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Here's a lovely bouquet of flowers from Martha Stewart's website to all of you readers who have been writing sweet supportive comments on my blog! Thanks! I'll try to get better at posting and keeping up with your blogs!
Image from www.marthastewart.com
Flitiga Myran tagged me, so here goes!
4 jobs I’ve had:
- Salesperson in a children’s clothing boutique (my first ”real” job that I had during high school)
- Baby-sitting and assisting an amazing 3-year old girl with autism (we spent 4 afternoons a week together during a 6-month period and became great friends!)
- Lunch chef at a café
- PR consultant
4 movies I can watch over and over again:
- Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
- Legends of the Fall
- Dirty Dancing
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s
4 cities I’ve lived in:
- Baghdad, Iraq
- Cairo, Egypt
- Amman, Jordan
- Paris, France
4 TV-shows I like to watch:
- Six Feet Under
- Gilmore Girls
- CSI (preferably the Las Vegas version)
- Nip/Tuck
4 places I’d like to visit (see this post for more details):
- Cambodia
- India
- Morocco
- New Zealand
4 websites I visit every day:
- Flitiga Myran
- Lantliv i Stan
- Shim + sons
- IMDB (well, almost every day…)
4 favorite dishes
- Spaghetti Bolognese
- My Mom’s White Wine Turkey Casserole
- My Grandmother’s Cabbage Rolls
- A really good smoky Hamburger!
4 places I like to be:
- By the water in the Stockholm Archipelago
- In the countryside amongst fields and animals
- On our living room couch with my husband watching a good show or movie
- Most anywhere if I’m joined by my best friends and family!
I've been really bad at posting balcony reports like I said I would. But finally here are some pics from our balcony from the past month. The wonderful warm weather and lots of sunshine has really helped many of my plants (and killed off a few too when we were out of the city I wasn't able to water them as often as needed).
These are the plants on the following pics: Kalanchoe, Pelargoniums, Lilac Tree (photo taken back in early June), Wild Strawberries, Tomatoes, another Pelargonium, Chrysanthemum, Pansies, Mint Leaves and Lemon Thyme. The last pic is of one of my Orchids. They have also been loving the hot weather and are blooming again like never before. (For larger pics, click on one.)
As a final post on my favorite interior decoration styles, here are some examples of the traditional Swedish style that I like a lot. I think it really works best in the countryside or in houses rather than apartments. The style can be the focus in a different way then.
Image from www.kallholmen.se
Image from www.skonahem.se
To continue on my three favorite styles of interior decoration and accessories, here are some example of influences from the Middle-East that I really like as details in home decoration.
Moroccan style ceramics and mosaic table (Image from www.moroccanbazaar.co.uk)
Tea glasses and some textiles in the background (Image from www.moroccanbazaar.co.uk)
Moroccan slippers (Image from www.vanilladesigns.co.uk)
I have a great love of three styles of decoration, in everything from details to design to cultural esthetic. The styles are traditional older Swedish (preferably country style), Asian and Middle-Eastern. Below are some nice things I found on Graham & Green's website that follow an Asian theme:
Chinese wire lantern
Painted flasks
Vietnamese lacquered notebooks
All images from www.grahamandgreen.co.uk
We spent the weekend in the archipelago dogsitting Alice. I am now completely in love with her! She's the nicest puppy I've ever known. I've spent a large portion of the weekend simply watching her playing and cuddling. She's been a very good dog and behaved amazingly well (especially for a 4 1/2 month old puppy).
The weather was fantastic all weekend. Very hot and sunny. So we spent the days fixing in the garden, sunbathing and swimming (same goes for Alice!). Here are a couple of pics of Alice swimming to get a ball in the water and catching her breath in the shade.
Yesterday was my Mom's birthday (Happy Birthday again!). We spent the evening at her and her husband's new farm (well, new for them but actually from 1870). We ate a delicious barbecue dinner and finished off with a raspberry cake I made with berries from their garden. I forgot my camera (typical!) so here's the closest thing to a picture of my cake that I could find:
Image from www.odla.nu
I bought a pre-sliced sponge cake base (not sure if one can find those in other countries - it's a three layer sponge cake). One could of course make a plain sponge cake and slice it in 3 layers. Then I moistened them with some orange juice. I put some crushed raspberries between the first and second sponge layers and vanilla cream between the second and third. Then I covered the whole top and sides with whipped cream and put raspberries all over the top. Yummy and super easy!
This is what we got her:
A bag for all her smaller gardening tools. (Image from www.keyexab.se)
Gardener's Hand Therapy hand cream from Crabtree & Evelyn (Image from www.crabtree-evelyn.com)
And a Lavender scented bag for her linen closet (once the linens and towels arrive in the move).
I remember when I was a child I loved to climb trees. There was something magical about seeing the world behind branches from just a little higher up. We spent a large portion of my childhood summers in Sweden and I particularly remember one apple tree at our country house that I always climbed because it had a great branch to sit on quite high up.
I never had a treehouse but I'm sure that if I had access to one, I would have spent most my time there (well, when I wasn't in a pasture or in stables with horses where I spent most of my summer vacations. I even tried to convice my parents to let me spend the night in the stables a few times, but they didn't go for it...)
Here are some absolutely amazing treehouses I found online:
City of Angels Treehouse (It's located near Los Angeles, California and sits 35 feet above ground.)
Fisher Treehouse (It's located near Healdsburg, California and sits 25 feet above ground. It has two antique double-doors, one from India with a stained-glass arch, and the other from China!)
More info about these houses (and many more) can be found on www.thelivingtreehouse.com (where these pics are from).
Then there is this incredibly elaborate treehouse in Northumberland in the U.K. called Alnwick Treehouse:
For more info and pics check out this link. (where I got these pics).
