Vårt eget liv.....



While the garden has been tranformed into a mudbath, we got busy getting settled as good as possible. We did not do any serious redecoration, painting or anything; we just moved in our stuff and began unpacking. There's boxes and stuff everywhere. Chaos has taken over what is going to be our home ..... one day.....
The first night in our house was, of course, a little on the odd side, strange noises and smells, which makes that you actually can't sleep at all. Except for Ron and the kids; they slept well. But hey, what did you expect.
The very first homemade meal made by ourselves was a big kettle of puzstasoup. And boy, did that taste good. Right between two spoons of soup Sven turned silent, after which, with a deep sigh, he kind of blew my mind with the words "Vårt eget liv" wich means:" a life of our own." Quite a deep thought for an elevenyear old I think. But that's exactly what it feels like right now.
Bit by bit, the pile of boxes is shrinking and we are getting a little more space to move around. Some things change place several times before they get their final destination and slowly but surely our house begins to look like a home.
Of course the kids have to go to school and on one of these schooldays Sven has a lesson called Hemkundskap, something like householdeducation. He is going to cook. He liked it the first time and we agreed that everytime he has this class, he cooks the same meal for the whole family in the weekend after. Luckily for him that was also his homework.  So on saterday he went shopping with me in Falun and bought all the ingredients to a pastameal. Back home he started...



Cooking in the new kitchen

 

The result of hard work and boy did that tast good 

Between working en sleeping we kept ourselves busy with unpacking and getting settled. The next weekend we thougth we might have an opportunity to meet the locals. There was a little festivity by the lake, Ljuskväll,(candle)Light Evening . The whole road up to the lake and beyond was lit by candles, there were candles floating on de lake on little rafts. There was hot coco and coffee and ... of course........ grilled sausage with bread. You can take a walk around the lake and after have a nice warming hot coco or coffee. And warming we needed, it was a bit on the chilly side.

 

Lots of beautifull little twinklers on the lake; the full moon, a chrystalclear night with more stars than we ever saw and everywhere candles.



Korv med bröd (in other words grilled sausage with bread)

We're starting to get a bit of a normal everyday life now. Sometimes we do realize that we have a little bit of luxury though. We haven't had a bathtub for 9 years, so you can imagine the joy when they may hop in. Especialy the girls are having a great time together.

 

 

 After a week of having to listen to agonising catmiaws, we decided it was time to let out fourlegged friends meet the outside world. As excited as they were, they took their time just to leave the doorstep, but once they did...... . I could only hope they would find their way back.

And they did........... after several hours. Kareltje, the red one, had the courtesy to bring back a giant mouse. A little thank you gift, I suppose.

They just can't wait

Finally!!

puzzle picture, find the cats

Eventually they ended up in the tree right in front of the door. The reason? Ed, the black one, was being chased by a big local grey striped cat!! And Karel... he joined just for the fun of it.

ore and more boxes getting unpacked  and more and more things find their way to where they're supposed to be. Like books on bookshelves, allthough sometimes books find their way to the children. Miraculously even Annalena seems to like one off our own old time favorites, Asterix. She hardly ever reads a book, but this she seems to like, and it's a great way of keeping up her Dutch skills. So, during weekends it is cosy on the couch......

And then, at the end of October, we suddenly have a second "teenager" in the house. Annalena celebrated her 10th birthday. It was her wish to have her birthday in our new home, so.... wish granted. Another one of her wishes was a chocolate/strawberry cake with whipped cream in her favorite colors, being green and blue, covered in multicolored sprinkles. And again..... wish granted. What more can a girl want........

 

 

If one wants to make his house feel like a home, one needs to go out and try to find homy things. One can find things like that very well at the local second hand store, or Loppis, as they call it over here. So yesterday Ron and I drew ourselves about 5 km from our house to Arkhyttan. We knew there was a loppis there, because we pass by there everyday when go to work. Time to take a look inside. Okay, it's not the cleanest place in the world, it's cold and a little bit of a chaos, but we sure found a lot usefull, practical, nice and even homy things, all at the same time. All in all it took two days to get what we liked and wanted. Our "loot"; 7 floormats (trasmattor), 2 cast iron skillers, an alarmclock, a copper walllamp, a large box of shoepolishgear, 2 breadforms, a pair of boots for Annalena, a ceramic honeypot, 2 wallcandleholders, a metal teapot, one of those things you put a tealight in to keep the teapot and contents warm, 2 small pots of skiwax, a pair of womans boots and 3 pairs of trousers for the Mss, curtains, and fabric to make curtains, garn, lots of decorating band and a strange candleholder with candle (plus a refill)... total "damage" around 1450sek (=162 euro's)!!! Woohoow!

 

Now who can tell how this is called????
candlesqueezerholderupperthingy??

All in all I think we had quite a bargain ......... Guess they were happy to see us as well. Just a case of supporting the local economy........ And we have more things to keep us going in case of a powerout.

First impressions of winter

The first real nightfrosts we had were on october 25th. Esther and I had some time together after the kids went to school, so we went for a little walk, just to get some fresh air.... The frost and moist air had cast a crispy carpet of white over the landscape.

 

A glorious sunrise... right in front of our house.



The still relatively warm water of the lake made it steam in the morningcold.

 

In the distance one of our "neighbours" was firing up his stove, but the cold air above the ground trapped the smoke and prevented it from drifting upward.

 

And a few days later King Winter gave us a little taste of what will be coming soon with more frosty temperatures on to the 28th.... with nighttemperatures going as low as -7 degrees.

 

And a few centimeters of snow on the 29th!!

Some serious snowfall resulted in about 8cm of the white stuff.

The first snowman of the season for our kids.

 

Too bad it didn't last long and within two days the white beauty had turned into a dark brown misery on the ground and grey in the skies....

 

Moving... a moving movement...

The day of the actual move came and much faster than we had anticipated. There was some much to be done and so little time to do it in. Besides the packing we still had to work. We also had to look around for necessary things we did not have yet. We lacked kitchenequipment, we had no beds or a sofa. Closets we did not need, because these were part of the rooms. Thankfully things like a refridgerator and an oven are standard parts of a house here. A nice bonus were the two freezers in the basement!
Again we had help. One of our colleagues, Susanna, had some surplus kitchengear. It turned out to be a bit more than "some". She gave us pots and pans, glasses and mugs, cutlery and kitchenutensils. On top of that we received loads of towels, curtains, a livingroom table, a kitchentable with chairs, coffeemachine, toaster and watercooker. And all she wanted in return was a homemade pie.... We only had to come and collect the things. When we did, we got an additional bonus. There was a single bed, a desk and a small loungechair for our youngest daughter, a tv, a large pile of bedsheets and covers, lamps..... We were stunned, surprised and really happy. Another colleage, Lena, helped us too by offering us a bookcase and a desk. We figured that these would be great for Annalena. Our employer Malin granted us permission to us the Priolevacompanyvan to get and transport things to our house, previous to the actual move.
Before all this we already had been given 2 rockingchairs, a bedsofa, a matras for Annalena's bed and a large bookcase by Esther's parents.
For some of the larger pieces we needed we searched a national sellingsite blocket, where we found a bed for us, a bed for Elsa and our sofa, all dirt cheap. These were moved into the house to. For the actual move Per-Åke offered the large van from Roslunds potatis to us. Again the community came to our aid....

The day we moved, saturday 20 october, was a miserable one; it was grey and rained... the entire day... and Hans, Esther's dad, helped us. The loading of the van went smoothly, the unloading however a lot less so. We had to struggle uphill with every single box or handfull and the path to the house quickly turned into a mudslide. What a mess!
Luckily we have a small shack at the bottom of the hill, next to the "road", so many of the heavier boxes were temporarily stacked there. But the damage had been done and remains to this day.
On the bright side, we did see a moose, while driving here the first time! So this move was in 2 ways similar to the previous one; lots of rain and a moosesighting. I consider the latter to be a good omen.
After we had unloaded the first load, we went over to Lena's place in order to get the bookcase and desk. These turned out to be 2 real nice wooden bookcases and a gorgeous wooden desk. We were not expecting this at all..... Luckily for us did Annalena not like the desk, so it has become a centrepiece in our livingroom, behind which I am typing right now.
Esther's mom had made dinner for us all here and took care of our kids all day. She also tested out livingroomstove and that one does give of plenty of warmth!! So no worries here, when winter comes.

We can not say thank you enough to all these people!!!

After a hard day's work, we turned in early for the first night in our own home......

Nothing, but pictures.

Well..... almost nothing. Because uploading pictures was a real drag last night, I tried again today and with a lot more succes (read speed). So I'll show what our house looked like and give a little explanation when I feel the need.  

 

Our bedroom

guess.....

the view from the balcony (and livingroom)

This is what you see, when looking up from the (future vegetable- and fruit)garden

The lake only a few hundred meters from the house. There's another one on the other side, too.

The very first residents

The first furniture that arrived. I'll tell you more about that in a later post.

Sven in our backyard

The dream creates the journey....

Well.... here we are....
Getting settled in our new house, our new home! And it sure already feels like that for all of us, including the cats!
I guess it would be appropriate to tell you how we ended up here, so I'll just start at the beginning and work my, or our, way up from there.
It all started, when we had just arrived here in Sweden. We moved into Esther's parents house, or a large part of it, and pretty soon found ourselves browsing the housesellers' sites and homepages. We had no fixed plan yet, so kept a bit of an open mind as to where we would wanted to live and work on a permanent basis. Offcourse we did look for local housing too and we soon found the advert for this house. Looked nice, but the pricetag was way to high for us, even if we had been able to get a loan. So it was put aside and we searched, compared and dreamt on......
Somewhere along the line our list of demands our future house and home would have to meet, materialised. It had to be not too large, but roomy enough for all of us to have a place of our own. That meant at least 4 bedrooms. It also had to have a garden, large enough so we could grow vegetables and fruit, maybe even have a henhouse and a beehive or 2 would be fantastic. It also should enable us to live our life in a simple and basic way (off the grid and independant if the need would arise), meaning heating with wood and maybe even cooking on a woodstove and a watersupply of our own. It had to have an guesthouse, in which we could house guests and if possible it should have a rootcellar (jordkällare), so we could store what we had grown. It would be great if we had something like a small barn or something in order to facilitate room for our hobbies and other things. Clearly you can see where this was leading to; a wishlist wayyyy to long to fit the bill. For all of this we would need a fullsized farm, which would be out of reach financially and which would be way to much to cope with for us Dutch cityfolks.
As time went by we were able to get a foothold. We both found a job; Esther on a 50%-basis and me on a hourbasis. Nothing to get rich with, but it was a start and, given our history, we are used to do with very little. It also became more and more appearant that, because of the support and help we received from this community, we all wanted to stay here and not move away. We really had started to feel at home here and feel a connection with the village and its people. Taking the kids to another school was a big NO-NO. They made that very clear to us! And so our search gradually narrowed itself more and more towards the direct area in and around Stora Skedvi with a radius of up to 15km.
The house, and some others, came up with every search, but remained out of reach, because of the price and because some of the requirements we had set, were not met. By the time we got actively involved with the charcoalkiln, it turned out that the house was en route there. So I stopped to have a quick look. House looked nice, area too... Too bad... *sigh...* And than.... the price dropped! Significantly! But still out of reach... just, but still... Ahhhh the frustration!! It did rule out all the other options with one blow, though.

The only picture from the original salesadd that i saved, befor the broker removed the add...

We had looked at the online advert and pictures many times by now. The house was large enough for us all, but not too large. The upperfloor had 2 of the bedrooms, a roomy kitchen, a large enough livingroom, a bathroom and as a bonus a balcony accessible from both livingroom and one bedroom. The livingroom had a stove and the house was further heated by a electrically powered central heatingsystem. The house had a large basement with foodcellar (so no need for a rootcellar), the boilerroom, 2 of the bedrooms, a laundryroom and an extra storageroom.
It was build on top of a rise in the terrain, with the high side facing south and the low side facing north. This way it had the broadside with the livingroom, the balcony and 3 bedrooms exposed to the sun, which would reduce heating in wintertime, while the northside only had one bedroom and the kitchen exposed to the cold.
And than one day, after we had dismantled the kiln, we stopped with the whole family here.... just to have a look. Only this time something had changed. There was something different about the house, but I could not put my finger on it. A feeling emerged, which, by the time we had gotten home, had turned into a knowing; that house would be ours. I just knew it. Don't ask me why or how, I just did.... We were going to live there. Our children were uniquely unanimous; they wanted to live there, too!
But still..... the price was too high for us to afford. We had previously contacted the broker with the question if we could not rent the house first, so that we could buy it later, when we had the possibility. She would contact the owner and see if he would agree. We did not hear from her for a while, untill suddenly something happened. Esther wanted to show her mother something on the broker's homepage and noticed that the house did not show up in the list of hits in a certain pricerange. So she adjusted the range and the house showed up again.... but this time again significantly lowered in price! Something we might be able to afford!!! Esther immediately called me at work at told me the good news. I urged her to contact the broker and even the bank, to see what our options were. Luckily for us, the bank and broker are linked and part of the Swedbank here. And I have to say that I am mostly impressed and very pleasantly surprised at how they helped us in finding a sollution. With their help, and from Esthers' parents, we were able to finance the purchase of the house! we made an appointment with the broker to visit and view the house and we were quit excited that day. After we were let in, the kids all rushed to different bedrooms and each claimed one. Without any form of consultation or planning with us or with each other they exactly claimed the rooms we had had in mind for them. They practically bought the house!
Some impressions;

After that things evolved at breakneckspeed. A million and one things had to be done and arranged, contracts had to be signed, insurances compared and bought, our few belongings packed... again, only to find out that they were not all that few.

A new blog for our Dutch AND international friends!!

Yes, you all read it right; a completely new blog about us; a Dutch family living in the wonderfull community of Stora Skedvi in the most beautiful part of Sweden, Dalarna.
We moved here from Holland some 14 months ago and by the current looks of it we're going to stay! We bought a house of our own now and by doing so, we have started a new chapter in the book of our life. Our emigrationblog will not be closed, but it will also not be updated anymore, since that chapter has closed now. It'll remain online, so that other's can still read it, though.
You will also notice that we will be blogging in English, so that both our Dutch and our Swedish friends and contacts, as well as other international friends can read and understand what's going on. It is not ready yet, as we have to alter the looks and gadgets to make it more appealing and easier on the eye....

You can find us here..... more or less.... Nyberget

So, enjoy our writings and ramblings and please feel free to read and/or comment.