New Apartment Befores

Previous owners had put up two walls that were removed.. you can see one was here (other was in the bedroom)

jumping forward in time, this room is stripped at this point! A new wall will go up here to make Noras bedroom and a dinning room for the time being.

and starting to be worked at this point! Sorry for confusing order.. the only pics taken were by Niels on his phone.

A little tlc from Jacob removing paint from some finer details above.

The master bedroom- or at least a corner of it. There is a glass door to the left that goes out into the garden. You can just see on the far right edge where there had been a wall once also dividing this room, sadly can’t see the other half of the room in the picture.

Niels artsy shot into kitchen from living room through lit hallway.

The kitchen before!

and removing it is Niels dad…

photos taken around the kitchen clockwise..

Door to back stairs.

Bye bye kitchen!

Now you want to see the New kitchen and finished thing don’t you! ..

Coming soon!

Posted on August 23rd, 2011 by emma
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City garden girl

I have always wondered if I be a city girl or a country girl or some kind of chameleon that was made for both! I love roaming near fields and being surrounded by wilderness until it eventually sometimes bores me out of my brain and I find myself seeking the ultra modern and bustling energy of crowds to lose myself in.. I love the lure of late night cities that seem to be as populated by night as they are at day. So I have tried living in the small towns out country and found myself taking many trips in city- this should have been my clue. I have also lived in cities and found myself wishing after green lawns and endless wild foliage and trees and quiet lakes. Finally it seems that I have found ‘my place’ I found it when I met Niels and I realized that wherever he was I would be ‘at home’ And so it turns out that (perfect to us) home that we have found is not in the suburbs but is the apartment that I call ‘the house’ Its an apartment that is big enough to be a house and has the perks of a house, on the ground floor with a pretty quiet street and its own private garden. They call the area an Oasis in the city because it is full of lush greenery, it seems like you have just stepped out of the city- but you haven’t! Just 10 minutes on your bike takes you straight back into the hustle and bustle of busy city life. I don’t know If I could think of anything more ideal for me. I love Copenhagen, I love my bike and I do like those Danes!

Posted on August 21st, 2011 by emma
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A little bit of heaven

Yummy Yummy

So my visiting teachers came this week and brought:

Yummy personalized cookies! Aren’t they lovely! I feel awfully lucky to have visiting teachers who bring me goodies every time .. (I need to be a better visiting teacher!) They are truly an inspirational duo. My waist line is not thanking them so kindly, I’m half glee half despair when I see the beautiful treats that they bring me.. oh well, shall just have to try cut out the other stuff so I can guilt free enjoy these pleasures! Thank you Mrs Lene and Mrs Carol!

These cookies were GONE before the end of that night! I wish to make time to create such lovely things in my life.. and I resolve to in my new home.. since I will now be a stay at home mum for the next year! YaY!

Posted on June 22nd, 2011 by emma
Filed under: bits n bobs, food, love | No Comments yet »

How we became true Copenhageners

Hello all,

So I don’t know how many of you heard that we started the process of putting our apartment up for sale about a month ago. The apartment had not even been listed at which point the estate agents had brought people to it thrice to be viewed when those individuals had shown interest in similar apartments close by in our neighborhood. We had a bid for less than our asking price, which I thought was crazy because we put the price of our place so very reasonable to avoid haggling.. but of course there are always chancers- I know because I am one of them!.. so Niels is the worrier in our home and he worried himself and thought we should just accept to save ourselves time and cleaning (for viewings!!?!) hahaa But I said NO WAY.. and that I wouldn’t be surprised if they still took the place at full price.. we actually decided that we could give them a discount of what we would have paid the photographer the next week for getting pics done of the place and that way we wouldn’t have lost anything but to our surprise we didn’t even have to go that far and the girl did take the place at its asking price after all So that was nice and easy. The new occupant would move in 1st Sep giving us just a couple of months to find a place to live.. just a slight pressure there.

You may also be aware of the high living costs here. Being in the city we pay by the meter. Yep.. this made me gasp in shock when I arrived here that people would brag about having a 100m2 .. (yuh seriously!) At first we had plans to move outside the city so that we could have a little house and a garden, more space to swing a cat.. hopefully even two, but on our house hunting ventures in the burbs, even though we decided we would move within a 30 min journey by train or metro from the city It felt like we had gone too far and the burbs weren’t agreeing with us, also we found a difficulty with getting to church from these areas without a car and that was going to be beyond our budget with this move (cars are insanely expensive here too!) so with that we changed the search to accept a slightly larger apartment in the city with at least one more room for No-no and we hoped to get a bigger kitchen or living room for a dining space too.. and a ground/1st floor so less stairs to climb to reach home. We figured we would buy a bucket bike to get around too

true copenhagener style

This was not at all what we had been planning to begin with but somehow we felt immediately better with this decision.

We set about apartment hunting our only real requisites were that we could have a washing machine IN our apartment and that there weren’t too many stairs and that we had at least one more bedroom.. we learned pretty fast that we couldn’t be too fussy. Oh and MrA wanted no less than 100m2! We looked at a couple of places that we liked one turned out to be in a bit of a ghetto area and the other we went to see, it was very nice even if it had a weird bathroom set up the views from the windows to the street across were picturesque and we loved it, the area was quiet and lush with a big green park near by, just over the way that Nonies cousins live too! It feels like you had stepped outside the city for just a minute, it was hard to believe that a few streets across the hustle and bustle of raw city life continued but I kept telling Niels that there was just something that wasn’t right. Not able to put my finger on it we hadn’t reason to discontinue this pursuit, the only apartment we’d found like it in this rare kind of location. We returned to see it again shortly taking a couple of Niels brothers (one a plumber) with us to see what they said of it. They thought it was a solid decent buy.

As we were leaving the building one of the brothers caught a glimpse of a notice up with all the apartments in the building for sale most of which never get advertised or sold through agents so we took a look and found that there were a couple of apartments bigger than the one we had just seen for about the same price (actually.. less!) And on the ground floor, with a garden..! We went to investigate and looking at one side of the corner apartment were very pleased with the size of the garden.. then we almost died when we learned there was the same size of garden around the corner too belonging to this flat. Niels and Jacob disappeared and I went to find that they had charmed their way into the apartment while the owners were having their dinner. Amazed at the size of the kitchen, we found that all the other rooms were equally impressive in size. High high ceilings and even while needing serious renovation we are still impressed. The occupants are moving in together and want to sell the place fast, they say that there have been eight people showing interest and one woman has visited three times with workmen and said she would get back to them on Monday if she would take it, the gentleman tells us straight forwardly that its first come first served. As we walk outside the apartment we know that we have to say now or we will lose this chance forever- Niels runs back and tells them that we want it, that we are serious and have sold our place already. The owner insists that he reduce the price of the apartment again and that he pay the two months rent for while we renovate before we move in! I wept- all our thoughts for making do with maybe not the best kitchen or finishes went out the window with his kind (crazy?) offer. Today we met and signed the documents. One month from when we started the ball rolling to sell our place. If we had waited any longer before putting our place up for sale or tried to get more for our own apartment we would have no doubt taken longer to sell and never have had this opportunity, nor if we had returned with Niels brothers to see that apartment again. We can barely believe what has happened still. We are moving from a 55m2 apartment in a ‘bad’ area to a 120m2 in a great area.. on ground floor with a very decent garden (very rare in the city!!) That we really shouldn’t be able to afford…

We are calling it the karma apartment, because we have stored up a few good deeds and we feel like they have been re-payed tenfold. Its the sort of thing that when you see it happen to someone else you think ‘lucky git’ and that it doesn’t really happen to ‘you’ but well.. this just goes to show doesn’t it,.. it does!

Posted on June 15th, 2011 by emma
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Good things

I came across this and thought it was soo beautiful that I had to share! Isn’t this just so decadent! Well done Mrs Lene!!

Right now I am scoping cakes like nobodies business while looking for inspiration for my bebe’s 1st birthday celebrations.. I was already thinking of doing a fancy (but much more simple) frosting technique.. Oh yum yum yum. I love cake!

Whatever I do must be fun and kid friendly.. here are some of my inspiration finds so far. I don’t even know where I saved the images oops

Posted on June 14th, 2011 by emma
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Floor snacks

Today I am going to (hopefully) Scrapbook my little heart out. It’s not really the easiest to do when there is a little body constantly up to mischief around me but MrA is going to have that little body for the day while I meet with friends for Scrapbooking gallore.

(I am actually very nervous about this as in 10 months and 1 week I have not been apart from said little body for more than 3 hours and that has been rare even)

I feel weird and give MrA Instructions like- Don’t take any chances.. really, none. Don’t cross the road like you normally do when you have her, don’t let her play with weird stuff for a moment, please watch what she is putting in her mouth, and investigate right away if you see her chewing some kinda floor snack thing! Yup I’m like that. Needless to say I will worry and call a little bit :/

I am now still laying in bed waiting for the bustle of motion that says the day is all go- that is in 17 minutes to be near exact, so trying to make the most of this time in thinking of how to get ready and what to bring to the super scrapbook day to make the most of it and save me carrying the earth.

Hm, my main project that (needs) working on is little Andersens baby book. I have the papers for it and desperately need to do more pages. Pages like what she got from who as gifts. Her first photo.. oh thats a goodie! And I have that printed (check) At the hospital- not printed.. :S um

And then my brain goes blank, oh dear.. hm.

I also want to make my own scrapit recipe book and I have plenty of papers for that! That would be a fun one to get going on.. maybe I should focus on that for today Nice and simple- straight forward. Oh my goodness.. too good to be true, I actually know what I’m going to work on for a change and thus what I need to take with me, yay.

9 minutes now until everybody is awake..

Fun day of Scrap checklist:

Nook + Pantry papers
Other kitchen papers
tab book?
kitchen stamps
photos of lovely food creations!
nifty pens + tools caddy thing
Stuff for my embellishment tutorial (circle punches, chalks)
snacks
Camera to take more pics to scrap later!! hahah

That should do it I think..

4 min until everyone is awake.. better get packed!

Posted on May 28th, 2011 by emma
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One of THOSE weeks

Seriously, I’ve just been running around like a headless chicken for the most part this week! We had a couple of viewings in our apartment which is officially now up for sale.. another tomorrow.. We had birthday/Mothers Day family get together.. I had my first Scrapbook challenge this week! Visiting teachers too and I have a talk to give at church tomorrow.. just a little one but still.. And erm, a mOuntain of washing that just keep’s growing.

But anyway.. lets look at the expression that I’ve been seeing a LOT of recently

Lol! What a cheeky little monkey! This is the look that she pulls constantly when she is in her pram.. as she looks at everyone. Oh girl. Loving you to bits, and yes you are quite the waver now too.. even if its just that you want to leave us or have us go into another room..

Posted on May 14th, 2011 by emma
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The challenge has begun!

In the leafy tree top..

Yea, I know I haven’t posted for aggees truth being i tried a couple of times but seemed to have temporarily forgotten my password hah, hows that for password security? I had to ask the husband who actually remembered it! In danish directly translated they call the post natal memory loss ‘breastfeeding brain’ like your brains have been milked out.. I think that could be what’s happened.

I am VERY excited about this new project I am involved in, where a friend and I with a love for all things paper and colour, challenge each other each week to be creative, and share the outcomes and challenges with others as we go- because we all know its good to share!

Check out the first challenge where Alaina tells us a bit about herself in a sweet and sophisticated mini album.. so cute! Now I have to get busy and figure what I am going to respond to her challenge with!

xx

Posted on May 7th, 2011 by emma
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A Saturday stroll

On Saturday we decided that we wanted to go visit the Botanical gardens but they had closed early and as it seemed that spring was in the air we just kept on walking..

and we went here:

and then we went here:

We stopped for a break..

And then we continued again..

Stopping to admire everything on our way!

We love the teeny tiny house..

yup I said everything!

Until we got to here! We had walked quite a bit and we were hungry so we thought we’d give this place a go.. our new favorite local Indian.. they even do a pashwari nan! And they really made it easy for you dining with a little one, so helpful and nice!