Lussekatter

Got some saffron and made Lussekatter :) Bring on Lucia!

Good times

Saturday afternoon was spent going to the recycling station with our old garagedoor + other junk lying around here, then off to Halmstad to see Interstellar in the cinema. It was a good film, a tear fell from my eye in the end, but it was way too long... Then we had dinner at Pio, and it was just soon good! It's such a nice restaurant and you get so much food and I was so full, so I can really recommend that place, and their pork fillet.
The evening was rounded off with a concert with Driftwood Company at Kajskjulet. We came slightly late but still got a great concert from them, as always :)

Love is a birdcage

In Falkenberg there is a shop called Fynda (Bargain) and there you can find lots and lots of pretty things for your home and garden. I saw this birdcage there and just fell in love with it! For winter I will put some pine twigs and pine cones in there but once spring comes there will be some climbing flowers in there. Photo to come in a few months ;)

Finally took some time for some arts and crafts

I saw something like this on Pinterest but with autumn colours, red, orange and yellow, and thought to myself, why not make three big ones but with colourful leaves that can be up all year long?!

so here's the result. And I'm very pleased with them, turned out exactly as I had imagined :)

concrete candle holders

a path to Buddha with step stones made by me

and Buddha is sitting on a Ikea tray ;)

had a go with some Magic Metallics paint I had read about that will turn your things into rust or bronze with patina. They didn't change as much as I had thought tey would but I think one has to put more layers on. I'll have another go and see what happens...

and this is not really a craft, just some fun with making a so called "Nutella star", but instead of nutella I used chocolate paste instead and it was seriously yummy!And not as hard to make as it might seem ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wglB1TCwZnU

New garage door!

Seven weeks ago we ordered a new garage door from Ekstrands and yesterday was finally the day when they replaced the old one, that you had to fold inwards to open, with new and very practical doors! We chose this door to match the look of the roof and it's the same colour as the windows and the frames will be made to match the lighter grey around the windows as well. It looks great and is ten times more practical than the old one.

And yesterday I also made a bargain buy when I saw an ad for a (used) Canon printer for just 300kr and I immediately jumped on it! My old one broke a few months ago and I got an Epson printer to replace it but that was probably one of the worst buys ever since it only prints when it wants to itself :( I will try and sell it and hope that the new buyer will have more luck with it. 

sleepless dahlia

Can't sleep... Too many thoughts going thru my head, and it's silly to dwell on them coz I can't do anything about it  coz it hasn't happened yet. Yet I can't stop thinking...

Plans being realised :)

Long time no see... I've not felt like blogging for a while, even though lots have happened that have felt worth writing about. But here I go again and am making a new attempt of doing this at a more regulary basis :)

So, this is how it looked at the back of our house just a few months ago, lots of  Japanese angelica trees (Aralia elata) and just a sea of ferns that everyone said looked so cosy and inviting, and I just hated it. The ferns were just too many and the trees were growing out of control with lots of runners everywhere and the trees had horrible thorns. It's not a surprise that they are called the "devil's walking stick" when you see this image:

http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/imgs/512x768/0000_0000/1108/0959.jpeg

Not the friendliest tree there is and thay just looked like dead sticks in winter and I wanted nothing else than to get rid of them and do a peaceful garden there instead, still with japanese trees but with more peaceful maples. I had already gotten a atropurpureum earlier this year and I also got  a osakazuki, a beni schichihenge, a little princess and a emerald lace and I hope they will all make it and be very happy living in my garden :)

Everything is planted, the maples, the hostas, the grasses, the siberian bugloss, the lungwort and the oregano! The boyfriend and I moved the clematis I got from mum and put it next to the path to Buddha, and I made some stepstones and a japanese lantern from concrete. To top it all I got some big rocks from my aunt and uncle who has a farm and has a big pile of rocks that comes from the fields and have all been thrown there over the years and I could just pick any sizes and shapes that I wanted and the japanese garden has taken some form now. I also kept some of the ferns and planted some new ones in different colours and I can hardly wait to see how it will look next year when it all starts to grow again!

I got hold of an old mirror at a flea market with high edges and I used it to make this concrete tabletop wirh rhubarb leaves. Got the idea from a concrete group I'm in on facebook and all it needs is legs and then I need to decide weather to put some colours on the leaves or just leave them as they are. Should probably practice on something smaller before I go ahead with this one since I don't wanna ruin it. It turned out much better than I had hoped.

When we moved into our house we started parking our cars by this side of the house since it's close to the front door and it seemed like the most natural place to park, but since it's not that nice to park on grass when it's raining and lot's of work to cut the grass we decided to make it into a proper parking place! And we started with cutting down that big tree by the window and then we got some help from a friend with the digging and work with the dirt and rocks.

lots of big and intertwined roots! Probably from an old beech tree that once stood there.

the ground work is done...

and I made some work for myself by starting to get the grass off the tiles and getting the idea to raise them a few cm to be level witht he lawn instead of under it. So I took them all up and put out some stone dust that T had gotten for the parking place and also put some extra tiles to make a path to the cars so we won't have to walk across the lawn.

a days work

and here we are all done!!

When we bought the house the kitchen tiles were white with little pastell blue and pink dots and it was never an option to keep it like that, so i got some tile paint and painted it all black. It looked really nice but always too dark. It wasn't a very positive kitchen to be in :/ Then I saw a photo of a kitchen with turquoise tiles and I fell in love! Asked the boyfriend if he was ok with that colour and thankfully he said yes, so I got the paint and then operation kitchen makeover began!

Before...

the colour I wanted

during the makeover...

and the result!

Am so happy with it and it eally looks like a brand new kitchen :)

Pumpkin with a twist

Merengues, from this recipie

this pumpkin plant started out quite innocent, but now it's growing very fast

and one month later it's taken a turn and I think it'll probably just keep going! Pretty curious to see where this will end, and will the flowers really turn into pumpkins? :P

the ground-elder is growing thick in the elephant grass and I just got so fed up with seeing it so I just pulled it all away and it looks much more welcoming. Just sorry that the roots are still in the ground but that will be next springs project to get rid of them!

the amaranths has self-sewn themselves and I'm so happy to see them again!

one of the cayenne purple plants has finally got a flower! 

the boyfriend and I went for a mushroom hunt last weekend but despite a big forrest we didn't find much else than moss 

and a ant house

a little creek

and three mushrooms! yay...

beautiful feather poppy

a visit to Horsabäcks Perenner resulted in this bigleafed hosta plant and some other goodies that found homes around the garden.

another gorgeous sunset in Mellbystrand

A visit to Inspirosa garden in Ysby resulted in me wanting to get lots of old bedends and armature for our garden and just go wild and crazy with it.

and to do these concrete paths in different styles

the purple poppy bloomed again this year :)