Joined the club

Yesterday afternoon we went to Dunelm Mill. I have never been to this shop before but straight away declared it my new favourite.

What an incredible array of curtains, rugs...homeware... everything I ever dreamed of while playing Sims, alongside with things I had never even heard of...! Spoilt by choice, but luckily with a tummy full of Mc Donalds food (so not moody) we were pondering over which colours to decorate our rooms in. Yes, the words “Duck egg” have not meant much to me before the house purchase but let me tell you, they have been used a lot in the last 48 hours.

Entering Dunelm Mill was like suddenly becoming part of a secret world. It felt different, for some reason not quite like IKEA or Homebase, where we went before, when we were still part of this other group, clearly inferior - the renters. Dunelm Mill has become synonymous with owning a home for me. It seems like there is this club of people, all of them happy homeowner-couples, that meet there every Sunday afternoon to discuss colours and fabrics of curtains and bath mats matching with towels. The first purchase solely made for our new home (apart from a key rack and key ring I got R. for Christmas) is a new set of bath mats, with matching guest towels of course :-)

I never expected I would get excited about those but yes, I do. Mainly because we are part of the club now, too! 

Here's where the living is

I have decided to start a new blog today as I am currently starting a new stage in life. Well...I... that is we, really. Me, Franze, my boyfriend R., and our two gerbils Holmes and Watson.

It all started in October last year, when our landlady decided it was time to put the rent up.
Well..no...actually... it all started quite a few years before this, in September 2005, when I went to the UK for the very first time to spend my semester abroad in Loughborough. To cut a long and lovely story short, I met R., the love of my life. We have been together ever since. I had to go back to Germany, where I was born and grew up, to finish my studies, but as soon as I had passed my last exam I made my way across the Channel to live with him. By that time, October 2008, we lived in St Albans, a lovely little town in the south east of England. I found a nice job (that turned out to be less nice after a while but have changed departments now and am as happy there as you can be in a job) and have settled in and simply cannot imagine living in Germany any more. I miss my family and some friends very much but I am not too far away and communicating with loved ones hundreds of miles away has never been easier so all is well.

Aaaanyway...our landlady had put the rent up, not by much, but it made us, or rather R., review our finances and while we always thought we will buy a house in the not too distant future, all of a sudden it became even sooner because we were able to afford our own house with a 10% deposit. Not in St Albans of course. Being close to London, a great train connection to London and...well...just being lovely makes living here unaffordable...for us at least. So we have searched the area as job opportunities are just better down here than up north. And we found Luton to be affordable. And it is almost the same: close to London, with a good train connection to London. It is just...well...a little less lovely I guess. But it cannot be THAT bad surely!? Yes, we have always sworn we will never set foot anywhere near it except for going to the airport once we had been there but hey, we are young, open minded...and not exactly rich.

So, here we are. After a few viewings, a lot of negotiating and even more waiting we have reached the week that we are moving in to our new home, our own little dream house. Next Thursday we will get the keys to our dream home and on Friday the removal company will help us getting our packed up life over to another county (in the other country) and on to the next stage. This is to document the things we will experience, love and hate.

This is the life now, surely...isn't it? Are we grown ups yet?