We officially got the keys to our new apartment in Stockholm, back in May – two days after we returned from our big Asia trip. The apartment needed a lot of work (including a complete new kitchen) but, as ever, I didn’t think much about taking ‘before’ pictures so the dramatic change may be a little lost here. Either way… a lot of hard work and love has gone into making this home of ours so here is the big reveal with a few ‘after’ shots…
The living room
This room needed cosmetic attention and so we re-painted, creating a feature wall with a natural theme – we used wall stickers for the tree outlines and they turned out really well:
(The curtain pole was created using a broom-handle and branches from my in-laws’ garden which we cut and painted to blend in with the tree theme.)
And in a moment of madness ‘environmentally-friendly thinking’… we decided to take on the task of completely re-upholstering our old sofa in a bid to reuse and recycle (rather than buy more ‘stuff’ when really what we had was more than sufficient). And for this… we do have a before and after photo:
Before (in the old apartment)
After (in our new apartment)
It probably took three days in total to finish the sofa – with some parts, such as the re-upholstery of the main frame, definitely being a two-person job. I have to say… I’m super happy with the colour and overall finish so this is a definite win!
Our bedroom
Inspired by our travels, we have gone for a clean room, inspired (in part) by Japanese culture. The window covering on the smaller window is actually a wall-hanging we brought back from Japan (and fitted perfectly in this new space) and our scratch map helps us to plan our future adventures! As this room is a cozy kind of size, the lack of wardrobes meant that we had to think more creatively about hanging space, so when we bought our new bed from IKEA (where else!), we decided to turn it round and use the taller end of the bed frame as a clothes rail.
The Studio Room
Part of the reason for the smaller bedroom size is that the room was originally one large room which was made into two smaller rooms… perfect for us as we now have our home studio set-up in the other room. This is where the Salt Of The Sound magic happens (complete with homemade soundproofing)…
The Guest Room… aka Anita’s work space / yoga / sewing / project room
Yes… this room gets called many things… and has many uses. Now complete with futon… it is a fully functioning guest room and is also my space where I like to blog, sew, write and just be creative…
The Kitchen
Ahh yes… the kitchen! While we did most of the renovations ourselves, we drew the line at fitting a new kitchen and used Kvik to get a good kitchen for a reasonable price. It did mean that we had to move out over the summer for a couple of weeks but we are so pleased with the finished result:
We have enjoyed adding our own finishing touches to this room too – including reupholstering these mismatched chairs that we bought second-hand from friends who were leaving Sweden. The fabric we bought from Japan – the concept behind the fabric patterns is a fusion of both modern Japanese and Scandinavian design.
Balcony
While we had a balcony in our last place, our new balcony is much bigger (more than two people can sit out there at once!) and has glass windows which can be moved across in the summer but also provide shelter in the winter, making this a real indoor-outdoor space. We relished having this space over the summer months and now, thanks to the invention of the outdoor heater, we can continue to enjoy our balcony throughout the winter months too. Oh.. and we may have even started to dabble in a spot of gardening too…
Looking out onto the balcony from the living room
The balcony
Winter plants in out overhanging baskets
Gardening corner
So there you have it… friends and family… we look forward to welcoming you into our new home in the near future. Our guest room is ready for you – all you need to do is to book your tickets to Sweden!
Plus, for the first time ever we have a collaboration track on one of our albums – while we have done several collaborations in the past, we felt that ‘Quiet Me’ (a song originally written by songwriter Ken Peschell) really worked with the flow of Meditations Vol. 2. We are thankful to have been able to work with him on this – and if you subscribe via Bandcamp, you can hear the full vocal version as an exclusive bonus track.
Finally, we would love to know what you think – do get in touch by leaving a comment below.
It was last year that I posted about the importance of SUSDAT – Show Up, Sit Down, & Type (or paint, or compose… or whatever). Having a regular rhythm is especially important as an independent… well, anything! I think so many artists, bloggers, musicians would agree – the practice of regularity provides focus, inspires creativity and most importantly becomes a useful tool in developing as a musician, writer or creator.
A few weeks ago, Ben and I decided to take this idea of regularity and turn it into more than just writing or composing – which is normal practice for us. Instead, we set ourselves a challenge to release a live cover version of one song each week on Youtube, which we release every Monday.
There are lots of reasons behind why we chose to do this. The main one being – we want to continually challenge ourselves to develop and improve on what we are doing, and singing live cover songs in one take, in our own style – with no room for mistake-fixes or autotuning(!) – is quite a challenge (for me anyway). So here I am – embracing this challenge fully and in doing so, also feeling quite vulnerable…
Here are our the tracks from the last 3 weeks – all different in genre, style and well… see for yourself…
There you have it!
If you have any suggestions for songs we should cover – let me know by leaving a comment below! I’d love to hear your suggestions. Oh…and if you follow us by subscribing on Youtube – you won’t miss a single #MondayCover!
What a year 2016 has been so far! Since my last post, we moved all of our stuff from our apartment into storage at my in-laws, went travelling for 5 weeks to East and South-East Asia, got the keys to our new apartment and subsequently moved everything in, went on tour in the UK with Salt Of The Sound and now we are in the final renovation stages of our new apartment in Stockholm.
We like to keep ourselves busy – that’s for sure.
Travelling
I had every intention of writing blog posts for each of the 4 countries we visited in Asia, but internet access was limited in some areas, making this a little tricky – but I do still intend to post some short articles on here about those experiences. Here are a few pictures in the meantime…
Japan
China
Great Wall Of China
Singapore
Experiencing Singapore
Ben’s dislike of the Durian Fruit in Singapore
Indonesia
Sunrise at Borobudur, Java, Indonesia
New Apartment
We’re still in Stockholm – in a slightly bigger place – it means that we have a dedicated studio space so can work more comfortably from home – recording and producing new music. We (well, Ben mostly) even found a way of creating our own, cost-effective and aesthetically-pleasing soundproofing for the home-studio:
I have also been busy re-upholstering our sofa, chairs and dreaming up design ideas for our new home. The renovations have been happening and here are a few of my favourite parts…
Display of fabrics collected from around the world
Now all that is left to happen is our new kitchen and I am hoping that it will be finished by the end of the week(!).
Salt Of The Sound On Tour
We were contacted last year and asked if we would come over and play for an event in Cambridgeshire at the start of July and so we set about organising our first mini-tour. We played 5 events and were hugely encouraged by the response of people who came out to hear our music. Here is a short video of our week on the road…
Technology. What a wonderful thing! Without a doubt, we live in a world is a world of instant gratification.
24 hour helplines. Extended store opening hours. Next day delivery. A world of entertainment, news, opinions, education and inspiration at our fingertips… if you need or want something, there’s a high possibility that you won’t need to wait long to get it.
And this works so well for today’s consumer! So where’s the problem?
Well, as this cycle becomes part of our daily routine, we also come to expect an instant response from others too – from messages to our friends to contacting and posting on social media platforms. Are we becoming wired to expect these immediate responses?
Take a look at this screenshot I took from our Facebook Page:
See a problem? While we might be able to expect large corporations to respond in super-human time, individuals and independent start-ups aren’t quite the same. It seems, Facebook can ‘reward’ me with a badge if I respond quicker to people’s questions and comments. What a great idea…in principle.
When people communicate with you from different time zones all over the world, reality seeps in. You see, in order for us to respond instantaneously would require me to not be present in so many of life’s moments:
I would never be fully present in meetings, and conversations with colleagues when I am working as a worship leader.
During time spent with friends and family, my mind would be elsewhere.
Imagine what a songwriting or recording session would be like if I had to stop at the sound of a notification just so that I could get the ‘responds in under 5 minutes’ badge.
And timezones… What do I do when the other side of the world is awake and active online? Interrupted sleep? Or maybe I should just forego this night time luxury…
Precious evenings that I spend with my husband, when we don’t work, would be compromised and constantly interrupted.
In fact, my life would be more focussed online than everything around me and that isn’t really where I want to be.
Don’t get me wrong – I love to get messages of encouragement and questions from people but Facebook, I don’t think you’ve got it right in this case. It’s not about haste. I’d rather spend time on a more personal reply when I have set aside time to be fully present.
So, if it’s ok with you, I might do things differently.
Rest assured I will look forward to reading comments and to replying but if it’s ok with you world… I might reply later.
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