inside.

outside.

A couple of weeks ago, Romain and I had the pleasure of having lunch at my favourite Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam with my great uncle Roel who I had not seen in 15 years. Oom Roel lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but he is Dutch-Indonesian, and grew up both here in Holland and Indonesia. Over our long lunch of rijs tafel – a Dutch-Indonesian speciality – he shared stories from his childhood, and told me things about my Opa that I never knew.

Oom Roel’s mother – my great grandmother  – was half Indonesian, half Scottish. She spoke many languages and she traveled the world regularly, even in her nineties. As a child I was so inspired by her, and I felt somehow deeply connected, even though I’d only met her a handful of times. During lunch, oom Roel gave me a letter that his sister-in-law had been saving for me all these years. It was a letter that I had written to my great-grandmother when I was just 8 years old. As soon as I took the letter out of the envelope I had the most vivid memories of the paper. But the content of this letter is what captured my heart the most. To my delight I discovered that even “sometimes” wishes can come true…

Every day I see things float by in the canal outside my window. I wonder what I’ll see today?

This past month I’ve developed an obsession for baskets. I spotted these by one of the houseboats in my neighbourhood.  I love the idea of growing conifers or the likes in random, mismatched baskets. Seriously, can you ever have enough baskets? I don’t think so.

Yesterday I took some time out with Yvette (and marie, of course) to explore the flower salon/1 exhibition at droog. It was quite spectacular, in the subtlest of ways. I particularly loved photographer maurice scheltens cut outs, the individual flower displays complete with labels on canvas tables from vlinder en vogel (which Yvette translated for me as ‘butterfly & bird’ – beautiful name)…

and the string gardens…

I also loved that you could purchase part of the trunk of a dove tree ( a fabulous idea from flower salon/ contributor jos bregman). So I did, of course. Read more about Jos’ idea here.

After our peruse throughout the gallery, Yvette, marie and I headed to Puccini’s for a hot chocolate. miam.

xx

PS Flower salon/ is located at various locations around Amsterdam, but today and tomorrow are the last days. I will try to see some of the other exhibitions today if I can – if I do, I’ll be sure to share the inspiration with you here in the (blog)house.