I realize I haven't updated my blog in a while, very sorry about that!

Latest news are the arrivals of our new French dining table, which will go very well with the table cloths my mom got us in Provence.

It can fit eight people when it's at its smallest, and at least 12 people when the extensions are installed in the middle of it.

We also got a wine fridge to store all of our bottles at a stable temperature. Ours can be viewed here.

Besides the two new arrivals, we will soon have moose meat in our freezer, because one of Sylvain's colleagues went hunting earlier this autuman, and is sharing his "profit" with his work buddies... I can't wait!

Sylvain and I did try some moose sausage a couple of weeks ago, which, apparently, isn't as good as saussison sec d'Auvergne (dried sausage from the Auvergne region)... At least according to Sylvain... hehe...

You can see pictures of the house on Sylvain’s photo page.

The latest addition(s) to the house are curtains for the kitchen and the living room, which I bought in Sweden a few weeks ago with my mother.

I have also acquired some dessert bowls and spoons. My mom gave us six ice cream bowls which have never been used in our household because of the small quantity. We bought the spoons in Sweden.

The desert spoon size is between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, and which makes it perfect for eating cereal. In a couple of weeks, we will also receive a 68 piece steel cutlery set, and then we will be well equipped, at least cutlery-wise...

We still need some more shelve space for books and DVDs and such, and a small "entertainment center" to store what is needed for evening entertainment...

We decided a while ago to renovate the second bedroom, partly because of the wall-to-wall carpet, partly because of the mint green color on the walls. When Sylvain told me he was getting a long weekend because of May 1st, I thought it might be a perfect opportunity to get the work done.

We cleared the room on Thursday. At first, we feared removing the carpet would be a tough job, but it turned out only to have been lain on top of a linoleum flooring.

Before laying the carpet, the previous "renovators" had tried to remove the lino, but ended up leaving a large, black stain instead, which is probably why they didn’t attach the carpet with glue. Fortunately for us! Instead of spending time on removing the carpet, we could look for the color we wanted on the walls.

Friday, we went to a the stores to pick up paint (and accessories) and parquet. For the walls, we wanted a really light color, but not white. We ended up getting a light blue paint for the walls, and white for the baseboards. The parquet is dark, and made of real, German oak wood.

We painted the "frames" the day before yesterday, and the walls yesterday. The blue color really looked blue before drying, but this morning it looked a lot better.

Am very excited to get the furniture in, and some paintings on the walls.

The couch arrived today, a bit before 1pm. The delivery guy called forty minutes before he arrived. When we arranged for the delivery on Saturday, I was convinced we’d have to wait a week before getting the couch, because the people at Ikea also insinuated that I lived way beyond the normal delivery zone.so imagine my surprise when I got a call the very same day, telling me to expect the couch between 10am and 4pm the Monday after.

The couch was delivered in four smaller and three bigger packages, all ready to be assembled. I am proud to say that I did almost all the assembling, though Sylvain helped me a little when he came home from work.

We will post pictures of the house (the couch included, of course) very soon.

My second birthday 'day' started quite early in the morning, because we were finally going to Ikea!!!

When we arrived there, the parking lot was already full. We didn't have to drive around for too long, though, before finding a space.

We started upstairs in the big furniture department, because we were looking for a couch for our living room.  We were looking for something simple, not too big, and with a built-in chaise-lounge. We had looked in a few other furniture stores before coming to Ikea, but we could end our search here, because we found something we both liked. What we ended up with, was this couch, but with gray washable covers.

We also wanted to buy a "singing" water boiler compatible with our induction stove. We already had an electrical water boiler, but the socket where we plug it in is attached to a fuse which also provides current to the living room, where we plug in our two 2000W oil heaters. Basically, when we want to boil something and use the oil heaters at the same time, the fuse blows. (Fortunately, we have the modern system, so we don't spend a fortune on fuses!)

We got 55cl (1pt 3fl.oz) beer glasses because I wanted huge glasses to drink from. I think this obsession with huge glasses comes from my brother always taking ours at home, leaving none for me. But now, I finally have my own, and they fit exactly in the kitchen shelves!

We got curtains for the bedroom and for the bathroom, a bedside table lamp for Sylvain, oven mittens, sheets for our newly acquired cots, and hangers for the bathroom door. We also stopped by the food section to get double chocolate crisp cookies for Sylvain.

My parents were coming up again with the black leather armchairs they had been storing for us, a bottle of champagne and a birthday cake.  We met at Ikea, and because Sylvain was getting tired of shopping, he went with my dad in my parents' car and drove towards the house. I finished up the shopping with my mom, and we drove Sylvain's and my car home.

We had a very nice dinner consisting of duck meat with a side of potatoes, apples and sauce, accompanied by red wine (white wine for me, but I'd already finished my half bottle before the meal started). For dessert, we had the cake my parents brought, a cream cake with chocolate sprinkles around the sides and a marzipan top. Yum!

My mom and I spent the rest of the night watching the newest BBC version of Sense and sensibility, adapted by Andrew Davis, who also wrote the screenplay for Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth and the "wet shirt" sequence).

I turned a quarter of a century yesterday.

I will have had two celebrations this year, one with "only" Sylvain, which was yesterday, and one with Sylvain and my parents Saturday (see Happy 25th birthday to me, part two).

It all started at midnight yesterday, when Sylvain gave me my present, a pair of white gold, sapphire and diamond earrings :

You'll have to excuse poor quality, I took the picture myself with my cellphone.

I spent the day at home, waiting for our new washing machine to arrive. To make a long story short, when it hadn't arrived at 3pm, I phoned Elkjøp's call center to figure out what was going on. After about 30 minutes, they call me back to tell me that the people who were supposed to deliver the washing machine hadn't been told, but that it could be delivered now asap, if I had someone in the house who could help to carry. The machine is now installed underneath the dryer :D, but I've learned my lesson to not go back to that store again...

But before this happened, I got an unexpected visit from two firemen who were inspecting the pipe and the presents of fire alarms and extinguisher(s).  We had to search for a while to find the pipe hatch, which was hidden behind some shelves in the kitchen, and clearly broken. We have to get a mason fix that, and some cracks in the pipes.

I checked the papers for the house, and I reconfirm the poor work of the guy deciding the state and value of the property. It clearly states that the guy hadn't bothered to move furniture to check for damages on the non-visible sides (including the pipe hatch, apparently!!!). I hope this is sufficient grounds for a "hidden faults" insurance claim!

I'd told Sylvain I wished to eat pancakes and muffins for my (first) birthday dinner, and that is what I got! In addition, he had found, and chilled, a bottle of Coteaux du Layon wine, a sweet wine from the Loire valley, to go with the meal. YUM! 

The move had a couple of casualties: the washing machine and one of the base elements on Sylvain’s home made loud speakers. The latter can, fortunately, be repaired quite easily with spare parts bought from a Norwegian website. The former, which had already been capricious before, couldn’t take the second big move, and stopped spinning the day before yesterday.

So, yesterday, we returned to Elkjøp at Jessheim to order a new one. It’s an energy class AAB. The B refers to its spin cycle, because it  "only" spins 1200 times per minute. The more expensive model is 1500NOK/187EUR/294USD more expensive for an additional 200 spins per minute. To be honest, we would have gone for the more expensive one, but it doesn’t come into the store until the end of April, at which time we would have run out of clean clothes.

The washing machine, which will fit better into our wash room than the old :D, will be delivered on Thursday, which happens to be my 25th birthday.

Wednesday, after I went to get the painting, I took the train to Jessheim, a slightly  bigger town than Eidsvoll, and closer to the airport, to go appliance shopping. On the agenda; find a dish washer, a stove, a tumble dryer, a freezer and some movable oil space heaters. This is what we ended up buying:

• an energy class A Siemens stove with induction top. It also has, amongst other things, a "pizza function"(!) and self cleaning function ("ecoClean")
  
• an energy class AAA Electrolux dishwasher with a sound level of only 45dB
• an energy class A+ Electrolux freezer with a net volume of 184 liters (6.49 cubic feet)
• an energy class B (no higher than that) AEG condense tumble dryer with a 7kg (15lb7oz) capacity
•  two Delonghi 2000W oil space heaters. Can either be attached to the wall or stand alone

Since our car doesn’t have a tow hitch (hey, I learned a new English word :D), the store is delivering our stuff directly to our new house on Thursday.