29 October 2009

Already?

Yesterday I saw some of these at the supermarket:


And I bought a bottle of this (for my sister, I don't like it):


What are this stuff you wonder? Some Swedish weird things. Swedish, yes. Weird, no. Very common even at this time of the year. Well, not exactly. It's actually a bit early. 'cause it's typical Christmas food. I loooove all the Christmas food here in Sweden, the pepparkakor, the julskinka, the glögg and the lussekatter, ah! The lussekatter! These are small saffron buns. If you go back to this post two years ago, you can see that I both buy them and bake them.

But as much as I love all this. It just feels like it's too early. These last weeks, we've had typical autumn weathers. Yes plural because there were two categories. Either grey, rain and wind. Or Blue sky, green grass and yellow leaves. Oh that was beautiful! It came very sudently and within just a few days all the leaves are now on the ground. It went so fast! Anyway, it's still autumn and it getting colder but not thaaaaat cold. It's not winter yet, it's not Christmas yet. It's October, not November yet (well almost ok).

The risk is, if you start eating this food too early. If you start buying all the Christmas decorations. If you start buying your Christmas gifts too early. The risk is that you will get bored when Christmas actually comes. But I discovered lussekatter only 4 years ago and I have many years of lussekatte-eating to catch up! I might wait a couple of days/week tough. Let's see how long I resist.

What about you, any special Christmas food you're looking forward to?

21 October 2009

Under construction

Once again I changed the layout of my blog. I wanted to have something more personal although I like the white/pink one. It's not finished yet but it already took way too much of my work time this morning so that will do for now and I will play more with it later. Would like to get the pink back until the end of the month at least...

Like it?

19 October 2009

Marstrand

On Saturday I spent the day in Marstrand, north of Göteborg on the Bohuslän coast with my sister and my father who came and visit ut for the week-end. Marstrand is a city that is partly on the mainland and partly on an island and you take a ferry that takes barely more than a minute to cross the channel. There are some great houses on the inhabited half and beautiful nature and sea sights on the other half.

Check by yourself.





16 October 2009

La famiglia

A little bit of self-promotion this Friday. This is the homepage of the Crystal company Daum. It was started by my grand-grand-grand father or something like that. I'm generation number 6 at least. It's no longer in our family but still has our name and I am really proud of it.

Go check it out! http://www.daum.fr


13 October 2009

Time?

Time? Time? Where are you?

Inspiration? Inspiration? Where are you?

It seems Mr Time and Mrs Inspiration have a very hard time (haha) meeting each other lately... My weeks are pretty much looking alike with not much happening except the routine (Monday = gym / Tuesday = home or pub quiz / Wednesday = gym / Thursday = italian). While the week-ends are filled with nice stuff such as London or the Super Hero double 30 year old party this week-end.

But in both cases, week or week-end, I don't really feel like sitting in front of the computer to write long posts. Maybe I should try blogging from my mobile. It's faster and more "on the moment". Because I have noticed the more I wait, the less I feel like writing a certain post.

Having a bit of a blog-crisis right now as you can see... maybe linked to the time of the year. But soon I am bound to stay more often at home as winter is definitely arriving. More chances to sit in front of the computer then.

Keep your fingers crossed my loyal readers!

10 October 2009

Pretty in Pink

See the change? I decided to have my blog pink until the end of the month. Still in the idea of participating in the fight against breast cancer. Google, you can find a lot of information about what you can do.

Are you pink this month? What are you doing?

08 October 2009

Fighting the darkness

We're at this time of the year where days are getting significantly and noticeably shorter and shorter and when it's getting dark earlier and earlier (too early?). I guess this is even more noticeable here in Sweden as we're heading towards really shorter days.

Soon we will take out our Xmas lightnings and put more and more candles on the windows. But before that, there is something we can do here. And which I did with some friends yesterday. We drove to Alingsås, a town a few kilometres from Göteborg. They have an annual show called as simply as "Lights in Alingsås". They invite some artists to come and build some lightning projects where they want in the city.

We followed the recommended path through the city guided by Henrik's mother (my friend Henrik is from Alingsås) and we saw some really nice things. I particularly like the park and the cemetary. The bad part is that it was actually smaller than I expected. There was around 6 spots with some installations but I was expected more. Maybe 5 or 6 big and some smaller ones here and there... anyway, it was nice.

The park I like the most


Nice effect by the water

A nice effect on a graveyard



02 October 2009

London Baby!

In a few hours, I am flying to Looooondoooon! Haven't been there for 5 years! Since I moved to Sweden actually. The last time I was there was spring 2004 for a job interview at Renault which I didn't get. I could picture myself there, I really could. But my little star had other plans for me it turned out. But as Paris, I am going there as a tourist and it's such a great way to enjoy the city. Will try to take many pics!

What are you doing this week-end?

01 October 2009

The Pink Month

I know some of the girls would be happy about that. In Sweden, October is the pink month. The month against breast cancer. Here in Sweden, every year, 7000 women learn that they have breast cancer. Not much you think? Well Sweden is not such a big country and in the end one in every ninth woman will be affected sooner or later in their lives. And if the number of diagnosed women is rising, the number of women surviving this is also rising thanks to research.

The whole month is full of different ways to give money for both private persons and companies and is concluded by a big gala shown on TV. Some companies are associated to the event and sell "pink products" during this month and give 5kr or 10% for instance for each sold product to Cancerfonden, the organisation in charge of this. You can buy everything from egg to toilet paper or a digital camera. See some examples here.

The symbol for this month is the pink ribbon, Rosa Bandet, that is sold throughout the country and is similar to the red ribbon, symbol of the fight against aids. In Sweden, the pink ribbon has a new design every year and this year it was design by Gert Windgårdh, a famous architect. It is very light pink with some dots on it like braille and it says "ska bara" or "just gonna". "just gonna" illustrates all the excuses women can find to avoid feeling their breast because of shame or fear. And reading and feeling the braille dots is like reading and feeling your breast, with your fingers. This was the inspiration of Windgårdh.


I firmly intend to be a part of this month. As for many of you, I have been affected by breast cancer in my family. I lost one aunt and the mother of my very dear sister in law. The horrible thing about breast cancer is that it can affect anyone at any age. Both of the two here above were in their 50-60 and it's way too young to leave us... that's the shocking thing, the too young age of the victims.

As every year I will buy one or two pink ribbons, a couple of the products such as toilet papper. I already have a pink mop and bucket. Very girly, very chic!

And my little plus may sound cheesy but I am going to wear pink tops and t-shirt the whole month when I go to the gym. October is the pink month.


What will you do this month?

Anniversary

Today it is exactly one year ago since I became a real estate owner and transformed this into that. I'm really happy!