I'm back with a giveaway winner and a slideshow!

Hello my blogsy people! I am always amazed at how fast the time flies. It's been two weeks since we last spoke and in between I have had a wonderful vacation and a happy birthday indeed.

When I left you for my blog break I had a little giveaway of some cahier style sketchbooks by Seawhite of Brighton. There were not very many takers, but that's only a good thing for those participating, because the fewer contestants the higher the chance to win, right?

Anyway, let's get to it. I used a random number generator to pick a winner from the eight contestants and here is the result:

The seventh commenter was Mary! Congratulations Mary, you won! Please contact me at c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl or use the contact form on the sidebar, so you can give me your snail mail address and I can send the sketchbooks to you. Please do so before next Friday (the 28th) because otherwise I will pick another winner. But I'm sure you will be happy to receive your gift and I hope you enjoy it very much.

Now onto my vacation. You know how it goes: I go away and come back with a truckload of photographs and that means there are also a bunch of slideshows coming up in my upcoming posts.

As said above, my vacation was absolutely wonderful. I went to a town called Valkenburg which is in the south of the province called Limburg, which is again the southernmost province of The Netherlands (I live all the way in the northernmost part). It is a landscape of green hills and lovely valleys. Because in general we are a rather flat country a lot of those hills are referred to as mountains, but make no mistake, they are not mountains by a long shot. We're just not used to much around here, haha.

The apartment I was staying in for instance was in a holiday resort on the Cauberg ('berg' means mountain) and it was a bit of a climb to get up that 'berg', but that still does't mean it was a mountain.
The apartment was spacious and comfortable and a good place to come home to after a day of walking.

The apartments of the type I stayed in were built in such a manner that they overlooked each other so you could enjoy the view from your (big) terrace, which was a nice little valley with an orchard.

What I loved most about this place was that even though the resort (which looked most like a very tidy little village) was located near a rather busy road, but all I could hear in my apartment was birdsong. I live on a dune where most birds are gulls, jackdaws and magpies, not exactly pretty songbirds, so to me this was a real treat.

The next five (!) posts will be a slideshow of my vacation and the sixth one will a bit of a bonus, so if you hate those types of posts check back in about two weeks and there might be some artsy stuff again. But I need to get a trip out of my system first before I can move on and I know many of you do like these looks at a different country.

Hope you will enjoy traveling with me. For now it's good to be back and I wish you a wonderful and artsy weekend!