Nestled In

It is always nice to get Christmas presents but it’s even nicer to give Christmas presents. The only problem is to come up with inventive and useful presents. Also, we are yet to decide whether we give each other presents this Christmas or not. Most of our money goes to curtains, rugs, shelves and lamps for our new home so it’s possible that we’ll buy something nice for the apartment instead of buying something unnecessary (but of course, nice) for each other.

We are also thinking of making Devil’s jam (marmalade) before Christmas, it would be a nice little gift to give to people. Devil’s jam is tomato-based hot and spicy jam that can be served with meat and vegetables. I also love it with goat cheese (and chicken). We haven’t made this kind of jam by ourselves before so it’ll be an adventure. If we are successful with the jam, we’ll give jars of Devil’s jam for some of our friends and family members.

Picture from DanSukker.

It’s been such a grey, dull day over here today that I decided to treat myself to some window-shopping online. Just looking at these beautiful things would brighten up even the darkest November day. I’m in love with Iittala’s Taika tableware, even though these pricey ceramics are almost out of reach for my student budget. I only have a few of the Taika plates in my collection so far but I’m planning to add to it, even if only one plate at a time. The Finnish jewerly maker Kalevala koru has a great new collection out, Horse by Kaisaleena Mäkelä. I have my eye on the Horse pendant which is availabe both in bronze and silver. This mosaic lantern from Indiska looks just lovely and perfect for the dark November afternoons and evenings. And last, there is this year’s limited edition Moomin Christmas mug called Snow lantern. We have a fairly nice collection of Moomin mugs already but you never can have too many Moomin mugs, can you?

We have almost all the furniture we need for our new apartment but there are still a few things we have to buy. For example, our dining table is really small. It has been designed for two people so it’ll be ridiculously small for the dining area in the new apartment. Last weekend we browsed through IKEA’s website and tried to find a dining table and chairs that would appeal to both of us. Since we like to photoshop we tried out how the Ekensberg table and the Olle chairs would look together. We would like to find simple black wooden chairs and a natural colored (solid) wooden table. We think Ekensberg and four Olles would be perfect for us and for our budget (under 300 euros altogether). The IKEA store in Haparanda is only 120 kilometers away from Oulu. That’s why we are planning a shopping trip to Sweden during the winter/spring in any case.

I haven’t seen our new apartment live. I won’t see it before we get the keys in the beginning of December. Katja has shown me a couple of photos and I’ve seen the floor plan. Last weekend we spent some time with planning. We are trying to figure out how we are going to arrage our furniture beforehand so that it won’t take too much time when we actually get to move in. Because we don’t have any exact measurements of the apartment or the furniture at this point, we can only dream and draw rough sketches.

Here’s one of the possible scenarios.

On Friday we were supposed to sign the lease to our new apartment. Unfortunately, when we got to the office we found out that it was closed for the day because of an employee training. Because of our long-distance relationship we usually see each other only on weekends and holidays. Last Friday was the only day we were both in town during the office hours so next week I’ll have to sign the papers by myself. It’s such a pity because we wanted to sign the lease and look at the paint swatches together. Paint for the walls and ceiling are provided free for us but the color selection is limited. We’re planning to paint the bedroom green so hopefully there’s a nice shade of green available.

We’ve been together since the summer of 2006 and we are moving in together in a month. During the first week of December we are going to clean and paint our new apartment and the week after that we’re moving in. We’ll have a little over a week to unpack and settle in before Christmas.

We created this blog to document the process of turning a 62 square meter (667 square feet) rental apartment into our first home together. Here we’ll share our plans and projects and the every-day things we enjoy in our home.