Getting a greener home

Energy friendly home
Living in a small home of only 50 square meters (=538 square feet) is one of the choices we’ve made to be more sustainable as a family. But because this is a home build in 1952, the Insolation was not what we wanted it to be. So in the last couple of years, we made some big steps in improving the insolation of our home.

For instance, we got double glazing in our windows in 2014, we insolated the roof back in 2017 (watch this dutch vlog from back then), and Insolated the crawling space under our home in 2018 (see this Englisch vlog), and we have LED lighting in our home.

This whole process is really expensive so we are taking one step at the time and every single change is taking us a little bit closer to our eco-friendly home dream.

Next steps we hope to take very soon:
-Insolating the double brick outside walls.
-Energy management system to track how much we use.
-Solar panels.
-Floor insolation.
-Heat pump hybrid system. (And Floor heating to make it more effective)

Because we are just a bunch of hippies on an eco-friendly mission Eneco asked if we were interested in a collab with them. So we did! We visited another family who is a few steps ahead of us and already has a lot of the eco-friendly solutions we are dreaming of in their home! Oh my! We are loving it!

And they had such a great family with two lovely little boys and a playful dog. We had a great time with them.
We were invited to stay for dinner so we did! Tiny little bummer to see all those throw-away plastic take-out containers on the table, but I guess our eco-crazy hippie standard is next level for most people. And they were certainly more energy-friendly than us! We all do what we can. baby steps.  So we all enjoyed the food and the lovely company.

Eneco made a lovely video of our visit! (Sorry, it’s only in dutch) You can check it out down here:

We went back home feeling inspired! Hopefully some day in the near future we get to have that energy-green home we are dreaming of. Until then I’m just making it greener with all of my plants!

Love,
  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

Oh, and p.s. Thanks for the levely flowers Eneco! So thoughtfull love it!

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Going to Amsterdam

Let’s go to Amsterdam!

We will go and have a drink at the docs. (at Pllek) I will hold you close until you will feel secure enough to explore a bit.

I will drink my tea, with some honey and we will sit by the fire…
And then you will run through the cafe like you own the place.
Of course, it will be totally exhausting running after you the whole time. but I don’t mind.

Then I will wrap you up high and warm up against me and we will take the ferry to the central station.
We are feeling tiny and light, passing people by left and right through the rushing crowds trying to board the fairy. And well be watching the water and buildings pass as we cuddle all the way there.

Ah Amsterdam
So many intriguing people, all different shapes and sizes, all going different places, living different lives.

We will wander around a bit, maybe do some window shopping, and we will be all alone while being surrounded by so many others. Standing still, watching everyone rushes through their daily routine.

So glad to have you so close to me in my arms.
This is the city, my love. Is’nt it magical!?

Love,
  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

Music in this video is by:
Meydän – https://soundcloud.com/meydansound/

Babywrap is from: We are Wovens – Boots are from: H&M – 
Blue fauxfur coat from:  Zara – Big floppy hat from: H&M –  Orange vest: Pull and bear – Flower dress: Pull and bear

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Slowing Down! – Recap 2018

Happy new year everyone!

Time is flying by and everything is going so fast.
Treasure every second!

Here is an overview of our treasured memories of the year 2018. We hope you had a great year and a wonderful new years eve.

May 2019 bring you all the love and happiness in the world!

Love,
  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

Music in this video is by:
Meydän – https://soundcloud.com/meydansound/

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About this Curveball…

Uncertainties are scary yet exciting…

Normally we like to share our highs, but we do hit some low’s along the way, just like everybody else. So let’s get real. So here is one huge bump in the road we are dealing with right now.

The beginning of 2018 brought us stability… Something we haven’t had in quite a while. I didn’t have any pregnancies or newborns this year in our family of 5 (we think our little family is complete now) and we had a stable income through our Wedding photography (If you were wondering… this is what we do). No crazy sh*t happening around us. Just a nice day to day routine and all was good. We finally got into the flow of balancing work and family.

On top of that my Instagram and this blog started to generate some income too! We had some pretty awesome collaborations amazing brands. It’s still not enough to stop doing weddings (not that want to stop doing weddings, weddings are awesome). But it was enough to let all the photo and video editing after we shot the wedding days over to Michiel, so I could focus on investing my time on creating content for this blog, the vlog, and my Instagram!

-“And then came Oktober… Oh my. What a curve ball!”-


The curveball

Things were pretty amazing!

And then came Oktober… Oh my. What a curve ball!
Our stable income was not so stable anymore.
The short version: We don’t have enough weddings in 2019 to keep ourselves afloat! So we need to make some adjustments. We need to push ourselves out of our comfort zone once again.

To fully understand what happened I need to explain it a bit more:
It takes us 2,5 week to process all the photo and video images of just one wedding. We do a maximum of 18 weddings every year. We don’t have room for more. 
The summer month we survive with the income of the weddings, the winter months we survive on the down payments for the upcoming weddings and the orders of wedding albums of the past wedding season.

We reach 90% of our clients through the biggest wedding fair in Holland. We participate two times a year, and then we are fully booked.
No need for online ads, campaigns or another form of advertising.
But this year, the wedding fair of October was a complete fail. Where normally there are on average 5000 visitors, now there were only 1000. We got ZERO bookings from that fair this year. Something that has never happened before in the last 5 years. And on top of that, the fair of March 2019 is canceled. The whole fair stopped. Forever!

-“looking back afterward it always has been exactly the way it should have been. We just didn’t know it yet at the time.”-

So now we have 4 weddings booked for 2019, Wich generates not enough to get us through this winter, or the next summer for that matter. so we need to get familiar with online advertising. But oh’my… its all sooo complicated and time-consuming learning process. And we don’t have the time, we need bookings like yesterday.

 

So Now what!?

I’m positive that we get this online advertising thing down soon, and we’ll get enough bookings for the upcoming summer. But until then, we have a bit of a financial problem. So one of us needs a job somewhere for the upcoming 4 months. On “project base” or for a longer period of time if we like it enough. And with “we”, I mean preferably Michiel. I want to stay focused on creating our content and keep the inspiring Wild&BOHO collabs going! I’m only selectively applying to jobs that I would LOVE to do so much, that I would maybe ditch all other stuff and stay working there forever! And there are not so many vacancies out there that will get my attention. I’ve written 3 so far. Michiel 5 and counting. We’ll see…

-“It’s not a curveball… its a Pusch in the right direction by the universe.”-

I’m stressing a lot about the What If’s.
Our reserves are running dry and something needs to happen soon! The uncertainties are taking its toll. Images of every imaginable scenario are going through my monkey mind. The never-ending chatter of my internal dialogue who sometimes gets stuck in a carousel… Going round and round in circles. Pointless and exhausting. We are doing our best here, there really is nothing more we can do.

One of my goals for 2019 is to just let the universe do its thing.
I’m going to do the best job I can, work my but off, and then I’m going to let it go. No stress. Trusting everything will be fine. Because looking back afterward it always has been exactly the way it should have been. We just didn’t know it yet at the time. This is a chance to grow, evolve, move forward instead of getting stuck in the same pattern over and over again. It’s not a curveball… its a Pusch in the right direction by the universe.

Our glass is half full. We have love, we have each other, we have our creativity, we have a nice home. We’ll pull through. 

-“Because of you this blog and our Instagram has started to become a way to support our family”-

So if you reached all the way to this point in the blog, I want to thank you for reading!
You are here not only for our best moments but apparently also here for our struggles.
Thank you for being there for us, for following our blogs, watching our video’s, checking out our Instagram posts and by leaving a comment now and then. Because of you this blog and our Instagram has started to become a way to support our family a bit! Maybe one day we can fully focus on creating art and cool content full time! We appreciate your support so much. So Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Have a Wonderful New year’s eve! We love you guys!

Love,
Jolanda, Michiel
Miley, Haley & Quinn

 

Blog post: Jolanda Marti
Photography: Michiel Fook

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