A tree outside my bed room window

Today we are moving (again), this time to another apartment belonging to friends. We will live in that apartment for about two months, and then move back to the place where we have been living since July this year. You might ask yourself why? Well, our friends who lent us this lovely 3-bed room apartment during their [looong] summer holidays are going back to Sweden in November to have a baby and won’t be back until September 2012. So, they asked us if we would like to rent the apartment while they are away (their land lord was very happy with the solution). Why make life easy when you can complicate things?

Our new bedroom with a big oak (?) tree outside the window and the same kind of Ikea bed as we used to have before moving to Puerto Rico! I spent a few hours in the apartment yesterday while O was picking up some of our stuff from the small studio that we still haven’t emptied…

It might sound complicated and unpractical, but as we [still] haven’t found what we are looking for when it comes to buying a place (apartment? house? apartment? house?) and it is very rare to find 3-bed room apartments in Brussels [for a reasonable price and not having to 1) sign a 3-year lease with huge "fines" if you break the contract before 2) invest in fridges, ovens etc that might not fit in a future home], we jumped at the chance. We love this area, it is green and lush – I am looking forward to discovering La Promenade Verte this autumn with Sweet Pea  [+ a good raincoat and wellies!], the apartment is close to the metro and tram, and services including a market on the square 2-3 times a week, and O can get to work in 10 minutes! And we can borrow our friends’ furniture, which is a great solution as we lack most essentials such as beds, sofa, books shelves etc and as we are planning to get our own place next year, we don’t want to buy stuff that might not fit in our future home.

The view from the old, very small studio apartment on a rainy day where we lived June 2010 to July 2011. I loved that big tree, listening to the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind was somehow so friendly and calming…

Our temporary home for the next two months or so, which will be Sweet Pea’s first home (!!) will be great as well, even though it is not so close to O’s office, and I am especially pleased that just like in the previous apartments we have lived in in Brussels, we will have a big tree just outside the window. I realise that it is something I really missed in Puerto Rico, where our apartment was too high up (9th floor) to see any trees – we did see the Atlantic ocean instead, which wasn’t too bad either. In the first apartment we lived in together here in Brussels there was a big pine tree and somehow it wasn’t entirely the same as you don’t get the calming sound of the wind through the leaves.

The view from the bed room in the apartment where we have spent the summer and where we will be back late autumn. I have spent many hours of my house arrest on the bed resting and reading or just staring at this tree while comtemplating the future…

Let’s talk about plants…

Another plant post:

When we were leaving Spain after Easter O’s mother gave us a few branches of a plant she calls sándalo (sandalwood) for the car ride back to Brussels. She always tries to give us something from the garden that will make the car smell good (a rose for example) and the sándalo really made the car smell nice despite us spending 14 hours in it (unlike when we go to Sweden with the boot full of smelly French / Belgian cheese for my family).

The bouquet of sándalo and a rose that we brought from Spain

O decided to put the the branches in a pot with some soil to see if we could grow our own sándalo, and it was very successful to the extent that we cut off a few shoots and brought to Sweden at the beginning of June. My mother got one shoot that she put in a pot on the summer house deck, even though my sister didn’t like the smell at all… Marianne in Älmhult and Olgakatt in northern Skåne also got one sprout each when we had a blog meeting together. Since then the plants have been growing at different rates, Marianne’s is very high but the shoots are weak so they need a support, while Olgakatt’s and our plants are more sturdy and bush-like. The difference is probably due to the fact that the stronger plants are kept outdoors while the weaker, but higher one, is indoors.

Our sándalo has maybe not received as much love and tenderness as Marianne’s in her kitchen window…

but it is blooming with purple flowers! However, compare these leaves with the ones on the first photo when the original shoots were brought from Spain – they almost don’t look like the same plant!

I have to say that the basil didn’t look very promising from the beginning – two small pots of basil in April…

but O’s basil is really enjoying the protected location on this balcony facing East

And my orchid is almost toppling over with all its heavy flowers!

Gifts from one cousin to another

It wasn’t just my sister who brought gifts for Sweet Pea, also O’s sister and niece brought presents and here are some of them:

5-year old M had chosen both the ducks (from the shop Casa) and the elephant (H&M) for her new cousin. I asked her if the elephant had a name and she told me that her name is Elly, like the elephant in Pocoyo. The ducks actually came in a set of 5 but M wanted to keep the “rosa fuchsia” one as that was her favourite

The crocheted (?) teddy bear is actually a Christmas present for myself from my mother that I got a few years ago – it was sold by the Children’s Cancer fund in Sweden and I thought that it was so cute. I have more crocheted toys from Anne-Claire Petit, a Dutch designer that I really like, and Sweet Pea will get them as well of course.

For those of you who wonder who / what Pocoyo is, check out this short film:

Pocoyo exists in different languages but we know him of course only in Spanish… Another big favourite of M’s is Caillou, which she watched every evening on Youtube. During the day she would watch cartoons in French or Dutch on the various children’s tv-channels we have. There was one cartoon that she recognised from Spain, about a handy man and his tools that can talk, can’t remember his name Handy Manny (thanks Mary T!), and he was partly speaking in Spanish even though the cartoon was in French. I guess like Dora, the Explorer, but a version for boys!?

Update: I was going to show some cute baby clothes that Sweet Pea also got from his Spanish tía (aunt) and prima (cousin) but I have problems with uploading the photos to the computer. Or rather, they get uploaded, I can look at them but then they all of a sudden disappear from the folder. When I then try to upload them again, the computer says that they already exist but they are not visible!!? Help!!

Sisterly gifts

I don’t know what happened but I wrote this post yesterday and saved it, watched some episodes of Brothers & Sisters (on dvd, 3rd season) with O and when I got back to the computer the post was EMPTY So now I am re-writing it… Very annoying!

My sister didn’t come empty handed to Brussels, and these are some of the presents she brought for me, O and Sweet Pea:

She brought several books; some were loans, some were gifts and I have already read Johan Theorin’s Blodläge (The Quarry in English), I liked it very much just like Johan’s two first books. It is set on the small, Swedish island of Öland in the Baltic and is not a typical crime novel per se. I am now reading a book by another Swedish author, Louise Boije af Gennäs (not translated into English), and I really enjoy her new book Högre än alla himlar.

The Penguin book post cards were in a box of 100 that my sister bought a few years ago and she brough the “left-overs” for me to choose some favourites. I love their classical design!

O got spices / herbs for meatballs and for “summer dishes”, actually I am usually the meatball maker in the household but maybe he should give it a try now when he has a special ingredient!

And for Sweet Pea we got two classical striped onesies / body suits (onesie is actually a trademark, but what the Americans call the “infant body suit”) from the Swedish brand Polarn O. Pyret. They have been making striped baby clothes since 1975 and me and my siblings all wore the PoP stripes as kids (and our mother as well!!). I actually found an American blog post about PoP’s children’s clothes, and the writer even quotes the classic Swedish expression: “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing”. It really sums up the Swedish attitude towards the elements, there are no excuses to not go outdoors even if it is raining cats and dogs! My Spanish sister-in-law told her daughter the other day that they couldn’t go to the playground because it would be wet after the rain…

Los patos y la tripa

I will try to update properly as soon as possible but sitting up is becoming more and more uncomfortable as the baby is pushing on my ribs. Reading book No 23 now, and all our family members have gone back to Sweden and Spain.

It’s been so nice with some company and help with the housekeeping   and everything went well with the two families meeting and even communicating a little bit. My sister has written about her Brussels visit on her blog (in Swedish, but you can always try to google translate if you don’t understand) and how she will never forget the Spanish word for duck thanks to O’s 5-year old niece M…

Los patos y la tripa (the ducks and the belly) – my sister and O’s niece playing around…

Another blogger in the family!

My sister has started blogging! She started out writing mostly about her new passion – running, but she will also write about travelling, books, films and interior design. Check out her blog (in Swedish).

And she is coming to Brussels tomorrow! Looking forward to her visit so much, and just hoping that she won’t be too bored with me as I am still spending most of my time on the sofa / bed…