The end.

As you will have noticed if you have visited this site in the last 6 months, I barely ever write anything here anymore. I have now finally decided to give up on this blog. I love blogging, but my Swedish site gets all my attention when I have the time to write (which isn’t often). I won’t remove this website (at least not yet), because it’s always nice to be able to go back in the archives and read old posts, but I won’t upload any new posts here (at least not in the foreseeable future).

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog! If you understand Swedish, you are welcome to follow me here.

Decorating the flat – Part 3

Last week we ordered a few things from IKEA, and then spent the next few days putting things together. It was quite tiring, but also very exciting. We (or actually mainly Phill…) also took the opportunity and painted a wall in the guest room/study which we had planned to paint. It was Phill’s idea originally, but he soon convinced me that it would be a nice idea, and I’m happy that he did because the new colour looks awesome and really adds personality to the room.

The wall, which is painted in a colour called “dark duck egg”.

This is what our book/cd-case looks like now! We’re very pleased with it. It actually consists of two “Billy cd stands” and one “Billy bookshelf” from IKEA. We chose the colour/material “oak veneer”.

On the currently empty shelves in the lower parts of the CD stands we have placed trinkets, souvenirs and cards…. To add that personal touch here too!

Finally, here is just a picture of my newest flower, which I bought a couple of days ago. It adds a splash of colour to the living room. In the foreground you can also see part of my current knitting project… A green and pink thing 😉

Decorating the flat – Part 2

We are now back home, and I thought that I could show you some little details from our flat. It’s all about the small things 😉

We bought this map three years ago when Phill visited me in Sweden for the first time. It is a copy of “Carta Marina”, one of the first accurate maps of Scandinavia. We both love it and it has had an important place in each place we have lived in since then. The only difference this time is that we have framed it in a large basic black frame from IKEA (there is a lot of stuff from IKEA in our home). The map is actually quite large (around 1m*1.25 m maybe? ) so it fills a substantial part of one of our living room walls.

This beautiful little painting hangs on another wall in the living room. This painting was painted by Phills mum and given to him for his birthday, so it is very important for us. A very personal decoration! Of course, it helps that it is beautiful 🙂 And it matches the other posters and photos we have on the walls in the flat since it also has a dark wooden frame.

I included a picture of this clock  just because it was such a bargain! We wanted a clock for the kitchen/living room area (we have an open-plan kitchen and living room), but our budget wasn’t very big. We had looked at a couple of clocks in TKmaxx which looked similar to this one, but they all cost a little bit more than we fancied paying at the time. Then by coincidence, we ended up in a “Home bargain” shop and found this clock which cost us around £2!! So cheap and it still fits perfectly in the place where we wanted to put it.

Another little detail which I love in the kitchen area is this oven mitt which Phill gave me for my birthday (I had asked for one). It is really cute and makes the kitchen look homier. Also, it really helps when I bake something 🙂

Not the best picture quality, but this is a clever little thing which used to hang in my parents’ house but which they didn’t want anymore, so I asked if I could have it. It’s a shoe organiser! This way we can keep track of at least some of our shoes and avoid a mess on the floor in the wardrobe.

This is a new addition to my growing collection of candle holders. I got this one from my god parents a few weeks ago in Sweden, as a graduation gift. It instantly became a new favourite since I absolutely love green (can you tell by the table cloth?) and it just looks so cool with the rough stone edges.

Finally, these aren’t exactly part of the flat decorations, but I just wanted to show the pretty cards I got when I graduated a bit over a month ago. I didn’t think that I would celebrate that much, but then I got all these cards (and some nice gifts like the one above) and it really made me happy! In this picture you can also see our mug/cup coasters in the shape of small vinyls. That was a gift from me to Phill last Christmas and we have been using them a lot ever since. They look cool, but we are now on the look-out for some more neutral looking ones that we could use when we want some variation.

Anyway, those were some of the things that we like and have decorated the flat with. I hope you enjoyed the little sneak peek! There will be more posts about this later when we have bought some more furniture 🙂

♥ Sweden ♥

 

Since I know that it will be harder for me to go on holiday when I start my PhD, I wanted to make sure that we spent a lot of time in Sweden this summer. We have been here for three weeks now and have five days to go before we return to the UK.

When we made the plans I dreamt of perfect Swedish summer days. There are not that many of them, but when they come they are the best kind of summer I know. Of course, the weather hasn’t lived up to my hope every day. But we have been lucky enough to have some really amazing days. Here is a photo bomb for you, showing what Sweden sometimes  offers in the summer!

  

Decorating the flat – Part 1

So, let’s move back a couple of months. In mid June this year, after I had completed my final exams, Phill and I moved to Glasgow. We were very lucky, because we were given a huge amount of help from Phill’s parents throughout the whole moving process. When we actually reached the day when it was time to transport our belongings, they helped us to drive the things from Nottingham since neither Phill nor I have driving licences (yet). We have a lot of things, and managed to fill both a small van which we had rented and Phill’s mum’s car. However, in Nottingham we lived in a furnished flat and in Glasgow we moved into an unfurnished one. That means that there were still a lot of things we didn’t have and we therefore have a lot of furniture projects and purchases ahead of us.

In terms of the flat arrangement, we have been given incredibly kind help from Phill’s parents there too. I am so grateful for the deal we have worked out with them. Basically, the flat we live in is owned by them, and we are covering the costs of all maintenance, utilities (of course) and also the furnishing of the flat. The idea is that this deal will hopefully benefit both parties in the end since the flat can be sold on and hopefully give a bit of a profit a few years down the line.

Anyway, the point I am getting to is that when we walked into the flat we basically had a blank canvas to work with. It was actually quite literally blank because all the walls are white. My plan is to let you, readers, follow the transformation of our flat, as that blank canvas turns into OUR homie home.

Since we moved in we have started to really put our touch to the place. We have been frequent customers at IKEA (and will continue to be for a while). The only pieces of furniture we had with us when we arrived were a desk that we bought last year in Nottingham and a sofa and sofa table which had been given to us. The first priority was therefore to buy a bed. We slept on the floor for three nights while waiting for it to arrive… but luckily we were so exhausted during those first days so it didn’t really matter; I slept like a baby anyway!

Next in the furniture line came a table and four chairs and after that a cd-stand. Phill’s birthday was a few weeks after we moved and he used gift money to buy a desk for his office/studio space.  That’s as far as we have gotten. During the summer we have had limited money resources and even some of the things that I mentioned above we are still paying back because we couldn’t pay it all at once. But in the autumn when I start working we will be able to add on a few more pieces of furniture which we would like.

Both Phill and I are interior design enthusiasts, but we have different approaches to it. I am the stingy one who doesn’t want to buy unnecessary things and who is prepared to chose something less than ideal just to save the pennies. Phill is more of an idealist. He wants the things that will look and feel the best and he has a more longitudinal financial thinking. While I would rather buy a cheap thing now, he wants things with good quality which will last for 20 years, meaning that they are more expensive to start with… Despite these differences in attitudes we have now agreed that we will order the next batch of things at the end of September and we have a good budget for it so it won’t be a problem. I will keep you updated!

Phill building our table

New beginning

I promised that I wouldn’t give up this blog, and I won’t. Phill and I have decided that we are going to try to encourage each other’s blogging since we both have a blog each that we often neglect. Of course, I still recommend anyone who understands Swedish and who wants to follow my life to read my Swedish blog, because I update that several times per week, but hopefully there will be some more posts coming up here too in the near future.

April

What happened this month? Well…

• I went to Sweden for three weeks to celebrate Easter and meet up with family and friends ♥
• In Sweden I got a new passport – so I’m sorted for the next few years! (Apparently the Swedish passport is the most powerful passport to have, so I guess I’m lucky!)
• Phill came to Sweden over the actual Easter weekend, his first Swedish Easter…
• We went to Skansen in Stockholm with my cousins A and Z and their mum/my aunt K. We had a really lovely day and I love how they get along so well with Phill as well. He played a language game with A which made both him and her learn lots of Swedish/English!
• We went to my parents summer place over a day.
• When Phill left Sweden I went to my grandparents up north for a few days and had the opportunity to meet my other aunt and some other relatives I haven’t seen in ages.
• I met up with my friend T several times, and one time we spent the whole day fishing and I almost got a pike… but instead it managed to escape with some of T’s fishing equipment…
• Phill has been accepted to study Graphic design in Glasgow as we were hoping he would be…
• … and we have also sorted out our accommodation for next year 🙂
• And now I have started revising for my final exams, which are in less than a month now!!! GAH

Quite a busy month in other words, and it hasn’t even ended yet!

I’m still here…

Hello!

I’m really sorry about my awful updating recently. I have been keeping up quite well with my Swedish blog, but this site has been fairly neglected. This always seems to happen; If I’m in the UK I feel inspired to write in the Swedish blog so that my family back there can follow me easily, and if I’m in Sweden I tend to prefer this site because of my friends from England. I think this will just have to be the case, because I don’t like forcing myself to blog, it has to be fun! I now know that I will be staying in the UK for a few more years, which means that I will possibly continue to have more reason to update my Swedish blog, but I promise to come here occasionally… like once every six months anyway! 😛

So far 2015 has been quite eventful and busy for Phill and me. I don’t want to write about everything right now, partly because I want things to fall into place a bit more first and partly because I’m too tired to write a long post today unfortunately, but I can tell you this: Phill has been travelling up and down the country several times since we came back after Christmas and he has also posted some more videos on his Youtube channel, and meanwhile I have also travelled a bit and have been busy going to lectures, studying and running trials for my dissertation project.  And I have registered for graduation! And in addition to our separate activities we have also celebrated our three year anniversary and gone to the cinnema LOTS since we now both have membership cards there.

In a couple of weeks I am going back to Sweden for a little while over Easter, so now I’m trying to get as much work as possible done before leaving. I can’t wait, but at the same time it feels like time is almost flying a bit too fast….

See you eventually 😉

2014 is coming to an end…

Hello!

I have created quite good holiday routines. I sleep until around 9:30. Then I get up and work with my exam preparations until lunch time (it’s going slowly but at least I think I’m making some progress). Then I spend the afternoon with Phill, family and friends. That way I have been able to both be very social and get a lot of stuff done. I wish I didn’t have to revise at all of course.. But I do, so I might as well do it without complaining.

We went for an evening walk in the dark a few days ago and since it was so beautiful with all the ice and frost we took a few photos. This is one of them…

Winter evening

Today is the last day of 2014! It’s actually been a very good year for me; I attended conferences, my friends got married and Phill and I moved into our mutual flat, among other things. Let’s hope that 2015 will be just as good for me! And regardless of whether you have had a good year like me or if you have had a difficult time, I wish you a good new year and hope that we will all get to be happy and healthy 🙂

Tonight we will celebrate the new year twice. We will begin the evening with dinner at my parents house and then move on to celebrate with my friends. It’s going to be a nice night!

 

Christmas thoughts

Hello there!

How was your Christmas? Good I hope!

We are in Sweden again now and have just celebrated Christmas with my family. When we arrived it was rainy and windy, but a couple of days before Christmas eve it started snowing and we got really wonderful white Christmas weather in the end. We have gone on long walks with my parents, done some shopping, met with friends and family and gone on a trip to Stockholm. It’s been nice to be back here and meet friends and family. You know, just relaxing and catching up with each other!

It’s crazy how fast time flies. It’s the first time I’m back in Sweden since early June, which is the longest time I’ve been away so far. But when we came here about a week ago it felt like I had just left!