Green grass

So here it is, our "new" lawn. Not yet perfect, but compared to earlier this summer, the difference is huge.

The doorstep

This is it. After four days of work, we now have a really nice entrance to our house. Inga can walk right out without climbing and I'm not afraid to trip and fall any more. It's comfy to sit on and great to walk on barefoot. It just couldn't be better.

Our new living room

Right before we went to Poland, Matts finished off the work in the living room (apart from the skirting) and we were able to furnish it again. Inspired by some interior design TV-shows, we turned the couch 90 degrees and got a much cozier room that we enjoy a lot. (Before it looked like this.) Last week we were able to buy an arm chair as well so now we can use the room with guests as well.

The corner, where the old wallpaper was ripped, now look great and I have to say that I really like this old-fashioned striped wallpaper that goes perfectly to our furniture.

Work in progress

The past days we have been quite busy here. Finally, our new pillarbox is in place in front our our house. And I got down to do some work on the front lawn. So far the result is somewhat greener grass (compared to this), but if everything goes as planned, the grass seed I spread out will make the lawn a proper one before the end of this summer. At the moment Matts is working hard on our new doorstep - and it will be awesome. Even our neighbors have given Matts compliments daily these past few days...

Workman's beard

After being locked in in our living room for more than a week, Matts came out, looking like this... Pictures of our new, fabulous looking living room will come later on.

Birchermüsli

On Sundays in Switzerland, I sometimes went by Frei's in Brugg to buy home some bread rolls and their delicious Birchermüsli after going to church. Before we went to Poland, about two weeks ago, and the fridge was quite empty I finally made my first batch ever of Birchermüsli and it was delicious! I used this recipe as a template (but with fewer apples) and then added a nectarine, bananas, raspberries and some whipped cream to it as well.

The last piece of wallpaper

Finally, after nine days of hard work, Matts came to the last piece of wallpaper. After some additional painting, our living room is finally done - apart from the skirting that we haven't decided on quite yet. Tomorrow we'll clean our whole house from dust and bits of this and that that have spread all over the place and then it's time to re-furniture the living room. I sure look forward to it!

Muffins - again

We had some really small and tiny bits of rhubarb left in the garden and I decided to do something with it. I googled and found the recipe for these delicious muffins.

Rhubarb muffins with white chocolate and cardamom, 12 small ones

Rinse and cut 150 grams rhubarb and add 2½ tbsp sugar to them. Put aside. Beat 100 grams of butter with 1 deciliter sugar and ½ tbsp vanilla sugar. Add 2 eggs, one by one and then 1 deciliter milk. Mix 2½ deciliter flour with 2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp ground cardamom in a separate bowl before genlty mixing it into the butter and stuff. Add 100 grams white chocolate in chunks as well as half of the rhubarb and then distribute the batter evenly in 12 muffin cups. Spread the rest of the rhubarb on top and bake for approximately 20 minutes at 175 Celcius.

Simply delicious!

The Knivsta Hedgehog

Yesterday we got a visitor coming by after dinner outside. And today, the same visitor came once more - a hedgehog. This time I followed it to our flowerbed where it turned out to be a true epicure, enjoying escargot for supper...

Hard work

To strip the living room of it's wallpaper has taken days. But eventually it was time for Matts to apply the spackling paste, and after some polishing and painting (the ceiling as well as the walls under the windows) today was finally the day of hanging the new wallpaper. It sure looks fabulous and I can hardly wait until it's all done and we can move back into our living room.

Let your thoughts fly away

While Matts worked on the living room and Inga played in her baby pool next to me, I lay on the deck watching the blue sky and the swifts that flew by.

Taking the wallpaper down

This is what our living room looked like yesterday morning. But after lunch it all changed. We moved the table into the guest room, hooked down the curtains and pushed all the remaining furniture to the middle of the room. There they are now, covered in plastic while Matts works on the wallpaper. The wallpaper is an old structure one with small small bits of wood in it to give it structure. Probably very modern in the late 70s, but now, more than three decades later it's about time it disappears from these walls. Not the least since it's broken in one of the corners where the walls have moved. Luckily Matts is doing a good job, taking down the terrible wallpaper, inch by inch.

Raspberry-Chocolate muffins

Today I baked. It's my favorite thing to do in the kitchen, but lately I haven't baked much at all. This time I made a batch of muffins. So easy and fast to make, and nice to eat as well... I found this recipe in a book that I was just about to return to the library and they don't have much sugar in them. Originally the recipe said to use white chocolate, but since I only had dark at home I simply used that instead. That might be the reason why they aren't so sweet. Not that that is a problem in any way...

For 12 regular size muffins I beat 200 grams of butter with 1,5 deciliter sugar. Then I added 4 eggs, one at a time. I mixed 4 deciliter of flour with 1 tablespoon of baking soda and added that together with 100 grams of frozen raspberries as well as 75 grams of dark chocolate. After about 20 minutes in 175 C they were ready to enjoy.

Our gardens

Yes, I know. I have been terribly bad when it comes to updating my blogs. But I haven't forgotten about them so don't give up on me quite yet.

We have some projects going on both inside and outside our house. Most of them are still only in our heads, but since Matts will go on vacation next week we'll have more time to actually get started. First we (that is Matts) will work on the walls in the living room. We already have bought the new wallpaper but before we (that is Matts) can put it up we (!) need to tear down the old, structure one. Hard work, but it shouldn't be impossible.

What we have done is some work in the gardens, both front and back. But we have lots of plans for these parts as well.

The first picture shows that some flowers, in this case geraniums, really can make a big difference. We still only have our small balcony table that we bought in Lund, but for next year we plan to buy a bigger table with a sofa and two chairs to go with it. If we are lucky, we'll find it on sale later this summer.

The second picture shows our front garden. The flowerbeds really need some work and the lawn is not as green as we want it to be. But in a couple of weeks we will do some work on the lawn and the flowerbeds will be upgraded as soon as we have time and energy for it. At least our front garden is not the worst in our area (luckily, this is Sweden and not Switzerland!).

Thirdly you can see our letterbox that is almost buried under our spiraea... We have a brand new pillarbox that we (that is Matts again) will install probably during next week. Eventually we'll do some work on the spiraea as well.

On the fourth picture you can see our jungle, aka back garden. Matts already did some work there, taking down some Alpine currant shrubs that had really gone crazy. They are already coming up again (you can see them in front of the "log") and will probably become a quite nice hedge when taken care of. But there's still much to do. We have some beautiful flowers; a sweet pink peony (that's now owerblown) and a gorgeous red rose (that you can see in the background) as well as both rhubarb and strawberries. But we also have lots and lots of weed that needs to be taken away... The plan is to plant more berries and stuff along the white wall; American blueberries, blackberries and red currant, as well as work on the lawn parts here too.

As you understand, we have quite some work to do - and this is not talking about everything we want to do inside as well. We try not to be totally stressed out about everything and focus on the things that we can do right now. Not everything will come true this year, but we plan on staying here for a while, so there's really no rush. Except when it comes to the so-called doorstep to the left: it's really dangerous and the plan is for Matts to build a new one as soon as possible.

Refund

Unlike in Switzerland, the soda cans and bottles in Sweden are recycled with refunds and therefore we don't have special bins for them. But it's not always you feel like dragging an empty bottle around until you can recycle it so many cans and bottles end up in the regular garbage cans. However, this is not always the last stop for the empty containers since some people; elderly, homeless or just bored, go all around downtown to scan the garbage bins and earn themselves some money by recycling. A while ago when I was walking through Uppsala I saw these pillars here and there - give and take stations for bottles and cans! How clever!

The Vasa ship

Last Sunday we took our guest back to Stockholm and to the Vasa museum where the more than 300 year old Vasa ship is preserved. It is one of my favorite museums and I still find it fascinating that 95% of the original ship is right there on display. This time, however, Inga and I didn't pay 100% attention to the ship, instead we trained on walking - Inga's new favorite thing...

Tree climber

Matts decided to do some morning work on our apple tree while I prepared breakfast. When I looked out of the window I suddenly saw that he had left solid ground and actually worked on the tree from the inside so to say...

Easter and runes

Last Friday night we cheated a bit and had an early Easter dinner. Egg halves with mayo and shrimps, smoked eel, preserved and raw cured salmon, pickled herring, quiche on Västerbottenost, meatballs, chipolata sausage and Jansson's temptation. To that Easter beers and påskmust. Yummy!

On Saturday we went to Uppsala. We started out with a lunch in one of the student houses and continued to the dome, walked past some stones with runic characters, took a look at the Silver Bible in the university library Carolina and enjoyed the view over Uppsala from the castle courtyard. A very nice and sunny day.

Apples and guests

This past weekend we had visitors sleeping in our guest room for the third time. The first time it was my mother in law. She helped us with the move and had to sleep in-between boxes and living room furniture. Our second visitors were my parents and the day they came, we went to Ikea to buy this daybed that Matts then assembled right before bedtime... Our third visitors were our friends Liz and Will visiting from Switzerland. Before they came I finally was able to roll out our fabulous green carpet that will set the tone in the guest room.

Talking about green, this is what our front garden looked like last week. A few crocuses and an apple tree gone wild...

Nordic animals

Last Thursday, Inga and I met up with Liz in Stockholm to visit Skansen, the oldest outdoor museum in the world. There they have lots of interesting things to explore, e.g. different Nordic animals. We saw bears, wolves, wild boars, moose, different kinds of seals and some beautiful reindeer - and learned that reindeer are the only deer where both males and females have antlers.

Room to live in

After eight days in our new house, I'm in love. There's a lot to do to make this our dream home, but it really feels good with all the space and the fact that we are allowed to do almost whatever we want to here (compared to the rental apartments where we have lived before). We started out with the living room floor. It badly needed to be polished and varnished so before placing our furniture there we hired someone to do the job since we realized we would probably never do it ourselves. So now we have a terrific floor to go with our terrible walls (the wallpaper was once white but is now both dirty and at some places torn - it's our next project!). While the work was done on the floor, we kept all our living room furniture in the guest room together with a bunch of moving boxes. Kind of crowded I have to say. Now we have furnished the living room and in a couple of days we are allowed to roll out the carpets as well (the varnish needs a few days more to harden completely). More pictures are coming later on...

Springtime - twice

This picture was taken in Lund two weeks ago. Now we are relocated to Knivsta and once more go through the first phases of spring. When we arrived here about a week ago there was still a big pile of snow in our yard. It's completely gone now. Instead, green leaves are showing on our small lawn...

That's what friends are for

Yesterday it was my birthday. It also was the first day of work in Uppsala for Matts, making me a grass widow. And it was the second day with a running nose and fever for Inga. In other words, not really a day for celebration. But then someone rung the doorbell: a friend with a piece of cake for me! Yummy!

Tell me why I don't like Fridays

TGIF

I don't know how many times I have seen these four letters as status lines on Facebook recently. And every time I have wondered what's so great about Fridays? Are Fridays really something to celebrate? Apparently, for many of my FB-friends.

For me, Fridays have been the worst day of the week for almost a year now. Not that Fridays have been terrible or anything, but the last day of caring for my wonderful daughter on my own before Matts comes home from work has been the toughest one most of the weeks since she was born. By the end of the week, I have often been so exhausted that I have burst into tears for pretty much nothing. I do love my daughter of course, but I do need to sleep too...

I remember how amazed my mother was, in the beginning of Inga's life, that I could cope so well with the lack of sleep. My mother knows more than well how dependent I am on sleeping well, and what happens to me if I cannot sleep enough (lots of crying, illness, personality change, eating disorders etc.). Now I know that during the first wonderful weeks, it was all about hormones. Hormones helping me get effective sleep during the short "naps" the nights were divided into. But it all came to an end and I am more or less back to my old, sleep-craving self. And Friday, being the last day of not being able to sleep in or have some time for myself hence became the worst day of the week.

This said, I am so very happy that Matts won't be working a single Friday this month. I might even be able to post "TGIF" on Facebook on Friday...

The good life

Inga is sleeping and the sun is shining on the small snowflakes that slowly make their way down to the ground. There are hardly any "musts" to do today. Life is good.

Sunny, chilly Sunday

After only enjoying the beautiful weather from inside yesterday, today Inga and I took a walk in the sun. We followed the same route that I walked almost every day last summer (until it just got too hot even in the mornings) but it was quite different. In Rinnebäcksravinen the water level is low and at some points frozen to ice. The ponds by the sewage plant are covered with thin ice layers now and the thistles along the shores are only dry skeletons. But there are signs of the upcoming spring as well.

Time to evaluate

The past weeks I have been thinking a lot about friendship. Now, we only have about five weeks left here in Lund before we move north, to Knivsta. I have concluded that one and three quarters of a year really is a short time to make really good friends. At least under these conditions. During our two years in Switzerland it was much easier, being the "foreign" as well as meeting many others in the same situation as ourselves. Moving to Lund was different though, since we this time moved into already existing sets of acquaintances. Very different from moving to Switzerland as well as from moving to Uppsala ages ago to study.

This said, I feel privileged to have met and got to know so many wonderful persons here. It's surpassed my expectations. However, the closer we get to our move, the less meaningful it fells to further extend our circle of friends here since there simply isn't enough time left to spend socializing. Instead I want to concentrate on the friendships already existing.

When moving away (or having friends moving away for that matter) I think there are three ways to handle it. Firstly, we can let everything continue as normal, seeing each other just like before until the inevitable day of the move comes. Secondly, we can start to distance ourselves from each other since it's "no use" to spend time together with the move coming up. Lastly, we can try to make as much as possible of the time left, knowing that after the move it might be a long time until we meet again.

For me, the first and last approach are the natural ones, depending on how close the friends are. The second way really hasn't got anything with friendship to do according to me, but I can see that it might be some kind of self protection for people who doesn't want to get hurt.

I hope that these last five weeks here in Lund will be great and that when the day of our move comes I can look back at our time in Lund with a feeling of gratitude for all the friends I have.

Five minutes

Since Friday afternoon, Inga's been down with the gastric flu. Now she is recovering and to help her I have to give her five ml of fluid replacement every five minutes until about lunch. So I have prepared a tray for the morning with a cup filled with the fluid replacement, a syringe for measuring, a baby-cup for Inga to drink from and a timer to help hold us to the schedule. At the moment Inga is sleeping though, but as soon as she wakes up it all begins again.

Saukalt!

Ice cold wind outside. A perfect match for my mood at the moment. And a bit refreshing - the thoughts fly away just like the dry leaves from last fall...

What I miss

Today I miss

• my friends in Switzerland - always up to do fun things and never too busy to just hang out.
• a chef in my kitchen - I really don't feel like cooking and Matts is down with a cold.
• a few hours of sleep - when will I ever catch up?
  

Three years ago

Three years ago, Matts and I went skiing for the first time in Switzerland (and for the first time whatsoever for Matts), in Flumserberg. Matts has been complaining a lot about us not going skiing this season, but this year we will take a rain check on carving down the hills. Next year we plan to be back in the slopes, if not in the Alps at least somewhere in Sweden.

Life insurance

There's one thing that really upsets me about some parents. Not all, since many are grown up and responsible as they should be, but unfortunately too many don't seem to understand the importance of this subject.

So what am I talking (or rather writing) about if not one of the cheapest life insurances that exists: the bike helmet! For more than six years we have had a law in Sweden saying that children up to the age of 15 must wear a helmet riding a bike. So far, all is well. What upsets me is the fact that so many parents don't wear a helmet.

What crosses their minds when they decide they don't need one, but their children do? Certainly not the fact that their children need their parents alive. Or that no matter how good a biker they are, not everyone else out there is biking or driving their car with 100% control at all times (even if they of course should). Or that we, as parents, are extremely important as role models for our children. Or that the hairdo really isn't as important as our lives.

What I find most upsetting is parents biking without helmets with their children on the back of their bikes or in a bike trailer, kids wearing helmets. What if there is an accident and the parent gets severely injured and the children watches it all happen? Of course, helmets doesn't protect anyone from broken bones, but it can make a big difference if we get into an accident.

So if you bike and don't already have one, go to the nearest bike or sport shop tomorrow to invest in the cheapest life insurance there is and show all those kids that you are a cool grown up using your brain and wearing a helmet.

Buying vegetables

When I was a child, my parents had to weigh and put price-tags on all the fruit and fresh vegetables they bought. This has long been history in Sweden. Instead, the cashiers learn all the four digit PLU codes by heart (or occasionally look in a table) and all the costumers have to do is to put the apples or onions in a plastic bag. I was amazed to come to Switzerland where the "old" system is still up and running. And when I by mistake forgot to tag my cauliflower or eggplant, the cashier took I run (and I really mean a run!) to the fruit and vegetable department to weigh it in for me. That's what I called service.

But at the same time it's kind of stupid. Because if they had a scale and a catalog of PLU numbers by the counter, they wouldn't have to take that run. And if they had a scale and all the necessary PLU codes by the counter there would be no need for the costumers to do the job themselves at all. In the end, it would mean that the costumers have to wait a tiny bit longer by the counter, but save much more time in the vegetable department since there is no risk of forgetting the cucumber number before reaching the scale (since in Switzerland, every vegetable and fruit have a number, and by the scales you press the individual number for every item). I guess this is what the supermarkets in Sweden figured out long before I bought my first orange.

However, Sweden being in the frontier, the scales are now reintroduced. Not for every Tom, Dick or Harry, but for everyone following the self-scanning trend. So now, we who call ourselves the go-aheaders run around the supermarkets with barcode scanners, fooling ourselves that we are saving time while what we really do is to save the cashiers from work. And of course, self-scanning means that we have to go back to the scales for the potatoes and watermelons we buy since there is no cashier in the end to do the work for us. And to confuse it all even more, even if you are not a self-scanning costumer, you can still use the scales and "save time" at the counter (in case there's an unexperienced cashier who doesn't know all the PLUs by heart) by spending an eternity by the touch screen that goes with the scale to find the image of that fennel...

Some stores in Switzerland also have the self-scanning option, and something tells me that they will completely skip the scales-at-the-counter-step, no matter how costumer friendly that would be.

Happy New Year!

We spent the evening with good friends and good food! We watched the fireworks from the dining room instead of going out in the wind and leaving our sleeping beauties alone...

The pig of 2010