A house in Tuscany....

Have you ever seen the movie, "Under the Tuscan Sun"? Well, it is one of my favorite movies. It´s about a woman who buys an old run down house in Tuscany and renovates it. A lot of other things happen in the film but I especially love  it because of the old house that gets transformed. 

Tonight I was feeling a bit like the girl from the film! We went over to clean up our new place and to do a bit of work on it. It has been such a fun evening!  

Kristian started to take down the old, horrible cupboards that were in the bathroom. 

 There was a cupboard in the kitchen that went into the bathroom. The walls were actually just made of that plastic sticky back stuff you put on your cupboards to make them look like wood.....there was no MDF or whatever it is you use to make walls! 

My hubby worked really hard!

 I also did a bit of work myself. The outside of the hosue was covered in cobwebs and needed a good cleaning. I got the cobwebs brushed away and the window and door washed down... 

The hall walls also got washed.

There is still along way to go but so far we are enjoying ourselves. We hope to put in an Ikea kitchen!! Now that will be a challenge has we have no idea what to do! 

In the film I mentioned earlier, the girl had Polish carpenters to help her with all the work. She just cooked food for them....Ummmmh maybe that is something we should consider. Well, watch this space and follow our renovations....we only have 6 weeks before we move in! YIKES!!! :-)

On the move....

...Sara is on the move! She is moving to the other part of Denmark and tomorrow (Tuesday) is the day when all her furniture is being taken over to her new place. Her friend has bought an apartment and Sara is renting a room there. She is so excited! She will go with the moving van tomorrow and stay a week in the town of Aarhus. She has some interviews lined up, so hopefully she will soon have a job there. After a week she will come back here and finish off her work over here.

So the weekend has been spent clearing out and packing. It is sooo amazing what Sara had in that small bedroom of hers! 

In the middle of all the packing chaos, we had our niece Annie visiting.We discovered that Annie had never been to Ikea. She is the same age as Leah, so Aunty here had to make sure she experienced Ikea! We drove in Saturday afternoon and had a great time  well, I had a great time dreaming and planning. We bought absolutely nothing.

Sunday afternoon we headed over to our new home. We got the keys on Sunday so we decided to head over look around the place and plan a little. While there we decided we might as well start our first job, taking off the living room floor. 

 Leah and Mia had a picnic with crisps and dip before we got to work.

 Laura arrived with ice cold Fanta to us all! Delicious! Just what we needed on a hot Sunday afternoon!

We decided to eat dinner together - Pizza on the living room floor. Such fun!!

 Laura had gotten us all a wee present! Tools for the garden!! haha We LOVED them! 

I really think we are going to enjoy living out there. It still feels so right and I have such a peace about it all. So different from all the other houses we looked at over the years, there was never any peace and probably the reason why we never moved to any of them.

It has been a crazy few days and it just looks like it is going to get crazier!!! I´m loving it though (at least at the minute.) We are getting all the paper work done for moving, got the internet set up for the new place from the middle of September. Slowly but surely things are getting done. We even finished getting the carpet off on Sunday! 

A friend, Strawberry cake and Ikea....

...life just can´t get any better than this!

After work today I went to visit my friend Rhona. She had bought the most delicious strawberry cake. We had a lovely hour together, sitting in her garden eating cake and catching up with each others lives. It was really great seeing her again! The time always goes by too quickly when I visit her, today was no exception!

So after a really lovely afternoon it was home to make dinner. There was no one home when I arrived there, this was rather strange as there is always someone around this place. Where were they all? Well ,Leah was down helping her friend re-arrange her room. Andrew started school today so he had not arrived home yet. Sara was working, she had a late shift and Kristian still hadn´t arrived home from work. So I spent a good 45 minutes out on the balcony drawing up how our furniture should be in our new living room. (such fun!!!!) Before long though, the peace was gone and Andrew and Kristian came through the door followed shortly after by an exhausted Leah who had moved furniture around all afternoon with her friend, she had drilled holes in walls to put up shelves, and the shelves hadn´t fallen down! WOW what a real wee handy woman we have!

Sara came home around 7.30pm and was in a panic. She is moving too. She will move to the other side of  Denmark to a town called Aarhus. She will live in an apartment that her friend has bought. Sara will rent a room from her. Her friends furniture is being moved over there on Tuesday and Sara can also get her stuff moved too. She was in a panic because she needed a few big things for her move. So guess where I ended up this evening??!!! Back at Ikea!! Honestly I should have shares in that place!

Sara got what she needed for the move. Now all she needs is a job!! She is waiting to hear from a few places. If she gets one of these jobs she will move in a week or so, if not she will wait until October. 

Life is just a little crazy at the moment...everything is happening at once! But I am not complaining I am finding it all very exciting!

Come and see......

...what we are getting ourselves into!! haha  So as you probably know we are moving to another place sometime in the near future. We have to sign the contract on Friday. Here`s hoping nothing goes wrong!

I was over at the house today measuring everything. I was so in the mood to start cleaning and organising the place. It really does need a good clean out and a lick of paint. I can´t wait to see what we can achieve over the next few months.

Leah had her camera with her today so  we took a video, mainly so dad can follow what we are up to....so dad this is for you ( but anyone interested can have a look!)

A dream come true....

What a night we have had!!!

People who know me well know that I have had a dream about living in the country for a while now. My friend Laura lives in a lovely place, just 8 minutes drive from where we live.It is close to shops and buses, yet it´s in the heart of the country. We always love going out to her place, its situation is just so perfect and her house is so cosy. Well last night she rang and asked me if I was interested in  renting the house next door to her. (The place where Laura lives is one big house that has been made into smaller apartments, but the place feels like a house, not an apartment!!) I couldn´t believe what she was aksing. 

The "funny" thing was that yesterday I had been  praying about our living accommodation. Over the last few months I have been unsettled here in our apartment. I had no idea what to do about it - where should we go if we should move?  I had been looking at houses to buy but even though there were some lovely ones that seemed to be in our price range, I never felt at peace about it. (We would have to move a bit away from here to afford something to buy.) So yesterday I was praying about it all and in the end I said to God that I was leaving everything in his hands, if He wanted us to stay her I was willing but otherwise if this unsettlement was a sign for us to move on he had to move us on, open some sort of door, show us somewhere we should go. Then last night my friend Laura called about this place! 

So off course I said yes that we were interested. So we arranged for us to see the place this evening. Already last night I had such a peace about it all. But I was going to go and see the place with an open mind, I would see if my peace left me or if I still had peace by the end of the evening. Kristian was also going with an open mind. 

So what did we think??? We LOVED it!!!! Kristian loved it!!! Leah  loved it!!! (Andrew wasn´t home so he didn´t see it, but he doesn´t care, he´ll move anywhere!) So we have decided to take the place!!! I can´t believe it!!! There is work to be done on it before we move, some things that need fixed up, but it is just what we have always wanted!! 

 There is a big garage for Kristian and a lovely room on the other side of the garage, opposite the front door, with window from top to bottom, it is perfect for my art gallery!! I feel so blessed!

                      (Leah outside my coming art gallery!)

Kristian will ring the man tomorrow and tell him we want it!! We have a busy few months ahead!!! We should be moved in by Christmas!!! 

It´s been a hard week....

.....having to get up again at 6am has taken it´s toll on me. Yes, I am back in Denmark again and back at work. Where did those 4½ weeks of holiday go?

I arrived back in Denmark late last Monday evening. Kristian was coming to pick me up. We usually just meet out at the "pick up/ set down" car park so we don´t have to pay for parking. As I was walking to the car a young fella tapped me on the shoulder and very politely asked me, in English,  if I could help him find a bus or train to Copenhagen. I was about to explain when I realised it was Andrew! Then suddenly Leah appeared at his side.  Sara was in the car waiting with Kristian It was a lovely surprise that the whole family had turned up.

Tuesday we held Andrew´s birthday. We celebrated by giving him his presents and then, as is our tradition, the birthday boy got to decide where we should eat. Andrew was in the mood for Mexican so we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant and had their buffet.

Wednesday I started work again. It was so hard to get up again at 6am! It was however, great to be back at work and see all my colleagues again. The day went by quickly. Wednesday evening found Leah and I at Ikea. We just went in to dream about how our bedrooms should look when Sara finally moves out and Leah gets the big room and Kristian and I get Sara´s room. (She has plans to move out within the next 3 motnhs.) So we got loads of inspiration. 

On Saturday we decided to head to Copenhagen. Leah has a birthday in a few weeks and she really would love a guitar so we decided to go into the music shops and check out what they had. Kristian came along too. We had a fun day. We discovered that even though a guitar is the same make and model it can sound and feel very different. She found one she loved, it was easy to play and it sounded really good and it wasn´t too expensive. We ended up getting her her birthday present early. We were afraid it would be gone when we went in at the end of the month to buy it. 

She was over the moon! We took the coast road home and on the way we stopped for a while at a lovely spot by the sea. She and Kristian went out with their cameras to take some picures of her new guitar. I stayed in the car with my book. It was a beautiful day but I wasn´t feeling the best. I had a bit of sore throat and head and I didn´t have too much energy. They got some lovely photos though....