Pillows – a cultural divide or gender issue?

After recovering from the excitement over the almost-disaster of buying plane tickets on-line, let’s do some pillowtalk: 

Yesterday I was checking out some posts on one of my favourite interior design web-sites; ApartmentTherapy.com, when I saw the following comment “Do Swedish people not use or need pillows?” on a post about a Swedish summerhouse and it made me think of the cultural differences of pillow use.

An American bed in Pennsylvania

In the US a bed doesn’t seem to be entirely made until it is covered in pillows and shams. Sham is another American word that I had never heard (in the bed context) until I moved to Puerto Rico! It always makes me think of a scene in Sex and the City where Charlotte and her then-husband Trey are arguing while un-making the bed, pillow by pillow (or shams?)… It is quite a funny scene, even though they are discussing the serious subject of infertility, but the whole pillow&sham situation makes it silly.

So, no wonder that the American (I presume) reader of the Swedish summerhouse post thought that the pillow-less beds looked a little bare (see bedroom photo in the post linked above)! I guess that the pillows might have been removed for the photo shoot or maybe the people owning the house don’t use pillows! In my family, both my parents sleep with very thin pillows, and I am always complaining that the pillows at home are useless (too flat).

In our summerhouse (guesthouse) we have both pillows and some decorative ”shams” – but just one on the bed and two in the sofa

When I arrived to our furnished apartment here in San Juan, one of the first things I did was remove all the decorative pillows and shams that were covering the bed! I think that I counted to 8 pieces, and I was actually a little confused – which ones stay in the bed and which are to be removed when sleeping?

Some of the pillows and shams on the floor next to the bed before I gave up and hid them in a wardrobe

Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE pillows and sometimes go under the name of “The Pillow Girl” (O’s nickname for me). I need at least three pillows – two for under my head and one to hug while sleeping. O uses one… Recently we bought new pillows (memory-foam) and I tried twice to sleep on one – but it hurt my neck as it was too high. Funny, O now uses one of the memory foam pillows even though it is higher than two of our old feather-down pillows together.

However, you can call me lazy, but I don’t want to spend 5 minutes every night removing stuff from the bed… We actually never use the bedspread (överkast), and just re-arrange the sheet (duvet when living in a cooler climate) and the pillows we sleep on in order to make the bed in the morning.

All these pillows are to be slept on – except for the “king-size” pillows behind the smaller pillows, that are used to cushion against the hard bedframe

Nevertheless, there is one place where I don’t think you can have too many pillows and it is in the sofa! The other day when Saltis and I were sitting down for a cup of tea in their sofa, she made the remark that her husband always gets annoyed with all the pillows in the sofa and throws them on the floor – O does the same!! Is it a girl thing to like pillows?? What do you think – do you also have lots of pillows in your sofa?

And a question: In which European country do you have SQUARE pillows (for the bed)? In the US there is something called Euro-sham, which measures 26″ x 26″ (66 cm x 66 cm) and I am curious where that measurement comes from? I am trying to think of the different pillows I have slept on in different countries – they all seem to have been rectangular (usually longer than the Swedish ones, which are 50 x 60 cm).   

For those of you who are interested in definitions:
Pillow: a bag or case made of cloth that is filled with feathers, down, or other soft material, and is used to cushion the head during sleep or rest
Sham: a cover or the like for giving a thing a different outward appearance: a pillow sham. A pillow sham is used for a pillow that is only decorative.
Cushion: a soft bag of cloth, leather, or rubber, filled with feathers, air, foam rubber, etc., on which to sit, kneel, or lie.
(source: Dictionary.com)

And American pillow sizes:
Standard: 50 x 66 cm (20 x 26″)
King: 50 x 91 cm (20 x 36″)
European: 66 x 66 cm (26 x 26″)

Spanish twin beds and a thin rectangular pillow can be seen on the right. I like how the chandelier is reflected on the wall in the photo. This is the room where we used to sleep, but nowadays we have our own room at O’s parents’ place.

And a funny pillow story to finish off:

In the autumn of 2002 some of my fellow masterini* and I, who happened to all live in Belgium, organised a reunion in Brussels. Among us, we managed to host everybody in our homes so nobody had to sleep in a hotel. I lived in a tiny attic apartment with a small bedroom + a sleeping loft, and we were 7 of us, so I had asked my Austrian friend T** to bring a mattress, since he was driving from The Hague.

The friends that I were hosting arrived from different corners of Europe, and T was a little late as usual. When he unpacked his car I asked him about the mattress. He said “Oh, I decided to not bring a mattress, but I brought my pillow“!! Well, the pillow was big (square when I think about it!) but a little small to sleep on, so I guess he wasn’t that comfortable during the two nights he stayed at my place… But as the saying goes “as you make your bed, you must lie in it”!  That he was utterly shocked by the fact that we were two Swedish girls and one Swedish guy sharing the sofa bed is another story 

*) Nickname for the students who have studied my Master’s programme in Venice – it really should be masteroni after graduation but the Italian diminutive just stuck..
**) Austrian T was the one who took over my apartment in Brussels when I moved to Puerto Rico – but he has since then moved back to Vienna.

Shopping tip for New York City…

… while O and I celebrate – not Halloween, but our WD…

This is my favourite shop in NYC – as I am a sucker for interior design and fun stuff for the kitchen!

Fishs Eddy entrance with old glove models

Fishs Eddy on Broadway, two blocks north of Union Square (exact address is 889, Broadway @ 19th Street).

I found lots of Xmas present ideas, including one very cool one for my father, but since he seems to be reading the blog with more and more regularity, I won’t show you that just yet…

The Floorplan plates come in different sizes – from studios to big “Upper East side apartments”

The Floorplan plate design is one of my favourites, the slogan is “Why rent, when you can own“. To thank Saltis and her family for hosting me during my NYC trip, I gave them a “bigger apartment” as they would like to have one more bedroom. Earlier this autumn my brother and his girlfriend got a floorplan plate as a house-warming gift from my sister and I.

The shop is full of old and new china, as well as cutlery (silver- or flatware in American) and quirky NYC souvenirs. Perfect for finding a gift that is a little different and not very expensive!

Vintage china from closed-down restaurants and hotels…

Read about the history behind Fishs Eddy here. The shop was named after an actual place in New York State.

Two new homes!

Not for us though, but for my brother and his girlfriend, as well as for my Latvian* sister Z and her family!

After having lived at home with their respective parents for the last 1½ months, my brother and girlfriend I finally got the keys to their new house today!! I am so happy and excited for them, and just wish that I could be there to help them move this weekend. The new home is a one-level 1950’s house with basement – so cute and with lots of potential. It is situated in a part of town that I don’t know at all, but I am looking forward to discovering it in January when we plan to go home for a few weeks. However, I already know their neighbours, as our Bosnian friends live across the street.  

It is funny that my brother D is moving back to our hometown, as he left home in 1997 to work in Scotland and has lived in Lund since his return to Sweden. He actually bought a new apartment in Lund last year and was quite happy there. Then he met his girlfriend who works in another corner of Skåne (the region) and all of a sudden the old hometown was perfectly located between their two work places.

The new house seen from the garden

Another house with potential is the house that Z and her family are moving to, from No 26  to No 9 on the same street! A huge house (3 levels) from the 1920’s with lots of original details – including the bathrooms. They have already started the renovations (maybe the bathrooms?) but I don’t know how much will have been finalised before the move. Z mentioned something about not having a functional kitchen yet… Luckily the Latvian-Swedish couple has lots of experience of renovating homes, both in Latvia and Sweden!

* In case somebody had missed that I have a Latvian sister: the background is that my family hosted Z when she came to Sweden as an exchange student in 1992-93, and she became like a new family member = my Latvian sister! She used to complain that our town was so small and boring compared to Riga, but look who ended up moving back a few years ago    

Priorities change, and I guess that the low[er] house prices might have played a part in the where-to-live-decision-making, for both couples. Being able to afford a house with a garden and to have walking distance to services, including the train station, might be more important than cool nightlife… I know that my brother will miss the Friday beers at The Bishop’s Arms in Lund though, but the pub is only a 12-minute train-ride away!

My brother’s and girlfriend’s basement has a lot of potential – notice the fireplace, but this is how un-cosy it looked when the previous owners lived there.

I wish both couples all the best in their new homes and fingers crossed that O and I will be the next couple to buy a house, even if it won’t be in the same town…

Furniture compromise and bargains

O and I are not always agreeing on interior design, which I guess could be expected considering that he is from Spain and I am from Sweden… The interior design taste differs greatly between these two very-far-apart-European countries (2,375 km to be precise between Zaragoza and Eslöv). But, like in many other aspects of relationships / marriages, you sometimes need to compromise when deciding how to furnish your home.

Potter Barn dining table that we bought in September last year with a 60% discount (display model)

O likes dark, leather and glass, while I like white, fabrics and well, most glass tables I hate – who wants to sit and look at knees while having dinner?! I guess O has a very masculine taste, and mine is more feminine… However, I can’t make up my mind what I think about dark furniture – I do think it can really look really nice against white walls and lots of white fabric, but I don’t want it too look bulky and oppressive. Leather I am not so fond of, in the winter it is cold, in the summer sweaty… But then again, it is very practical and more stain-resistent than white textiles.  

Costco Bookshelf – more full of books now than when I took the photo last year…

So far, it might look like I have compromised a little more than O, at least when you look at the photos of the furniture we have bought in Puerto Rico. However, I am biding my time… after all these pieces of dark furniture, it is time for some white! I am hoping for a white sofa, mind you with removable and washable covers, and maybe some white bookshelves to compliment the big, dark one.

San Juan Club chair – it really is its name! You can see our Pottery Barn table in the background – the other pieces of furniture are not ours (chairs, and Chinese side table)

Yesterday we bought two leather armchairs in Costco, they were half price from when we saw them two weeks ago (and we thought they were cheap already then)! I think that the model has a cool name (San Juan Club chair), a nice dark brown colour and not too bulky – they will look really nice next to a sofa with a white fabric cover…

Have you compromised when it comes to furnishing your home? Would you say that any possible differences between you and your partner are due to gender or culture?

Dreaming of a home of our own

On Saturday O and I found a dream apartment… in Brussels!

It had a small terrace overlooking the Park, 400 metres from a metro stop, including a garage (box fermé as it is called in Brussels), a small kitchen that needed refurbishing but already with a double-sink (Hallelujah!!), a huge living room with big windows in two directions and two bed rooms. We immediately tried to call friends in Brussels, could somebody help us check the place out? Maybe O’s brother could get a Ryanair ticket from Zaragoza to look at it…

This morning we found out that the place was already sold – of course! When things seem too good to be true, they usually are… Obviously somebody was quicker than us to react and scooped up a lovely apartment with lots of potential…

An empty kitchen just when I had moved in (2003). I shared the apartment with a French friend for a while before she moved upstairs to the attic flat just above (when she moved out, my boss moved in – upstairs, not with me, but that’s another story)

I got this outdoor set of table and chairs from a Spanish friend who was leaving Brussels when I needed furniture for the kitchen (my flatmate brought the old table with her when she left). Another Spanish friend broke one of the chairs, and I think O might have broken the other one… Spanish men are heavy!?

When O moved in with me, in early 2007, he made this extra counter space from two Ikea Bekväm tables and a spare counter top from the bargain corner.

The bed room just when I had moved in, 2003

My bed room in 2005 – with my cuddly seal called Umbrella on the bed!

While I continue searching for our future home in Brussels, a few things strike me:

• If apartment ads were half as staged as the Swedish ones, you could actually see how the place looks like instead of focusing on open cupboard doors, dirty laundry, unmade beds and other blurry images of the objects for sale
• Does anybody actually cook in Brussels? If the kitchens have been renovated in the last 30 years, it is with shoddy materials, no sense of practicality or planning…
• Can anybody work as a real estate agent in Belgium? There is a myriad of companies (and their photos don’t look a single bit more professional than those of the individuals who pose their ads on immoweb.be*) that don’t seem very professional or serious. Sometimes you will see the same apartment for sale by 4-5 different agents. Different angles on the photos but still all as bad…

Some of you might remember a similar, an equally ranting post about apartments in Spain… scarily almost exactly a year ago (28th August)! Scary, because we are in exactly the same situation as a year ago, not knowing too much about the future and I keep surfing the internet to look at apartments and dreaming of a home of our own…

An interesting looking tile job on the bathroom walls – compare with the kitchen wall.

Living room in 2003 – the red colour was really not by choice, I don’t even like red and prefer blue. However, the cheapest Beddinge sofa bed was sold in red, and then I found a cheap red and white rug… Later on I bought a white corduroy cover for the sofa and a white carpet, definitely more my style!

Dining room when I had bought a proper dining table! The same coat is in THREE of the photos and illustrate the lack of a place to hang coats by the front door. My father finally put up a few hooks behind the door in the dining room (see the photo below, the coats can be seen through the glass in the door).

The dining room later on became the living room… but I don’t seem to have any photos of that arrangement.

The photos are from my old apartment in Brussels – not staged and I would never try to sell an apartment with them! Obviously this was before my blogging days, as I have hardly any photos of my home without people in them. I was just thinking that it was a pity that I didn’t take photos of the rooms before we moved, it would have been nice to have as a memory, when I thought of my father’s photos (on a server that I can access remotely)… Every time my parents came to visit, my dear father seemed to have taken photos of my home! (some of them are mine though) 

This is the kind of photo people would post on the internet when trying to sell their home – you don’t see anything of the kitchen, just all the stuff… O and I had so much food and kitchen utensils, as you can see. Maybe that’s why I don’t have many photos of the last 8 months in the apartment – it was just too full of things and furniture when O had moved in!

*) The equivalent of hemnet.se in Sweden. A website to find houses and apartments for rent and sale in all of Belgium – both for real estate agents and individuals selling their homes without the “help” (??) of a professional.

An indoor summer project

Not a summer without a project! Last year the decoration of the new summer house and fixing of the [old] shed were on the to-do list, and we did so well that a carpenter remarked to my father that he didn’t understand why we had put in old doors in a new shed! My father had to explain that the whole building is old and that we didn’t paint the doors as we might change them for new ones. This summer we decided to make the huge deck between the main house and guest house a little more cosy… I will show you photos from that project another day because I thought that it was time for a post about our hot but productive week in Spain in July.

My mother-in-law (MIL) put the thermometer outside the window during the hottest day and was very excited when it showed 49 degrees (only 45 on the photo though)! However, it was right smack in the sun and it only goes up to 50 C so I am sure that it was even hotter… And of course you measure temperatures in the shade…

The weather in Aragón is really extreme, it seems that I am either really cold or terribly hot when we visit O’s parents… Probably because we either come in winter or summer, instead of spring or autumn*. I don’t know if it is only due to the weather, but we always tend to be indoors - in the summer it is too hot, and in the winter too cold to go outside! This summer we had the hottest temperatures so far (35-45 degrees Celsius, that’s 95-113 Fahrenheit), and one day we were actually just a few kilometers away from the hottest place in Spain (I think it was 47 degrees!). The very uncomfortable thing about the weather was that the wind was hot as well, so the breeze made the temperatures raise, instead of being refreshing. Anyway, it was just as well that it was too hot to be outside, since we had an indoor project to tend to: 

Before emptying the “empty” room…

O’s mother and sister had had the brilliant idea that maybe O and I should get our own room in the house! So far we have been taking over the room that O and his younger brother JI used to share (two single beds), and since brother C has replaced the two single beds in the room he and brother MA used to share with a double bed, it means that poor JI doesn’t have anywhere to sleep when all of us are visiting (sister E has her own room)**. However, the grandparents’ old room had been “empty” (there is no such thing as an empty space in my parents-in-laws’ home) for the last 10 years or so, and even though it is a tiny room, it would be perfect for us. To have our own space, where we can unpack, close the door (the room we’ve been using so far has a balcony which my MIL uses for hanging laundry, which she does every 2 seconds…), sleep in the same bed (warmer in the winter, not so comfortable in the summer) and have some privacy sounded like heaven to me!

Belive it or not, but I had never been inside this room before. I think that O once opened the door to show it to me… We started by clearing out the furniture, old Ikea boxes (from C’s remake of his room), old suitcases etc. I liked some of the old pieces of furniture in the room, but unfortunately they were not very practical for the space.

The big wardrobe had to go. I like old furniture but a dark, bulky wardrobe just didn’t fit in the small space. However, nothing is thrown away in this household, so we might be able to use it somewhere else…

The walls had to be painted, and despite my MIL’s suggestion of painting the ceiling “salmon” and FIL’s idea of light blue, we stuck to white for both the walls and ceiling. Painting was an interesting experience; the wardrobe was still in the small room, it was extremely hot, the flies were very annoying and my FIL didn’t believe that we needed to cover the floor “let’s just clean it afterwards”… I still tried to move the one newspaper that we had to wherever spot O and his father were painting for protection.  

The painting done! I wasn’t entirely convinced about the old chandelier in the ceiling, but it’s nice to have something that is not from Ikea and it kind of looks cool against all the white and clean, simple lines of the furniture

Once the painting was done, the room was measured and we drove to Zaragoza to buy furniture. The bed had already been purchased, and was actually the reason for the whole project. O’s father had bought the bed for the master bedroom but it was too long (despite being only 1.90 m instead of the [Swedish] standard of 2 m) and made the opening of the wardrobes impossible. That was when the women in the family had the idea of letting us have the bed in the ”empty” room! However, we would have the same issue with fitting a wardrobe, and sliding doors were not really an option (still taking up too much space). After 6 hours in Ikea and a meatball lunch, computer designing of the room with the help of an Ikea programme, checking out the bargains in O’s favourite Ikea spot - the “coin de bonnes affaires” (bargain corner, we still use the French expression from our Ikea sessions in Brussels), lots of wardrobe pieces and meeting up with the Swedish girl L who works in Ikea in Zaragoza, we headed back home with all our flat packages…

Assembling an Ikea wardrobe in small space is not the easiest

Even though I had told my MIL that I didn’t want to sleep under a “puente” (bridge) (as I have a reoccurring nightmare of the ceiling falling on top of me while sleeping), we did decide that hanging [kitchen] cabinets on the wall across the bed would be the best use of the space. O spent a full day securing the cabinets to the wall and the high wardrobes on either side of the bed, so hopefully we won’t get crushed in our sleep by falling furniture…

Handyman in action

Despite the Ikea Family offer of 20% off the Hemnes furniture in black, we decided to go for all white to make a lighter, less crowded impression. White Pax wardrobes with white doors, white Hemnes storage bench (but a black Hemnes mirror), and colourful striped Kajsa accessories fit the bill.

Almost done! We chose to have a low storage bench instead of a chest of drawers at the opposite wall to the bed since the room is so small and it is practical to have somewhere to put a suitcase

The assembling of of the wardrobes took longer than expected, and we needed to go back to Ikea for a second round of shopping, so in the end the room was not finished until the last evening. At least we got one night’s sleep in the new room, and it is waiting for us when we come for Christmas!

Done!

Of course we are not entirely done yet, a curtain decision needs to be taken (with or without curtains is the question!), a mosquitero (mosquito net) needs to be installed, bedside lamps to be installed and we are planning to enlarge and frame some photos to put on the walls. Maybe a narrow picture ledge under the so-called “bridge” for mobilephones, keys, alarm clock etc and the big mirror needs to be hung. It will be put next to the window as there’s a need for a full-length mirror in the house. I would have preferred the mirror opposite the window to make the room feel bigger…

Next year’s project – to clean the backyard and cut down the dead parts of the old apple (?) tree. I’m hoping that we can save the fig tree that is in there somewhere…

Our to-do list for this summer was too long, and we only managed to do our room but hopefully next year when we live in Brussels, we will have more opportunities to go to Spain. We are hoping to clean the backyard (photo above), the plan is to have an outdoor space with a table and some chairs, so that we could actually spend some time outside when it is not too hot! The apartment where O’s grandmother used to live a few blocks away from the parents’ house also needs a remake, as well her house in another village… Actually the list is neverending, but it is fun with projects!!

*) Which is actually not entirely true, I have been twice to Spain for Easter, i.e spring but it’s been cold and I only brought “spring clothes”. The short visit in October 2007 before our wedding was probably the most enjoyable, temperaturewise at least!

**) Did you follow that? O has 3 brothers and one sister; the brothers were sharing bedrooms two and two, and the sister had her own room. The oldest brother MA lives permanently in the village with his wife and son so he doesn’t need a place to sleep in the parents’ home, but the others still need a bed when visiting from Zaragoza or abroad.

Friday theme / Show & tell: Inspiration

The last Friday theme from Musikanta is quite simply “inspiration“, which is quite fitting since I feel that I have been lacking in the inspiration department lately… All kinds of inspiration has been missing from my life; blogging, studying, exercising, emailing, cleaning, ironing, cooking I guess most of us go through these periods of lack of inspiration, or maybe I should call it motivation?

I am struggling to find the inspiration / motivation again, but knowing that I am going home to visit my family and friends in Sweden (+ France and Spain) in one month’s time is inspiring! I will be in Europe for one month and I can’t wait to spend the summer with everybody again. Not that I didn’t enjoy our 2-month stay in Europe in January – March but going home in the summer is so different!

Nevertheless, planning travels actually always inspire me… Maybe that’s why I have been unmotivated lately – there hasn’t been any trip to plan since we came back to Puerto Rico at the end of March!?

Narrow staircases in a triplex apartment in Brussels (triplex = three floors)

What more inspires me? Well, I very interested in interior design and I am impatient for O and I to get our own home – hopefully very soon in the future! At the moment we live in a furnished apartment, and we don’t actually own a lot of furniture anymore since we sold most of it when we left Europe.

Typical Brussels gardens / backyards

We are more and more thinking that it will be Brussels we return to, probably in mid-December. And we are actually considering buying a home there. However, the location of our re-relocation is not really up to us to choose, but rather where O and his company can find him a job position… Fingers crossed that we will know soon where our future is going to take place!

A French-Greek livingroom in Brussels – I love their rug (Kibäck from Ikea)!

So, I am day-dreaming about a future home in a Brussels apartment or house with high ceilings, stucco, fire places (usually not working), double doors and narrow staircases… A terrace or a garden is a must, and preferably parking as well. It might sound like an impossible wish list in they eyes of people who live in other European capitals but really, in Brussels the only requirement that is almost impossible to attain is parking!

A terrace in Brussels is usually just the roof of an extension (with or without protective railings), like this terrace, as well as on top of the multi-coloured part of the neighbouring building where some flower pots are visible.

While I try to imagine how our place will look like, I read interior design books and magazines, check out design web-sites such as Apartment Therapy and look at my photos of my friends’ apartments in Brussels. My Irish friend MT used to keep a very inspiring blog about interior design – you can still check it out, but it is unfortunately not being updated anymore.

A Swedish-Cypriot home in Brussels with beautiful double doors, wooden floors and a fireplace (to the left).
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My participation in the Friday theme / Show & tell has been a little sporadic lately, mostly due to the lack of inspiration but also because it seems like the initial idea which was Show & tell has been somewhat lost on the way since December 2007 when it started. AuroraBuddha in Texas, a Swedish expat, took the intiative of Show & tell which was not even called Friday theme, the weekday just happened to be Friday. A definition of Show & tell can be found on Wikipedia where it is explained that it is quite a common phenomenon in American schools where children are usually asked to bring something from home to talk about.

To find inspiration for the Show & tell I enjoy trying to find photos, either old ones or newly taken pictures, to illustrate the Friday theme. I don’t want to sound conservative and reactionary (bakåtsträvare) but I hope that we will be able to return to the show-part of the Friday theme! Annika in Virginia and Desiree in Alabama have written up (in Swedish) some good “rules” about the participation in the Show & tell today. The most important thing is to interact with the other bloggers; check the other blogs and comment, and answer the comments that you get on your blog. I know that I haven’t always checked all the other participants’ blogs but as I know that it is a reciprocal thing I hope to be more diligent in the future!

Annika and Desiree have chosen the themes for June, and I hope that many of you will feel inspired by them:
5th June: Blue & yellow
12th June: half-year check-up (show one photo per month from your photo folders January-June (6 photos in total) and tell something about the background)
19th June: Summerday / Summer evening
26th June: The light of the city

The other Friday / Show & tell bloggers can be found below:
Anki, Anna, Annika, Christel, Curieux, Desiree, Emma, Erica, IamAnnika, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Lena W, Leopardia, Mais-oui, Marie, Mia D, Millan, Minerva, Moster Mjölgumpa, Musikanta, Nilla, Norrsken & Stjärnfall, Petra H, Saltis, Sara, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, Under Ytan, Victoria V and Västmanländskan.

Details from a home

It is always nice to come home after a long absence. To unpack, do laundry, organise, sleep in your own bed, have long showers, stock up on food, meet up with friends and get updated, and settle back into those daily routines and habits…

The new pen holders (mugs) in the Swedish colours

Two semi-naked women in our bathroom, Venus from Milo (?) I saved from my paternal grandfather’s house when he sold it in 1989, and the photo is from Parc Royal in Brussels. The bracelet is from one of the -stan countries in Central Asia and was given to me by one of my best friends

The last few days I have noticed details in our home that I never really paid attention to before… These are the details that make this apartment our home despite it being rented and mainly furnished by someone else…

Two shells I bought in Chesapeake Bay in Virginia last year

My beach collection is kept in an old glass jar for olives

In another glass jar I have collected corks from wine bottles…

My maternal grandfather drew this picture when he was 12 years old – I really like it despite the simple lines

On the home note, isn’t it interesting that in Latin languages the most common word for home is house (casa / maison)? The Spanish also have the word hogar which means hearth (fireplace).

An Italian bread apron that my parents gave me many years ago when they had visited Italy – nobody could have guessed then that I would live in Italy for a year and even visit Ferrara (where the bread in the picture is from)

Our stainless steel fridge & freezer is not magnetic so I had to find another place to put up our magnets from Canada, Spain, Belgium and Sweden

Cinnamon sticks from Cyprus – decoration and for cooking

At Zaventem, the Brussels’ airport there is a message saying Welcome home in various European languages – it always makes me smile and feel like I am really coming home.

My collection of icons from Russia, and Greece (Meteora) plus San Antonio, the patron saint of Padova where I studied (I never got around to actually check out his tongue (relic) in the cathedral though)!

My great great grandmother, or my maternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother (mormors mormor) made this rug which now covers the floor in our kitchen

Some of my many cds (some of them might be O’s cds) – one of our cd shelves was smashed in the move and O’s Easter project is to rebuild it!

Why don’t you show me which details make your house / apartment your home? Take out the camera and start taking photos of those small things that mean something to you!

An autumn photo of a Santa Barbara vineyard and an orange Atoll candle holder

I have many memories of my maternal grandparents old duvet (orange / red) and even though I have much nicer feather-down duvets I keep holding on to this one! Obviously, it is far too hot to use a duvet in Puerto Rico

Friday theme / Show & tell: If I won 10 million…

Last Friday of March and Erica’s last Friday theme is: If you won 10 million [Swedish crowns] – what would you do? What is the absolute first thing you would do?

At first I thought that I would of course do what many others have already mentioned – pay off debts (student debts in my case), travel and maybe buy a home. But I wanted to show some photos, it is after all show and tell, and then I knew what I would do:

I would use the money to renovate some of the old buildings in Spain – in O’s village there are just far too many crumbling houses and it makes my heart bleed to see how they are not taken care of. Instead people build new buildings next to the derelict ones!

Not a very good photo to illustrate the decay but on the right there used to be a building – now there is just a wall

This house is in relatively good shape, at least from the outside… I love the green shutters

But this is very often how the buildings look – crumbling facades and half-ruins

I would buy this old factory building and maybe turn it into a hotel / Bed & Breakfast – no stress about profit if I have won 10 million!

The old palace had been crumbling for years and O recalls playing in the ruins as a child – it is now beautifully renovated and houses a restaurant, bar and hotel. That would be the model for my renovations!

This area of Spain is very beautiful with mountains (snow-covered in winter -usually until Easter) and valleys scattered with villages and almond & olive groves

There is an orchard behind the gate along the small stream - I’d like to have an orchard of my own!

I would grow olives, almonds, apples, figs…

 
And maybe build a little hut in the middle of the orchard, where I could cook lunch, have a siesta when the sun gets too hot, and have barbeques with friends

You can always dream… Have a great weekend everyone!

The other Friday theme participants can be found here:
Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Christel, Desiree, Emma, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Jennie, Lena, Lena W, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Marskatten, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Moster Mjölgumpa, Musikanta, Nilla, Petra H, Saltis, Sara, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, Under Ytan, Victoria, Victoria V and Västmanländskan.

Trying to create a Christmas atmosphere in the Caribbean (Part I)

Already 4th of December and we put up our new fake Christmas tree yesterday. I finally found all the decorations or should I say ornaments    from Brussels packed away in the only box I hadn’t looked in. We hadn’t realised that the multi-coloured lights included more than red and green (the tree was not lit up in the store), we also have purple and yellow lights – yikes! Oh well, it’s a very American style kitsch tree but it looks good in the corner with the windows overlooking the ocean! I’ll take a photo tonight…

Annika has written a post on Christmas music, which reminded me of my all time favourite Christmas song; Fairytale of New York with The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. Click on the above link to read more about it, apparently I am not the only one who thinks that it is the best song for the holidays*! I could easily put this song on repeat for an hour or so… maybe I’ll do it now when I am home alone :D

My favourite memory of this song is not holiday related but in January 2001 I was travelling by bus from Sarajevo to Tuzla in Bosnia with my fellow students from the master’s programme, and Irish girl O and Scottish guy E started singing this song for some reason… They did it so well (their accents were perfect for the song), that it gave me goose bumps and everytime I hear the song, I think of that bus trip. [And how the bus driver heated up the frozen brakes with dipping a piece of fabric in the petrol tank, setting fire to it and putting it underneath the bus  - we discreetly tried to walk as far from the vehicle as possible!]

Read the lyrics, maybe not too much Christmas spirit at the end… And watch it on this link (do you spot Matt Dillon in the beginning?) – unfortunately my internet connection is not fast enough to watch it properly but I have the song on the cd Absolute Christmas.

Fairytale of New York by The Pogues 

 

It was Christmas eve babe

In the drunk tank

An old man said to me, won’t see another one

And then he sang a song

The Rare Old Mountain Dew

I turned my face away

And dreamed about you

 

Got on a lucky one

Came in eighteen to one

I’ve got a feeling

This year’s for me and you

So Happy Christmas

I love you baby

I can see a better time

When all our dreams come true

 

They’ve got cars big as bars

They’ve got rivers of gold

But the wind goes right through you

It’s no place for the old

When you first took my hand

On a cold Christmas Eve

You promised me

Broadway was waiting for me

 

You were handsome

You were pretty

Queen of New York City

When the band finished playing

They howled out for more

Sinatra was swinging,

All the drunks they were singing

We kissed on a corner

Then danced through the night

 

The boys of the NYPD choir

Were singing Galway Bay

And the bells were ringing out

For Christmas Day

 

You’re a bum

You’re a punk

You’re an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot

You cheap lousy faggot

Happy Christmas your arse

I pray God it’s our last

 

 

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

You took my dreams from me

When I first found you

I kept them with me babe

I put them with my own

Can’t make it all alone

I’ve built my dreams around you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*) Is the favourite Christmas song of Cliff Richard, Jack McMorrow, Matt Dillon, Dermot O’Leary, Pete Doherty, Ricky Olarenshaw, Carl Barat, Bob Geldof, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Tim Hames, Sue Johnstone and The Office creators, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, with Gervais even going as far to say, when covering Jonathan Ross’ BBC Radio 2 show on Christmas eve 2005; “The best Christmas Song ever and one of the best songs ever – it’s just brilliant” (from Wikipedia).