Btw..

Just a little brainteaser until i blog again... My score was a struggling 13.

Gardening is slowing down. We've picked all the potatoes, carrots and parsley, Still got some beet roots left and the parsnips aren't done yet but getting there. We might be getting some late salad if the warmth lingers a bit longer. But it is getting quite cool at night. Apples are getting there and we've had loads of plums that I've turned into the most lovely tasting jam I've done so far. Imagine ripe red-blue plums spiced up with a vanilla pod, yummie. Dead simple recipe too. You take 2kg of plums, halve them and take out the pips, boil with 2 dl of water until soft and mushy then add 1.2 liters of sugar and one big vanilla pod, you add both the scraped out black seeds and the whole remaining pod, boil for further 10-15 minutes to a nice consistency, de-foaming it if necessary then put in warm jars and seal.

We've had very rainy wet weather with sunny warm days in between perfect for growing but too late for the year I think. Today is a Change day. You know the kind, pelting rain one minute, sunny spots in between but also quite a fierce northern wind blowing. Definitely a Change day. Me, I'm home with the first cold I've had for ages. One by one got hit by it at work so I was just counting the days really until it was my turn. It isn't too bad, sore throat and fever and general tiredness but not really any running nose and coughing, yet I might add...

Just cant pass over a test can i.. It is pretty accurate as well.

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations. A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you. You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness. Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life. Most things in your life are organized and planned well. But you borderline on being a total perfectionist. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You're generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have medium neuroticism. You're generally cool and collected, but sometimes you do panic. Little worries or problems can consume you, draining your energy. Your life is pretty smooth, but there's a few emotional bumps you'd like to get rid of. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high. In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas. You'll try almost anything interesting, and you're constantly pushing your own limits. A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Do you ever get the feeling that there is a change even though nothing obvious has changed? I had that feeling today when i went outside. It just felt like the summer is ending, strange because it is still nice and warm outside, but you know there is a time when the garden turns. Lots of things are ripening and it looks like we will have a great year in the size of crops we are getting. Some of the summer flowers have ended though, surprisingly early but i think it has to do with the long dry spell we had earlier and now that there is rain it really doesnt help.

The garden has looked better this year and will do even better next year i hope. Our new hedge did suffer a bit from the dry weather but hopefully it will spring back next year and get going. We have to start pondering about the Big Dig next year. Considering the amount of downpours we have had it is time to do something about our damp foundation. So that is something we would like to do first thing next spring. Also there is this wast amount of space around the tree stumps that could need a bit of work and planning. I would like to make that part of the garden a bit of a wild spot, bushes, small trees, ferns and flowers of course. Like a little hideaway with paths around and in it. We'll just have to see.

What is keeping me busy...

Untill i get my writing skills back again i am doing a little photoblog. Feel free to visit.

Should i stay or should i go...?

At the present it seems i cant find the time to blog and when i do i get writers blog.. So, what should i do?

Summer has arrived with a BANG!

Lovely blue skies, temperature is hovering around +20, the Syringa hedge is in full bloom with lovely lilac flowers and all my summer flower seeds are growing like anything now, plus all the weeds of course.. Not to mention the lawn and there isn't anything we can do about it since our lawn mower decided it needed some service and was making this horrible sound when James was going to cut it last week. The damn mower is only 1 year old but James thought it might have to do with that he by accident drove it over a piece of rope that tied itself around the knife last time he cut the grass. Oh well, helpful neighbour let us borrow his mower once so it isn't a complete jungle out there. Hopefully we will get our own mower back soon. Anybody got some sheep we could lend?

We've been digging new flower beds as well as putting up a little willow fence to try and get people from cutting across to the Finn neighbours. Will see how much help it actually is later on. The new hedge is coming along, slowly. We've had loads of flowers on our plum tree this year and not so many on the big apple tree. But the huge old apple tree in the corner is covered in flowers so we'll see how much we'll end up with this year again of uneaten apples. I mean there is a limit to how much you can do and eat with apples in it before you get so tired of it you don't want to see another apple pie for as long as you shall live.

The vegetable patch is on the go, don't know how much will actually come up though due to a large flock of magpies. They are forever there picking at it so don't know how much spuds we got left or any other seeds. We did try to scare them off with dangling CD's but they soon learned that it wasn't scary. We did cover the seeds up with fleece but on closer examination there are now huge holes pecked in the fleece by them. Any suggestions to what to do about it? Part from shooting the buggers! Which isn't allowed anyway...

Flowers are going better this year but it has been nerve racking a couple of cold nights and I'm sure some of my climbers have been frost bitten because they look ever so sad so I've started a new batch just in case they don't pick up. Trying to organize the flowers and new shrubs in a way that is nice is fun but frustrating as well. It's sometimes a bit hard when you start off with a little little shrub that is supposed to grow as big as 2 meters and visualize how it will look in a year or two. I want instant BIG and bold plants. It is always easier as well to see how they will match each other when they are bigger and I wasn't planning on moving them in the near future but I might have to if I got it wrong.

Anyway it is nice that some plants survived the first year and are now coming back bigger and hopefully flowering better this year. I had some casualties that didn't make it through the winter. Sadly my big red poppy didn't like it where it was planted and was rotted away and also I don't have high hopes of my big, white, wonderfully smelling lilies coming back, no sign of life yet where they are but all other lilies are coming along nicely.. But surprise surprise all the tulips came out even though I did plant them way to late last autumn.

Currently playing Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush Dont give up

I've finaly got around to sort out all my mp3's and stumbled over some old favorites of mine. It has been sort of a night with music overload. Got rid of quite a lot of crap music as well. Everytime i hear this song i get goosebumps, i really dont know why, i just do.

It is still cold and wintery over here. The snow is slowly melting away but it is still a thick layer on the lawn and not a flower in sight. We have now finished our decorating inside and are preparing for the big push in getting the garden in shape whenever the frost has gone. First of all we have to get rid of all the fir tree branches that remained after we cut down the 3 big trees earlier. And then there is just a the question of what to do with all the space we now have.

It is snowing

Not just a little but a lot and it is wet and heavy and just plain old horrible! I am soon to do the last few strips of new wallpaper to our bedroom and hopefully that will be it until we have saved enough money to renovate the bathroom.

So onward getting all glued up it is. Back with pictures later

Morning walk

We went for a walk today to the local auction house to have a look at what they were going to auction out later on today. I think we saw all in all 3 people on the road there and it wasn't that early, around 10 I think. Partly I think people kept inside because it was Sunday and Vasaloppet (90km long ski race) was going on up in Mora and was being showed on TV. But also it was cold and windy plus they hadn't cleared much of the snow that came during the night. It was bit hard going on the smaller roads but we managed to get there without slipping over even though James did his best impersonation of a skier without skis. The auction looked more interesting on the pictures online then it did in real. There were the odd bits and bobs that I might have wanted to bid on if they didn't go too expensive but nothing really special.

We are going to my mums today for a Sunday dinner. My sister and her bf are picking us up in about 1Â? hour so got to think of something to do until then.

The more it snows a tiddelie pom...

At the moment it is still snowing, third day in a row and James has started to throw the snow past the big ridge of snow that is now enclosing our drive or else he wont get it over the top soon. We have started to shrink the driveway as well so it will just accommodate our car and a guest instead of 3 since we haven't got anywhere to put all the snow that is coming!
But hopefully it will ease off after the weekend. It's really not too bad compared to what I am used to from my childhood but still, I think it must be one of the few winters of late where there has been plenty of snow.

Yesterday and today have been spent looking at wallpaper for our bedroom and looking and trying out a new bigger sofa. We were thinking of getting a corner sofa so we didn't need to shuffle around and try to fit in 2 armchairs with our old sofa. So in search of the perfect sofa we have looked everywhere and did find a very nice one at Lidens but realized once we came home and started measuring up the lounge that there wasn't a chance in hell for it to fit in. Even though we used various option in building it James got it right when he asked if we wanted a lounge or a sofa. That is how imposing it would have been. So yesterday we went back to Mio here in town to have a look at a similar one but slightly smaller version of a corner sofa. But that one would have been too big as well, it would have fitted but maybe just. We were getting quite despondent at that time before we looked at another option that we are favouring at the moment, it is a wide 2,5 seater (longer then our current sofa)with a corner divan stuck on it and would fit nicely without taking over the room completely. We even took some fabric swatches with us home and James had to agree that my favorite color, a mild green, actually worked very well with the rest of our new lounge even though he protested at the start and said NO we have plenty of green (our hall and my sewing room). But we will have a bit of a think before we decide yet.
As for wallpaper, would you be surprised if we said we have actually been looking at black and grey prints? There is this collection by eco that just have the most lovely black and grey prints among other colors as well but we just fell in love with the black and grey ones. But knowing me and just how much color actually affects me I don't think I would put it in the bedroom. We looked for other options and found a very nice chocolate brown with a darker brown hazy floral print from Midbec that we are quite in agreement of. We went today to see if Falun had any better options before deciding in favor of the choco one but couldn't find any that tempted us as much. But it still is an open issue what we will have in the end.

Nostalgia

I've been reading some books that pictures Falun how it used to look like and what it looks like now. I am still very attached to that town even though we have moved and are now living in Borlange. I sometimes do wonder about the good of progress and change, at least in the way how towns change over the years Somehow I would like to smack the silly people who thought progress was to knock down charming old houses and destroy complete blocks and replace them with bunker looking complexes all in the name of progress and the future good. Borlange I think is a brilliant example of how it can go wrong. The town center looks like it is a set of concrete boxes put together, no curves, no greenery, no surprises just this grey, beige mass of concrete and glass from the seventies. No wonder people don't like to be in town and that the businesses are moving en mass to the big shopping mall Kupolen just outside the city center. But I must say that Falun did patch up a lot of the damage done by redoing lots of the buildings as to make a softer skyline.

Just as an example the house we now own is from 1925 but you really couldn't tell, that is how massive and damaging the renovation to it is. The former owners must have ripped every feature out of it because bloody eck we haven't found ONE original feature, part from the doors which I am surprised they kept. But also very pleased that they did because they will be lovely once we have stripped them of I don't know how many layers of paint and repainted them in a soft white. I am quite sure that at one point they must have had a balcony above the porch and most likely a glass veranda entrance underneath it. Also I think there must have been a wooden staircase inside even though the one in here now is made out of the much used MDF and then covered with plastic carpet (shudder).

There is quite a lot I would like to do with our house in terms of renovation and putting a bit of the features back in or at least try and give it a bit of its charm back. At some point we will renovate the bathroom/sauna/utilityroom and the kitchen. Most likely we will get rid of the sauna, I quite like saunas but haven't tried ours out because it has been packed with books and other stuff when we were doing the lounge and bedrooms upstairs. I much more prefer to have a bath tub installed and a better way of having the washing machine/dryer tower placed. The kitchen is a problem in itself as it is now since there really is only one way of having our kitchen table and we cant fit any free standing cupboards in since the walls are too narrow and you got a fire in one corner. It would be very interesting to change everything around in there and move the fire into the lounge plus put in a better fitting window where the sink is today. That's another thing that is annoying me just a bit, there are at least 6 different styles of windows in the house, somehow it makes it look lopsided. But there are good points as well with the house or else we wouldn't have bought it, but I like to dream a bit of what it can be made into. Just to ease James' worries I'd better put this disclaimer in; I am just talking out loud and not making any firm plans to do anything or all of what I have written in here. Better love..? :)

Golden Sunday

Sweden won the Olympic hockey final today over Finland, YaY to us!! Hockey is one of the few sports I do enjoy watching and it was a nail biting one as well since it was a close match from start to finish. Not to talk about the last few minutes when the Finns really were throwing everything they had against the Swedish goalie, taking out their own goalie to gain an extra player and the Swedes were diving in to stop the puck with their own bodies if anything else failed. It was really tense and people at work who snuck in to watch it on the staff room TV were shouting and jumping and then the last second ticked over and we WON!!!! Poor Susanne was sitting at the till all alone while the rest of us was shouting in the kitchen but I don't think she minded and there were hardly any customers in at all during the game anyway. Everybody was home watching it just as they have been during any other Swedish highlight or chance of a medal in the Olympics.

It's that time again.

You know, when you look around and get the urge to change everything around you?
You don't know it? Oh good for you because it is a hard bug to shake once you've attracted it. We are now getting in gear to redecorate our bedroom after having a wee bit of a rest from the stressful pre-Christmas rush getting everything nice and finished. We are starting slowly by looking at wallpaper and taking home endless amounts of catalogues and test rolls and you really don't want to know. We've gone off the idea of the one we had decided on before Christmas, partly because it will be the only thing in the house that is blueish and we don't have anything that will match it, not to mention any bedspread that will fit with it. And I have an inkling that I wont be allowed to buy yet another bedspread just because I have such wonderful puppy dog eyes when I really want something from James. He might have fallen for it earlier but he is wising up ...! It's a bit tricky this time too with a north facing window meaning not a lot of light in winter and huge white wardrobes, white floor and white newly painted ceiling. At the moment it feels a bit bleak and too white. I do like white and shades of white when seen in magazines but I don't think I'd like it so much if I had it at home. Because if I did we wouldn't have decorated the house so much since almost everything in it was white or beige to start with! I'm more of a colour girl but not bright ones since I cant stand it loud and bright everyday. So the question for the next couple of days and weeks is, which colour do we pick for our bedroom, not to mention the pattern....!

Work is as work usually is, boring but pays well. Stressful and intrigue filled as well as of late. I'm really really REALLY trying not to get sucked into all the gossip and bullshit that is flying around and just do my stuff and get out and home before anyone has the chance to start asking me what I think of this and that and have you heard of so and so... But it is hard to close your ears especially when the person talking has this loud and shrieky voice that will penetrate steel if necessary to get her point across as the one that should be heard and obeyed and oh yes we will do as you say Mrs B, not really, up yours and leave me alone is what I really want to say!

Spring is not sprung but mini springing as the snow is melting at daytime and freezing again at night time. Hopefully it is not too far away since we both are eager to get started with the garden and getting various projects going.
I've asked James if he would build me some flower boxes to hang on the side of our porch. I also want a trellis for a climber plant to grow on as to shield us from the wind on the left side of the porch. Also we have to get the rest of the boxes for the raised beds made and put in place, all fir tree branches cleared off and the freed ground surveyed to see what to make out of it. Raspberry bushes bought and planted, black currant bush moved from the allotment to a suitable place in our garden and flower beds dug in various places if there is time. Lots to do and plans to be made. All great fun eh? :)

I've cut my hair

Not just trimmed the ends a bit, oh no I have really really cut it all off... It feels weird not being able to put it up in a pony tail as I am used to doing to keep it away from my face. There wont be a pony tail for ages! But it has it advantages as well, no more frizzy hair in winter when everything is so dry you could almost touch the air inside. And at the moment all I need to do before going to work is ruffle it up a bit, add a bit of hair spray and off I go. It is also fun seeing people doing the double take when they don't recognize me at once. I got to look different if they walk past and then stop and have a second look before saying ' oh it IS you'.

We have had some cold weather for a while but now it is finally easing up a bit with warmer weather in the daytime at least. Right now it is close to 0 and the snow is melting a bit on the sunny sides but still loads of snow left since we had some more the past week. I managed to capture a sun halo with my camera when it was -20 the other day you can really see how misty and cold it is I think. Hopefully it wont be getting that cold again for a while.

A wall of snow coming down

That is what it looked like a minute ago when I glanced out the window. Here we have had absolutely perfect winter weather with up to +8 degrees for a week and now it is back to old miserable snow and cold. Sigh..

I hate to be fooled into thinking it might be getting warmer and a bit more like spring but its not spring but you could have fooled me the past couple of days! It's only February I had to remind myself over and over again. I was getting really excited about the warm weather but to no avail. Everything is once again covered in a white blanket and I'm sure it will remain so until late march if we are unlucky. Booo hiss!

Bloggers block or Just to damn tired

I've not written anything for ages partly because we have been very busy before and during Christmas and New Year as my family decided on to have the Christmas dinner at our place this year and we also had James' parents stay a week after Christmas.

And after all of that i naturally got a cold that is still lingering on and making my voice disappear. Oh joy of sitting at the till all day tomorrow trying to get my voice to make an audiable sound and not just a little huff and puff crow. I went to work on Tuesday barely being able to say hi but my boss didnt think it such a problem as to let me of till duty when i asked if he could let me off. He just asked me why i hadnt got some medicin for it. I looked quite dumbstruck asking him what sort of medicin you would take when your voice is lost and he looked even dumber when mumbling something about me sorting it out myself.. I shouldnt have gone back to work but hey you think you are being nice and loyal by going back as soon as possible since you know that they do struggle when someone is ill. That's gratitude for you!

I had a very pleasent surprise the other day when Mary phoned us to see what was wrong since I hadnt blogged for ages and James hasnt even glanced at his blog since i dont know when. We had a little talk and it was good to catch up and i seem to recall me promising to get back into blogging again so voila, here i am! Mary can work wonders you know.

But now when im here i really dont know what to blog about. Before Christmas we were so busy with redecorating, that was all that i blogged about. And i still have a few things i would like to change around the house but im in no rush really anymore and i cant bother you all about the pain of finding the right wallpaper and all that stuff again. I'll take some photos and post here to show you all the hard work we've been doing but i'll have to wait untill the batteries for the camera is charged up again. I've not touched that camera for so long it was dusty when i picked it out of my cupboard! Shame on me, shame!

It is snowing at the moment outside. We had been treated to a few days of +5 last week but it all seems to be changing again. You get that longing for spring when it does get that warm in the middle of winter, not so nice when you get blasted with -7 and a hard wind making it even colder the next day. They've promised lots of snow for tomorrow so we'll have to see if it is back to getting the snow shovel out and back into action again.

Spring... oh there is lots to do outside in the garden this year when spring has sprung and i've already bought some seeds and cant wait until it is warm enough to get them going. Got lots of ideas in my head what to do with the new space that the 3 big fir trees left us with now that they have been chopped down. Also we have to finish building the boxes for the raised beds we dug out last autumn. I dont think i'll have anything growing close to the house this year just in case we do decide on doing the Big Dig this year. Plus we had an awful lot of bindweed in that flower border and along the house itself that i'll have to spray this year in a feeble attempt to get rid of it. We got to prune the apple trees now in February/March and i'll make an attempt at getting the middle size tree a bit more even looking since it has been neglected and is growing far more at one side then the other. It looked like it would topple over last year when all the apples on one side was pulling it down, i really thought the branches would snap when we were surpised with some heavy wet snow when there still were apples left in it in late october. But it survived but i cant say that about a bush we have close to the old shop, it was looking really sad with branches cracked and all hung down by the heavy snow. i managed to keep the rest of it intact and hopefully it will grow back this summer. And hopefully our new lilac hedge will grow very well and tall this year so we can trim it and make it nice and thick.

Busy bee or lazy snail?

I'd go for the lazy snail any time, any day after this hectic month! I'm not used to a fast pace with a calendar that is fully booked with things to do and places to be at. It was fun I admit to go visit Al and her family but shopping for 6 hours straight in a very big, very crowded shop is nothing I will be doing for quite some time thank you very much!

The weekend spent in Stockholm with colleagues from work I could have given a miss. Ok, the food was excellent and the show funny enough to give me a few laughs but the rest I could have missed out on without regrets.

But the weekend in Gothenburg with James and my mum was very fun and the show wonderful and funny. The hotel was very nice and just situated outside of Liseberg, big amusement park, so we ventured into the Christmas market already on Friday night. Saturday morning was spent looking for my mum who disappeared when going down for breakfast. We had to take turns to get into he elevators and how she got the notion of trying to find the breakfast room on her own even though I told her we would be getting downstairs to the lobby as soon as we could would she please wait there for us I'll never know. When we eventually got down she had vanished and me and James went looking for her if she had gone to the lobby to sit or already gone into breakfast. But oh no, she had asked the people in the lift if they knew where breakfast was being served and they had answered the 18th floor... So off she went even though we told her to wait for us downstairs. We finally caught up with her when she was on her way down and the elevator didn't stop at her floor for whatever reason and James had just gone to have another look around the lobby area. After that she stayed close by, mainly because I threatened her with being locked in her room for the rest of the day for scooting off like that! Mums!

The evening show and Christmas buffe was very nice and boy are we glad we came a bit early seeing the queues that lined up to the food later on but by then we were already into the desert table. The show was a combination of music in Christmas boogie woogie style from Robert Wells and some fantastic magic by Joe Labero.

In other news we have repainted the kitchen to a lovely soft yellow, we've just finished laying a new floor in the lounge and have decided on what new wallpaper we are going to have in there as well. And it all has to be done before Christmas whcih we are going to celebrate HERE this year!

Fanfare!!!

In celebration of my 501st post i present

Bunny Story

A precious little girl walks into a pet shop and asks, "Excuthe me, do you have any widdle wabbits?"
The shopkeeper's heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he's on her level, and says,
"Do you want a widdle white wabbit or a thoft, fuffy bwack wabbit, or one like that widdle bwown wabbit over there?"

The little girl blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her
knees, leans forward and whispers ...

" I don't weally fink my pet pyfon gives a phuk."