Discovering that gardening is therapeutic

Our house on the lake is still a place I look forward to returning to after a day at work and I still can’t quite believe it’s ours. As you know we’ve been doing lots of DIY on our little gem and although there is still lots to do it’s spring and that means our DIY takes us outside!

One of the essentials when we were looking for houses was an outdoor space and we’re lucky that we have 33 meters of garden at the back of the house:  

Its actually quite difficult to design a garden that’s that long and narrow (I know, first world problems) but we’ve decided to divide it up into four parts – a patio, a classic english garden, a herb garden and an outdoor kitchen. Again Pinterest has become an absolute obsession, it’s very easy to get carried away 😉 

However, we’ve started with the classic English garden, which we dug out to fit beautiful lavenders, box hedging, hydrangeas and hornbeam:

A few before and after photos:   

               In total we planted 180 box hedges but being outdoors, sitting in the sunshine and letting your mind run wild is actually quite therapeutic. Although I had a lot of this:   Finishing one section of the garden gives you a real sense of achievement and puts us one step closer to finishing our project, which puts a big smile on my face 🙂 

What’s your spring project?

Getting back into the swing of things

Happy 2015!!

I had the most amazing Christmas break this year. I was lucky enough to have two Christmases – a Danish one with my parents and sister on the 24th and an English one on 25th December with Welly and his family. It was awesome, everything from the food to the wine to the company was excellent – big smiles all around.

But all good things must come to an end right?! It’s probably for the best or I would be obese in no time.

This week I’ve been ready to get back into the swing of things. We met our diy deadlines which means I have more energy and my evenings back.

I’ve really been loving being able to cook nice homemade dinners but I’ve also taken the opportunity to prep my lunches for the following day. My main tips are:
– choose your meals for the week – breakfast, lunch and dinner
– order them online for delivery
– love preparing and eating each one

Its been an incredibly busy week and I’ve had more red flags in my inbox and more lunches at my desk than I care to remember so having my meals prepped was an absolute lifesaver. These are ‘some I prepared earlier’:

Homemade pea soup (onion, stock cube and frozen peas) with marinated turkey breast (dried coriander and cumin)

Homemade quinoa with mint and coriander accompanied with a green bean, broccoli, beetroot and lime salad. For protein it was leftover roast chicken:

Homemade Mexican burgers (turkey mince, jalapeños and spices) with a red onion and tomato dressing accompanied by a lentil, green beans, beetroot, feta and fresh herb salad:

How do you prepare for the week?

DIY can actually be quite relaxing…

DIY is often said to be the make or break of a relationship and I’m definitely not about to say that my experience has been blissful and romantic – it has not…

Now that’s out of the way I want to make my point. DIY can be quite relaxing when you’re waiting for the next step – such as varnishing your newly sanded wooden floor – after and before the sanding:

Welly did an amazing job with the floor and my job on my day off this week was to varnish it, sand it and varnish it again. Now this might seem like quite a lot of work and it is BUT there is quite a lot of waiting around in between to allow the varnish to dry and the dust to settle.

So what did I do to entertain myself in between?
– Absolutely nothing 🙂 well I watched lots of cooking programmes, drank lots of tea and got even more excited about Christmas

I’m pretty happy with the final result and can’t wait to crack on with the next room. The countdown for Christmas is on!

DIY – slow and steady wins the race

DIY – it’s rewarding, fun, exciting and grownup but it’s also slow, hard work and a little frustrating at times, mainly because it’s stuff we can’t do ourselves!

My good friend over at Let Her Eat Clean once said to me ‘slow and steady wins the race’ so that’s what I’m standing by and letting the experience of doing up our first house together be an enjoyment!

I’m learning new skills, which is great and putting late victorian features back into the house on the lake is so rewarding. My latest project has been restoring a fireplace for the second bedroom – this eBay wonder that Welly won:

Paint stripper in hand, protection sorted – it all began:

Two hours and two layers of paint later:

Four hours and four layers of paint later (I was starting to wish I had just applied a fifth layer of paint at this stage):

Meanwhile Welly had made room for the fireplace by exposing the original ‘hole in the chimney’:

And it went in, got sanded down and got plastered up:

Now we just need to sand the floors, paint the room, put a radiator back in, put down vintage victorian tiles, paint the fireplace and most importantly decorate the room. It might sound like a lot but we’re more than halfway there and it’s all still pretty exciting 🙂

Are you living the DIY dream?

Dreamy bank holiday – diy, friends & food

It just so happened that the last bank holiday of the year was the first bank holiday in the house on the lake for Welly and I.

We have extensive plans for the downstairs of our home so we wanted to paint a bit and put in some colour before we get going with our kitchen extension next year:
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I love Habitat so safe to say we paid them a quick visit. Our eBay antique and history-filled furniture are perfect backdrops to a punch of colour:

Upstairs is another story. We’re currently getting the second bedroom ready for mama and papa Hansen’s visit in September – check out Welly exposing the fireplace:

And ripping up the gorgeous chocolate brown carpet:

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Between all the diy and interior goodness we got to have our first dinner party with my favourite gal over at the house called abe and her hubby herringbone kitchens which was just dreamy! We followed this with a BBQ with good friends enjoying the fab weather until the bats came out to play!

This weekend has been one we’ve dreamed of for a very long time and the fact that we did it all is another tick on the to-do list 🙂

Home decor – Inspiration from other countries

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that Welly and I became homeowners to our little gem the house on the lake

Coming home to our own house was incredible and actually quite romantic. There is a certain excitement that comes with knowing something is yours to do with what you want and our project doesn’t let us down! We’ve already started decorating our pad however, being in another country can inspire new ideas and intrigue design.

I love the colours of the bench against the brick, I love the wood and the rustic love affair:

However, on the other side the flowers bring life, wonderful smells and colours into a room or a space:

However, we’re just about to take the wall paper down – it’s actually exciting as I will no longer wake up to oversized flowers on my beloved fireplace:

This bank holiday I can’t wait to get properly started and really make our gem come to life!

Decorating our pad

Our little project is coming along nicely, still lots to do but I’m starting to play around with the interior.

Welly is epic at eBay and wins awesome things most of the time, he’s keeping his technic a secret, probably because if he told me I’d be on there all the time!

Basically I’m all about furniture having a history and antiques have always done it for me – for example I love this wall already:

Then there’s my love for NYC and Danish furniture:

Then there’s these fellas which I found on holiday in the Cotswolds last year – they make me smile:

Lots more to come but we’re slowly getting unpacked and still loving it!

The big move

It finally happened, we’ve moved to the house on the lake and it’s fab!However, let me take you back to when we started the big move.

It’s incredible how much two people who share one room can have between them. So Everyone who knows me will be aware that I like a good plan and the move was therefore organised, time managed and it came as no surprise that the first van load looked like this:

But the two other that followed was a bit of a shock. So what’s a girl to do?! After all I do have my priorities in check :-):

Welly and I did the move each day after work for three days, we could have waited for the weekend but the excitement of having bought our first home made us feel a bit like Hercules. Plus we treated each day like a big celebration:

I’ve always been a morning person but I realised that mornings in the house on the lake are better than what I could have imagined – they are simply blissful:

And when your morning commute starts with this wonder of a walk you can’t really complain:

I can’t wait to share the progress with you as we renovate, clean and unpack this little gem.

Do you have any exciting projects brewing?

Packing up our lives

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that I’ve fallen in love with the house on the lake and this is the last weekend in our old house before we move!

Actually having bought your first house is incredibly exciting and something at just 26 I’m pretty proud that I am able to do.

However, what I didn’t plan for was how overwhelmed I’ve been feeling about the whole thing. You see, this dream that I’ve had for so long and that I’ve been saving for, for so long has finally come true and now it’s time to pack my old life up and move to the next stage in life – a snapshot of my life:

I don’t in any way feel sad but packing everything up makes it all real – FYI I’m one of those people who needs to see it to believe it. For everyone who knows me when I pack my gym kit I’m not messing around:

So as I pack up the first place Welly and I called ‘home’ I can’t wait to make our new place a proper home just the two of us!

Oh and yes I’ve realised that the perks of packing is when you find all your old Oyster cards you’ve run around like a headless chicken looking for in the past – winning!

The house on the lake

The other thing on my so-called high reaching to-do list for 2014 was buying a house.

I had told myself this was going to be the most exciting and romantic thing Welly and I would ever do – wrong, it has been anything but! I could pretend that no one ever told us how hard it was going to be, many did but it was just that I/we didn’t quite listen.

In a market where the house prices are higher than ever being a first time buyer isn’t the best scenario anymore as it seems everyone is. We lost out more times than I care to remember but thankfully with encouraging and ever-positive friends like my fave Michigan gal over at The House Called Abe , parents/in-laws and lots of proseco and karaoke with my Sister we got over it and stayed positive – this was a tough day 😉

Eventually our search took us to ‘the house on the lake’ with a garden to match and we were smitten! Now this was when that bit of romance that I had made up this process to be started (plus the day dreaming, impassion frustration, love of wooden windows and absolute obsession with Pinterest ).

As we await all the paperwork to go through I want everything but I’m not quite sure this one will fit in:

What’s your favourite site for furniture inspiration?