Sunday, July 6, 2014

A little house by the sea



One of the reasons why we haven't had much time for things outside of work this spring:
our first renovation project! 
We're not entirely finished (is a house ever?) but the rest can wait until after the summer.
Today we were there with one single purpose: to enjoy the view!





Sunday, June 22, 2014

Pictures & Routines

Seemingly insignificant photos can bring back so many memories of a specific moment in time.
What looks like just another picture to you can mean a whole lot more to someone else.
I think that might be why I have unlimited amounts of random pictures saved on my computer and external hard disks that I just can't part with. 


The picture above reminds me of the third edition of our yearly old school festival. I didn't even take it myself, but it reminds me of all the time we spent shopping, preparing & decorating, of a possible brief moment of irritation wondering why we even bother ...
And then the first guests arrived :)
Of course there will be a 4th edition!


This picture is taken in our vegetable patch, an experiment that grows a little in size every year. 
I'm not the best at taking care of plants - mine have to survive regular periods of neglect - but so far there haven't been too many casualties.
I'm still optimistic about the harvest - plants seem to be very forgiving.


These two pictures were taken during a lovely little roadtrip to the south of the island. 
It's so easy to get stuck in the routine of working too much and doing too little fun stuff, but it's really easy to break out of it too. In this case it only took a car ride.


Another really easy way to break the workweek-routine is inviting people over for BBQ-nights during the week, for no reason at all.
These pretty flowers grow all around our terrace. They will hopefully witness a lot of dinner parties this summer!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Throwback Thursday







We've been home for 2 months now and I'm finally getting around to ordering prints of our holiday pictures :)
I'm completely amazed at how fast time flies. School's out and the tourists are slowly but surely taking over the island again. What happened to the spring?

We definitely underestimated the amount of work that was waiting for us when we got back but we're finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Soon it's time for some time off again: Swedish summer shall be enjoyed to the fullest!






Monday, June 2, 2014

Dad & his Girls


I love these photos so much I decided they deserve a place on my blog.
Happy Monday!





Monday, May 12, 2014

Combining the good with the good.



The 10th of May a lot of clean-up events were held throughout Europe.
Our beach clean up initiative Trashless Gotland has been more or less on hold since we left the island in November, so this weekend was a great time to kickstart the season.
I love going for walks on the beach, and picking up trash has always been part of that, but this time I was most excited about the fire & the marshmallows that were waiting for us when we got back :)


Thursday, May 8, 2014

In Transition


Lots of green in my life right now!
Spring flowers, a lot of sowing and repotting, leaves breaking out of their buds, wild garlic & wild leak gathering (makes the most perfect pesto & soups!) and the usual amazement at what comes out of the little tiny seeds I put in the soil not so long ago.

I went to a screening of this movie earlier this week.
Inspiring to say the least!

From the website:

"In a world that is awash with gloom, here is a story of hope, ingenuity and the power of growing vegetables in unexpected places."


Thursday, May 1, 2014

Coming home to Spring


Coming home after almost half a year away felt like the first day of school used to feel when I was little.

After our 26-hour car ride from France to Sweden, a 3-hour boat trip and definitely not enough sleep, I woke up too early and too excited to stay in bed. I just had to go out and see what had (and hadn't) survived the winter, couldn't wait to go meet the people I hadn't seen in such a long time, couldn't even wait to start work!



The fig tree, the grapevine, my parsley, and the strawberry plants were all doing just fine, and I managed to capture the very first mirabelle plum blossom on the tree outside our living room window. 
Life was picked up where we left it and work was waiting ...

Fast forward 10 days and this happened: 



The other day I made the remark that our days now are very comparable to our days in South East Asia. 
We swapped the beach for work but the rest of our days still pretty much revolve around mealtimes :)