Discovering Nijmegen

March 3, 2017March 2, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

JOYFUL GRATITUDE #18

I’m very grateful for a lovely weekend with Paolo discovering Nijmegen for the first time. Despite the cold, we walked around the park overlooking the river Waal from Nijmegen’s hill and wandered down the little streets of the town.

We had to warm up regularly and which was a great excuse to stop in wonderful cafés and indulge in hearty sandwiches and rich cakes:)

Thanks to Paolo’s perseverance and good luck, we even got the last two tickets to watch a play version of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road that just happened to be playing that evening at the theater. The actors were captivating and their way of telling the story was gripping!

Paterson

February 27, 2017February 26, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

If you are looking for a great film to watch on a lazy sunday, I would recommend Paterson, the latest Jim Jarmusch film. It’s a lovely reminder about how beauty lies in routine and the small daily pleasures and struggles of life. I don’t want to give too much of the movie away as I hate spoilers. Just watch it and be transported.

Pizza dinner

February 24, 2017October 22, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

JOYFUL GRATITUDE #17

After a long day, full of meetings at work, I came home with a bad headache. Luckily we had planned to make pizza for dinner. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was concentrated on chopping the veggies and cheese, as well as rolling out the dough for the pizza, or simply the pleasure of eating it, but my headache disappeared and I felt a hundred times better by the time we finished:)

Full disclosure: the second pizza may or may not have landed on the kitchen floor right after this picture was taken… however I swiftly applied the well-tested 3-second rule and it was delicious all the same!

A big shout out to Simona B. who shared her pizza making skills with me a few months ago. The dough was perfect!

Lovely listening

February 20, 2017February 19, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

For me the cold winter months are the perfect time to stay indoors, in a state of semi-hibernation, living vicariously through podcasts about other people’s lives:)

Here are some of the thought-provoking podcasts I’ve been enjoying a lot lately. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Good Life Project Radio
Jonathan Fields alternates short 10 minute riffs on different life themes and 1 hour in-depth personal conversations with guests from all horizons. There is so much wisdom in these recordings.
Some of my favorites: The Truth About Luck, Orly Wahba, Elizabeth Gilbert, Tiffany Dufu

Strangers
Lea Thau is a beautiful story teller, many of these true stories have me crying and laughing at the same time.
Some of my favorites: Alaska Bingo, The Waxing Virgin, the Love hurts episodes
Side hustle school
In a totally different genre, Chris Guillebeau’s daily podcast is only about 7 minutes long and it presents lots of wonderful tips and tricks to get your business ideas up and running, without quitting your day job. I love that all the examples are really specific and concrete, with actionable suggestions.

Happy listening!

Precious daylight

February 17, 2017February 17, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

JOYFUL GRATITUDE #16

Since a few days when I leave the office it’s still daylight! I feel like the worst of winter is over now and it’s such a pleasure to no longer be cycling in the dark. The soothing light of the magic hour over the Amsterdam canals on my way home is so beautiful.

Peperomia happy bean and a friend

February 13, 2017February 12, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

Nina sent me these pictures of her Peperomia happy bean which is thriving, along with it’s friend, a pepper plant that emerged spontaneously from the compost. The plants enjoy a lovely view of Amsterdam’s city lights!

Thanks Nina for the pictures!

The icing on the cake

February 10, 2017October 22, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

JOYFUL GRATITUDE #15

This may be controversial, but I believe regularly eating delicious cake is part of a healthy diet. According to me, cake is perfect for any occasion and at any time, whether it’s for fueling a creative afternoon in a cosy café, celebrating a birthday or simply for dipping in my morning coffee for breakfast, and it tastes even better when it is shared with family, colleagues or friends.

Cake is also an important way of transmitting family traditions. My grand-dad’s speciality was making Biscuit de Savoie for us (which is a cake despite its confusing name). I miss watching him in his kitchen, patiently folding the beaten egg whites into the batter with a wooden spoon, turning always in the same direction to keep the cake fluffy (and obviously licking the bowl which was the best part!). We still use his recipe to make this amazing cake for every family reunion:)

The pretty cakes in these pictures were made in Ahhh Toots, a stand in the Glass Arcade in Bristol. My friend Eva and I attempted to sample as many of them as we could when we were visiting in 2015. They truly know how to make icing in the UK:)

Plants all over the place

February 6, 2017February 5, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

It all started out quite innocently. I fell in love with this wonderful flat in part for its great windowsills, which I proceeded to decorate with a few plants (and Barberine the photobomber, who I was cat sitting at the time ;).

Little by little the amount of plants increased as I decided to experiment with cultivating the baby plants and cuttings in second hand pots, and selling them online.

My appartment slowly became a greenhouse (or a jungle, as Paolo would say). There were plants covering all available surfaces, including the whole coffee table, placed awkwardly in the corner where they would get the most of the sunlight.

Radical action needed to be taken, as the plants were threatening to take over our small living space;) So with the money I made selling plants, I bought a simple shelf to store the plants vertically and as you can see they are now thriving in that sunny corner:)

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who supported Cultivating Joy by purchasing a plant for their home!

Morning coffee

February 3, 2017February 2, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / 2 Comments

JOYFUL GRATITUDE #14

I am grateful for the quiet moment at the beginning of the day when I prepare coffee. It takes only a few minutes, but I relish the deliberate action of cleaning the moka, filling it with just the right amount of cold water, delicately placing the ground coffee into the filter, closing the moka tight and putting it to cook on the stove. The split second when the first coffee topples over though the column is a magical one!

Lovely plants of Madeira

January 30, 2017January 29, 2017 / cultivatingjoy / Leave a comment

At home we regularly tease my foodie sister about how she is into foodporn and how the majority of her travel pictures consist of new dishes she discovered along her journeys. However recently it’s been dawning on me that I’m obsessed with something similar, which I guess can be called plantporn.

I love close up photos of gorgeous plants with their tiny leaves, colourful petals, uncanny shapes and intriguing textures…

What made Madeira so special to me in terms of plantporn, was that succulents grow in the wild all over the place and in general there were also many unfamiliar plant species I don’t get to see every day.

I spent a great deal of time in the holidays behind my camera attempting to take decent macros of the amazing plants that caught my eye. (Thanks to Paolo for the picture above and especially for his patience when I get mesmerised by yet another plant!)

I took these last two pictures in the natural park of the São Lourenco peninsula – though to me these plants look like they really belong in the landscapes of Arrakis (Dune;)

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