home - part 1

when we first moved in, our apartment looked like this:

then, for about two weeks it looked like this:

and now finally the boxes have [mostly] been put away and we have a home! its not all in order yet, but i thought i'd show you a sneak peak of the kitchen. it was very important for us to get the kitchen in order quickly- eating out here is rough on the budget. and let's be honest, not the best food! we were so excited to start cooking again and to use all of our nice kitchen things that we haven't seen for a year and a half. 

welcome to our new kitchen! don't you love how we expanded into the dining area to get more space for storage and our big work table? typically the dutch do not have big kitchens and this one has lots of amenities but almost no counter space. so we found this lovely work table which also stores a lot of our big appliances, pots and pans, knives, etc. one of the best things we did was to buy several transformers so that we could use our US appliances. 

now we just need some wine...

the mixer is "on display" because its too heavy!

one of my favorite spots- lovebirds from grandma millie
(the teapot is from her house as well!)

how to meet your neighbors

1. say "hello" as grumpy man tries to get to his mailbox while you are holding the door open for the odd cast of characters (two middle aged women wearing high heels and one extremely tall and thin guy) who are carrying lots of your stuff into the building. grumpy man grumbles something under his breath while he is trying to figure out which one of you ya-hoos is moving into the building.

2. as you are making the trip down to the storage room to retrieve the ski boot you've been using as a hammer to assemble furniture, a friendly neighbor is putting his bike away and offers to lend you a REAL hammer!

3. you need to take some photos of scratches on the outside of the entry door of the apartment but the lighting isn't quite right. in order to get better lighting you move into the hallway, close the door and almost instantly you realize that you've locked yourself out of the apartment in an unheated lobby wearing neither shoes nor jacket (or even sweater) with no phone, no watch... only a camera. about forty-five minutes later your neighbor will come home from work and (because everyone in this town works for Philips) will help you find your husband's phone number by phoning colleagues still at the office and then let you sit on his couch and warm up.

4. you hear a door close across the hall and since you're curious you grab your bag and rush out as quickly as possible. in the hall you are relieved to find out that the remaining apartment on your floor is NOT inhabited by the grumpy man but instead a very kind man who chats it up in the elevator. (he also worked for Philips)


*so far all neighbors we've met have been single males.

**when i was locked out i took a series of photos to check the time while praying for Howie to hurry home from work. i like to call this series "did i ever set the clock on my camera?"

mutato

I was thinking this print would look nice in our place. But then I realized that it resembles our couch a bit too much. Anyway, very cool!

found on swissmiss, one of my daily reads.

Ouchy 58.

Ouchy 58 may not mean much to you, but its now where we call home! (Although for me MN will forever be "home" as well.) On Friday I gave my first cooking lesson at our place.  I cleaned up a bit and realized that I never posted photos of our lovely abode.  It was looking spiffy so I snapped a few.  


We have one big bedroom with a nice big wardrobe and another room that is open to the kitchen so it makes it feel a lot bigger than some of the other apartments here. Our bathroom is very new, nothing special. But, living here has made me very aware of space we really need. I wonder how I ever needed so much space before, when all of our things fit onto that tiny bathroom cart?  We’ve made chicken curry, spring rolls, soups, muffins, etc. in our small kitchen. And I had 6 guests over for my cooking lesson. I love having a small apartment, especially when cleaning takes 1/3 of the time!

The couch is almost finished- I call it my “IKEA hack job”. The couch was originally from IKEA, passed down to us from other students, like most of our furniture.  We actually paid for the thing, without knowing that it is actually very old. Who buys a white couch in a student apartment?! It is very grey with many stains, pen markings, etc. and then springs are about to burst through the cushions. I found some adorable fabric at IKEA, took some measurements, and bought just enough to cover the couch. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but luckily the previous cover was attached by a friction-fit type of device, a metal groove with a plastic plug to hold the fabric taught under the couch. This job was easier than I thought! Now I just need to tack down a few corners and it has most definitely brightened our room.  Now to get a few things on the walls…

 

days three/four. the couch.

days three and most of four were, literally, spent on the couch. my illness took a bad turn and i could barely move. thankfully howie was feeling better and made two trips to the pharmacy for me! he also managed to take these pics of our ouchy apartment view during the snow. believe it or not, there may be some alps behind those clouds- we have yet to see!

i think we have a pretty decent view- we look directly out to the white building with turrets from the top photo, and the grey building with shutters from the second photo. our apartment is a pink version of the dirty one to the right of the gray building, so its a good thing that we have something a little more charming to stare at! there is also a pedestrian/bike path you can see in the photos, so we have lots of green space to look out to. and somehow there are millions of little birds that live here- maybe there are just lots of birds in switzerland?

we did make some progress on unpacking our apartment today, but we'll wait to post some photos until after our ikea trip. hopefully we'll also be able to find the mysterious cellar to find the remaining furniture we "purchased" from the previous tenant... to be continued...