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 🙂

222. An example of stupidity at its worst

Hello there! You haven’t heard from me in a while again now, and that is because we had another little “mini-drama” here in the beginning of the week. Admittedly, it was a lot smaller  this time than a few weeks ago when we thought we would become homeless; this time the problem was basically that my old laptop finally decided to give up completely. I have been expecting that this would happen for a while now, because I have had problems both with unannounced crashes, a flashing screen and difficulties to charge the computer for almost a year now. It was still quite bad timing though, seeing as I am not made of money at the moment.

I do need a laptop however, so the day after the collapse Phill and I went to a large technology store to have a look. In the shop, it turned out that the timing for the crash was quite good after all, because they had a large clearance sale with really big reductions. I got a laptop that had been on display but which looks just as nice as any other new laptop and hundreds of pounds cheaper than it would normally have been. It still cost a lot of course, but it was a good and affordable price for what it was! I collected it today and now I am using it to write this blog post. It is so amazing to have a laptop which doesn’t need to be plugged in at all times, I had almost forgotten what that is like… and it is so small and cute too… As you can see I feel happy with my purchase so far anyway.

There is one aspect of the “computer-crash-event” which was more of a disaster for me however. One might have thought that my awareness of the issues the old laptop had might have made me take extra precautions to make sure that I saved important things on another devise too. And I did do this with some things, such as photos and course work, but I forgot one essential thing. During the summer I have written quite a lot on my novel manuscript, and been a bit lazy with saving the documents on my usb stick. Some chapters are there, but the majority of my work is now temporarily inaccessible! When I realised this I saw my maths teacher from secondary school in front of my eyes, preaching as she always used to do: “Always save everything in at least two places, preferably more”. I always thought “yeah, yeah, I know” when she said this…. Obviously I didn’t! How could I be so stupid? But as you might have noticed, I only wrote that the work is temporarily gone. Apparently there is some kind of device which can be used to extract files from “dead” computers and luckily I happen to know a person in possession of one of these. I therefore keep my fingers (and toes) crossed that my novel isn’t lost forever because of a stupid mistake. Hopefully  this machine will save it… and me!