Advent Preparations

366 challenge: 14 Wooden (bouquet)

Today our household is a busy one. I wish I had my advent candle holder ready to show you, but it is still to be decorated later today. We have started putting out some Christmas decorations in the house, though and it must be the earliest ever in our household *and I am a little proud of myself*!

No santas are spread around the house yet, just some glimmering items and candles, lots of candles. I put the electric advent lights out in the windows yesterday, but not all windows, I will take a shot when it's all done.

This, little cone bouquet has made it out of my Christmas Boxes and with the day light gone by 3, I hurried out in the garden and I managed to borrow some of the last light of the day to take this shot.

The rest of the family is out buying ingredients for some baking I indend to do this afternoon.

I long for tonight, when the house will smell of soft gingerbread cookies, mulled wine and we have decorated our Avent candle holder.

I wish you a wonderful 1st of Advent.

Pink and White

366 challenge: 363 delicate

Pink & White

To view more contributions, please click here.

Christmas Gifts Preparations

To write about Christmas preparations in November is almost hilarious, if you know me. We usually miss 1st of Advent (in Sweden we light one candle every Sunday (4 Sundays) before Christmas). It is a beautifull tradition, I'll tell you more about it this coming Sunday.

For years, we have moved house in December, so the whole Christmas decorating part naturally has been delayed. But this year I am all set!

A tradition that I started when J was newborn is to give my children a pretty Christmas decor each year. The first year, I bought them a snow globe each. J was just 2.5years last Christmas and had not seen her snowglobe since January that year, when we packed away all our Christmas things, and she started jumping up and down shouting "hnö, hnö!" (which menas snö/snow)

Last Christmas I gave them a pretty Christmas bauble for the tree and this year, I think I am going to get them Christmas cups. It's great having little traditions, that build up over the years, I think.

To read other Show and Tell contributions this week, look at the following blogs: Nilla,Simone,Anna,Desiree,Annika, Anne,Petra ,Anna-Saltis ,Millan, AuroraBuddha, Anki, Lullun, Marianne,Victoria, Susanne, Lia, Cecilia, Leopardia, Anne-Marie, Marina, Marie, Strandmamman, M.K.B , Ulrika, Jemaya, Nina, Kicki, Barbamorsan, Emma,MiaD, Tätorts-Anna, Maisuoi, Inga-Britt
Ny fredagsbloggare:
Lena

In Bed

Yesterday, when I was doing my wordless wednesday blog-round, I found a challenge that really appealed to me. 3barnsmamman has started a new photo challenge called Torsdagsreflektion (Thursday's Reflection), which means that you reflect on your week and post a photo that represents your week. It can be something personal, an event or something that has been going on all week.

My week has really all been about being in bed. I caught a really bad cold together with my daughter and husband (C has thankfully breezed through the week!), so we have pretty much done everything in bed. Having yogurt, watching tv, reading books etc. Today my daughter is better, so she is playing with her brother who has taken such good care of us over the past 3 days.

My thoughts today go out to 3barnsmamman, who has taken her daughter to hospital with mononukleos (körtelfeber). I hope they can help Big J to get better!

Wordless Wednesday: Lavender Gate

366 challenge: 46 Iron works

One last flash back from a lovely summer's day. To view more Wordless Wednesday contributions, please check in with Akson and Nejma.

7 things about me

I have been challenged by iki. Thank you for picking me, I love challenges!

The Rules:
- Link to the person that have challenged you and add these rules to you blog.
- Reveal seven things about yourself, both ordinary or/and crazy.
- Challenge seven new people by adding their name and links in the end of the post.
- Let the challenged people know that they have been challenged, by posting a comment on their blog.

7 things about me:

1. I love the colour purple. Really dark purple and if it is also made from velvet, I completely melt.

2. My hair is blond and my eyes are brown-greenish.

3. I always "tie" my shopping bags into a little knot, so that they fit neatly into our cupboard, which makes my husband crazy having to struggle with a knot everytime he needs a shopping bag.

4. One would think from no 3, that I am a tidy person, but I am not. If I enter a room, odds are that it will be chaos in there any time soon.

5. My weakest characteristcs of all is waiting, especially if I am waiting for someone else to make up their mind about something that I want. It is literally destroying me.

6. My "obsessive-compulsive thing" *you know like having to close a closet door 4 times before it's properly closed or counting something* is the feeling that I am attached to an elastic band. If I go to the store, I have to walk on "the same side" of a lamp post both on my way to the store as well as back from the store, otherwise the rubber band get's tangled...

7. I am really good at making pancakes.

I challenge: Cissi, Dossis, Amelia, Annika, Luxlatte, Anette, Barbamorsan

Do you want to see our guest room?

During my EFIT-post on Saturday, I promised you photos of how our guest room turned out. To start with it looked like this:

Quite a horrible room. Ugly curtains, a lamp that had seen better days... This far, we have only used it to store boxes.

With a light grey blind from IKEA instead of the curtains, the room feels brighter with cleaner lines. The table, was rescued from O's parent's basement when we moved in together 13 years ago. The table lamp is from IKEA as well as the ceiling lamp *a bargain at £14.99*! The bed is IKEA as well..

IKEA Hemnes mirror and IKEA vases makes the Magnolia walls look cleaner and brighter.

We also put one of our sofas in here as we have ordered a Kramfors Fräsig Brun *giggle, it's a very corny Swedish description, sort of how you said cool in the 60s..* leather sofa for our living room. It feel almost a bit weird having "grown out of" our first leather suit. This is the only expensive piece of furniture that we have bought together, and hearing myself say to C: "Mum and Dad bought these chairs when we first lived together." made me feel very grown up. Anyway, we'll see if I can live with my Fräsiga brown leathersofa or if I will be sneaking into our guest room when I need a good relaxed moment...

oh, and the pillow, quilt and lamp is IKEA as well...

Tuesday Theme - Golden

366 challenge: 261 Gold

Today's Tuesday Theme is golden. And what is more golden than autumn leaves? This is a beautiful autumn day in the park. The fact that this photo is taken on my birthday and I got to spend it with my family, makes it even more golden.

If you want to me more golden contributions, have a look here.

EFIT (One Photo Per Hour)

This is my EFIT for Monday November 12. I was just going to post this when I realized that today is the next EFIT (which I completely missed), so I hope you are ok to view my last EFIT day instead. Today I am going out to the countryside to meet with an agent *work* and what better day to bring my camera along?

7.45 A last touching up of my clothes with the iron.

8.45 I am on my way out of city, sitting in a traffic jam, but not really bothered, I am enjoying the off-kids time, singing along to the radio and enjoying the beautiful weather...

9.45 I arrive (amazingly enough, I found my way here!) 15 minutes early and I take a little stroll around the house. There is a pretty church opposite the hall, so I decide to go to the church yard afterwards with my camera.

10.45 Still in my meeting in this house.

12.00 Meeting is finished and I take a stroll around the village church. I took lots of pictures, but this was one of the first. It's a bit overexposed, because I stood under this massive tree, but I still think it's a pretty photo.

13.00 On my way back to the city, on small winding roads in the English countryside. Snapped in a hurry.

14.00 Living a low-carb (LCHF) life since April this year, I stopped at a petrol station and bought my lunch. A fruit corner without the fruit corner *ie just the yogurt*, full milk and Cathedral City cheesesticks without the dip.

15.20 Coming out of the hospital entrence, been to my ENT consultant (Ear Nose and Throat), discussing the results of the CT scan of my sinuses. (Looks OK, he thinks that I have an inflammed nerve)

16.20 Back home and I we turn our attention to the store room that is now going to be turned into a nice guest room. Not a pretty sight to begin with, but I will take some photos tomorrow to show you how it turned out.

19.00 The rest of the day and evening, we work on clearing the guest room, so not much more happening. Part from O finding my mobile phone! He found it in a removal box, from our last move...I haven't seen it since July 2007 and now it turns up in November 2008! *Sofia, I can receive SMS again!!*

I hope you have enjoyed my EFIT, if you want to view more EFIT contributions, please click here. Välkommen att skriva en kommentar på svenska om du vill! :)

Show and Tell: Jewellery

This week's theme on the Show and Tell is jewellery. I am recycling my ring photo from early summer, as these are almost the only pieces of jewellery that I have.

It's not that I don't like jewellery, I love it! I think it's more the "baby years" that makes anything that a baby can pull or get hooked on, is more a nuisance than necessarily something that enhances your life.

My sister in law (to be) asked me the other week when they were visiting why I didn't use earrings and I replied, because of the baby..she looked at my 3year-old sitting with hair-clips in her hair putting a jigsaw of 24 pieces together...and we had quite a good laugh.

I realize that I am starting to have more interest in clothes nowadays and I realize that maybe it's time to have some jewellery in my life again. *nudge, nudge to O if he reads this...*

The rings on the photo are my engagement ring and my wedding ring. We did the english way, when getting rings, so I got the one with the stone for our engagement and we exchanged the more plain, textured rings when we got married.

To read other Show and Tell contributions this week, look at the following blogs: Nilla,Simone,Anna,Desiree,Annika, Anne,Petra ,Anna-Saltis ,Millan ,AuroraBuddha,Anki,Lullun, Marianne,Victoria,Susanne,Lia,Cecilia,Leopardia, Anne-Marie, Marina, Marie, Strandmamman, M.K.B , Ulrika, Jemaya, Nina, Kicki, Barbamorsan, Emma,MiaD, Tätorts-Anna, Maisuoi, Inga-Britt
Ny fredagsbloggare:
Lena

The Park

It's been a rainy day here today and I've been locked in the house with all our removal boxes. We have finally *after 2 months of trying to figure this out* managed to decide how we want to use our rooms. The master bedroom has a very strange layout, there is not wall where a bed wider than 90cm can fit. So we have been thinking and thinking some more on how to solve our layout. It was such a relief and I can finally start ordering wardrobes and some smarter boxes for all our storage stuff.

I am hoping for some clear crisp weather tomorrow, I long for a walk in the park, it is so beautiful with all the colours. Here we are, the first autumn-looking day in mid October. It was actually a really hot day with 25degrees, but with some lovely leaves on the ground.

Bench

366 challenge: 40 Bench

I've had quite a hard day, so I am not going to pour all the details over you. This bench is however standing on a favorite spot of mine. I love sitting on this bench, and several years ago, when we were newlyweds, we drew up all our plans and goals *ie, we were sitting on this spot figuring out what things in life was most important to us*, and I would go so far as to say that without this spot in our lives, we wouldn't live the life we are living today.

In early October, I took my children to this spot. They brought some toys and they had a good 2 hours play by the trees and I sat on "my bench" and just enjoyed the view. When I stood up, I turned around and noticed the wording on the bench. I don't know why I haven't done so before.

I wonder who Cornelia was. Maybe she came to her decision to go to San Francisco, sitting on this very bench?

Enjoying Halloween

J looking a bit like "Lisabeth" in Madicken *Swedish series*

We had a great Halloween. Our street turned into Trick or Treat Lane! We weren't sure that the children really wanted to go out trick or treating. C, loving everything scary, have had night mares lately and the closer to Halloween we came, the less he talked about going out in the dark...

It all turned out really well, because children was constantly ringing our door bell and my scary cat princess and pirate was fully occupied with opening our front door and offering candy and balloons to the scary creatures outside.

Cat Princess and Fierce Pirate


Dear Brother