Recent doings #5

It’s time for another What’s New With You? linkup with Gretchen and Kristen, which means it has also been a whole month since the last one. I’m not entirely sure how that happened. The year is one third over already, guys! What?! How?!

I scheduled this post to publish yesterday, while Jan and I were out hiking, so it would appear on actual link-up day, but apparently WordPress chose to ignore me?! So instead you’re getting it in place of Friday letters…

 

Reading. I picked up Possession by A.S Byatt again (and fiinally finished it on the train home from work yesterday. Another Big Read book down!). I aso read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith on the flight back from New Zealand. It was interesting, and so different to 101 Dalmatians! There were some other quick reads in between as well, but those two are the main ones.

Watching. I was going to say we didn’t watch anything in April (except for like breakfast TV, which Jan puts on every morning!), but then I remembered that we started watching Mr. Robot again on 30th April so it totally counts 😉

Going. (That seems like an odd descriptor, but it was too close to really be called travelling). To Allschwil for April’s destination for Take 12 Trips (in case you missed it, I’m taking the challenge again).

Houses in Allschwil

Eating. Camel’s milk chocolate! We bought it in Dubai. Honestly, it didn’t taste particularly different to normal chocolate – and it wasn’t even all that great. I’m not really sure what I was expecting though.

Cross stitching. A new home card for a pen pal. I’ve also been working on something bigger, but I can’t tell you about that yet (you never know who reads here…)

Looking. For furniture. We actually managed to order a wardrobe, which will be delivered in June (why so long?!), but balcony furniture is proving more of a challenge. It’s surprisingly difficult to find stuff that a) we both like b) actually fits on our smallish balcony and c) isn’t either ridiculously expensive or terribly cheap (in terms of quality; cheap price wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t already scratched from being stored badly!).

What did you do in April? Check out the linkup to see how everyone else spent the month.

Buying things for the flat makes me happy

Close to Schwetzingen, there is a huge furniture store called Höffner. As we were leaving Schwetzingen on Saturday, Jan suggested for drop by there to see if we could find any of the bits we still need for the flat (I love that I have a boyfriend who’s not only willing to shop for furniture with me but actually suggests it himself!). When I agreed to stay I told him that I wanted to get back to sorting out the flat this year, and he obviously took it to heart.

Here’s what we got:

A cupboard to go under the bathroom sink. Jan had to saw its back legs off so it could go on the raised ledge thing that runs the length of the bathroom.

Bathroom cupboard

I love how neat the bathroom looks now that our toilertries are inside the cupboard and not lined up along the entire length of the ledge!

I wanted something to store wrapping paper in, so we ended up taking this:

Giant vase? Nah… gift wrap holder!

I saw a beautiful umbrella stand that would have worked just as well, but I refused to pay €75 for something I planned to store wrapping paper in. (I wouldn’t have paid that if I was going to use it for its intended purpose either!)

This basket now holds all my self-help books:

Basket for books

They were previously stacked up under the bedside table, partly because there’s no room left on the bookcase for them but also because I don’t think every visitor to our house needs to know I have those books. It was difficult to move the pile when I wanted to hoover… now I can just pull out the basket.

A gorgeous table runner, or more fuel for my obession with owls:

Owl table runner

They had bedding with the same owl on, but only in single bed size which is no goo to us.

Jan also got a frame for a poster of his that refused to stay up with simple blu-tack. It looks much nicer framed anyway!

Not a bad haul for a couple of hours shopping.