Strawberries

Our very own home grown strawberries. Yummy!

We're moving again

... but before we do, here's a walk through our current home. It's narrated in Swedish, but for those of you who don't know this beautiful language, I'm quite sure the pictures tell you what you see anyway. :-)

Time passes by

I haven't been posting anything here in ages, and the green grass in the previous post is now covered in white snow (finally, after a very mild winter so far). Inga went sledging for the second time in her life today and she really enjoys it. Right outside our house we have a small hill, just the right size for her.

Since my last post we have been doing a few things around the house and I'll try to post some info about that soon. We have also been visiting our families in other parts of Sweden, celebrated Christmas and New Years completely differently from what was planned and so on. I am also only five weeks from due date, which is one of the reasons I haven't had the energy to update this blog in the past months... Least, but not last, we have had lots to think about lately. I'll get back to that later, but right now I can reveal that it has to do with work and location.

Stay tuned and don't give up on me just yet!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...