Happy fab year!

I know it’s a bit late, already two weeks have passed of 2012 but here’s a new year’s greeting from Swedish designer Therese Sennerholt. I hope we will all have a fabulous year!

Looking for Xmas

This year I haven’t decorated much for the holidays as we are celebrating Christmas in Spain and we are actually already leaving today. It means that I have only spent 4 days in Brussels this month! However, I couldn’t stop myself from bringing out a few decorations anyway…

My plan is to try to make O’s parents’ home cosy for the holidays, especially as it is V’s first Christmas even if he won’t remember it… And to do some baking, maybe together with O’s 5-year old niece.

Glögg from 2006. It tasted ok, probably because it is 12% alcohol… Why do we have 5 year old glögg? Well, we bought it for a glögg party in 2006, didn’t finish all the bottles and then put them in storage when we moved to Puerto Rico!

I really like this angel light from Ikea (sold out it seems!), which I use as a night light by the bed. V doesn’t like the pacifier, and keeps spitting it out – I guess that I shouldn’t insist.

Xmas socks that I will wear in bed in Spain – it is cold in O’s parents’ house!

An elk or reindeer that we got a few years ago from my parents

Lights from Ikea in the hall

Oven gloves and a tea towel

V will have to wait at least another two years before I prepare the advent calendar with small gifts

The Ikea bag is filled with Xmas gifts and other stuff that we are bringing to Spain

Merry Christmas!

About time: getting a home!

You could say that it is about time that we get a “real” home in Brussels since we arrived back here from Puerto Rico at the beginning of April 2010! I know that most people have lost track of our moves so let me remind you:

Moving from Brussels, August 2007

• the first few weeks, April 2010: we lived in hotels and with friends
• May – June 2010: apartment-hotel paid by O’s company
• June 2010 – July 2011: renting our friend’s small studio apartment – it was supposed to be for just a few months…
• July – August 2011: Borrowing the apartment of our Swedish friends
• September – November 2011: sharing the apartment of our Flemish friends with them. They are mostly living in Stockholm…
• November 2011 – August 2012: we are going to rent the apartment of our Swedish friends, in other words we are moving back to the place where we lived this summer.

Moving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 2010

It is still not a permanent home but we are still hoping to find a place to buy and now we have another few months to search for our dream (?) home. The best thing about this move is that we are getting all our belongings out of storage, including those things that we left behind when moving to Puerto Rico. We haven’t seen them since August 2007!

Baby stuff

Our home is slowly being taken over by V’s stuff – laundry drying (opps, just saw a wet pile that I have forgotten to hang up!!), changing mat (it is warmer in the living room than in the bed room and no space in the bath room), breast pump (ok, that one is mine!), bottles of vitamins, bibs, a nursing pillow, the BabyBjörn, parts of the pram etc. However, from next week V will actually have a room of his own as we are moving this weekend! I can’t wait to decorate and furnish his room…

Here are some of the cuter of V’s belongings:

The bird plays a melody, and moves its wings and eyes – my siblings and I used to look at it when our mother changed our nappies! Japanese quality that still works perfectly!

As I didn’t know that my parents had found the above bird, O and I bought a toy that plays a melody for V… cute but not as retro cool as the red bird!

Oscar the Rabbit, Sophie the Giraffe and … an Ikea “animal” that V got for free when we went to Ikea a few weeks ago.

The lack of nesting…

Since we are in temporary accommodation, sharing our friends’ apartment with them on and off (as they also live in Stockholm) until mid-November, I haven’t been able to do any of that famous nesting that pregnant women are prone to do before giving birth… It is kind of frustrating, because pregnant or not, I am a typical Cancer (the starsign, not that I am into astrology that much) and I love making my home cosy, personal and comfortable. I will just have to wait a few more months before unpacking and nesting in the apartment where we can live until September next year (same apartment where we lived for two months this summer).

This is what our room looks like at the moment, we have decided to not assemble the baby’s crib until he is born (it’s under the bed in a flat package at the moment) and all the baby stuff is still packed away in boxes.

Space for the crib… We will remove the weird-looking hanger in the corner as well as the Ikea bags that are full of sheets and towels

My messy side of the bed… magazines on the floor [and different papers and documents that I actually removed for the photo op 😉 ]

Literature to pass the time… books on child-rearing and novels lent / given to me by generous blog friends

I like the fact that we are sleeping in the same kind of bed as when we first lived together in Brussels… Our friends have four (!!) sets of the same bed frame and I might ask them to sell one of them to us if we ever have a big enough guest bedroom

There is a lack of storage space and it looks very messy with plastic bags on the floor and random stuff on the shelves… I will try to get some order there next week

Most of the baby stuff is kept in these two Ikea boxes in the living room

Sewing project: A Spanish / Scanian / Belgian quilt

I had a sewing project for this summer that never took off, mostly because I have been lacking textiles: I wanted to sew a quilt for our little baby in the colours of Spain, Skåne (Scania – my region in Sweden) and Belgium. It just happens that the three flags have red and yellow in common, plus black for the Belgian flag.

The three colours needed for the quilt – I was thinking maybe 45% red, 45% yellow and 10% black…

Also, because I was confined to the house for the whole summer it was impossible for me to go fabric hunting. When my parents came to visit, my mother brought a pile of left-over textiles from my childhood, and my dear Peruvian friend M in Puerto Rico sent me some unicoloured fabrics but I really need more yellow and black pieces. I looked in Ikea last weekend but they had NO yellow or black fabrics at all. Actually the shelves were very empty, I guess that they are waiting for the new collection to arrive…

As a child I used to have some piece of clothing (a dress most probably?) that my mother made from this fabric

My mother sewed a red quilt for me when I was a baby and this was one of the fabrics she used

The red & white flowery textile is actually a scarf that matches a little apron that I got for Christmas one year, and my brother got a blue & white set 😉

The old [faded on one side] curtains from my room in my childhood home. The wallpaper was white with red stripes and my mother got the inspiration for the curtains from the (then) newly built Post Office in the village – those curtains were brown and white and she really liked the textile. My brother’s room had the same wallpaper but with blue stripes and you can probably guess what the curtains looked like*!

So, if you have any left-over yellow or black fabrics (preferably in cotton), please think of me and my quilt project! As you can see from the ones I already have, the textiles don’t need to be unicoloured as it is actually more interesting with a pattern. I will probably have to ask my mother to help me sew the quilt as I might be a bit busy over the next few months…

This is the only fabric I have found myself, when I was back home in Sweden in the beginning of June (from Åhléns)

My sister and my mother found this yellow & white fabric that I really like as it matches the blue & white clouds on the box that they bought for Sweet Pea’s toys… The textile is a copy of the classic Swedish cloud design below:

The original cloud design, by Gunila Axén from 1967. I have actually just ordered the original cloud fabric in black and white on-line today!

*) It’s funny how all through our childhood my brother would get the blue stuff and I the red things – maybe that’s why I love blue so much nowadays, especially for interior, because I was denied it as a child!? 😉

First September Weekend

I wonder, will this be the month that our little Sweet Pea will be born? We have seven birthdays in September, six of them between the 6th and the 12th September including my father-in-law’s and O’s… However, it seems like “everybody” is convinced that the baby won’t arrive until after his due date, the 7th October, except the doctor and I! Nevertheless, we are much more relaxed about me moving around since we have now reached 35 full weeks, which means that the lungs of the baby should be fully developed and therefore there is no big risk if he arrives now.

One out of three textile boxes for baby stuff (from Ikea)

O was wondering why I got even more of these practical paper boxes and I told him that as we don’t have a chest of drawers in our current home (until November), we need to keep the baby’s clothes somewhere… At the moment all the baby stuff fits into two bigger boxes of the same design (Ikea) but they don’t fit in our room.

So, this past weekend we have been doing some excursions: on Saturday to Ikea (of course) for a traditional meatball lunch and getting some provisions, and then to the scary Baby2000 – a huge baby shop where you can buy everything from 1000 EUR prams to automatic swing chairs, 500 EUR cribs and a so-called tummy tickle monitor that registers the baby’s breathing while sleeping! No, we didn’t get any of the above, we are happy with the 69 EUR crib that my parents offered us, and we will borrow a pram from one of my colleagues. However, I did get a nursing pillow that is supposed to be supportive while sleeping in those last few weeks / months of pregnancy, then useful as a breast-feeding support and eventually as a sitting aid for the baby.

The big sausage-like nursing pillow – I let O choose the colour (I would have bought the dark blue cover) and he seems to be completely obsessed with this shade of green lately.. I don’t know if I have the wrong technique or just that my bump is too small but I can’t find a comfortable position sleeping with this thing!

After the very small shopping spree, we had fika with our Swedish friends who lent us their apartment during the summer. O spoke to their neighbour, one of those ladies who know most about everybody in the building, as she had told me that there might be an apartment for sale in the near future… As our friends and I have already experienced, O had some problems finishing the conversation with her but eventually we were able to go home 😉

Our lunch yesterday at Gaudron – O had a sweet meal; a cappuccino and a basket of bread and jams, while I had a savoury lunch consisting of a Club sandwich and home-made lemonade (without sugar)…

Yesterday we did a trial run driving to the hospital and now we know which way NOT to take and which motorway exit NOT to take! As you can imagine, I was very happy that we did this before the big day! Afterwards we had a late lunch in a café / bakery close to our old apartment. We have been trying to eat there several times but have always arrived too late (they close quite early, 19.00 but stop serving food at around 17.00). Gaudron is a nice place, although a bit expensive but that’s what you get in that area of town! Before heading home we went back to the old studio apartment to get some more of our belongings, such as warmer clothes for the autumn. No, we still haven’t emptied our former home and it is something that needs to be done asap so that our friend and landlord can rent it out to somebody else…

I think that the prices are a bit hefty at Gaudron – 20 EUR for a plat du jour (today’s dish) or 14 EUR for a plate of pasta but the place has a nice atmosphere…

One of the things we picked up from the old apartment, a mobile I bought in Wadi Rum, Jordan in 2006. I hope that the baby will like camels! 🙂

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!

Looking for a brewery and a canal…

My mother is most probably coming to Brussels next week to keep me company while O goes to India. It makes me think of the last time my parents came to visit us, in October last year. They had one wish each, my mother wanted to see a canal and my father wanted to visit a brewery. So, we decided to take them to Affligem as we have a friend who lives nearby and it is a nice area close to Brussels (can’t remember if it has a canal though).

It says “Stop the night noise!” on the posters, I guess the neighbours are tired of drunken people in the streets…

Off we went, O and my father in the front of the car, my mother and I in the back, and the GPS in the middle… We left Brussels and got on the outer ring (motorway), where I expected O to turn towards Ghent but he was following the GPS instructions and continued driving on the ring. I questioned his decision but he trusted the GPS more and didn’t want to listen to the back-seat driver. It is true that we hadn’t been in Affligem for years and maybe the GPS knew a better way!?

Interesting way of displaying art – in the windows for passers-by to see instead of making it visible from inside the apartment

Eventually the machine told O to turn off the ring and head towards Antwerp, which he did while I kept saying that I thought that we were not going in the right direction. At the same time, I didn’t want to insist too much and make it into a typical husband – wife discussion (which is very, very rare that we ever have!) in front of my parents. Anyway, when we were almost in Antwerp, O finally realises that yes, maybe something was not entirely right about the GPS instructions so we stopped at the next exit where we checked the GPS settings. Apparently when he had chosen Affligem as our destination, he then clicked on “Important sights / monuments” (or something similar), and somehow changed the destination to … Antwerp!

The Swedish colours!

Oh well, we were almost there by then and as there is a canal (ok, ok, it is actually a river, Schelde) in Antwerp, and my parents are very flexible, easy-going people who are just happy to spend some time with us, we all agreed to continue to Antwerp! Despite the change of plans, the lack of a brewery and the grey weather, we spent a very nice Sunday afternoon in the city. We walked along the river and then continued up in the antiques / flea market area.

And even a Swedish flag! (not the same house though)

And lesson learnt [for O]? To listen to his wife and not trust the GPS  😉 However, you might recall the last time we went to Antwerp and we once again had GPS trouble?

Some “fleas”

Mirrors for sale

Headless mannequin family, anyone?

Hispantics – do they only sell hispanic antiques?

What I love about Belgian cities – there is always something interesting to look at on buildings (Brussels has murals of comic strip characters)… Here a poem by a Flemish poet and singer

Has anyone heard of Jürgen von der Lippe? I didn’t buy his record…

Nor did I buy “One more little kissy”

Plastic chairs

Or wooden ones in big and small sizes

There is something about empty frames that I really like

I did actually buy something from one of the flea market shops but I will show you that another time. Something that really is quite ironic considering the Belgian reputation of … being crazy drivers!