the long-awaited new bedroom

it's been ages since i've done any updates on our never-ending house project and it's not because there's no progress, it's more that i have less time to document than i did in the old days. 

sabin and i painted this mural on the wall while she was home this summer and husband has done the rest of the painting. we used fancy handmade, non-toxic paint and it's really beautiful, though husband thought it was very hard to work with, so i'm not sure we'll be using it in the rest of the upstairs. the room is a bit minimalist at the moment, as we're still painting the two chests of drawers that we got second-hand and they're not quite finished.

i've sneaked in a few more plants since i took the third picture. it's so nice to both go to sleep and wake up here. and since i've been battling a cold, i also spent quite a lot of time here yesterday, working on my computer in the beautiful light. 

oh, and i'm really loving that ikea lamp. and the pedestal husband built for the bed. it puts us up at the perfect height for waking up to that beautiful view. even though they harvested the corn on the field, it's still pretty and i keep seeing deer out there, sniffing out dropped bits of corn. 

just a little summer project

no summer is complete without husband engaging in a more or less major building project. we had long planned to build this building to shelter off the house a bit more from the road, which is quite close. it's also the first step towards being able to tear down the middle house, which is in quite bad shape.

husband did all this framing himself, building each of the sections over near his workshop and then we brought them over on the trailer and raised them (i helped with that bit).

there will be windows up high along the walls on both sides, but since we weren't sure we'd get them in before autumn winds and rain come along, he didn't cut the holes yet.

husband found a guy who rescues old doors from various places - these from a school somewhere. i even loved the color so much, i bought a can as close to it as i could get to paint the whole thing. i had talked about red or blue, but this green is perfect. we're going to have some vinyl stickers made for the windows, for a bit more privacy and with a groovy design of some sort - i'm thinking of incorporating our name, the house number and the nordic sun symbol.

the brewery

i've not shared any house progress photos in ages. mostly because things happen so slowly and incrementally around here that it never feels like there's anything significant to share. but that changed recently.

husband recently his old workshop space (and a space that was a garage with the previous owners) into what he calls the brewery. it's a room dedicated to big, messy jobs, like pressing apples for cider, spinning honey out of their frames, and eventually yes, even making beer.

he painted the walls and ceiling white and the floor grey. and i can tell you that paint makes a huge difference. to divide the space up a little bit, he built a little brick wall (to practice his brick-laying skills for the bigger job in the kitchen). he also built several shelves - mostly to house the beekeeping supplies - frames, boxes, wax, even buckets of honey.

we got this old scale at a flea market ages ago and it really works and is quite useful when you want to weigh how much honey you harvested.

an old cupboard that was one of the first things we bought together way back when houses our flag collection down at the far end. we inherited the flags from husband's father, who was crazy about flags, especially the nordic ones.

the wood-burning stove isn't hooked up yet, but it will be and then i intend to spend lots of time out there, as it's much nicer than the house! i love the brick pedestal husband built for the stove. there to the left, there will be a sink, as a brewery needs a water source. we're scouring the markets for the right sink and haven't found it yet. but we will.

husband made a new top for an old green table that was here (one of the few good things), so there's a nice work table next to the honey centrifuge.

that little green bench was in sabin's room until yesterday. i'm not sure it's going to stay there, but it's always good to have another surface.

on the right is the cider press husband made. he's making modifications to it after this year's cider pressing, so it's not intact at the moment (if you're looking at it, wondering how on earth you can press cider in that). i love how he has no qualms about taking apart something he made and remaking it. i could really learn something from that. down at the end, more shelves with the beekeeping supplies on them.

my favorite feature is the meaningful stones he bricked into the wall. the three bricks are from a favorite beach in sweden. the second stone from the left is from crazy horse monument in south dakota. the heart and the stone with the eye are both from møn's klint, one of our favorite places in denmark.

i want to grab my book and a cup of coffee and go relax out there right now.

things that matter

another glorious day in the garden.

my heart is strangely full.

and a little tearful.

maybe because a friend came for dinner.

and we walked the property.

and she said, "i so get it."

why does it matter that someone gets it?

when all that should really matter is that we get it?

but it does matter.

and we do get it.

a leisurely dinner in the garden.

at the grill table.

grilling veggies and a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin.

that matters.

and a treehouse for a ten-year-old.

built by her father.

to catch the best afternoon light in the garden.

that matters.

and a hedgehog.

that calls our garden home.

and lets us pick it up.

that matters.

it's what life is really about.

and it matters.

in this together

we spent a good part of the weekend, including all day friday, loading this container and another one like it, with the wood husband bought a few weeks ago. hours and hours of lifting and moving and in the process getting to know the boards. and it made me realize that physical labor is good for the soul. after a long, dark, cold winter, without a whole lot of physical activity, it feels good to stretch unused muscles and to feel tired in the way that only physical labor can make you feel tired.

but mostly, i noticed this most amazing feeling that we're really in this project together. watching husband's capacity for hard work is awe-inspiring. the division of labor at our house is that he builds and fixes and i cook, keep more or less on top of the laundry and sew stuff. i get a lot of ideas for things i'd like to have built and he builds them. but helping him with "his" side of things made me realize, for one, the enormity of the project we've undertaken, but mostly, that i love doing this with him...dreaming and quite literally building our dreams. there's really nothing like it.

i am not my house (yet)

the room i'm sewing in these days contains our dining table and most of the boxes of stuff we haven't yet unpacked (and won't 'til we have the space - stuff like everything from my blue room). it also features hideous carpet (visible on lower right of this photo) and a hideous ceiling where the "cornices" are actually made of rope. yes, rope. what WERE they thinking? oddly, i turn on the iYiyi, light some candles and i can ignore it. i guess because i know it's not a permanent state (this bit will be gleefully bulldozed torn down. eventually.).  and ignore it i did today. and the only reason the quilt pictured here isn't finished is because i got so many ideas while i was sewing it (sewing is extremely conducive to ideas) that i had to go off and work on some of those. well, that and the dishwasher was running and i can't actually iron at the same time or the fuses blow. oh, the joy of an old house with a fuse board that one electrician characterized as "something hitler left behind after the occupation."

last week, we had some friends over. friends who, like us, have bought a falling-down farmhouse that no one else really can see the potential in. happily, they live nearby (we may have bought in a falling-down farmhouse sort of area) and happily, they totally get us, so they don't mind sitting in our rope-ceilinged, box-lined dining room, eating dinner and enthusiastically discussing ten-year plans.

and casper said something that has really echoed in my head ever since. he said when they first moved in (they moved here about a year before we did), he spent so much energy apologizing to people who visited. apologizing for what is essentially the visitors' inability to see the potential. but also apologizing because you don't want people who don't know you very well to think that the the place is really YOU. (as if that's not obvious.) and i realized i had expended an awful lot of energy on exactly that.

a colleague from husband's former workplace visited us between christmas and new year's with his totally lovely wife and two gorgeous, well-behaved children. they live near nyhavn in copenhagen, in an undoubtedly fabulous 4th floor apartment overlooking sweden. *sigh* and so the minute they came in the door, i found myself apologizing for the house. for the 7 different ceilings, the rope, the fake formica (who knew there was such a thing as fake formica?)  countertops, the pink cupboards, the low ceilings and doorways. and honestly, they were perfectly lovely and even, on some level, through their oh-my-odin-why-didn't-they-childproof-this-place eyes, got it. and they knew it wasn't us, but could respect that we saw the potential in it and that in its current state it wasn't who we were. but for some reason, i didn't trust that, even tho' the former colleague worshipped professed awe at the apple hardware altars around the house. so i spent the whole time apologizing.  which is really kinda sad at this point in my life. i should have more confidence than that.

and i even DO have more confidence than that. so what is it? we both are and aren't where we live.

but we are our wegner chairs (tongue firmly in cheek). but i should trust more in that.

scenes from frilandsmuseet: take 2 or it's the light, silly

i found myself being especially observant of the light in all of the old farmhouses at frilandsmuseet. we're pondering quite a lot about how to redo the bits of our farmhouse that won't be torn down and windows are a big issue. we've collected a lot of old, traditional metal-framed windows, thinking we wanted to use them, but they are actually quite small and we're worried it will be quite dark inside. and in these northern latitudes, light is everything. so i looked for how the light fell at frilandsmuseet...

the right windows mean everything

this little geranium is clearly getting enough light.

a rather dark hearth in a house from småland in sweden.

if only my old kitchen were THIS old - that i could live with.

i love, love, love the idea of a step-up pantry

an axe by the door - looks like they're ready for blog camp! ;-)

there were many cobblestone floors. we might experiment with that in one of the rooms of the part of our house that was once a barn. i love how some leaves had found their way in on the autumn winds.

one of the things we're generally really rubbish at is lighting, so it's really important that our coming remodel enables us to take as much advantage of natural light as possible. there's so much inspiration to be had by visiting museums, don't you think?

haunted

are there ghosts among us?

since moving to an old house (it was built in 1898), we find ourselves in conversations with people about haunted houses. despite actually hoping this house is haunted, it hasn't thus far shown any sign of it, unless that sense of irritation i sometimes feel overwhelmed by when i'm working in the kitchen isn't caused by missing my smeg stove and refrigerator from the old house but by a dissatisfied spirit instead. maybe one who, like me, has good taste in kitchen appliances.

there's a guy in the neighborhood who told me about one evening when he was watching t.v. and felt a weight on his shoulder. he thought the dog had come up behind him and laid his chin there, but when he turned, the dog wasn't there. the same dog raises its hackles and growls at thin air, so he's pretty sure that his house is haunted. he says occasionally all of the pictures on the wall are suddenly hanging crooked. i love such stories, they give me goosebumps in a very good way.

we had friends to dinner last evening and they live in an old farmhouse as well. they've traced the origins of their place to 1600-something and in one of the barns found evidence of a stone floor from that original building. their project is even bigger than ours and they actually think our kitchen is nice in comparison to the condition of theirs. (i haven't seen theirs yet, but find it hard to imagine how bad it must be if ours looks good in comparison).

the first night they slept in their house last summer, they had a strong feeling that they were unwelcome. it freaked them out so much they actually got up in the middle of the night and drove back to their old apartment to sleep. regularly, they wake up in the night and the humidity has shot up to 75%, from a normal 60%. they actually got a humidity detector (what's one of those called?) and documented it. they wake up from it and then within minutes it dissipates and goes back down to the normal 60%. they've tried to trace it to the furnace and such, but can't find any physical reason for the humidity swing (and they're both engineers, so they should be able to). one night, after it happened, they could hear their dog down at the bottom of the stairs, wagging his tail and greeting someone, as if it was one of them going down the stairs. they regularly hear footsteps overhead when they're watching t.v. and have combed the attic, looking for evidence of an animal, but there is none.

they also have both seen a blueish male figure passing through a wall and crossing the room. the lights flicker when he's there. they took a closer look at the wall where he passes through and realized that there had once been a door there but it is now covered up. they were both in the room and they turned to one another and one said, "did you see.." "...the blue man," finished the other. they had both individually seen him and not said anything.

i get the most delicious creepy sense when talking about such things. i get completely covered in goosebumps, but i feel it in a very thrilling way and i don't feel frightened by it. in all honesty, i totally have ghost envy. i want one too, but i 'm not sure you can wish your way to one.

husband and i laid awake talking about it last night (that's what you get for drinking coffee at 11 p.m.). husband, thinks it's flashes of access to another dimension. one that we don't normally see or feel. we recently saw the others, a 2001 film with nicole kidman (who i normally hate), where you realize at the end that she and her children and the servants are dead and still living in a big house that a family has moved into. it's a well-done film and raises that question of whether when we die we just move to another plane, but still hang out in the surroundings where we were. if so, think of the layers upon layers in an old house. i do wish i had access to the ones here.

house tour: an inside view

during my week at home sick with the dread disease (whatever it may be - the two doctors i've seen don't really agree, but it seems that some of the many meds i'm now taking are beginning to work), i've had time to give myself a little talking to about this house. i was having moments of depression and even anger about how awful it is and how little the previous owners seemed to do with it. and i was missing my beautiful kitchen on poppelvej. i won't say that i miss it any less (yes, you, my pretty red smeg), but i've talked myself around. there are things i can do to make this livable in the meantime before we build-on and create a brand new and even better kitchen. and we did, after all, choose this, so it's not like i've been forced into this situation (tho' leaving the appliances behind is something i've been forced into, but we're not going to go there. again.).

i thought i'd give you a little glimpse of the inside and what we have to put up with until the renovations can take place...

looking into the living room.
naff ceiling constructed out of rough planks normally used for making fences.
covering up some of the horrible, cheap office-style carpet with my turkish rug.

i chose to put a few books (gardening, decor and craft) and things we love on the shelf, in order to make it seem more livable.
the carpet is yucky office-style carpet and that depresses me a little bit.

the curtains were on the windows, but i dressed them up with some fabric circles.
as you can see, that's the corner where i sit and knit.
sabin's scarf in colorful mercerized egyptian cotton is going rather slowly.

the kitchen from hell.
still pepto bismol pink (i will remedy that in the near future, for reals).
this crappy linoleum floor depresses me as well (i can't even get it clean!) - i miss my oak floors!!

but at least i have my kitchen aid and my posh red kettle.
and the window above the sink is nice.
plus there are lots of cupboards, and that's good.

i despise that stove (and refrigerator for that matter).
for one, it's not gas, for another, those glass-topped stoves just seem so fake and cop-outish somehow.
and the left front burner is totally iffy - sometimes too hot, sometimes hardly heating at all.
when i stand in the kitchen and get worked up about missing my old kitchen, it's because of this stove.

our bedroom - obligatory basket of clean laundry at the foot of the bed.
i'm good at doing laundry, but rubbish at putting it away.
great light from the window - i like that.
the pictures look a bit random on the wall, because we just used existing nails that were there.
it's hard to tell, but i also dressed up the curtains with a turquoise border - they were plain cream colored.

sabin has been allowed to set her inner artist free and is painting what she wants on her walls.
circles on the left and a little jackson pollack action on the right.
the t.v. will be hung on the wall once she's finished.

the one and only little bathroom - shower only, no bathtub (don't get me started on how much i miss my bathtub).
as husband says, it's actually the best room in the house.
by which he means it's the one that's been most recently redone.

and my little desk area - looking quite a lot like it did at the old house - some things can't change too much.
the light is also nice here, tho' the window looks out on a naff little entryway with makeshift clotheslines.
the people who lived here before were apparently obsessed with clothelines - they're everywhere there possibly could be one.
note the pretty scarf on the doorknob - it's from the magnificent debra! and i love it!

the indoor spaces being what they are, i had to create a homey outdoor space.
if the sun would just reliably shine, i'd be out there all the time.

i found out that tho' this looks fetching under that tree, i've got to move it.
too much bird poo.

we've been discussing the order of our renovations quite extensively. our architect is nearly ready with some drawings for us and we're getting excited to see them. the expansion of the house is essentially going to be a separate, new building off the back of the existing house. it will be one large room that's kitchen, dining area and living room in one. it will be joined to the old house by some kind of exciting, creative, mostly glass solution (at least we hope that's what erik will come up with). so it will be possible to build it first while continuing to live in the old house. once it's built and we have a new kitchen up and running, we can tear down the old main house, which currently houses the kitchen, and do the renovations to the "left wing" of the house, where our bedrooms, bath, laundry and living room are at the moment. now, if the old house would just sell....people keep looking, but they don't seem to be buying.

happy weekend, one and all....

a little bit country

as some of you may know, i grew up in a very small town in the upper midwest. i know i seem like this dazzlingly cosmopolitan, sophisticated, traveled european woman (NOT), but really, i'm a small town girl. so it's not all that surprising that i find myself twenty-odd years after leaving for the city (if Iowa City counts - ha!), back in the countryside.

but having lived in orange county, phoenix, chicago and copenhagen for two decades, there are some things i forgot about country life. things like...

~ flies.

~ livestock grazing in fields (see flies above).

~ wind sweeping across with nothing to stop it.

~ that comforting sound of a horse crunching its grain.

gratuitous jumping shot, because i love this picture.

~ neighbors dropping by to chat - and to try to sell you a tractor.

~ riding lawn mowers.

~ trading for things instead of buying them.

~ having a BIG vegetable garden - instead of a dozen strawberry plants, we've got more like 150.

~ birdsong filling the air. and i mean filling the air.

~ the general intensity of the presence of nature. and spiders.

~ deer darting in front of your car on a winding country road.

~ people driving like complete maniacs on winding country roads.

~ getting stuck behind a tractor on the winding country roads.

~ a feeling of having loads of space - both physical and psychological.

~ pollen allergies from hell that turn to sinus infection and then a sort of asthmatic bronchitis which only more steroids than lance armstrong used in the last tour de france can cure. (i know, i know, he supposedly doesn't use any. yeah. right.) case of pneumonia which leaves you feeling even worse than you did because now it's been assigned that word.

life in the countryside generally has a completely different rhythm. after dinner, we go over to the horse - to ride her and groom her and spend time with her. as a result, we're watching far less t.v. this can only be a good thing. there's always something to be done outdoors - weeds to pull, seeds to sow, lawn to mow, a walk which beckons. we definitely feel much more the pull of nature. it feels healthy and good for us. it clears our heads of a day spent in the office or at school. but i guess i appreciate it that much more for having been away from it and lived in cities for a time (half my life, actually). it's nice to feel things slipping into an easier rhythm, one that feels more in tune with nature.