Have I told you lately that we are enjoying the most gorgeous weather here at the moment? I’m loving it and enjoy every second (while it lasts)!

The countdown is now down to 2,5 days and the anticipation is definitely catching up with me. A lot of the tasks that were still open a week ago are finished up now, which might be another contributory factor to my increasing relaxation!

On Saturday Dan, Julie, Jens, Ivonne and their little girls came by to help us with the last part of the deck; screwing on the boards. Gosh how fast we were! Even in the 29 degrees the job was all done about 7 hours later and we could all enjoy a yummy BBQ on the new deck! So awesome! That BBQ was followed by another on Sunday and J and I are spending every evening out there at the moment.

Also the fireplace builders did a fast job and since yesterday we have a chimney and a fireplace added to our house. It still has to be painted therefore I send a link  to a ready pic.

At work things are coming along nicely and I was also able to move the appointments in Stockholm to tomorrow instead of Friday, which feels good. The night will be over at 4:00 am on both Thursday and Saturday but who really bothers when 5 (!!!!) long weeks of vacation are just around the corner!

How could I think that this year would be any different from all the other years? I’m looking forward to an event, counting the days and really can’t wait and all and then; when I’m getting really close; I’m panicking and would suddenly love to have two weeks more before leaving. The fact that our deck building project is far from being finished and that the fireplace builders come next Monday makes this year just a little bit worse then all the other years before. Also at work things are crazy at the moment and the confident knowledge that fall is getting even worse makes me really nervous. I’m actually having trouble sleeping at night because I’m so scared to forget something important with all the stress. Next Friday, literally hours before our plane to London leaves, I will have to fly to Stockholm with the boss to sign a really important contract. Well at least I got the hair cut done today and think that there isn’t any more major shopping needed to be done before leaving. The only really important purchase arrived last week: our new

 

 

I’m really not easily impressed by technical toys but this baby really captured my heart! Love it! So it should be just the packing left to do next week.

Summer has also decided to return which is really good for the deck building. It came in handy that we HAVE to take out all our accumulated overtime now, so J is taking afternoons off at the moment to finish things off. This weekend we are doing a screw- and grill party with helpers which will hopefully be all we need to get the deck done. Then in fall we will have a gardener redo our hedge, it’s really too much to do for us without the right machinery.

Busy times right now; I think I’ll need at least a week to move into low gear 10 days from now! Trying to get to enjoy the gorgeous weather, too!

3 years ago Sweden decided to make their “Flag day” on June 6th the National Day and thus installed it as a bank holiday. And to celebrate that day we decided to host a moose dinner at our place this year ! J’s Dad is hunting and we therefore had some pieces of Moose left in the freezer that we prepared with chantarelles, a potatogratin and honey glazed carrots. So yummy!” For dessert I made a Raspberry mousse that had succeeded at several occasions before. It was such a great night with Julie, Dan, Silvia, Patrick, Orsi, Michael and their kids Helen and Greta. Should definitely be repeated, holiday or not…

In the beginning of June we also had the annual wrap up BBQ at our bosses place: very nice even though we had to be inside due to the typical Swedish “summer” weather.

And then came our first Anniversary; unbelievable how time is flying! This year it coincided with Midsummer Eve; one of the most important Swedish holidays. We therefore just had our traditional Eggs Benedict breakfast before we proceeded with the more Midsummerish traditions. So yummy! Here’s a picture of last years

at wonderful, wonderful Blue Heaven in Key West. Here’s a little memory of the surroundings:

I didn’t make a pic yesterday because the atmosphere couldn’t quite match, but it still was a super yummy breakfast. Shortly thereafter we were heading to Silvias and Patricks place for the big Midsummer party. The weather was very typical which means rain, sun, wind and everything mixed. Luckily we had a big party tent that held all 20 of us. For lunch we had a potluck of all the typical Swedish Midsummer foods like herring, new potatoes, sour cream, more potatoes with anchovies etc and for dessert lots of strawberries and cheese cake.

And as no Swedish party can go without the singing and drinking….

 After all that food we used a rainless slot for a little walk to the lake before it was time for more food prepared on Silvias home build Argentinian BBQ.

It was nice to stand around the hot BBQ on this cold Midsummer night and the experiment with the Pizzas turned out wonderful as they certainly tasted wood oven baked!

Yum! After dinner it was definitely time to move inside where we were having a real good time into the early morning hours! One of the best Midsummer parties we had!

We are still going to have a special Anniversary dinner tonight when we will also open the bottle of wine that we were to save for our first Anniversary.

Yeah and now it’s only 2 more weeks until we will embark on our trip to England! Cornwall here we come!

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I just realized that I haven’t posted anything for quite a while here. I  just needed a lot of time for myself and with my husband for reasons I don’t want to write about publicly at the moment. Lately I noticed though that I’m in the process to draw myself back much more than is good for me and have therefore decided to not let myself fall any deeper into that black hole. It’s spring for g**s sake and soon it will be summer! This really isn’t the time for the blues, right?!!

Here comes the last three months in bullet points:

• House remodelling:
  We have finally finished the new guest-, work-, TV room and are super satisfied with the result. The room is so much lighter now! Lovely! Anyone of you wanting to visit Gothenburg?
  We also threw out the old plastic shower doors in the lower bathroom and exchanged them for new ones made of glass. Together with the white painted ceiling the room appears bigger and lighter now. Success!
  We have now started to rip out our old deck and spent the whole last weekend with digging out the roots of big bushes. Sweaty, hard work I’m telling you. But soon the fun part will start and then we’ll have a bigger and improved deck for our BBQ s! Yeah!
  We will also have a fireplace built into our living room before the summer and then rearrange the whole room afterwards. I guess a new couch will also be part of the deal.
  Plans for thereafter:
  We will get rid of our horrible hedge and replace it with cypresses this autumn.
  Next year we will exchange the other deck outside our kitchen and maybe renew our kitchen by taking out the wall towards the dining room so that we can get a big kitchen island which will give us so much more work- and storage space. Yay for that!

 

• BBQ etc.
  The month of April was beautiful this year and we had the chance for some lovely evenings over at Jens’ and Ivonnes as well as Susis and Tomas’ for some great BBQ. Last Saturday we also had an amazing German asparagus dinner at Susi’s which lasted until 2 a.m. We enjoyed ourselves immensely!

 

• Travels
  Also this year we spent our Easter holidays in Germany and had a great time as usual!

From hiking through 1 m high snow on the Rennsteig to lazy BBQs in the sun to shopping in Weimar it included pretty much everything.
On May first we visited our friends Katrien and Johan in Stockholm for a long weekend. We were 5 couples + one child and had an awesome time there with great dinners and also there a proper BBQ!

 

It’s not long until the summer holidays anymore and we spent a good deal of time planning that! For the first week we rented a cottage in Cornwall, will then visit our dear friends Gill and Carl in Bristol, then travel along the Welsh coast up North where we have rented a cottage for 8 people in the Yorkshire Dales. There we will be staying with Dave and Chris as well as Sven, Debby and Alain our old friends from the Erasmus times! The England part of the holiday will be finished with 5 days in London and then we’ll fly for another week to Germany. I’m so much looking forward to this trip!

Alright, this pretty much sums up what we’ve been up to lately. I guess I will post a bit more often again and pop around yours as well!

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And there another weekend is over and we are already 2 days into the new week. On Friday it was time for our monthly restaurant night with friends again and we had lots of fun and superb food at a newly opened Lebanese restaurant. J and I chose the Meze menu and were super stuffed before even the last dishes came in. They made for a doggy bag and good lunch the next day. On Saturday we got up early to see Susanne defend her thesis. I’m so proud of that girl that stirred up media Sweden in terms of prostitution law properly. She is on TV, the radio and all the newspapers on a daily basis because of her dissertation that compares the Swedish and German prostitution legislation that couldn’t be more different. I feel really a bit proud to know her. Susanne and I met 1999 on the ferry to Sweden to visit our respective boyfriends. We both had booked the cheapest beds in one of the cabins underneath the car deck and discovered a lot of likenesses when we talked. We both made the move to Sweden permanently in 2001 and have since then developed into different directions but still meet every now and then and usually have a great time.

After the disputation we continued with the flooring of our new guestroom. Yeah it took a while but the demolition work was the worst and since this is over now everything is coming along fast. In the evening we were invited to Ivonne and Jens who had prepared a yummy raclette. It was quite the fitting atmosphere since we had to drive through a horrible blizzard that night. Anyway it was worth it as we had such a cozy evening that should be repeated soon.  On Sunday we finished the flooring and were quite knackered in the evening and just fell asleep in front of the TV.

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As we are getting closer and closer to spring, it was about time to start up our winter project: the remodelling of the guestroom to be. We would like to be ready when the weather allows for some garden work, so renovation it is for now. The first weekends were spent with shopping for floor, paint, wallpaper and a new couch: things that were by far more interesting than the ripping out of the old flooring and taking down the old dark blue wallpaper. What a tiring and ungrateful job! We came about halfway last weekend and decided to do shorter one hour sessions in the evenings the coming week. It’s just too exhausting to keep up with for hours.

Other than that we had two very nice dinner parties on the last two Saturdays: The first one was hosted by us and we had a nice chili salmon on ruccola as a first course, followed by a lasagna as a main and topped off by a key lime pie made by Jim with the real key lime juice from nowhere else than Key West! Oh the awesome memories that were revoked! Last Saturday it was Julies birthday and she outdid herself again with serving us an amazing dinner consisting of goat cheese soufflés on ruccola, a filet of beef with potatogratin and a wonderful raspberry pie with vanilla ice cream! It was so yummy! Julie and Dan also had some news: they are becoming a family of 3 by the beginning of July! Makes her number 5 in the round! It’s so wonderful to see their happiness! It was also great to see Kavya again as it has been almost 4 months and in her age so much is happening during that short time period! Anyway, we had lots of fun hanging out until 2 a.m.

What else is new? Not really much actually. On Saturday it looked like our crocuses are about to come out but this morning we woke up to a world covered by a beautiful blanket of snow! Unfortunately it will be gone by tonight already. The disadvantage of living so close to the coast. Have a great week everyone!