Despite my silence on the blog, this summer has been anything but quiet. Perusing my planner, I look back over the weeks since we moved and see that we have traveled or had guests more weekends than not. That’s a good thing! And it has meant that we have been kept busy and occupied during a time of transition. But it also means that we haven’t had the chance to really dig in here yet. Last Saturday was our first real day at home in who knows how long. It was such a treat. We slept in and then took an hour to make Norwegian pancakes (think crepes), and watched cartoons while stuffing our faces. We lounged around watching more cartoons. When the itch to do something struck, I finally deep cleaned the house while Chris addressed those sneaky little corners that still had junk in them from the move. Time—we had time! Time allowed us to talk through our budget and post-moving expenses and get on the same page with our church search. Real conversation and connection were able to happen when we let the dust settle a little and stopped doing things. In fact, I intentionally didn’t set any “goals” for the day. I didn’t sit down the night before with my Post Its and write that I wanted to 1) talk about the budget 2) clean the house 3) exercise. Those things just happened anyway because they were all good things that we not only needed to do but wanted to when we didn’t feel “forced” to by the to-do list. My goal-setting, accomplisher self needed a chill pill. And when I took it, we had the most relaxing, happy Saturday—not because we didn’t do anything and lazed around but because my attitude toward accomplishing things shifted (at least for this one day…face palming myself this weekend because it’s been much more of a struggle!). So, to continue the good vibes, we spontaneously decided yesterday morning to run to a craft store and buy canvases and paint supplies. We were going to have an Art Day at home, complete with sweet tea and oatmeal coconut cookies (which we also spontaneously decided to make after watching our ALL TIME favorite show Friday night, The Great British Bake Off. Seriously, do yourself a favor and go watch it). Michael's Crafts is having a Labor Day sale on a lot of their painting supplies so we got two value packs of canvases (16 total!), 12 large tubes of acrylic paint, and various brushes for just over $50. It was a great buy, and we have tons of canvas left over, so I would highly encourage this as a date that keeps on giving. Now, let me be perfectly clear: neither of us are artists by any stretch of the imagination. Appreciate, study, and enjoy, all yes, but execute—not so much. As Chris likes to say, we each have “delusions of grandeur” when it comes to painting. Like, I think I may just be the next Rothko or Van Gough. But then I look at my canvas and realize I don’t even know how to properly blend one color into the next. This became abundantly apparent in my first piece, which I have entitled “Choppy Blue.” To be sure, I like the choppy look. But also be sure that it is there because Chris had not yet looked up a YouTube video on “How to Paint With Acrylics,” in which a kindly professor showed us that we ought to brush the canvas with water before we applied the paint. Such an “ah-ha!” moment. “Yellow Feather Sunset” was my second piece. I have such mixed feelings here. I was concentrating on blending yellow into orange, which I think I did quite well. Then some insane idea popped into my head and told me to swish gold stripes down the middle, something I regretted almost immediately. All my grand delusions of hidden genius went right out the door, and I became very despondent. I decided to mope on the bed checking Instagram and then cleaned my brushes and called it a day. Well, the paint dried and then looked decidedly less gross. So I decided I didn’t completely hate it, and that together with Choppy Blue and Chris’s “White Square” it may just look all right on the wall. At the end of the day, here’s what we turned up with. Not so bad, right? Thankful for okay art, good music and great tea while making it, and the left overs: blue splatters on our dinning room wall which remind me of a fun afternoon.
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If I had to describe my ideals for a home in three words (or phrases) I would say cozy, eclectic, and tells a story. Home should be a safe-haven, the one place in the world where you can be you fully. I love that our new home is just that. It tells our story: the silk painting from China that we bought at the Great Wall, the water-color maps from Paris, New York, and Oxford, dozens and dozens of political philosophy or theology books from college, the red Persian rug that was in my family's living room in Kenya, seashells from our favorite beaches. I also love that in this home we don't have a coffee table in the living room; instead we just have a large open space with a sheepskin rug, perfect for plopping down at the end of the day for a few cartoons and chocolate chips.
Most of our stuff is hand-me-down or antique, and what isn't Chris and I saved up all last year to buy when we made the move down to North Carolina. We bought our couch and the orange chairs on Craigslist and they were GREAT deals. In fact, we even found our house on Craigslist. Sure, there is a lot of sketchy stuff, but if you do your research and keep an eye on the market you can uncover some amazing gems. Okay, so the stunning desk and credenza (which, I should add, isn't finished yet. It needs to be painted and have the doors attached). Those were handmade by my niffy, talented hubby. He is such a great artist and builder! I really wanted a slim, simple writing desk to put in front of the window to take advantage of all our gorgeous afternoon light. He took my idea and ran with it, desinging the entire piece from scratch. The hairpin legs and leather drawer pulls were even his idea. The sheepskin rug and the leather poof were bought from a wholesale auction. Lamps are all from Target or Homegoods for less than $30 each. The wooden stumps were also made by Chris, and were from a tree in his aunt's yard. We bought our vintage bird and vegetable posters for $5 each at the Natural History Museum in New York, and then made simple hangers for them with thin pieces of wood from Lowes. Curtains: West Elm Bookcases: Ikea Leaning ladder shelf: Ethan Allen: this model is from years ago, so I doubt it's on the website. We snagged this piece when my college neighbor was moving out of the building. $80 for this shelf, a side table, and a large dresser! Dining room table: Ikea: We bought a slab of wood from the as-is clearance section and then got the legs separately. Best of both worlds: customized and cheap! Dining room chairs: Overstock,com White side table: Ikea: we have three of these and love them! Desk chair: second hand from Restore So without further ado, here's the living room! Other rooms are still works in progress, to come to Honeybutter and Blue at some point in the future. :) So much has happened in the past month that the actual move seems light years in the past. Between then and now we have:
And that’s just scratching the surface. Depending on the day all this transition is either really fun and exciting or really overwhelming and not fun at all. On the not-fun days I find myself missing New York and New Jersey. Missing not exactly our circumstances from this period of life but the concept of comfortable. The past week had me in a particular funk: disgruntled, easily annoyed, irritable, and despondent. Flipping through my phone (the worst possible solution to these problems, I might add), I realized that I hadn’t looked at a single picture I had taken from the moving weekend. I had been avoiding looking back on those high-stress, crazy-out-of-the normal few days, full of so much hard work and change that you collapse in an exhausted puddle of dusty clothes in the middle of the barren, finally cleaned out kitchen and simply refuse to go on. The thing is: moving is just so hard. It doesn’t matter if you have the absolute best friends and family helping (like we did!), plenty of time to get everything done (like we did!), money to be able to afford the necessary vans and boxes and food for crowds, etc. (like we did!)—it’s just a difficult thing to do. Now, I held it together really well. We had fun. Music was blaring. Pizza was consumed. All boxes ended up fitting into the UHUAL. Holes in the wall were spackled and tubs were cleaned. Cats were not lost. It all got done. But it only got done because of our amazing families. I kid you not, Chris and I regularly stop in the middle of cooking dinner or driving to church to remark that we have such cool families. Both sides so selflessly served us this month, as they always do, and we think they are just the best. The week before the move was mainly full of me packing boxes, the turtle in the race to the finish line. One. Box. At. A. Time. Later in the week my mother-in-law and the youngest Svendsen siblings came to the house to help deep clean. I remember this being one of the token panic days, so close to the end (we move in two days!) and yet not looking anywhere near to being done, junk oozing from every nook and cranny. Thankfully, Bethany and Aiden’s cool composure under pressure helped calm my nerves (below: keeping calm and carrying on). The last few days before the move also included a run to Ikea for our new kitchen island and a few bookshelves as well as a very relaxing, fancy dinner with the in-laws at an amazing steak house (where I promptly forgot to take a single picture). Day 1 Chris and I take the Intentionally Relaxed Approach when it comes to moving day. Morning of, we walked to our favorite diner for one last Nutella and strawberry waffle and then visited the local florist on our way home to get flowers for our landlady who lives downstairs. After this slow start our helpers began to trickle in, and long story short, our whole life was crammed into the UHUAL and trailer by 10pm that night. Day 2 North Carolina and New Jersey being so far apart, there was simply no way we could load the truck, drive south, and unload all in one day. So, we spent the night at Chris’s parents’ house after everything was loaded and again decided to take the next morning slow, sleeping in and enjoying a yummy breakfast before honking our way down the road. The morning was filled with coffee and tears. Highlights of our driving day include Eloise being a boss navigator, Chick-fil-a for lunch, only being able to travel 60 miles an hour the entire trip because of UHUAL limitations, the never-ending drive because of said speed restrictions, singing along to the full Hamilton soundtrack a total of three times, and a late night Mickey Dees stop for breakfast sandwiches and yogurt parfaits in the middle of no-where North Carolina. Arriving at the new home at around 11 p.m., we grabbed the keys and then headed to a nearby hotel to partake in such simple luxuries as mattresses and running air conditioning. Day 3 LAST DAY OF THE ORDEAL. By this point we were exhausted but also ready to be done with the whole thing. The need to be done outweighed being tiered, and we dutifully rose for the 7:30 alarm, meeting my excited and more-refreshed family who had driven from Virginia the night before to meet us. While the boys and some new friends from church unloaded the truck, my mom and me grabbed biscuits from a local favorite—Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen—and coffee from Starbucks for everyone. Coming home an hour later, piping hot beverages in hand, we were shocked that most of the truck was already unloaded. The process is so much quicker on the unloading side of the equation! Amy and Kate went to fish in the pond behind our house while the adults put together furniture, cleaned the kitchen, and unpacked boxes. We took lots of breaks and even went to a second hand sporting goods store in the afternoon. This kind of casual is good for me. There is no way I could ever get close to being done—catching up to “perfect”—on a day like this. Best to just let go and enjoy being with the people you love. We ended the day with a Mexican dinner at a festive restaurant and an early to bed—the first night in our new home! As I said above, moving is totally exhausting. It drains your physical, mental, and emotional strength. It makes the normally little things—like missing an exit or not getting quite enough sleep—seem like life-shattering events. I woke up Sunday morning, the day after we had officially unloaded in North Carolina, having a complete meltdown. I kept saying over and over, “I just can’t find the thing. I just can’t find it.” “It” being literally anything I could think of. Brush, a pot, tissues, my jeans—everything was haphazard and I had absolutely no clue where anything was. Moping around in sweatpants, I dragged myself from room to room, sprawling out on the floor and crying if I was unable to locate something immediately. It sounds really funny to me now. I’m more rested and things are in order again. But for these couple of weeks they weren’t, and that’s okay. I put on my big girl panties and just kept swimmin through the boxes. And I’m thankful to report that I now know where all my pots, tissues, jeans, and brushes are. ~SNEAK PEEK OF HOME!~ I must be a true pessimist—I always assume the worst. The great thing about being a pessimist is that you are often pleasantly surprised. The world isn’t always awful! How wonderful! This first week in North Carolina has taught me just that. Because I hate “CHANGE” (I always blow it up in my head like that), I assumed that a big move like this would most likely be de facto bad. My instinct is to think that because something changes it inherently overwhelms any good that might come along with that change. Certainly, our whole daily rhythm has been torn apart, exacerbated by the fact that we aren’t actually living our new “normal” yet. Chris has a FULL schedule with his MCAT prep course and won’t be slowing down until after the test. In the meantime, I won’t begin working full time (more on that in an upcoming post!) until the end of July, so I’m just here hanging out, enjoying some non-stress time, and managing all the “life stuff.” Things are very different, but it’s all new and exciting. We love being in a wide-open space with trees, woods, and biking trails. We love our new home and how it perfectly remedies some of those super annoying things about our old place (we now have a washer and dryer and lots of closets!). We love this location and the opportunities and friends to be made here. Don’t get me wrong—I know we are still in the honeymoon stage. I’m sure there will be days of culture shock or sadness. But they haven’t hit yet, and I shouldn’t even assume, come to think of it, that they will. See, in the midst of what is turning out to be a happy transition, I’ve found myself feeling guilty for being happy and carefree. I’ve felt as if I’m not being authentic with my friends when relaying primarily happy news; the pessimistic worrier in me starts telling lies: “Life is too good—something awful must be around the corner.” “Why is God giving us these blessings?! Something’s up.” “Oh well: it will all fall apart soon enough.” It’s as if I am actively seeking out something to worry about in the absence of more difficult life circumstances and “legitimate” worries. But when you get down to it, all these worries boil down to unbelief, to a stiff hand of control that won’t let go. If I don’t get too happy, life won’t disappointment too much. The past two years have been really tough, and yet through it the Lord has been so close, teaching me more and more about joy that transcends circumstances. Now, when our circumstances are happier, I still need to be taught about joy. About how to have joy free of doubt, free of fear. My prayer is that the Lord can use the refreshed and joyful me for purposeful ministry, and that I would be able to see the good of good times. Because this week has been a good time. Our moving weekend (also in an upcoming post!) went so smoothly. My family was able to come help, and we were also blessed to have some new friends from a local church meet us at the house as well. They made us feel so welcomed right from the get-go. My wonderful mom stayed with us for a few extra days, and together we unpacked, ran errands, did loads and loads of laundry, shopped for lights and nails and spackling putty and all those moving necessities, ironed curtains, and ate chocolate pastries at Panera. She’s pretty cool. My new job has already been such a blessing and has enabled us to step right into a community. From welcome gifts of homemade jam and tulips to after-church conversations and lots and lots of restaurants recommendations, Chapel Hill has been treating us well. And to top it all off, I’ve had a burst of energy which has enabled me to do tons of little things like researching the DMV and NC license requirements, scouting out new grocery stores, joining a gym, and learning to drive on the highway by myself (ya’ll, 5 years in the city with public transportation, no hating). From the little things to the big things, I’m thankful for and in awe of a week of provision. This post is a long time coming, and I mean a longggg time coming. So long I don’t really remember when we started thinking about, planning, or working toward it. I do remember junior-year-of-college Chris starting to doubt his plan of going to law school. I remember him feeling worried about a desk job, and feeling trapped. I remember a particular walk along Battery Park City on a cool evening where I asked him if he had ever thought about going into medicine. He said it was strange I should bring it up—our Dean of Students had recently asked him the same thing. To my great surprise—and I think his too—we both took the suggestion seriously, and started researching options. In the months that followed there were many serious talks about whether or not med school was doable at such a late point. Because he was so close to graduation and had never planned to go, med school would require not only taking the MCAT but also 2 years worth of extra classes (all the sciences Chris didn’t take in college). After much prayer, and countless talks with parents and friends, we decided to go for it. My dad, an ER doc, was our constant companion, and was able to help us navigate the many requirements needed for a successful application. Chris was even able to do his clinical hours in the ER where my dad works. We aren’t quite at the end of the road yet. Chris will finish his last semester of pre-requisite classes at the end of April and is slated to take the MCAT on June 18th, after which he will begin the official application process. But, we made a huge step forward this weekend! After a successful house-hunting trip in North Carolina we can say that we are officially moving to Chapel Hill in May!!! We signed a lease on this lovely little townhouse in a great location of Chapel Hill, and we could not be more excited. When we started our deep dive into medical school research it became pretty clear to us that while there were great schools across the country, we wanted to stay close to the East Coast and family. We also knew that we wanted to be in a small town rather than a big city; as much as we love New York, it’s time for a change! And, of course, Chris wants to get into a really good program. Those preferences basically narrowed it down to Virginia and North Carolina schools. There are a couple of really great options in N.C.(Duke, East Carolina, Wake Forest), apart from our top choice, UNC Chapel Hill. Even though Chris hasn’t been accepted yet, we really feel God moving us toward Chapel Hill this year. We know He has a plan for the perfect school for us. In the meantime, we are going to move to the area we love, establish N.C. residency (yay for cheaper schooling cost!), and trust the rest to Him. Risky? Maybe a little. But not really. The worst that could happen would be a move to a better place in a year, having saved money in 2016 by not living in the New York City metropolitan area. Exciting? So, so exciting. Last night as we drove down Franklin Street on our way to the Mediterranean Deli (which has changed our lives; so much delicious), we talked about how strangely comfortable we felt here. Like this is where we are supposed to be. Compared to looking for apartments in New York, this past weekend was a joy. After driving down late Thursday evening, we grabbed coffee Friday on the way to our first appointment of the day: a 10:00am total let down. But our spirits were high. We saw several apartment complexes, had lunch at a Mexican place, and showed up to our 4:30 appointment with our front-runner: the two bedroom townhome in a wooded setting about 10 minutes from downtown. It had everything we were looking for and more. The landlord was accommodating, jolly, and obviously cared for the home. It took about 30 minutes to decide on the place while lounging on the UNC quad sipping iced tea. And that was it. We had a celebratory dinner at a sushi place, and the landlord swung by our hotel the next morning so we could all sign the lease. That left us Saturday to chill out and explore the area. This included mural hunting, antique shopping, eating at cafes, cartoon watching, gym exploring, tulips, sweet tea, baklava, biscuits, and lots and lots of walking around our new town. It’s a little surreal to be leaving our New York. I’m sure there will be lots of tears and some second-guessing. But we feel confident that this new stage will be worth it. We love that Chapel Hill has a small town feel combined the conveniences of a thriving University town. And we love that this thing Chris has been working for is finally coming to fruition! Thank you to everyone who has supported, prayed for, and encouraged us these past few years. You have helped make this new beginning possible! |
Authorwife to a med student and mama to three under three, seeking the joyful and learning to live by faith. Find me on Instagram and Pinterest or shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you!
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