Marjolein and I went on an excursion again, this time to The New Farm in The Hague. All in order to provide you with interesting background stories featuring this mint green shirt with brown trousers.

Let’s talk about the outfit first. As I told you last week, I bought a little paperback with colour combinations to help me create outfits and below is one of the combinations. Although the colours are equal blocks, you don’t have to use them like that. I chose to reveal only a little bit of yellow underneath the mint green shirt. The trousers are a bit odd with various styles of shoes, which I solved by putting these cream (family of yellow) boots over them. Not everybody’s taste but it is mine. I know José-Maria will say “You are in your pirate era again” haha. The chain necklace is in the colour family of the shirt and the earrings echo the shape of the necklace and the gold in it plus the yellow of the top.
It still is a bit of a funny outfit but why not think out of the box.

Now over to The New Farm, a 7 storey high building, offering workspaces for small businesses focussed on social, sustainable or circular practices. From ways to help farmers produce more sustainable but also more profitable, chocolate, beer, bicycles, workshops to The Farm Kitchen’s Cook Factory. A buzzing place.

The building was constructed in 1956 for Philips Telecommunication which stopped producing in 1994. In 1998 the building was renovated and converted into workspaces and offices. You can also rent spaces for photo shoots (weddings), meetings and events.

Below: I contacted Tanja Bernsten, the Community Manager of The New Farm and asked whether we could do a photo shoot. She was ever so helpful.

Below: Tanja gave us a tour around the building and we started at Eiber beer. They are firmly rooted in The Hague, often trying to add a specific ingredient from The Hague to one of their beers. Eiber is another word for ‘ooievaar’ (stork) which bird is in the The Hague’s coat of arms.

Below: Eiber beer is brewed on the sixth floor of the building.

Below: There used to be a glasshouse on the 7th floor, the highest floor. A highly innovative way of growing vegetables and even fish but sadly it wasn’t economically viable. I am sure The New Farm will come up with another tenant for this space. For now, it was just me and the Christmas tree.
(I have seen awesome wedding photos in this space.)

If you want to see what the glasshouse looked like before 2018, click the link to the 2018 post which was also situated in this building.
In that old post you will see me climbing a spiral staircase, something which we mimicked for this post (below).

Below: One of the other interesting entrepreneurs are Sox2Soxs. They produce 2,2 million socks a year. Sport socks, casual socks, compression socks and fun socks.
It is always such a revelation to be in a production factory. It fills me with awe.

Below: The yarn is produced from old fabrics, thus making the socks sustainable. Look what great colours you can create.

Below: A little video of the machines working (not a very good video, sorry).

Below: The results, something for my English editor Selina to enjoy as she adores socks.

Below: We found a floor with a balcony from where we could photograph the view.

Below: Blurry photo, but the company VisViva Labs rings my bell as they provide 3D print services for creators & makers. Something like vases is of course, most appealing to us. But as you saw with the creations of Iris van Herpen, with 3D printing, the sky is the limit.

Below: i-did is another company which recycles old fabric or wool to new products like acoustic panels and little felt gifts. Here are some examples.

Below: The 6th floor provides enough space for meetings, presentations, drinks, gatherings, you name it. But I am sure there are more spots in the building.

Below: Suddenly a lift opened on one of the floors and we saw the fun decoration of it. Plus an invitation to the Friday afternoon gathering on the 6th floor. Mirror selfie.

Below: The company Dutch ‘n Decent creates corporate clothing, also from recycled material.

Below: Again, a mirror photo. The back of the mint green shirt can be left open. I usually leave the bottom two buttons unfastened.

Below: Marjolein in front of the sign for the 4th floor. Her top is longer at the back than at the front; she found it somewhere in her vast wardrobe and created a black and white outfit.

Below: Close-up of her boots.

Below: Close-up of Marjolein’s earring. In the other earlobe she had a smaller cat image. Really cute.

Below: And a photo of me on the 3rd floor haha. The bronze golden bag is a second-hand Mulberry.

The New Farm is a very inspirational place and we loved it.

What happened in my life this week

We were invited by Froukje and Petro for ‘the opening of the Christmas village” or something like that. We didn’t quite get the invitation but turned up of course.

Below: As we entered their house, we saw signs on every door. I cannot translate these signs as they refer to many Dutch things, so this is only for the few Dutch people, following my blog. We thought it was hilarious.

Below: I took a photo of Froukje which she allowed to appear on the blog. It was a blurry photo and it was too dark in that corner of the kitchen. So I asked her to pose for me in a lighter spot.

Below: Absolutely no chance of a decent photo. Certainly not after I told her she was holding that pastry bar in a peculiar way. But this is Froukje, inside and out. Laughing her head off.

For us, it was like celebrating Saint Nicholas as we got excellent coffee with Saint Nicholas pastry bars and we got a ‘newsletter’ that Ron had to read out lout.
Below: Me as little red riding hood and Ron as Formula I driver.

We didn’t get a few jokes as we hadn’t opened our present yet (yes, a present! What a surprise). But we laughed a lot afterwards when we read it again after coming home.
Below: An overview of what we got. Froukje and Petro created this themselves. Below this photo, some close-ups to properly see the scenes.

Below: This speaks for itself when you know that Ron drives a 40-year-old red Renault 4 car with ‘Ricard’ signs on the front doors. The length they went to finding this toy car!

Below: Ron as a snow angel. His arms and legs are moving up and down and they had given him a big belly haha. Teasing is part of the Saint Nicholas fun. Dog Watson is also in the scene.

Below: At the font I am pictured as an old-fashioned photographer capturing the snowman. The underwear hanging from the tree with pegs, refer to Ron’s gimmick in the shed with the shadow play of the old lady in the rocking chair (he calls her Mrs. Van Vleuten). One day he took the joke for our neighbour a bit further by hanging white bloomers from a tree in our garden, Mrs. Van Vleuten’s bloomers.

Below: This bit is taking the mickey out of me. The trousers and blouse and especially the bin bags with the content all nicely documented. There are bags with jewellery, skirts, sweaters, blouses, trousers, socks and cardigans. But the one that took the cake, was the biggest bag with shapewear hahaha.

When friends spend a fortnight creating this for you, I am really touched. What a labour of love. We had such a wonderful afternoon.

Below: Ron and I visited a garden centre which had a huge Christmas decoration department where we bought little Christmas trees and lights. We put them outside, at the front of our house as the plants we usually have in those pots, are hibernating. The staff at the garden centre were ever so helpful. Gives you a warm feeling.

Below: I loved this ‘dress’ at the garden centre.

Below: I chuckled when I saw Santa’s legs and an elf’s legs move in the Christmas tree so I took a little video.

We had Georg and Marla over for dinner. Ron cooked mussels and carrots, both in a special way. He is becoming an increasingly good cook.

Below: Monday I wore this outfit as I had a lot of little chores to do and needed to be comfortable. The chocolate brown jumper (sweater) is at least 20 years old. A reader told me that chocolate brown and turquoise are a good match and I remembered this necklace and the old brown jumper.

Below: I also wore the above outfit to go shopping with Marjolein (no photo shoot that day). As we were in a shop, this lady (Marie-Elise) came up to us and said she recognised us from my blog! What fun, meeting a reader in real life. We chatted for a while, receiving many compliments. Sweet.

Further entertainment this week:

Below: I had a coffee date with Misja (blog MisjaB). She was perfectly dressed as always, quite an inspiration to me.

Had another date with Marjolein, this time to do a photo shoot at a Christmas fair.

My lunch with Helga fell through which wasn’t too bad as I want to lose just that little bit of weight (in the December month, really clever…NOT). The scale is giving me alarming figures. I need to be able to fit into all my clothes.

Anyway, till next week.

Greetje