Now if only these images came with the wonderful scents these flowers gave…

Arriving at the entrance to the Japanese Garden…

It’s beautiful in here…

Lilly of the Valley, so tiny, and so pretty…

*smile* Here’s Karola and I:

Are you curious about the Japanese sign that Karola is holding? Visit Images to Inspire Hope to discover it’s meaning :-)

Usually there is a Buddha statue which sits on top of this red platform. Buddha was ‘sleeping’ today, and will be on display another time.

The Japanese Garden is an extra special place to visit. It’s only open for a short time so that it’s beauty can be preserved. Make a note in your calendar to visit before 12 June 2011, it’s a long wait till next year!

Hope you enjoyed these images as much as I enjoyed taking them :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Best wishes,
~Natalie

:-)

and underneath the wrapping…

I lifted the lid….and WOW – I was hit smack in the face with the most delicious smells!!! absolutely mouth-watering!

Oooooh which one to try first… they all look so good! and I am *loving* their names! :-)

mmm Gingerbread Sweet & Spicy.. mmm Pumpkin Holy Moly… mmm Avocado Blimey… mmm Strawberry Shortbread….

Nearly 100% organic and all incredibly delicious, I found two unexpected favourites… the Cranberry Orange WTF and the Lemon Lekkerding – so packed full of flavour! YUM!

My husband is going to have to fight me for the rest! Though, truth be told…he already told me he’s expecting an empty box by the time he comes home from work… I’m trying to save him a Chewy Chocolate Whoa-Baby, and maybe a Chocolate Chip OMG too… maybe… ;-)

I.am.in.food.heaven.

Thank you, Katie!!

Visit Katie’s Cookies and order some for yourself or for a friend! I assure you, you will certainly not be disappointed!! They are DELICIOUS!

My good friend and fellow photographer, Vinita Salomé and I signed up for the FREE event and excitedly waited for the day to arrive!

That day, was yesterday: Monday 15 November 2010!

Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) is an initiative to inspire young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. The week is a worldwide movement of entrepreneurial people, with millions unleashing their entreprising talents and turning their ideas into reality.

The Women’s Business Initiative International (WBII) also takes part in GEW and so I headed over to the WBII for their GEW Kick Off Business Lunch where the topic of the round table was “Magnify your Marketing Message, how to effectively use your personal network and social media tools to grow your business”. Then it was a quick dash to the train station to meet Vinita and we were on our way to an aircraft hanger at Rotterdam – The Hague Airport for the official opening of GEW Netherlands and Meet the Dragons!

The event was much bigger than I had anticipated and we were so happy to be part of the audience. It was all very exciting!!

The dragons were introduced and took to the stage: Arjen de Koning (Founder & CEO Paradigit Group), Henk Keilman (Founder & CEO RIG Investments), Willem Sijthoff (Renowned Media Entrepreneur) and Rachel Elnaugh (Renowned Serial Entrepreneur, and also a Dragon on the first two series of BBC’s Dragon’s Den). It was all very dramatic with big music and big lighting, quite spectacular!

Four pitches were presented to the Dragons by CityHub Hotels, Tinypay.me, Aquaculture Benin City and Aesthetic Interactions.

But without a doubt, the highlight of the event was the official opening by UK’s Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, and the keynote speech by Rachel Elnaugh.

Nick Clegg stressed the importance of entrepreneurship as an essential ingredient for economic recovery, and surprised the audience by speaking in Dutch too. You can watch his opening speech here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Rachel Elnaugh captivated the audience with her keynote about ‘The Extrepreneurial Rollercoaster Ride’. Speaking of her first entrepreneurial venture, Red Letter Days, which was generating £1million profit per year at it’s height; she showed incredible strength in recovering from it’s failure and her story was extremely inspiring.

She shared the following fabulous tips.. take note!

• Find your passion
• Go it alone, put yourself at the helm of your business
• Dare to be different
• Strong brands sell – you have 7 seconds to engage a potential customer
• Focus on sales, sales, sales
• Your customers are your biggest marketing department
• Defend your energy, stay positive and manage your motivation
• Never say die – there is always a solution, there is always an answer, if you look for it

You can watch her keynote speech here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Be sure to visit her website at www.rachelelnaugh.com

Most certainly, it was an incredibly inspiring and motivating event! When can I sign up for next year? and who’s coming with me? :-)

Best wishes,
~Natalie

Btw. I love the way that sounds – Vin, Tin and Tigs – thanks to Sandra for that, since I pinched it from her blog post title ;) I also pinched ‘cheese and laughs’ from Tin’s blog post title, because that sums our day up quite nicely! Hope they don’t mind!

So, where to start… well, this time we all met up in Gouda to visit the cheese market. Whilst wandering the old parts of the city we managed to stumble upon a ‘secret garden’ where we had much fun creating self-portraits and pulling silly faces to each other – we’re all big kids at heart! After our play in the secret garden we stopped for lunch at a fabulous bagel shop to feast on delicious bagels and unfortunately we ran out of time to taste their incredibly delicious cheeeeeeesecake that Vinita had been tempting us with for so long, lucky for us, we got it all packed up nicely for us to enjoy back at Vinita’s home :-) yum! I’ve never tasted cheesecake soooo gooooood!

What’s in the bag that Vinita is holding? it’s cheeeeeesecake!!!!! :-)

Yes, here we are in the ‘secret garden’ and the sillyness begins………

I think Tin wins the competition of ‘most silly’! lol

Here I am spinning around and around with my new fish eye lens….. do you see Tin and Sandra snapping pics of me in the background..?

Are they really self-portaits..? You betcha! And me likes! ;)

So… here we are at the cheese market, and having fun and laughs with those working there!

Busy busy on the phones..

Tin never stops being silly, never!

See ice cream shop, must buy ice cream – right Tin? ;-)

And back home, to Vinita’s gorgeous son – here he is eating a delicious lollypop – and their gorgeous (and mostly shy) puddy cat, sweet Maffie :-)

Hope you enjoyed my rather large selection of photos… be sure to stop by Vinita, Tin and Sandra’s blogs to see their photos too:

Vinita’s post: http://vinitasalomeblog.com/?p=586
Tineke’s: http://spaghettiphoto.com/blog/?p=375
Sandra’s: http://www.sandra-aartman.nl/blog/?p=245

Till next time……

Need to work on these ‘arms-length’ self-portraits…. here’s Vinita, Tineke and meee!

Ohhh more fun..

At the end of the afternoon we went on a hunt to find the Douwe Egberts we’d passed earlier, and can I say mmm iced cappuccino caramel… yum!

The i-c-e-d c-a-p-p-u-c-c-i-n-o-s seemed to affect us all in strange ways….. didn’t they Tineke?!

This one you need to see LARGER *giggles* …so click here to view BIG! ;-)

Check out Tineke’s photos here: http://spaghettiphoto.com/blog/?p=136

And check out Vinita’s photos here: http://vinitasalomeblog.com/?p=344

Have a great weekend everyone!

…and Happy Easter to you all too! Hope you are all enjoying the long weekend! :-)

Heiko and I spent Christmas Eve in Gouda with our friends, Vinita and JK. They treated us to a delicious Indian meal and afterwards we headed out into the cold to photograph the city hall for ‘Gouda bij Kunstlicht’ (I haven’t edited those photos yet, but I will blog them here once I’ve finished editing my client’s photos, so watch out for them!)

Having had a very late night the evening before Heiko and I had a nice lie-in on Christmas Day morning and were very lazy getting up! Our cats were pretty lazy too!

Here’s Eddy with Heiko… Eddy loves to lie on our bed and is constantly seeking cuddles!

And Freddy was curled up on the landing… his big gold eyes followed me curiously as I lay down on the floor and pointed my camera at him!

Oh look, reflections… so this is the only photo I have of me on Christmas Day, behind the camera as usual! ;)

Freddy is a nuisance when it comes to wrapping presents, he’s forever trying to play with the wrapping! And he was one of the first to find our gifts underneath the tree!

Heiko shouted “Freddy” … and Freddy responded with his “what? I wasn’t doing anything! look”… he’s so sweet, how can you not resist those big gold eyes!?

So it’s a little bit Christmasy around here…

I really like both these ornaments… I bought them on a trip to Dresden, Germany, unfortunately they are quite fragile and Freddy caused santa to fall last Christmas and his head has since been superglued back together… this year it was the snowman’s turn to loose his head, ooops – it was my fault this time though! He’ll be all superglued back together again soon though!

Couldn’t resist using our African placemats for our Christmas Dinner, even though they aren’t very Christmassy! ;) This was Heiko’s placemat, mine was a group of zebra.

Just before dinner was ready, Heiko phoned his brothers on Skype… no smile for me, Heiko pulled a silly face instead!

Dinner was delicious!!!! And we were soooo full we could hardly move… still had some room left to finish off the champers tho ;)

ps. I am in love with Heiko’s 24-70L lens ..anyone fancy buying one for me?! ;)