Bianca and Julian were cheerfully greeted by Margreet and Huib.

"I've already prepared a separate page for you. I've given it a name, but if you don't like it, we can change it like that, no problem at all."

"I'll come and have a look, just put Julian in the playpen," he said.

"Would you like some coffee or tea?" asked Margreet.

"No thanks, I just had two mugs with Annerieke and Simon. And oh, I have to tell you something, Simon got an impression about our work, about our creations, art, or whatever you want to call it. He saw it for himself! A big gallery, he felt it would be a special building, but did not yet literally envision what it would look like. He already felt like building it. And all the creations we are working on will be displayed there, and much more. Annerieke thinks the website is a kind of digital gallery, in preparation for the real thing. And she thinks it could be some years before the real one comes around, that we need to continue healing and get stronger first. What I get in my own mind now is that the stronger we become, the stronger our creations will also be able to work towards the visitors."

Huib and Margreet listened breathlessly, nodding affirmatively.

"It's true... And the little son Lisa and Sjaak are expecting, he's going to make the design for that building," Margreet complemented. "Lisa got an impression of that the day she knew she was pregnant."

Oh really? I remember Lisa telling me that he was going to draw buildings ... so also the gallery! How cool! Then it will indeed take years!"

"Yes, let's see him be born first," Huib laughed.

Bianca chuckled, grabbed a chair away from the dining area and placed it near Huib. She handed her mobile phone to Huib: "I've already taken pictures, see if they're of any use to you."

"Handy, shall I just copy them on the PC, then we can see your pictures big."

Bianca nodded, wondering how he would manage that. She saw him grab a cable and connect her mobile phone to his PC. Huib looked at her: "You have the same input on your mobile as me, pretty handy, that allowed me to use my own cord so we can transfer the photos directly to the PC."

Bianca and Margreet tried to follow what he was doing, and moments later saw her photos appear on the computer in a separate folder, a folder with her name. He then handed her back her mobile phone and clicked on the first picture. It appeared large on the screen.

"That one turned out nice, that doll will soon be dancing away in that dress like that!"

Huib clicked on the arrows to the right of the picture, letting all the photos scroll by.

"They turned out well Bianca, we can definitely use those for the website!"

"Yes, but I think there are far too many of them. I think we'll have to choose the best ones among them. Quite a pity actually..."

"Would you rather use them all?"

"Yes, actually I would, I'm just proud of my work," laughed Bianca.

"And rightly so," thought Margreet. "In real life, those dresses are amazing, and they look great in those photos."

"So, your preference is," Huib probed again, "for all the photos."

"Yes, but that can' t happen, can it?"

Huib clicked on their website and showed his work.

"Oh yeah, I saw that earlier, that you had made collages. Would you like to do that of my photos too? A collage with the doll and a collage without the doll?"

"I would like to do that, but I think it would also be fun for you to learn to do it yourself. And I'd be happy to help you with that!"

"Okay, good plan! Just tell me what to do."

Huib moved his chair up a bit so Bianca could sit better behind the computer, and showed her step by step how to assemble the photos of the doll in her dance dress into a collage. The second collage, of the same dance dress but without the doll, she made herself, whispering verbalisation of what to do. She also merged the photos of the other two dresses into collages, noticing that things were getting smoother.

Margreet gave her a literal pat on the back: "You managed that smoothly! I'll let you continue to play with it together, I'll continue with my tapestry. Ah, I see Julian has fallen asleep, just keep sitting Bianca, I'll place a blanket over him."

Margreet covered him and, following Annerieke's example, put a folded tea towel under his head. Julian let out a soft noise and moved his arms, but then slept quietly on. Margreet walked past Bianca and Huib, gave Huib a kiss on his neck and Bianca a hand on her shoulder for a moment, smiled at them and walked on to her hobby room.

"Next step," Huib said, "the collages need to go to your page on the website." He pointed to where she could open the website again, pointed to the column that listed all kinds of options, and told her she could drag the 'text' or 'image' block to where she wanted it. Step by step, he showed her how to place her own images next to each other and type a piece of text with them. He showed her on his own page how he had set that up.

"You can do it the same way, if you think that suits you too, but you can also do it differently. The only thing you do have to take into account is how people will see it on their cellphones, because that's different from here on the big screen."

He pointed to the mobile sign and asked her to click on it. She was momentarily startled by the effect this had, with her collages suddenly seeming to be compressed to the size of a mobile, but then discovered that she could scroll the mobile with her mouse and find both her collages below each other.

"It seems convenient, if I do it like you do, the collages next to each other, so on a mobile they come under each other, and then the text underneath. People who look at the site on their mobile are then first surprised by the pictures and then get a slap in the face by the price they read underneath."

Huib burst out laughing, dragging Bianca into it, so that they were both roaring with laughter at the computer. Margreet came over to see what was so funny, looked at them questioningly. Bianca repeated what she had just said, dragging Margreet into their laughing fit. When they calmed down a bit, and Margreet could talk again, she said, "I do understand, I had been struggling so much with this. The prices are so much higher than I thought the work was worth. But when you start looking at how many hours you worked on it... Take that dance dress, do you have any idea how long you spent on that?"

"I know I worked on it for ten days, about an hour and a half every morning, another hour in the afternoon, and about another hour and a half in the evening. So about four hours a day. That would be a total of forty hours... Is that right? It doesn't feel like that much at all!"

"That's a good sign, then you enjoyed doing it. I'm moving on again; you guys do the math!" With a wave, Margreet walked away.

"Forty hours, and what should you charge per hour?" asked Bianca to Huib.

He looked at her, shrugged his shoulders slightly and made a gesture of "what do you think?

"I get 15 euros in mind, but that seems like a lot," he said.

"Extraordinary, I had gotten that amount for myself too, and Margreet, who didn't know that about me, exactly the same. Elly, too, came in at fifteen. And now you, so apparently we're fine with that."

"Boy... forty times fifteen, that's four hundred and two hundred... six hundred euros for a dress like that?!"

Huib chuckled, recognising the reluctance of himself, and especially of Margreet and Elly.

"First of all, it's not 'such a dress like that' with a negative sound as if the thing is nothing. Okay, it's a doll's dress, but not one you let a child play with. It is a special dress, a work of art. That first of all, and secondly, I think that if everyone gets an hourly rate, it may as well be normal for artists."

"Yes but, what about all those people who absolutely cannot afford this?"

Huib nodded. "That is indeed a problem. At the moment, I'm not so sure how to solve that. I think we have to be honest on the website and later in that gallery about what it's worth, but there will be times, when we get it very strongly on our hearts, to give someone the chance to buy it at a different price, or even give it away for free. But I would advise you not to do that for now. I think we can only get a good sense of that when we are more deeply healed, when the wound behind this has healed properly."

"What kind of wound should be behind this then?"

"A wound that has something to do with a cut-up feeling of fairness or justice. We have learned things about that that are standardised, which therefore have nothing to do with our inner self. And because of all kinds of wounds that are unknown to me, we feel we have to do something about it. I think we just have to go through it for now, that time and again we feel what we charge as an hourly rate, and what therefore becomes the real price. Margreet finally decided not to charge anything for the material, because it hardly costs anything at the thrift store, and also because it's easier if she only has to charge for the hours."

"Would we start selling so much at some point that we would get rich from it?" wondered Bianca aloud.

Huib smiled: "I have already been able to sell so much in a fairly short time that I have been able to pay back Lisa and Sjaak quite a lot. I guess I'm about half the price I had to pay for that building in the village. Well, I still have income from the guesthouse and our houses are part of that, so I hardly need any income from my woodworking. That makes a difference, but it does give some indication of how well it can work. Once I have been able to pay it all back, I will save the money I earn afterwards as much as possible. Margreet and I think the same way as Sjaak and Lisa: if we get on our heart to give someone an interest-free loan, we can do it in the future from that savings. And besides... you just mentioned that gallery, in the future... that could be such a project. Setting up something like that costs a lot of money, which we could then advance. Just an idea, I don't know how it will turn out."

Bianca nodded: "I understand, and I also have a click with that idea. For now, I have free board and lodging and a salary I don't have to buy very much from, so I can also put money aside every month. There will come a day when I want to live on my own, buy a small house around here. Then I might not even have enough on my current salary. Well, we'll see. One day at a time, but your idea of saving quietly and trying to get a good feel for what you can do with it, that clicks with me. There are still some thoughts shooting through me, that it's selfish of me to start saving for a house and what that requires first. But I know that's just a touch point, that it's not selfish at all."

"True, and if your piggy bank continues to fill up after that cottage, one day you will automatically know what to do with that. For now, you just need to enjoy your little guy, your hobby and your work at the guest house."

"Nice, that's a clear summary!" laughed Bianca.

Together, they continued with the website, registering her on Twitter and Facebook. She soon figured out, how to post her photos and texts there too, and got more and more into it.

She e-mailed all the details to herself, so she could maintain her contacts in her room on the laptop and post pictures of her next doll dress.

To chapter 25. Making plans concrete

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