CHALET HEAVEN

I am slowly getting into the holiday spirit as we will be going on our skitrip this month and this is one of my favourite holidays! I just love, love love the mountains and the whole atmosphere of a winter/skitrip. It is all about being outside in nature, fresh clean air, famly and skiing.
We will be going to one of our favourite hotels and I am soooo much looking forward to it that I can hardly wait to go. The hotel we are off to is similar to the style of this gorgeous chalet. Not exactly my style when I am at home but I just love this 'chalet style' when I am in the mountains (I even love it during summer!). Woodcovered walls and floors, sturdy furniture, rich thick fabric on the cushions, thick fluffy covers on the beds, a fireplace and a great balcony where you can enjoy the sun. Thats my little place of heaven in winter.

This chalet can be found in Verbier, a luxury skiresort in Switserland, and can fit 10-12 people. It has 5 bedrooms, a large living, a mezzanine with lounge for watching tv and playing on the nintendo, a turkisch hammam, sauna and jacuzzi, and how cool is the double bunkbed for the kids!!

chaletverbier.com

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

It has been a bit quiet around the blog the last two weeks as I was already in the 'shutting down' modus and realy wanted to focus on my family and my interior design business. I wanted two really great projects to 'fall' and made sure they did.
I finallized on a new logo for my blog and my new, yet to be built, website of MINT Interior Design.

We will again spend a wonderful and quit Christmas at home, just the 4 of us. No hurrying form one familydinner to the next and stuffing ourselves. We will be cooking great seasonal food, but are trying to keep it simpel and just cook with really great ingredients instead of serving a 5 -7 course meal.
This afternoon we will start of the celebrations with a childrens Christmas mass in a cute little church in Naarden and tomorrow we will have a full-on Christmas breakfast (with homemade spelt Chistmas bread!). I really look forward to doing as little as possible and spend this time of year with the people I love the most and recharge our batteries for 2014! This means I will be offline for the coming two weeks and will only return January 6th.

Happy Holidays to all you lovely people!

x

pic 1 caisak, pic 2 and 3 pinterest

KID AND COE

Ok it's maybe not the time yet to scout for your next summer holiday destination but to me the 'little' trips in between are just as much if not more fun and quality-wise so good to recharge your battery. But the difficulty is often finding something suitable for a family with 2 small childeren that doesnt cost a small fortune to start with or leave you ending up with two ajointed rooms in a hotel, but still has everything you need.
Via this post of my scandinavian home from yesterday I ended up on the site of kid and coe. What a great site with some great and cool apartments around the globe to visit with kids! This year I have short 2 trips plannend with the man, no kids allowed ;). Same goes for my business trip to Milan next year April, to visit the Salone. But maybe I'll spot just the perfect apartment and book a trip with the kids sooner than anticipated.

Here some of the cool apartments for rent

High Gate Hill Residence London

Baker Street Residence London

The N. 3rd Street Residence New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hobbacott Lane Residence Cornwall

I like them all for different reasons. But if I had to choose... It would be the 3rd apartment. Why? Because IT IS NEW YORK BABY! and it is a loft and has a openstructured brick wall.

What would be your apartment of choice?

xoxo K.

BACK TO REALITY

After a welldeserved break of 3 weeks I started work again last Monday.
During the holidays we enjoyed a lot of the sun here in the Netherlands and later on the Andalusian sun in the South of Spain. We ate icecream, drank cafe con leches, had lenghty lunches on the beach with loads of fried babysquid, bbqed sardines and cold beer.  Later in the day we ate cheese, olives, cured meats and drank cooled red wine in front of our familyhome or went to the local fish restaurant for some fresh fish. We spent time at the beach, swam in the pool and finally I had time to rad 3 books! But most of all... we did nothing we did not feel like doing and I loved it!!

But now it's back to normal life and work. After not minding a lot on what I ate and drank I am also happy (not minding the weighing session the Saterday we returned) to be back in a more structured regime. This makes eating healthy a lot easier for me. Inspiration for this I find in my bible "It's all good" from Gwyneth Paltrow or on her blog goop.com. Also on the blog of lovely Ellen, who is practically my neighbour as we live in the same village, but now our kids both go to different schools we dont run into eachother anymore. She blogs on madebyellen, with fun and often healthy recipies for the whole family.

A couple of my favourites:

Thaistyle chicken burger served with some simple greens
Beet Avocado salad with a mustard vinaigrette served with homemade lambsburgers.

picture 1 and 2 are my own, 3 from goop.com, 4 pinterest

HOLIDAY

I just picked up the kids from school and daycare and holiday has now officially started. Right on time as the kids are really tired and done with the hectic and busy schedules. I still have to work a couple of weeks, but will take an extra day during this period to be there for the kids and do some fun stuff with them before we leave on our 'real' vacation.

This post inspired me this morning as the house makes a great holiday home, don't you think?

via Jelanie

HOLIDAY EMERGENCY

I just returned from a very well deserved and needed break with my family. Our last holiday was month and month ago and we were all tired. Of work, of school, of daycare, of everything actually. We went back to our favourite hotel at the foot of the Alps. The hotel is far from hip and happening and I don't think they would recognize an Eames if they tripped over one, but we just love it. We enjoyed walks in the mountains and woods, swam in the outdoor (hot)pools, had breakfast in the sun, ate great food and played both inside as well as outside. We even had a snowball fight, saw a 3 hour old baby horse and the boys went for a tour in a convertible racecar (yes the white one in the picture). But most of all, we enjoyed having time together and having to do ab-so-lute-ly nothing and just went as we saw fit. :)

On the day we left my boy bumped his heads against a hard stone table and we needed to go to the emergency room for his first, but probably not his last stitch. Auch. But kids are so resilient. After 15 minutes he was laughing again and enjoying his icecream. The day we returned we were back at the emergency room as my boy fell chasing his sister and had his tooth through his lip, both inside as well as outisde. No stitches needed this time, but a great scare nonetheless. And again icecream was the remedy. I know my boy loves icecream, but I hope he won't use the ER to often to get it.