End of the Year Recap

This blog has been neglected since we returned from our Europe spring trip!  Time for a recap:  Right before going on vacation we closed on a house in Maryland and moved in so we've been pretty occupied by that.  Generally we've been homebodies except for the occasional excursion.  Our Instagram followers have probably had a better idea of what Hans and I have been up to so here's a little bit of photo catch-up:

Our little home

On a whim I bough a mini pack of concert tickets to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra four times this spring.  They did not disappoint!  During the summer we went to DC to see a hilarious play that has been translated from the original French prose and modernized: Le Misanthrope reenvisioned as School for Lies.

In the fall I went to see the Mariinsky Ballet production of La Bayadere with a pal who is also super into ballet.  OMG the cast was amazing!  It was the first classical ballet I'd ever seen.  Last year's Swan Lake by the American Ballet Theater was wonderful also, however the Russians are truly dominant in their execution and control.  No wobbly arms or fidgeting in the wings from these dancers!

Let's back up a bit:  In June we picked a hell of a lot of strawberries...

and then made hella good preserves (and pie) with them.

In October we went up to Ithaca, NY for a long weekend.  The Corning Museum of Glass had a temporary Tiffany Glass exhibition that I wanted to see.  What I wasn't expecting was the really pretty glass pumpkins they had for sale in their gift shop!  I came home with two :)

We also came home with lots and lots of excellent wine.

This summer I also built some furniture for the new house.  It started with a bookshelf to fit in an awkward corner by the stairs.  I also made a small side table for the living room.

Hans' mom visited during Halloween.  We had fun exploring Baltimore and checking out some of the outdoor spaces in Annapolis, including some that Hans and I hadn't been to yet.

Shortly after Hans' mom went back to Wisconsin my parents came for a visit through Thanksgiving.  My dad and I went up to Philadelphia for a day and the rest of the time we just enjoyed each other's company at the house.

Between house guests Hans and I finally made time to check out the Renwick Museum in DC, which is one of my new favorites.  At the time their special exhibition was miniature crime scenes that were built by a real criminologist in the 1940s and have been (and still are) use to train police and detectives in crime scene processing.  They were tiny, detailed, and creepy (some of my favorite things).  The artworks in the rest of the museum were really cool too.  There was a backlit "quilt" made from film that was sewn together with nylon thread, among other things.

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Christmas was a cozy affair at the house and New Year's Eve is going to be the same.

Here's to another trip around the sun! 

Keukenhof Art

I've decided to make some of my other Keukenhof pictures freely available in large wallpaper format (1920 x 1080 resolution).  Scroll through, download, and enjoy.

Belgium and Holland: One More Day

Sadly, this was our last day here.  I would have liked a few more days both in Belgium and The Netherlands because there are so many things to see.  That being said, we got to visit some really interesting places.

This morning we went to the Dutch national museum, Rijksmuseum.  This building is like their Louvre and is probably more widely known for its outstanding collection of Rembrandt and Vermeer.  Vermeer's famous The Milkmaid was sadly actually AT the Louvre for repairs but they had another one of his wonderful paintings, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, on display in its place.  Rembrandt's Night Watch was much larger than I expected and it seemed to be the most popular piece of art.  I focused mostly on the floor featuring Dutch artists and crafts.  There was a wonderful dollhouse made with real luxury building materials (like marble tile floors) and it cost almost as much as a real house in Amsterdam at the time.  There was a lovely Delft pottery collection that included a couple of remarkable Delft violins.  I almost didn't go through their Medieval art collection but it was just as impressive as the rest of the exhibits.

The museum gift shop had a couple of very cute Playmobile sets.  

The other one was for Night Watch.

 Behind the musem

Otto Frank's warehouse is the on the far left of this photo

In the afternoon we went to the Anne Frank House, a sobering and powerful experience.  The museum is made up of Otto Frank's spice warehouse and the famous annex building in the back.  You begin your tour by going through the warehouse, which has information about what Amsterdam was like for Jews right before and during mass roundups, leading up until the point the Frank family and four other Jews went into hiding.  After climbing through the secret opening behind the bookcase the annex is, as you can imagine, depressingly cramped.  When the Nazis arrested everyone all of the furniture and possessions were removed.  Preserved under glass are postcards and newspaper clippings that the Frank girls glued to the original walls.  You can see pencil marks where Anne Frank's mother tracked the height of her daughters during their two years in hiding.  Anne's original diary and notebooks are on display.

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the city and doing some last bits of shopping.  We still had some leftover bread and cheese at the rental flat so we had a late afternoon snack and then skipped dinner.  At the last minute we decided to go on a canal boat tour since it was such a lovely and sunny afternoon.

The building we stayed in

The next morning we took a bus to the airport and flew, nonstop, back to the USA and regular life.