Sunday, February 28, 2010

Thumb prints...

When I signed up for the office I had to sign the lease by identifying myself... with my thumb print... Just like when we bought the house, the Notary came in when signing and got our thumb prints in her big book. To a Swede, that feels like... ancient... But, in a country where you don't have such a rigid system with the "personal numbers" - I guess this is a good way to ensure identity...


Saturday, February 27, 2010

Painting walls

All our walls were white when we moved into our house. And for years we've thought about adding more color - especially to the living room. But since we have 5 meters to the ceiling in half of the room, it's a major project and one we just talk about but never actually start. And the other rooms have stayed white too, with the exception of the Daughter's room which actually got wall paper (ambitions of first time parents...).

But when we moved out the office part of our guestroom the last couple of weeks we suddenly were faced with an almost empty room (only the sofa bed remaining) and decided to repaint the room. We immediately took off for Lowe's so we wouldn't change our minds, and without much thinking spent about 20 minutes in the paint department, deciding on colors. We even dared to make a "fond" wall - one wall in a different color.

Once back home we just started painting and were surprised it was such a quick job (the preparations takes way more time that the actual painting).The light green color is called "fishnet" and the brown/khaki color is called "garden urn" (it must be fun working in a paint company's naming department...). American walls usually have a "bumby" structure (the original paint is "spray painted" on the walls - and sometimes I can really miss the "flat" Scandinavian walls. But adding color really made a difference. Now I want to repaint the whole house!

If the refrigerator hadn't  broken down, there would have been some time to go to IKEA and get the new furniture in...

It's going to be so nice to have a genuine guestroom again - a special place for our usually long way guests to use and hang out in.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Refrigerator failure

Last weekend our freezer failed. And here - that means that your whole refrigerator system breaks down since the freezer and the refrigerator parts are always connected. The Husband had just arrived with a week full of groceries and I was about to try to push the frozen items in to the tiny freezer half when I was met by a sauce of water and thawed food... We just had to turn around and head out and head for Lowe's and HomeDepot. No time for research or price comparisons.

Turns out that you can't have a refrigerator that fast - so with an interim solution of a freezer box (that we have thought about anyway) and an new, tiny office refrigerator set up in the garage we have made it through the week, and luckily the warm temperatures last week was exchanged with lower temperatures cooling the garage preetty good. We still lost a lot of food. And it's been a hassle to go out and in of the garage to get food.

But now we have a new, more energy efficient refrigerator - and a freezer box. We really are "freezing" people and are so annoyed at the small freezer half of the refrigerator solution that is the standard here. It's impossible to find the free standing freezer/refrigerator solution they use in Scandinavia - where they both part are the same size - and if one part fails - you don't have to exchange the whole system.

And we have opted for a in-door-ice maker (there are hardly any refrigerators without ice makes and they take up a good quarter size of the freezer part...), hoping to get some more space to freeze food...

But it was not money that was planned to be spent - I had lots of other plans for stuff for the house... like the newly painted guestroom...

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Moved in!

After a couple of weeks of having my foot in two places - I'm now moved in to my new studio. It's a 1 minute and 37 second drive or a 15 minute walk from my home office - so it's almost like working from home still. I love to get out and walk in the morning and love "leaving" work and still being so close to home.

Very good feeling. I had a pretty good home office before the family grew larger and my office items had to be spread out - now they are all collected and set up in the same room and I love it. It's going to be a good spring!

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Moving out!

After been working from home for 9 years - I'm finally getting an office outside the house.  It's going to be great! We used to have a great home office in the house - but as the family grew, space got limited and the past few years I've been working out of  a rebuilt walk-in closet in the guest room.

Now I'll get a huge room (compared to what I have...) - and - best of all - I'll have big windows with a great view. I can walk/bike to the office and I'll "leave" the office - which is one main drawback of working from home - you never leave - you're always at work...

I'm keeping my office at home to give myself some flexibility.

Now I'm dreaming of painting my walls with Idea Paint... wouldn't that be soo cool!?

Picture from www.IdeaPaint.com - so cool!