Slowly but surely this house of ours is coming together. We’re focusing on the top floors at the moment. One of which will be our home office. I’m so excited to move our mattress to the attic and start decorating our office. It will be the first time we will have our own office. At the moment we’re working from the couch, which is cosy but not comfortable.
I don’t know about you but I’m having a hard time finding furniture I really love. Desks are so ugly. I’ve looked everywhere but I just can’t seem to find a desk we really love. We’ve designed furniture before so for our home office we’ll be designing and making our own desks. It will be a learning process but I can’t wait to get started.
On another note, I’ve been thinking about getting some chickens. Here’s the pro’s and con’s list I made today while I should have been working on a client’s website.
Pro’s:
- they eat leftovers, reducing our waste
- they start out as chicks
- they fertilize the garden and eat snails
- eggs. Who doesn’t love eggs!
- I’d like to find out if you can train chickens
Con’s
- they fertilize the garden with poop
- our dog likes to hunt anything bird-like so I’m afraid she’ll constantly harass the chickens
- the chicken coop will take up a lot of the space in our small garden
- no more cons, chickens are awesome
Do you have some good home office inspiration resources? And how do you feel about chickens? Let me know!
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who loves to see how other people live. So , here are some pictures of our new house and of how we are living at the moment. We’ll keep you updated as we settle down and make this house our home.
When we left home to travel, a year and a half ago, we sold everything we owned. Thinking we would never come back, it seemed like the best thing to do. And it was. It still is. Letting go of all of your belongings is incredibly freeing and knowing you’re carrying around everything you own is scary and amazing at the same time.
A while back I wrote about starting over and how excited I was to invest in some great stuff for our home.The furniture you see in the living room pic is not ours, we only have a mattress at the moment. Turns out, you don’t need much. We don’t have plates and eat every meal shared on a big cutting board. It’s one of my favorite moments every day and we would never have had this moment if we would have had plates. Maybe I’m scared of buying a lot of stuff, because it makes the rooting-process so real. I believe that once you’ve traveled you will never live without travel anymore. It’s always there, that small voice in a tiny part of your brain. And when I feel stuck in life or work, it tells me to start looking for cheap tickets to one of our dream destinations (Mexico! I say. Skiing! says Nick).
When I started writing this blog post I was planning to write about our new house. So I’ll end with that. Here’s some quick info:
- Six years ago, we walked by this street one day and I remember telling Nick ‘I wish we could live here’ and now we do.
- Because of the skylight, the kitchen is flooded with light and I love being there.
- We have enough space to transform one of the bedrooms to a home office! No more working on the floor! My back will be so grateful.
- Our bedroom will be up in the attic. It’s going to be romantic as fuck.
- Bathtub. ‘Nough said.
- This house is a rental, so we won’t be doing any mayor renovations
Any thoughts? Anyone else who is sort of freaked out by how serious it feels to go shopping for a couch?
For the last six years I’ve had a folder on my computer labeled ‘dream homes’. Over time I’ve collected a lot of pictures of houses I love, or used to love. Some pictures still show my style while others are memories of what I liked before. Recently I deleted a lot that just wasn’t my style anymore. I always knew this folder would come in handy and now the day is finally here! I’m using it as my personal home inspiration guide to inspire and guide me when buying stuff for our new house.
A year and a half ago, we sold all of our belongings to fund our travels. And now we’re starting over. We don’t have anything, not even cutlery. There were so many things we’d been dragging along for years without really using them. We’re not doing that anymore. This time, we’re going to invest in quality pieces and grow our new life bit by bit. We’re going to completely skip the phase of buying a lot of cheap stuff, just so you have something to use. We’re starting with nothing and we’ll see where we end up. We’ll gladly eat on the floor if that means saving money to buy the perfect dining room table. I’m so excited to start hunting for great pieces.
In a few weeks we are moving back to the city we fell in love with many years ago, Haarlem. At the moment we’re living with Nick’s dad who lives on a small island. There isn’t much to do here which, granted, can be amazing at times. Even though we really love the countryside, we sure miss living near a city. We’re very excited to move back to the city and to live close to all of our friends again. It’s time to grow some roots.
Bangkok is one of the most inspiring cities I’ve ever been too. Although we were only there for a month, I feel like we got to know the city. I truly loved it. Since we were both raised in small(-ish) Dutch cities that have nothing on a huge city like Bangkok, we were continuously in awe as we were wandering around.
There is so much going on in Bangkok, new cafes and shops are opening every day, and each one is even better than the last one. Because we are running our company while traveling, we are always looking for places that have an inspiring interior, fast wifi, tasty food, good drinks and a crowd that’s not spilling beer over our laptops.
Bangkok can be quite overwhelming at times. It’s so ginormous and busy and hot (oh god it’s so hot). If you are looking to escape the heat, have good coffee, work, or drink a beer or two (not all of them serve beer), these are the places to go. And there are so many more places like this, go out and explore!
If you find anything similar, let us know one way or another so we can visit them when we get to Bangkok sometime in the future!
Library Cafe is kind of hard to find if you don’t know where to look. It’s in a side street of a side street of Sukhumvit Road.
This cafe stands out for its extremely good styling. The style is 70’s mixed with contemporary stuff. Everything just goes together perfectly. The little wooden spoons (which we are looking for, if you know where to get ‘m let us know!) complement the good coffee. Upstairs is a Japanese style sitting area with pillows on the floor. Shoes off before you go upstairs!
Library Cafe gets a Sparrow-in-Space-award for the prettiest toilets I’ve ever seen. I kept drinking lots of water so I could pee again, just to spend some more time there. If you don’t like interior design, coffee, tea or food, just go here to pee. Seriously, this toilet is better than eighty percent of the hotel rooms I’ve slept in.
The food is good as well, although some of the dishes come in quite small portions. The pies are great. Try them all!
Address: Soi Sukhumvit 24, Bangkok
On a Friday-night we found ourselves in a former bicycle factory with no idea what was going on. Somehow we found ourselves at one of the opening parties of Beijing Design Week. China has an amazing amount of talented designers and they gathered in the Dashilar hutong to show what they create.
We have already shown you one of our favorite pieces. Designers Aida Studio strung and lit 1,664 of Beijings famous ceramic yoghurt jars to compose Milkywave. It is an impressive chandelier that looped through a two-story stairway.
Most part of Beijing Design Week was situated in the Dashilar Hutong of Beijing. In addition to design aficionados, the hutong inhabitants also stopped by for a visit, making for mixed crowd. Most shops and showrooms were situated inside of ancient courtyard houses. It gave us a little glimpse of real hutong life. One of those courtyard houses had been taken over by GCDKDesign.
Sometimes you find people who are extremely good at what they do, and Mumo is one of them. We fell in love with his furniture. He loves working with wood and makes some of the best looking tables we have ever seen. His furniture was being displayed by designers platform Jue. We wish we could tell you more but the Jue-website is in Chinese.
Creative platform Nuandao was responsible for a whole street of quirky and crafty designers. Nuandao has created a platform where young designers of all sorts can easily sell their work. There was also a skateboard brand, showing some decks.
We left Beijing Design Week feeling inspired and amazed by the creative talents China has to offer.
