Someone just accidentally deleted the title of our website and somebody else will have to fix it when he gets a chance. This html thing is a mystery sometimes. But the orange sidebar just had to go.

Orange and me – I don’t think we are ever gonna be friends. I have tried so many different shades of it, but it just keeps reminding me of the trash trucks in Germany. So, it was time for a color change on our website. Right now I’m just playing around a little with different shades of green and blue. They are kind of reflecting what’s going on on our walls right now and what the dining room will be soon. Have I ever mentioned that I am a color geek? That person standing in front of the paint chip collection at Home Depot, comparing 20 different shades of blues for hours – yep, that’s me. If I had unlimited amounts of time, I would probably make a trip to the paint color dream land every week and soon run out of walls to paint. In the meantime I am just collecting a significant amount of paint chips in my desk and dreaming of time for endless painting to magically appear.

Check out this cool tool if you need inspiration for color combinations for graphic stuff, home decor, or just to get a kick out of looking at colors: http://kuler.adobe.com

Update:

Obviously, everythings been fixed and improved. Do you like it the changes?

Honestly, I never really understood all the rage about blogging. Yes, I can write down whatever I want, and almost nobody will ever read it. That’s great. So what’s the big freaking deal? Why is blogging so 2.0, and what does that even mean?

(Check Wikipedia if you are looking for a serious answer (there you go Brad coworker, I learned my English punctuation lesson today. No comma before the if. Just let it flow.)) Anyway, without getting into more technicalities – I found this blog, and I love it: http://www.younghouselove.com/. I can keep reading and reading, and commenting, and getting inspired by it all day long. It’s my new favorite thing. Especially now that I have a little casita on my own and can finally come out of my renter’s closet and make a real home! The blog is about a young couple – now turned family – who bought their first house and started blogging about their kitchen renovation. (All those parallels. Read about our kitchen renovation in the next post). Then they kept renovating and reporting and painting and taking photos and documenting it all for the world to see. Their decorating style is THE bomb, their writing skills genius, and on top of that they seem like really cool people. Now they make their living by doing exactly that. Isn’t that just too cool?

Check out their projects, their house, and their stories. Reading this blog is pretty addicting right now for me. There are so many great ideas about how to home-ify your house that I am willing to go full force forward and sacrificing all my rare free evenings to keep going with my own young house love.

Now don’t get any ideas. I am not becoming a full time blogger any time soon or even later. But I definitely found great inspiration to post more frequently, because there might always be someone out there who is just remotely interested in what I have to share. Or maybe there are even a few people who can find themselves in what my life is about: love, family, house, nature, interculturality, the world, and other stories.

Soo … we did it. In the hopes of halting our high speed life for a good while and finally settling, we bought our first own house. It’s a townhouse (Reihenhaus) in a very lovely little community pretty close to where we used to live. After seeing about 20 houses, this one was clearly the best choice and we are very happy with it. What we were really looking for was a spacious place that we wouldn’t grow out of too soon, but is also manageable for our small family now. And we wanted good location. We learned pretty quickly that those are the two things that have to be right, because everything else about a house can be changed. Luckily, the house is in pretty good shape and does not need any immediate work, although in the long run we will definitely change some finishes.

The outdoor deck needs a new finish, the wallpaper in the basement has to be removed, the wood floors refinished, the carpet in the dining room has to go (stupid! whoever puts light colored carpet in a dining room must not have any children), replace the old brass light fixtures, and in the course of changing the kitchen sink we might as well get us some nice darker counter tops.

We moved in in February and have kind of arrived, even though a lot of details are still missing. It’s just a lot of space to fill and we are trying to get more pictures, curtains, and rugs piece by piece. Right now the living room is still pretty bare and empty (which makes for a great play room), but soon our highly anticipated sofa that we ordered two months ago will arrive. As you might imagine, the amateur interior designer within me is bursting of ideas and projects right now to make this plain canvas truly ours. It’s interesting how Lincoln’s and my role changed in this aspect. I used to be the one holding our budget together and keep spendings low. Now he has to hold me back not to go shopping for home goods every day. But hey, this is what I’ve been waiting for all my life. Confessions of a homemaker. Enjoy the tour!

So acupuncturists, please help me out: Is this the damp season or what? From my non-tai-perspective it definitely looks like it. Or why does all that water enter our room right now? Okay, the complete story from the beginning: (more…)