dick bruna huis

Opening Hours

Centraal Museum: Tuesdays through to Sundays 11.00 - 17.00

dick bruna huis: Tuesdays through to Sundays 11.00 - 17.00

Admission Fees

Centraal Museum

€ 11: adults aged 18 and older

€ 9: groups over 10 persons, U-pas pass holders

€ 5: 13-17 years; CJP, Cultuurkaart and student pass holders

Free: children 12 years and under, ICOM pass holders, Rembrandt pass holders, Museumkaart and CM club pass holders. Every Tuesday free admission to U-pas pass holders.

Tickets also include admission on the same day to the Rietveld Schröder House and the dick bruna huis.

Wi-Fi

Public wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) is available to visitors of the Centraal Museum and the dick bruna huis, free of charge. The network is available throughout the building.  

How to access the network:
- Turn on Wi-Fi on your smartphone or laptop (how to do this depends on your device)
- Select network ‘CMU-Publiek’
- Username: CMU-Publiek
- Password: centraalmuseum (note: case sensitive)

Change of Address

Due to the economic downturn and the strong Yen coupled with the weak greenback, the unusually long, hot summer, followed by the sudden change in temperature, the typhoon that cancelled Halloween...um, okay, due to none of these reasons other than we have been negligent in our blogging duties (three kids might have something to do with it; I know, where are our priorities!?), we decided it was time to evict ourselves from our dedicated site, changtheworld.com (thanks Bluehost you've been wonderful) and settle (back) into the cloud. Those of you who tried to go to www.changtheworld.com in the last 24 hours probably noticed that you were redirected to a new address here: platinumbev.wordpress.com. We initially wanted to keep changtheworld.com, but discovered that we would not be able to do a domain redirect to a Wordpress.com blog--at least, not for free. Wordpress doesn't hand out their name servers for free, you know. Ok, you don't know. (*YAWN* Geek.) You can do it free with Blogger, but we'd already moved everything over to Wordpress, and since we've been using Wordpress for the last couple years, we figured we would stick with it for the time being.

So if you've landed here, congratulations. Now update your links, update your feeds, and come back here often for new updates: It's Mr. Plow, Mr. Plow, That name again is Mr. Plow.

New Blogspace

Ok everybody. We're making a greater leap into our new home at changtheworld. Start updating your links, and see you there!

And the winner is...

Lovely "Martha Stewart" bluegreen colored paper. Actually, these papers come from a bottle of gum sold in Japan. hehehe The gum makers include a pad of papers in each bottle for when you want to dispose of your gum. Omoshiroi. Interesting. Mark never uses the paper to throw out his gum, so we've got these little tiny pads of paper floating around the house.

Poor Evan looks wasted. He actually wasn't feeling well when I asked him to pick a name from the bowl. He's a trooper.

Congratulations, Kaneyuki's! Its your lucky day! I'm sending a package of Japanese candies and snacks your way.

Thank you to all of you out there for keeping up with my little personal challenge and commenting or just lurking. Its been fun reading every one's comments!

I think the most interesting part of my daily bloggings has been finding out who's reading my ramblings. I guess in my mind I still think that its just some friends and family reading, but it really is bigger than that. I'm in touch with lots of old and new friends and friends I've never met in real life.

Its a nice reminder that the Internet isn't just a virtual space of zeros and ones, but that there's real people on the other side who, like me, appreciate being heard. So thanks for reading. Thanks for making me feel like I matter. :)

One Post a Day for a Month, Check!

I did it! I really did it. I've always wondered if I could really blog everyday. Questioning my own stick-to-it-tive-ness. And I'm glad I made the commitment and completed it. I don't know if I'll continue this habit. I am so tired by the time I find time to type that I'm worried my posts will get more and more uninteresting and nonsensical. :) 

I spent a couple hours getting the latest order of clips finished and ready for delivery. While I work I usually listen to my stations on Pandora. And today I was listening to Christmas music sung in the stylings of artists like Michael Buble, Tony Bennet, Josh Groban, and old big band/jazz/Americana type Christmas songs. I love listening to these types of songs, because it reminds me of Seattle. The Christmas versions remind me of Christmas in Seattle. And Christmas in Seattle has a very special place in my heart. 

Mark and I met in a Cantonese class at BYU, and somehow we found out that our families only lived 20 mins away from each other in Seattle. So we decided to book the same flights going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because traveling is much nicer when you have someone to talk too. The three years following that, we dated on and off and on and off and on, but every Christmas we were always together. It just worked out that way. So we have lots of wonderful memories of Christmases and New Years, exploring together places in Seattle area we haven't been to in years and showing each other our old haunts. Going home for Christmas, where we were free from homework and in between semesters at BYU, that we felt like we were going away on vacation together. But at the end of the day we'd go back to our parents houses! :) 

So Christmas time always reminds me of when Mark and I were dating. 

Fast forward to our third Christmas together. We just survived a summer of separation, when Mark went to Japan for study abroad, and we both came away from that experience learning that we didn't want to be with anyone else. 

On Christmas morning, my family opened presents except me. All my gifts, that were there the night before, were gone. I knew Mark was up to something, but how did he manage to take all my gifts, and what stunt was he trying to pull? I was getting agitated that he called and acted like nothing was up when I knew he was behind it, and he wouldn't tell me when he would be coming over later. So, decided to go take a shower, and just expected not to see him till later that evening cause he was being so wishy washy about the exact time. I got out of the shower and I could hear him talking in the living room. Just great! He came over without giving me time to really get ready! I wasn't happy about that. I had to put my pajamas back on because I couldn't run to my room from the bathroom without him seeing me in just a towel. But as soon as I opened the door, my sister had a camcorder in my face, and I could see Mark and his sister in the living room dressed like Santa and an elf. Then Santa Mark calls me over to come sit on his lap and proceeds to ask me if I've been a good girl this year. Oh my gosh... Then he pulls out a sack with all my presents, and I open them up one by one. They were all the gifts from my family to me. Then Santa says he's got a gift from Mark to deliver. Its a white box with a red bow, and I open it to find a shiny lump coal. Coal in it's diamond stage that is! 

Yep, Santa proposed to me. Sorry Mrs. Clause, move over. 

I could tell Mark was nervous, but he pulled the whole thing off so well, I had no way of knowing how he was going to do it. I knew he was going to propose sometime around Christmas, because I had worked with the jeweler to design the ring a month back. I just had no idea the extent of Mark's plans and costuming. :)

And that is why Christmas has a very special place in my heart.

Oh yeah, and I said yes. 

IKEA Addict?

We went to Ikea this evening to replace a lighting fixture that was on the fritz. It would turn off and on at random times on it's own. Mark thought maybe it was overheating. We bought it back in August, but they still took it back and gave us store credit to buy a replacement! Another reason why I love Ikea. Although, we did find out that return policies can vary between store to store. 

I'm glad it was a quick and easy fix to the lighting problem in the dinning room, because I was getting tired of eating in dark to the light of a lamp. We looked at other options for our replacement, but in the end I still loved the one we had the most. 

Am I an Ikea addict? A couple weeks ago, out of the blue, I just had an itch to go to Ikea. No reason to buy anything, I just NEEDED to go. Odd as this sounds, I like how at home I feel there. Not like, I like to pretend I live in one of the rooms in the showroom. No, I like the Marketplace. I like seeing everyday objects that we use, constructed differently, in vivid colors, or just improved upon. I think that's the industrial design part of me coming out. And I love finding those great deals!

Although, I have to say, there aren't any really great deals here in the Kohoku Ikea. Not like we used to find in the Woodbridge, VA or College Park, MD Ikeas. We found this shelf for $25 USD at a box sale in Woodbridge. Nothing was wrong with it, just the box was damaged, and the shelf wasn't harmed. I'm not sure why it had such a steep discount, but we're happy with our shelf! 

Here's some tips to successful shopping at Ikea. And so you don't get sucked in that place for HOURS because you're wandering around. 

1) Start from the end: don't go through the showroom if you know what you're looking for. You will just spend hours looking at the wonderful ideas they have on display. We always start from the cashier's and walk against traffic. 

2) While you're starting from the end, go to the As Is section first and look for deals on stuff because you never know if the item you're looking for is there at a nice discount. I've found great bed linens there, great box sales on furniture, and cheap lighting. 

3) Keep and eye out for yellow signs. They are dispersed all throughout the store and they have the best deals. I found a duvet cover with pillow sham for a single bed for $5 USD once. 

4) shop only on weekdays, tues, wed and Thurs are the best time  because there's less people there, and because those are the days that we have found good deals. Seems like there is always some promotion going on only on weekdays. wacky Wednesdays etc...

So today I finally got my Ikea fix, and I'm good for awhile. 

Pickle, pickle, who's got the pickle?

Just thought I'd share one of our newer Christmas traditions that I found out more about online today. This was introduced to us by our friends Julie and Dave back when we were both young newlywed couples and would spend a lot of time playing, eating, FHEing together. They were like family.
I noticed that they had a pickle ornament in their Christmas tree. I had seen it in Target too, and wondered why on earth would you love pickles enough to put it in your tree. Julie explained that it was an old tradition in Germany, where it was the last ornament hung, hidden in the branches. On Christmas morning, the first child that finds it gets an extra gift and blessings for the new year.
I thought it was a cute idea to add more fun to Christmas morning, so I bought one at a Target after Christmas sale. And maybe this year we can introduce the game to Evan, even though Careese isn't going to be much competition. :)
Today, I did a little google search to find out more about this said German tradition. As it turns out it isn't German at all. Germans don't have any idea what this pickle ornament is about. hmm interesting. Its completely American. And Wikipedia says that it's a popular American tradition. It is?! How did this tradition slip past me all those years?
Well, anyway, what traditions do you have in your family during this holiday season?