Chopping wood is Therapeutic

let them express their inner Rugged bearded man!

 

Chopping wood, Therapeutic for him. That’s what I would call it…

During the lunch break, or after dinner, Michiel loves to get outside and shop some wood. Rain or shine, Spring, Summer, Fall or Winter! He is out there chopping his logs in to big chunks of lumber for the fire.

And to be honest, there can never be to much lumber.
During the spring, summer, and fall we make nice campfires in our backyard.
And we are looking for a nice stove to keep us warm and cozy during winter months!

 

“It’s in our DNA as humans. There is a fascination with creating fire with most men.”

 I guess it’s a primal thing, making lumber to keep fires going has been a ritual for thousands of years.  It’s in our DNA as humans. There is a fascination with creating fire with most men. At least, that’s what I’m seeing.

Look at the neighborhood barbecue… Where are the men? Where the fire is! Haha, a little bunch of pyromaniacs with their beer in hand poking the fire.

So I say… let them chop wood. It’s good for the soul. Letting them follow that primal instinct, letting out all their negative energy and frustration on the logs.
Letting them be wild instinct-driven bushcraft motherfuckers! They are providing wood. Providing warmth. Providing protection from the cold. Providing the fire which we all can gather around.  Hear him roar! My strong man. Gosh, o’ my! Look at him being all provide-dy and stuff! Suddenly I forget I’m an independent woman who can chop her own wood just fine. I bet he would catch me whenever I would faint. Oh wait, he actually did once when I was pregnant! See!? My strong wood chopping for-family-providing-and-protecting man!

 

“a genius guide that can lead any aspiring Burschcraft motherfucker in the right direction!”

 

So, whenever he gets grumpy… tell him to go out and chop some wood. Youll see. He’ll come back a whole other man. 😉 Thank you Weltevree for gearing us up with this fresh and sharp new blade for Michiel to get his chopping on! And we are so happy with this Dutch guide that publishing agency SNOR sent to us, it’s a genius guide that can lead any aspiring Burschcraft motherfucker in the right direction! (brilliant fathers day tip for all the dutchies)

Ladies! Do you send your men out to do some chopping and de-stress!?
Or is it just me?

Blog by: Jolanda Marti
Photography: Jolanda Marti & Michiel Fook

“man of the house” MUST HAVES

In this insta-proof flatlay, we laid everything out for you. All the must-haves to make him feel like the ultimate survival backyard bushcraft badass.

from left to right – top to bottom:

Follow Michiel on Instagram!

Our story from his point of view! More guy stuff and how to be a badass dad to 3 badass girls!

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Chopping wood is Therapeutic

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Winter garden overview

Happy new year everyone!

We collected all Our garden adventures, routines, and preparation for winter and in wintertime. In the wintertime, our garden is in hibernation. We spent most of our time indoors.

Now that spring has come we shake up the ground and welcome all the new life that is bursting out of the garden! Wood is being chopped for all the campfires to come with the razor-sharp ax that Weltevree has send us ! 

The lawn is being taken care of with our brand new Hover mower we got send over from BLACK+DECKER and it’s awesome! 

Check out our full lawn care routine blogpost over here!

 We hope you enjoyed our vlog, when the summer begins we will make a new Garden overview regarding our spring and beginning of the summer season! Until then we will have a lot of other themed video’s coming up for you! See you next time!

Love,
  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

Winter garden overview

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Spring lawn care routine

 

Spring Garden Prep: getting our garden Ready for summer


Getting Your grass lawn Ready for Summer.

When all the life starts turning back in our garden and the grass lawn shoots up again, our fruit trees burst out in big fluffy “cotton candy like” balls of blossom. We take our boots and hit the garden. Feeling completely green-depraved after the long and cold winter months. So we are preparing the lawn for a wonderful summer filled with cuddles and playing and chilling in the thick and soft green grass!

Our garden has a few functions:

  1. Grow our own food
  2. Be a place of beauty and an oasis for us to relax and come together.
  3. Be a place for our kids to play,  learn, discover and have adventures.
  4. Create biodiversity and nurture all insects and animals that live here.

The green green grass

The first thing we do is we take care of our lawn. It’s the center of our garden and provides us a colorful bright green carpet on which we can play and relax the whole summer.  I like it when the grass is a bit longer so it can wave in the wind. So that it’s nice and thick and fluffy when you lye down on it. Taking care of the lawn is the number one thing we tend to.

Trim
First, we mow the lawn. We have a small lawn and the new hover mower we got from BLACK+DECKER is perfect for the job! I like it when the grass is about 10  long and really soft and wavy… But if you never maw it shorter the quality of the grass will go down, eventually it will get too long and when you mow it too late you will end up with a lumpy patch of yellow grass filled with dead brown spots. Not Ideal. So the first thing we do is trim it down after the long winter to give all the new grass straws that are coming up more light!  This used to be Michiel’s job, but it has become so much fun with our new hover that I wanted to do it. The whole spring and summer we will be mowing it at least once a week to keep healthy.

Scarify
After the winter the grass tends to look a bit unhealthy.
The build-up of dead and dying grassroots, shoots, runners, and other living and dead plant materials and moss which can accumulate at the roots of the grass can make the lawn look a bit Grimm. So we scratch the soil’s surface with a “Rake” to give the new coming up grass more air and room to grow.

Seed
Seed in new grass seeds to fill up the dead patches that may have arisen and that will make the grass overall full and thick in no time.

Aerate
Poke in little holes in the lawn using a pitchfork or a special roller with spikes.
This will give the soil more air and water witch will result in better root growth and a fuller thicker lawn to chill and play on. (plus the earthworms will thank you for it! and they are playing a vital part with their composting activities in keeping our soil (and therefore our plants) healthy!

Feed
Provide your lawn with plenty of nutrients to grow and flourish this upcoming summer season. Organic lawn fertilizer will improve the overall health of your lawn. Always use organic fertilizer and try and stay away from synthetic fertilizers. That way you are sure you are not poisoning your soil and water with chemical pest and weed control additives that are usually in the mix and the synthetic fertilizer runoff is really harmful to the environment. 

Water
Save rainwater in a rain barrel to water your lawn and give your grass the best start it could get to grow into a perfect green fluffy and thick carpet!

This is our lawn spring ritual we do every year and this way we get to enjoy our lawn every single day during the summer!

Enjoy the upcoming summer days!

Blog by: Jolanda Marti
Photography: Michiel Fook

Floating on air!

BLACK+DECKER send us this awesome lightweight hover mower, and its something I’ve never seen before! Normally this part is a job for Michiel since he is strong enough to handle a heavy lawnmower in the first place. But this friendly light powerful beasty is something I can handle with ease! It weighs just as much as an average folding chair. Plug & play!

The moment I turn on the power on it the mower is lifted and I can slide over the grass without putting any pressure on my arms. No more pushing and pulling like a madman. Just steering the gliding mower over the lawn effortlessly! Getting in and around all the fruit trees and borders without a hassle! This is actually so much fun to do! and when I’m done I just pull the plug and lift it up and store it away. Easy peasy!

Want to learn more? Read all about it here!

Thanks, Black+Decker we will never want anything else after this!

Instagram moments

We live on our lawn. It’s basically a living space for us and our kids to play, chill and cuddle on! Check out all of these moments that where on our lawn:

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Spring lawn care routine

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Bathtime goals

We don’t wash our kids…

Our bathtime ritual.
We made a video about our thoughts on getting our Baby and kids “clean”.

When you explore, you tend to get dirty! But that doesn’t mean we necessarily want to get cleanBecauseouse whenever we get a bit crunchy of all the playing, we just play some more in the tub!

It you think we take a bath to get clean… think again.
Kids don’t care about getting clean!
Kids just want to have more adventures!
Climbing mountains of foam, You can be a superhero with superpowers,
You can make it snow, Play hide and seek, Explore, 
You can be a hairdresser or make high fashion

And the getting clean part… oh, that just happens. Just like the getting dirty again thing. But who has time to think of those kinds of things, when there is so much having fun to do.

So do you wash your kids? or do you just let them PLAY some more!?  

We want to thank our partner Naïf baby for supporting us and making it possible for us to keep producing our video’s, vlogs and blogs. It’s because of these kind partnerships we get to do what we love most:
Being creative and sharing our stories and Images.

And Thank you for watching our adventures, blogs, and videos! Your interest in our adventures is what’s giving us the biggest motivation to keep on producing our content!
And we love you for it!
Love,

  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

Bathtime goals

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Shoot us mom!

Never let children pose… let them be themselves!

From the moment Miley was born until she was 4,5 years old we had a big photo studio. She grew up surrounded by camera’s, lights, makeup, fashion, and set styling… She occasionally watched the models getting ready and saw me shooting them in our photo studio. She saw them “pose” naturally and make subtle changes in their pose with fluid movements. changing expressions, taking directions from me and all of that without looking forced or unnatural. And she loved it.

As it comes to photo shooting kids, I like them to be interactive. give them something to do, something to engage with, something to play with. Anything but posing! I don’t like kids posing, because most kids (Really, I mean 99%) look forced and unnatural. That kind of photo’s with kids smiling those fake (almost creepy) smiles makes my hairs stand up. Not cool. Just fake.

So whenever I’m shooting kids (my one or any kids for that matter)… I let them play.
I have a strict NO POSING rule.

But… Tiny baby girls turn in to big baby girls! And then that day came, the day when Miley (8yrs) Came up to me dressed a bit much over the top and  Asked me “Mom? Can you shoot me? I’ve made everything ready!”
I looked over and there was my living room turned in to a complete styled set. With 3 different concepts, she wanted to work on!  I was like “What the….!?!? uuuh… Ok!? I guess?”

So we could proceed in peace. After every Klik, Miley made a tiny adjustment in pose, expression or looking direction. I didn’t have to give her any directions. She was totally in control.  Like she understood exactly what it was she wanted to reflect, express and what story she wanted to tell. I felt a warm proud glow in my heart for her. What a great way to express yourself.  There goes my “NO posing rule” for her… She has got this down.

 

Turned out she had a school project where they had to take their favorite piece of clothing, make a photo of it, and write a little poem about it. She wanted to create a photo she had pictured in her mind. (Creative little creature) So who am I to refuse such a brilliant initiative from my 8-year-old.

I grabbed my camera gear and as she stepped in front of the camera. Wow! She is actually doing a really good job posing! Not one Photo where she looked unnatural or overly posed. I guess she intensively studied the professional models in our studio! My little baby copy-cat. Loving this…

After a few minutes, her little baby sisters decided they wanted attention too, and started to jump on top of Miley… So I had to promise them that I would shoot them too tf they waited their turn. And If they would go and play a bit more I would call them and take their picture.


As for her sisters… The rule still stands. No posing! PLAY! Once I called them for their turn to shoot, I gave them something to keep busy! Singing a song,  playing peekaboo, giving them a ukelele or a watering can to play with. And as usual, that way I had a fun and playful shoot with my two babies. And my no posing strategy still worked out worked perfectly fine with them! Scroll all the way down to see the rest of all the photo’s we took!


How do you take pictures of your kids? I’m thinking of making a series of DIY video’s in photography toppics like “kids photography” .
Would you think that’s something you would like to see? Anny requests on specivic photography toppics!?


Love,

  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

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