Jet van der Graaf (in her daily life she’s a designer at a magazine) has a dream: traveling the world in an old camper with her boyfriend and her two sons. The nineties camper van has been purchased and work continues day and night to pimp the in- and the outside. Jet shares her tips, doubts, decisions and moments of bliss with us.
Let’s go wild and explore the world!
Preferably for at least a couple of months – that is the dream we are working towards. ‘We’ are me, Jet van der Graaf, boyfriend Michiel and our sons Roemer and Rein. The four of us live happily in a super cozy little apartment in Den Bosch.
In my everyday life I love working as a designer and Michiel is a passionate (extremely talented!) web programmer… But as soon as the days start to get longer than the nights, we are hit with an extreme case of ‘wanderlust’… We want to go out and explore…. freedom and good cheer underneath the stars! And that’s how we started the No-MadFamily lifestyle & travelblog. Because we’re definitely not going for your bog standard box on wheels or a camping rag, no way, we are all about a customized traveling palace! Which is why we opted to buy a real camper van from the early nineties… as it turns out that wasn’t exactly the heyday of camper design… so we’ve got ourselves a little ‘project’ 😉
Everything simply had to go: the brown ‘wooden’ interior with the gray – you can’t see the stains, yikes – mottled pillows, the gray curtains, the ‘bathroom’ with ‘marbled Dynasty-look’ walls, and the vinyl floor. We’d also like to do ‘something’ to the outside; a little more cheer and fun on the road never hurt anyone after all. Before we’ll embark on our long trip – we are planning to go in about another four years so our kids will be old enough to collect some fond memories – we’ll first be taking it out for lots of short trips, enjoying summer holidays and visiting fun festivals.
So that’s our first big deadline right away, the camper van really needs to be ready before July! So making mood boards, late night web shop adventures, trailing the flea markets and fabric research are pretty much an every day occurrence here. And seriously, it’s all just so much fun!
This month you can get your fill of our glamping progress in my guest blogs… and trust me, even though it may look incredibly ‘un-glamping’ at the moment, it’ll all work out in the end, it’s going to be awesomeness personified!
Summery greetings,
Jet
