Sofa in middle of the room

Life in April, 2021

March vanished and here we are at the end of April. Our applications for uppe­hålls­status (post Brexit residency status) were approved and that was a huge weight off our minds. We’ve been riding out a third Covid wave, redecorated the apartment, had our final TBE vaccinations, enjoyed brighter days and I’ve been recovering from a sprained foot.

Tulips in the sun
Tulips / tulpaner

Sofa in middle of the room

We managed to redecorate the whole apartment in 2.5 days. By luck, we chose the two warmest days of the week, which really helped the paint dry. It snowed again the day after we finished!

The walls were quite badly marked and several big cable holes needed filling. It felt good to get rid of those and reset everything. We painted all the walls white, put a fresh coat of pale grey paint on the windowsills and ruined our necks painting the 2.8m tall ceilings. We also ended up wearing sunglasses indoors because taking the curtains down and painting everything white in the sun was really flippin bright!

Main painting ceiling on ladder

White flowers on branch
Blåbärsris

Blåbärsris are wild blueberry branches. I love the little lantern shaped flowers. The supermarket didn’t sell them for long so I’m glad I picked some up when I did.

Light in the shape of an exclamation mark
New light patterns
Man laying on the floor
Sunday / Söndag
Plaster on arm
TBE vaccination / vaccin mot TBE

The final TBE vaccinations are in our arms and now we’ll only need booster shots every few years. No tick pattern plaster this time.

Net curtains blowing in the breeze
Spring / Vår

^ The first day it was warm enough to have a window wide open.

Plant silhouette on curtain
Jasmine and dalahorse / jasmine och dalahäst
Messy bed
Post nap

I had to document the best nap I’d had in a really long time. My head hit the pillow and I don’t remember trying to fall asleep, then I woke up when the alarm went off an hour later.

Columbo projected on wall
Columbo

Columbo on a sleepy Sunday is one of my favourite things. We’ve seen all the episodes a million times but see things we haven’t noticed before — certain scenes, comical lines, continuity errors etc.

Fig tree in sink
Fig tree / fikonträd

Meet Astrid, our new fig tree. We wanted to get a larger plant or tree to break up space between the living room and kitchen; she’s perfect for the job. I’d had my eye on fig trees for a while because I love the shape of the leaves and as luck would have it, some appeared in our local supermarket. Seeing them reminds me of the time we picked warm figs from the tree in Scott’s Nan’s garden.

Opening parcels
Parcels from family in the UK
Roots growing in jar
Geranium cutting

Our friends gave us six geranium cuttings — they collect unusual varieties so I was pretty excited to receive them all. I potted them on and made a geranium corner on the windowsill. One was very tall so I snipped a piece off and put it in a jar of water… and this is how it looks now!

That’s all I’ve got for April. Hopefully I’ll be less distracted during May and get my camera out more often.

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