I am scouring Etsy for neat little things to decorate our house with. So far I’ve only purchased the prints I mentioned in yesterday’s post, but I am itching to get more, more, MORE!

So imagine my glee when I found that Teresa of Scribble Scratch is running a contest to win a dish towel set found on Etsy! Our dish towels are all boring (white and blue/green), so some new ones would be only too awesome, and would brighten up our kitchen a bit. Personally I think I’d go for the green set, as that goes best with our decorating otherwise.

Etsy is definitely my new addiction. I should probably rename my Paypal account Etsy-money, heh. I’m glad I haven’t made any withdrawals to my bank account lately, at least!

In addition to True Blood, I have yet another new obsession: Home improvement blogs.

I know, I know - I live in a brand new house, what could I possible want to improve?

A LOT.

Oh, so many things. I’d like to paint some walls - to be exact, I’d like to paint one wall in the living room (is gold paint considered tacky? Cause I kinda think it would look tres awesome), one wall in the bedroom (blue) and one wall downstairs in the library/new room of horrors (mess) since my brother moved into the old one - for this last wall I’m thinking purple. Or, actually, I want to put on wallpaper, with one of those big, sort of old fashioned patterns on. Sort of like the fleur de lis, only…not. You know? I know you don’t know, I hardly know myself what it is I am talking about. Geesh.

I also want to change the bathroom counter and sink (and maybe get some Kohler faucets), because the one we have is boring, but the house got to be expensive enough as it was, so we just had to let them give us the boring one. We know people in the business though, so it’s cool. We just need to, you know, not spend most of our money on LIVING HERE, and then we can go look at stuff. I hate being “poor”. Someone please hook me up with a comfy, well paid job. Preferably one where I have my own office, because I’m not that heavily into the whole “sharing my space”-thing. Sorry. It’s not you, it’s me. Ok, and a little bit you.

I digress. Slightly. What I wanted to tell you all was that I found some really good home improvement blogs:

• This Young House - a young couple and their old house, which is so much nicer and more soulful than our brand new house.
• Chez Larsson - Benita blogs about her home, her family and cinnamon rolls. Lots of handy tips on things like making your own furniture!
• Making it Lovely - if I had one tiny little shred of Nicole’s creativity, I would consider myself blessed. Instead, I will just borrow ideas from her. HAH. Take that, lack of creativity.
• Adventures in renovating a Brooklyn limestone - Mrs Limestone makes wonderful things, such as Halloween invitations, AND she loves the Twilight saga. What is there not to love?

My head is now so full of ideas that I’m not sure it can hold them all. Thus I might have to do something I really loathe - do printouts of some posts and put them in a folder. Then I’ll put the folder on some shelf, forget about it, and then rediscover it next time we move. Which, you know, might not be for years. That’s just how I roll. +5 forgetfulness, -5 focus.

Yes, I failed in my project to clean the room my brother (who got accepted into the bachelor’s program in history, huzzah!) is going to rent. I managed to clear out 3-4 boxes and I moved some other stuff around, but most of the time was lost in looking through papers and throwing out many of them (like the confirmation slip that I passed the theoretical part of my driver’s test - goodness knows why I’ve held on to it for this long), and sorting stuff into smaller boxes to store on shelves. So - not much done, but what IS done is done pretty well. I can be organized if I really want to, I can, I can.

Today we are going to Ikea to pick up some stair gates for my parents’ house, so that Hera (puppy!) won’t fall down them. And no, she is not ours, she is my mom’s. We’re just her chauffeurs. We’re also picking up some picture frames for the library - my plan is to print stills etc from movies, frame them, and hang them up in no particular way. We already have two large, framed Lord of the Rings posters (Fellowship and Return of the King, no Two Towers yet), and I have some awesome postcards featuring artwork from Pan’s Labyrinth.

Then hopefully we’ll find the time this week to go to the gym. I’m starting to feel very unfit, bordering on flabby, and I’d much rather go to the gym and get a good workout, than resort to pills or similar, such as Phentermine.

Four more days to go and then it is holiday time! I can’t wait.

I plan ahead a lot. To be honest though, it isn’t so much planning ahead as it is dreaming ahead - dreaming is much more fun, too! I dream of a better tomorrow. A better job. More money. Traveling. The dream house (it might be the one we’ve sort of bought, just not to that cost). A baby.

Lately it has been mostly about the money, because of the situation we’re in. But - earlier it was all about the baby. I am so ready to have one. So. Ready. When we bought the house (of doom), I told Tor that the smaller bedroom on the 1st floor was to be set aside for the future baby. I’ve browsed baby furniture. Baby clothing. Baby toys. I’ve read articles on breast feeding, on co-sleeping, on what diapers to choose, on parenting in general. Because this is what I’m like - when I decide on a new “project”, I go all in with the preparations. All in.

Now if only those finances of ours would stabilize…

Holiday hangover. That’s the only phrase I can think of to describe how I’m feeling these days. I had a fantastic holiday at home with my family, and it didn’t last half as long as I needed it to. Returning to Trondheim, however much I’ve missed Tor while away, is always a letdown. Everything seems darker here, even though the days are longer on this side of the Polar Circle. Mostly I’ve been functioning somewhat zombie-like - doing only what I need to do. When I’m not in my zombie state of mind, I run around like crazy doing all sorts of things that need doing, anything to keep my mind occupied so that I won’t think about how I miss being at home and how I miss being with my family, because it inevitably makes me cry. Then I feel guilty about wanting to be there rather than being here with Tor (allthough that’s not really the case - ideally I’d be able to be both places at the same time, always.), and then that makes me cry even more. Holiday hangover, January depression, post-holiday induced mental fragility. I’ve got it.

But what if you feel like you have two homes? I actually do believe that I’ve left part of my heart back home-home, it sure feels like it whenever I have to leave my family to go back here again. It’s not that I don’t like it here, I’d just prefer to be both places at the same time. Is that so much to ask? IS IT?

Anyway, I had an absolutely fabolous trip home. I spent a lot of time with my mom, talking and doing crafts and walking the dog, and I also visited my grandmother a couple of times as well. We went to my recently deceased grandfather’s house, but I didn’t go inside. I think I’d prefer to remember it as it was with him in it, not as an empty house. :cry:

I have to say a special thank you to everyone who commented on the last entry. Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever had that many comments on a single entry before. Link’s really popular with the ladies, it seems. :love:

I’ve been working on a couple of crafty projects since I got back, and will have pictures to show eventually. :) Other than that, I’ve been playing a bit of Star Wars: Empire at War, and am now awaiting Tomb Raider Legend, Oblivion and Dreamfall. Especially Dreamfall. I’m also studying like mad for my june 6 exam. The curriculum is enormous, as it includes both American and British civilization, with everything from history to population to geography to economy to media…the list goes on. Suffice it to say that even though the books aren’t that big, it’s A LOT for one brain to understand and remember.

Now, for a few pictures from back home…

View from our house. The red building is the old barn, the yellow house is my grandmother’s, and the blue one is my aunt’s.

View again. See those trees that are lying there in the field? Notice the one that’s lying away from the others? It fell the wrong way when it was being felled, and cut our telephone cable. Of course, the 3 days after this incident were all holidays, so the repairmen wouldn’t come fix it.

Gavi, my mom’s Golden Retriever. She might look nice and cute, but she’s really a whirlwind in disguise.

Yay, spring is arriving!

My grandfather on my father’s side passed away this morning. Peacefully, in his sleep. I’m not really sure how I feel - I’m thinking ‘numb’ might be a good word for it.