
I got a white gel pen a few weeks ago (why are they so hard to find?) and that has really changed the look of my journal pages.

The background is done in Pearlescents, and I added another National Geographic photo. I also used the Pearlescents with my dip pen, to see how that would work, and I found it not strong enough, so I traced some of the words with my white pen.


Here the background is done in Pearlescents, the girl in acrylics, black ink and Pearlescents, and I then added journaling (in Dutch, it's almost like a secret language...) in white pen. The border was done with left over ink on my brush.