Some things don't need an explanation..

This is what greets me every time I need to go and get a garden tool. And it smells absolutely divine... And on the right hand side of the door there is a small golden honeysuckle adding to the scent as well. It's not as big as the rosebush yet but give it a couple of years and it will cover the wall behind it and the doorway. I'll make sure of that!

Right now inside the old paintshop there is a very pungent smell of wood oil since we have given our patio furniture their first coat. It didn't help to have both doors open and all windows wide open, I still got a headache from the fumes.

We've celebrated midsummer here in Sweden and we had my mum and sister with bf over to stay. We had a bit of luck with the weather being very nice and warm so we did manage to have a bbq. Much laughter and a game of boule on the lawn after the bbq made the evening complete. We didn't have a midsummer pole to dance around and neither did we bother about going somewhere to have a look at one being raised. We might have one next year and I'll make sure that James does the frog dance as well! Everyone stayed the night and we had a very late night game of TP. The next day was very chilly after a early morning downpour which actually filled all the water butts! We were all very tired so we just relaxed and had a nice lunch before people started to set of back home.

And today it is back to the grindstone but somehow I don't mind anymore, because I can just leave it all back in Falun when I go home at night. It does make a difference with a bit of distance between work and home. Anyway for me and it also helps to know that I can just sit out in the garden and relax if I like when I get back home.

Some pictures from our new house and garden. These are the lovely pink roses in their new pots on the steps.

I just love these flowers. Gazanias they are called here and they only open when it is sunny.

Finaly done with the new hall downstairs and upstairs!

And this is what we are considering having on our kitchen wall, it's just a little bit of wall by the window that will have it if we decide on it.

A young brunette goes into the doctor's office and says that her body hurts wherever she touches it.
"Impossible," says the doctor.
"Show me."
She takes her finger and pushes her elbow and screams in agony. She pushes her knee and screams, pushes her ankle and screams. Everywhere she touches makes her scream.
The doctor says, "You're not really brunette are you?"
The girl says "No, I'm really a blonde".
"I thought so," the doctor says.
"You have a broken finger."

Time is a flying...

Where do the days go? I cant believe just how quickly the days have passed since we moved in with boxes, furniture and fishes. Thing is, it is only 3 weeks since we did move in and we already have some flower beds going and a bit of a vegetable patch started. Plus we have managed to almost agree on a wild kind of wallpaper for the kitchen and paint the hall a very nice shade of green. Today we went and bought some more good soil and 3 pale terracotta pots for my intense pink patio roses I bought earlier this week. They are now sitting nicely on the steps up to the front door.

I also managed to connect the water butts together with this brilliant set of tube and washers that James dad suggested we get. I still cant believe that we Swedes haven't come up with something similar so James ordered them online and had them sent to his parents and they sent them on to us. Might be a good import idea there...Hmm. I got a bit of assistance from Lotta when assembling them so if there is rain tomorrow as they predict with some thunder included we will be set with rain water in hopefully all 5 butts for another spell of nice warm summer weather as we have had for 3 days now.

I planted my beans today and put up the bean poles. All I need to do now is sow some marigolds and weed and water. Until this autumn that is. We have to see if we will get started on a bigger vegetable plot, lots of digging involved there though so we'll have to see, I would like to be able to grow potatoes at least!

I had a nice little chat to one of our neighbor's. We can call her Liz. She has lived here all her life and took over her parents house. She used to know the first people who owned this house and she could tell me quite a lot about how it used to look like before. They had big garden beds with summer flowers and vegetables in them, but they were all on the wrong side for us as we intend to dig up the lawn closer to the house rather then the old shop. They had pebble paths inbetween the beds and now I understand where all the pebbles are coming from when we have been digging up our new flower beds. She also said there used to be a one room and kitchen upstairs and that the 2 brothers lived in the house with their parents and one brothers family. It would be fun to get a hold of some pictures from how it looked like then. Maybe I'll ask our Liz nicely if she has any.

I cant believe how many shades of green there is!

We are trying to decide on a nice apple green for our hall that continues on up the steps and the landing upstairs. We contemplated lots of different colors before settling on some sort of lime green or apple green. Not knowing how many shades there were that looked nice on paper and horrible on the wall we are now into our fifth tester pot and still it doesn't feel right. Well one of the new ones we got today feels better then the darker olive green we decided on yesterday. The olive is nice in daylight but makes the hall look very dark at night time. What to do, what to do..

In other news we have finished digging two flower borders and have planted one up but got some left to do in the shady one. The tomatoes have gone in the short end where there is sun all day and they are really sprouting on now. We have also got rid of the big mound of dirt that they dug up earlier when fixing a leaking water main. We also shifted the big lilac bushes they uprooted at the same time.

We are doing a wee bit of planning for the future as well. We really do want a green house in the garden or a conservatory added onto the house and if we did the latter one we could have a patio area next to it with steps down to the garden we thought. Still have to decide where the vegetable garden is going to be dug this autumn though. I dread that because it was hard enough doing the little flower beds with all the turf that had to be removed and all the weeds that left all their roots if you weren't careful with the fork. Maybe we could have a digging party? Anyone interested?

I think I'm going to have a look if the paint has dried yet, they tend to dry darker these green ones..

So here we are then..

The new house.

And we all are a wee bit bushed really and in need of a few nights good sleep but who got the time for that when there are things to put in place and boxes to be taken out and the garden to tend to and lots and lots more stuff. We cleaned out the apartment today and took just about everything that was left there from yesterday when the big move was. We had some good weather yesterday but today just rained in really. The next adventure for us is the hunt for a new lawn mover and we will have to venture into the land of DIY at one pint or another and I'm sure it will be a fun trip but a bit scary since there is a house to tend to now a days. As soon as the weather eases off a bit I'm going to have a good poke around the garden and see what can be done in there. I'm tempted to get started but I really shouldn't until the house feels a bit more finished or at least until we have some curtains up and not a box in sight.. good thing there is some storage to tuck boxes into isn't it?

It's short and sweet today since i really am longing for bed, so tired..

4 days remaining...

The moving crew (James mum and dad) are arriving tomorrow. They will be staying until next Saturday and help us with bits and bobs and driving the van. We are getting to borrow my sisters huge Mercedes Estate as well so we'll have an extra car to take the boxes in. And boy do we need it. At the last count we did, including all the prepacked ones in the storage and the ones under our bed we are now up to 64 banana boxes filled to the rim with our home. And still we are functioning quite well without everything that is packed. It sure makes you wonder why you have so much stuff doesn't it. And perhaps if you really need everything you got as well...

12 days remaining....

Got this in my mail today and laughed at the last little paragraph, nice pun.. :o)


TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.


Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

14 days remaining...

Well now, it is getting closer to our moving date and i am feeling more and more drained by the day. I dont know if it just all down to stress and that my spring allergys are going in high gear but i just have NO energy at all. Dont know what to do about it either. I was home from work yesterday and slept practically all day but it only helped for a few hours this morning when i had some errands to do and visit my gran who is in hospital due to a fractured thigh bone after a nasty fall last thursday. Now i have no energy to do anything, just sit and my eyes are starting to itch and all i feel like is to go to bed! Help

21 days remaining....

Do you have a theme song or know anybody that has one? James, my sweet and funny husband has one. Its like a little fanfare and he uses it when entering a room, preparing food or any kind of action produces it now a days and all I can think about when I hear him go "Du de Dum" is .... Danger Mouse! But I'm sure its not from there but all I can think of is Danger Mouse and Penfold racing to the rescue of the world, again. LOL

22 days remaining....

New phone number and adress... check
Notice about moving sent to internet provider... check
Electricity company - chosen and informed... check
House insurance... check
Give notice to cable tv operator... check
Appartment sold.. check (big YAY)
House bought.. check (HUGE YaaaaaY)

I think that was all..? Oh i almost forgot..

Vacation planned and approved.. CHECK!

Got up early today and went to the allotment to get it prepared for sowing. We got some gravel added to our little path so it is all nice and straight. I tidied up the raspberry bushes and added onto the wicker fence I tried building last year it had sagged a bit during the winter. Some of the spring flower bulbs are coming up but nothing flowering yet but hopefully they will be soon if this nice warm weather persists. It was a lovely day with almost summer temperatures and a nice cool breeze coming from the lake Varpan. There is something very relaxing about gardening spite the hard work of turning soil and you get the extra bonus of watching all kind of little birds help themselves to whatever worms you expose while digging.

4 weeks left BTW, cant wait until we are in the new house!

I know, I know its been ages since I blogged. But there has been some developments. We did sign the contract and sent it of to the housing associating for approval earlier as I blogged about. Only thing is that it came back last week Friday saying they couldn't process it because James name was in it as well. So we did rewrite the contracts and the buyers did sign again even though I thought for a while they wouldn't, you know nerves are tense before the contract has been approved. But to our surprise James still had to sign a consent form allowing me to sell the apartment! Wouldn't it had been better if they would have agreed to the first contract?! Anyway it is all done and has been sent away again to the housing association for approval.

Right now we are in England since my maniac for a husband is going to run the London Marathon on Sunday. We went into London yesterday to pick up his running number and some other freebies that came along. After that we had a very relaxing day and visited the British Museum and did a spot of shopping as well. Cant go to London without seeing what's new in Covent Garden now can you? But did we have tired feet after all that walking, no not much..

Today is set for a spot of light shopping in Ipswich and tomorrow it is visiting day to James grandparents and other relatives. Sunday we all know what James is going to do, hopefully around 4 hours worth of it as well. On Monday I suspect I will have the pleasure of pulling said James out of bed and giggle while he descends the stairs on his bum since he will be too stiff and achy from the run to walk down it. Hopefully by Tuesday he is well enough to make the plane trip home. We might have to get him a wheelchair at the airport since it is quite a long treck out to the gates in Stansted Airport... At least the ones Ryanair uses for its Swedish flights.

Finally at home it will only be a month before we are moving!

Still keeping everything crossed in terms of the apartment sale, we might be able to have good news tomorrow. Well it is good already but just to make sure it is even better news for tomorrow, you know.

It is terribly busy at work at the moment. Lots of shoppers since it is Easter this weekend. The worst day is yet to come, tomorrow, until we can have a little bit of a breather on Friday. Hopefully people will be out in the lasting warm spring weather we are having at the moment and the rest of the weekend will just breeze by. It has been up to +14 today which makes for a welcome change from last weeks cold and quite nippy -15. The snow have been melting visibly today and I went for a long walk around the little lakes just down from us. All in all after a hectic morning and afternoon I am finally home and can relax a bit. But not too much or I will fall asleep!

I've started some seeds, at the moment it is just the double flowering Petunias I bought from England and a new sort of flower I've not seen before. In Latin it is Cistanthe grandiflora but in Swedish it is Stor Sidenblomma. Petunias are happily sprouting away and are a cm high. Bit gangly but I think they will get better once I take the hood off the tray. No sign of the Sidenblomma yet but they are supposed to be late at sprouting. Other then those I don't think I will have time to do any vegetables. Possibly I will do the runnerbeans in pots again to give them a head start in our cold spring and summer start. It did work a treat last year and we had a very good, big harvest of beans. Also I'm going to try out some nice yellow pearshaped tomatos in buckets at our new place. My mum is doing those for me since she had such a good hand at getting her tomato plants so big last year. All in all, it is feeling much more like spring!

After a day of scrubbing and dubbing so everything was neatly shining and you could eat off the floor we had 8 couples come to the viewing, 3 left a note of interest straight away and the rest have until Monday to think about it. Keeping literally everything crossed we might be able to sign a contract before Easter.

Six couples are interested in our apartment, at least that is how many is coming to the viewing tomorrow. I've been busy all morning getting things done but it seems that nothing is getting done! I'm just running around like a chicken without a head, panicking! BREATH!

In other news I think the new ice age has begun. We woke up to a foot of fresh snow this morning, it is soon V?rdagjämning damn it! That is when spring should have been sprung but not this year it seems. We have a very late winter and a fickle one at that.

Oh well I should be getting back at running around aimlessly, panicking.

Everything seems to be put on hold. We are having a viewing of our apartment on Friday and cant really do anything until we got a buyer for this place. So we cant really do anything in terms of starting packing and cleaning and just making the whole moving business a bit more easy and less stressful until we know if it is sold.

And I should know about stressful moving. When I moved away from home for the very first time I moved 4 times within 6 months. It wasn't my fault, promise! I was supposed to move into a 1 room and kitchen that had been converted from a 3 room and kitchen. But when it was time to move in they noticed at the final survey that they had budged up when doing the new kitchen and managed to drill through a water pipe so it all had to be redone, meanwhile I got a temporary apartment next door. Then I moved into my 1 room apartment and had a great few months there in spring. I had a lovely party at Valborg with lots of people from work and friends as well. But then in summer I started to notice this smell. After a few calls to the housing estate they came to see what could be wrong and they found a leaking old pipe in the hallway next to the bathroom. So I had to be evacuated to a 2 room apartment across the yard while they fixed the pipe and dried the apartment out. While in the 2 room apartment I found I had cockroaches in the kitchen and that was just the last straw! I had to find somewhere else because I wasn't at all comfortable to stay in that area anymore. By chance, Al (best friend from old really called Ann-Louise but Al for short) phoned early one morning saying she's seen this add for a 1 room in town and I should really phone straight away. So I did as I was told and was lucky to be the first to phone. Went and had a look at it the same day after work and it was lovely, only 5 minutes walk from the city centre and just big enough, cheap as well as the electricity was included in the rent. That is where I moved for the fourth time and that is where I stayed until James and me moved here 2 years ago.
And talking about moving here, don't move the same year you get married, it is nerve racking, I should know because I did...

I've been busy all day and still got some things left on the To Do list. Right now the second load of washing is going round down at the laundrette, got to go down there in a minute to get it drying. The kitchen is literally SPARKLING since I've been scrubbing away at it since early this morning. The oven has a gleam to it not surpassed by a brand new one! And you better agree with me or I'll come with some brillo pads ready to scrub your mouth out with the lies you tell!

I've also had a chat to the estate lady and we agreed on the description of the apartment and she said she would lay it out on the internet today, it would probably not show up until tomorrow though. Hopefully there are people interested and willing to pay the upted price. I had a chat to our chairman in the förening and he thought we would easy get 250 000 kr so after a bit of thought and consideration we've changed it to that. Left to do today is the bathroom. It need a good scrub of the walls and everything else if I'm going to have a easy clean before the viewings start. Then you would only need to touch up on the essentials and stage it rather then scrub it all.

We now own one tenth of the house. Contracts were written yesterday and as is customary here in Sweden we also paid 10% of the house price in a downpayment. So now we can relax a bit until 25 May when we are signing the final contract, köpebrev, getting the mortgage in order, pay the sellers in full and getting the keys. Now we only need to stress over the moving part and the selling of our apartment. But I did realize that I wouldn't cope with selling it myself, James does help out but it is me keeping tabs on people and calling back so it was a bit too much taking care of everything else so we got an estate agent from Svensk Fastighet in to help us sell it. She came round yesterday and took pictures and wrote a bit about the apartment and was going to send us some more papers to sign and other questions of info she might need as well. So that ball is also in motion and hopefully the apartment will sell quickly and to our asking price of 225 000 kr. We are hoping for several people to be interested so there would be a bit of bidding, but we'll be happy with the asking price as well.

Contracts to be written on Wednesday but feeling pushed over by the estate agents and sellers. They wanted to use our survey we paid for as part of an insurance they will buy to protect them from hidden faults we could process against them in the future. Bit miffed they had the nerve to ask and expected us to comply without hesitating! It's not like we are paying them peanuts for the house anyway but to be asked to pay THEIR survey, which it would become, and then they will use it in an insurance against us was a bit strong. I've asked around for advice and it seems that if they are buying this insurance the survey needed comes with it in the packet price. But I'm a bit concerned that one of the sellers also is an estate agents so she knows all the tricks and turns and that they might not sell to us if we don't agree on this, it is all hanging loose now before the contract is written. But I told estate chap on the phone that we could share our survey if they agreed to pay half of it or else they could have an own survey done. He sounded thoroughly surprised we didn't agree with them.... Are we to be worried?