12thingsfor2012

Since I have updated on the flat and the garden I figured I give shorter updates on the other endeavors I have been working so far:

1. India

Flights are booked! I will be off to India the last 2 weeks of November. Together with my sis I will first head to Mumbai to visit the lovely Nausheen, do some sightseeing and just experience incredible India. From Mumbai we will head up to Delhi to see Rashi get married and hopefully see lots of the “Indians” (guys, you better be there!). So far it sounds like a small Hult reunion is coming up! Gosh, am counting down the days!

2. Volunteering

Nothing new really – the agency never called back so I need to develop a new strategy to find something I might enjoy volunteering for.

3. Writing an article

Am working together with my work mentor on an idea. More on that later 🙂

4. Stockholm

Still working on dates and flights that work. Definitely the next flight I will book!

5. City Tour of Cologne

Originally planned to do it this weekend but with the abysmal weather this weekend I had to postpone it. Come the next nice weekend I soooo will be in this bus and learn all there is to know about my hometown!

Until then!

Some people have a gift with plants. Whatever they plant grows and flourishes. I am not one of those people. My thumb is grey and was usually a safe way to kill off any plant that had the “pleasure” to come across it.

As luck would have it, together with the flat I got a garden. Yay for BBQ (the nice Easter bunny even brought me a cute pink BBQ!) and soaking up the sun in the summer. Not so much yay for the plants.

Since this gardening thing of mine will certainly be a “first” that I have to face this year, I decided to add this to the list.

Below a pic of how the garden “really” looks like right now… You can see – still lots of work ahead of me!

Well, with the unwavering aid and support of my parents I am now spending some time each weekend gardening. I have planted plants, cut back a tree and am currently growing carrots and flowers in my kitchen (due to some evil snail infestation I can’t “Start them off” in the garden itself but need to get them big and strong in safety first (yeah, whatever safety under my thumb means…). In the coming weeks raspberries, tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, chilies etc will be added so that I will actually be able to harvest some yummie food later this year.

But until then I leave you with a few more impressions of my garden (in the rain… been raining nonstop today and I really want this post to get published today…).

A special thanks here, again, to Adrian for the birdhouse, it really is a center point in the garden!

Sooo, I finally found my camera and hence there are no more excuses for me not to post J

After long, long hours of renovating, countless trips to IKEA, decoration stores and the German version of home depot I managed to move into my new flat in late February. Though the flat, of course, is still not 100% done, it feels more and more homely week by week.

Well, let’s work our way room by room:

Entryway

When you walk in that’s what you see:

Before

I decided to keep the furniture, as the wardrobe is really beautiful and provides sufficient storage space for all my coats, jackets, bags, shoes (ok, probably won’t be sufficient, still it’s already quite full and not all my stuff has moved “down” yet.). But still, it’s pretty. Same goes for the shoecupoard, which is pretty useless for storing shoes but makes a nice desk for my lava lamp. The pics of course got changed and give the whole space a funkier atmosphere (if I say so myself), obviously the lava lamp helps here, too.

After

Kitchen

Before

From the entryway you head straight into the kitchen. A side board was added above the stove and my cupcake hangers and the vintage clock fit just right in. The eating space got redone with a picture wall (to be continued, still hunting for more frames!) and new rose chairs replace the worn down chairs.

From the kitchen you can get into the garden, but this will be a post all of its own J

After

Living room

Before

The couch/TV-area and the “formal dining room” switched places so that I have a little bit more light when hanging at the couch and less when formal dining. Frankly, works for me as I definitely spend more time on the couch than at the dinner table. A couch-table and some other antiques I inherited now complement my old white couch. I am planning to re-paint some of the antiques, but am not quite settled yet on the colors and frankly, it might be a shame painting them… Still need to make my mind up here…

The “dining” area holds all my books, porcelain and crystal cups (trust me, there are a lot of them – my two grans seemed to have a fable for porcelain and well, seems I inherited it J If however someone has a hint as to where I might be able to sell “mothers days plates” I will be eternally grateful!

After

Bath

The bath was renovated only a few years ago, so apart from some paint and adding a chandelier (yep, you read correctly!) nothing much was to do (plus it’s so tiny, there wasn’t really a lot of space to make any changes to begin with).

After

Bedroom

Before

The bedroom got a pinkish wall to contrast the white toilet table. A new bed was added and tada we have a new bedroom. I decided to keep the old wardrobe – a new might be added at some point of time, but for now it works allright.

 After

So, there you have it. That’s how I live right now. Hope you enjoyed the little tour!

Sorry for being a bit MIA but work and point no 11 have kinda preoccupied me plenty 🙂

Long story short – I got a flat!

The pros:

• It is the flat I wanted all along
• It has a garden
• It’s plenty big enough for me (70 sqm)
• It’s affordable
• (and it’s in my parents house which can go as a pro or a con depending on the situation ;-))

The con:

• My gran used to live in it and hence, before moving in, there is a lot of emptying and sorting her stuff (so far I was able to add 50 nail scissors, 100 lighters and about 30 soaps to my collection – if anyone is in need of any such items, please let me know!) – oh and, btw fyi, my gran didn’t die but had to move to a nursing house for a plethora of reasons, none of them attached to my benefiting from it

Anyhow, the pros outweigh the con 🙂

The current plan is to finish the bedroom and the bathroom first and then hit the living room, kitchen and entry way. As I have now inherited two sets of furniture (grandparents on both sides) and also still have my own set of household items it’s going to be one wild mixture of styles, with me slowly throwing old pieces out and buying new ones (I just don”t have +5K lying around to buy everything I want right now).

As you can imagine there still is a lot of stuff to do before I will be able to move in for good . However, the house warming party is scheduled for Feb, 25th so by then I better make some headway 😉

Luckily my parents are helping a lot so there might actually be some walls painted when I am back from Dresden (I have to travel to Dresden every Monday to Thursday for work for the next couple of months…) 🙂

As I make headway on each room I will post before and after pics for you to getting an impression of how it’s going 🙂

Till then & stay tuned, new updates will come faster than this last one 🙂