let me introduce the handbags

Edit - this post was written then, in those days when the purchasing of silly expensive handbags was possible. Now is not such days. And my mind works differently now. I don't think I'd even enjoy it anymore, for many reasons. However I love every little handbag I already am the fortunate owner of.

But if you read on, that was me then, 2006, this is not me now, 2010.

I had an idea, that if I just browsed through my photos I would surely come up with an idea to write someting about. And sure enough, there it was, several different ideas in fact, I just had to chose one for today. Hey maybe that's what one should do every time there's a drought ideawise? Take a look at pictures and "heureka"!

It's so superficial, but also so irresistible, my rather newly woken fascination and need (yes absolutely!) of silly expensive handbags. I've always been interested in handbags, the right one can really lift a whole outfit, yes even a whole day. But until recently I've been rather, sort of, moderate when it comes to the price-range of them.

I've always been looking at personal, often colourful and handmade in limited editions handbags, preferably unique one-offs. But now, oh now, since I decided to invest in, and treat myself to, the most fantastic of them all, a Mulberry Roxanne (which I've given the name Blända), colour Oak it's just been a downwards - or perhaps upwards is the correct word - spiral in the handbag-department.

When Spring came this year I realized I needed at new Spring handbag - and my mum who thinks I've totally lost it, spending that kind of money on something as un-necessary (ha, what does she know!) as a handbag, spoke the magic words in the matter "why don't you buy a smaller one then?"

Little did she realize she had let the handbag devil loose inside of her precious daughter. I browsed through the Mulberry website several times a day, which model would be best for Spring? Which colour? Aha, that one doesn't come in that colour. Maybe I should look at some other crazy-expensive brands to, just to show some diversity... Well, in the end I can't find any brand or model that satisfy my longings like one from Mulberry I must admit. And no, actually, as harsh as it may sound, I don't get paid for writing that...

So I had my eyes set on a little sister to Blända, the lovely dark pink (I don't care if they called it lavender, that's NOT lavender!) Rosemary. With that shoulder strap I so miss on the Roxanne model. When I reached the store, all starry eyed thinking about the fact that I would probably walk out of there with a new best friend, and a pink one too, it turned out that exact colour was sold out - I wonder to whom, since I haven't seen it on another person here in Stockholm or abroad for that matter. Perhaps I don't mix in the "right" circles then...

But the girl in the store called the Mulberry boutique, and they had the model in. We hurried down through the streets of Stockholm - "we" includes poor Mats, who also thinks I'm absolutely nuts with my new passion for these types of handbags, even if he thinks they look good, they don't look THAT good... - and there it was! My perfect little Spring handbag, even if I was choosing between Rosemary and Blenheim, the latter really wasn't an option (too small). And I just decided, there and then (well I probably had decided way earlier really...) that a Rosemary in dark pink it was to be! Who can resist that model, and in my favourite colour pink, Rosemary is also called Rosa which means "pink" in Swedish. Nearly too perfect to be true!

I know, I know, if I had waited about two months, it would have been on sale for half the price - but what if, if, it had been sold out then, I just couldn't bear the thought of that happening... So soon I was a happy owner of one little sister of Blända's, Rosa. She's been with me almost ever since I bought her and she's such a darling and always, always makes me happy and give my outfits that certain something which I think is called style.

Yes I was happy, so happy with these two handbags, I thought they would last me a long time -and thus save me money in the long runt really, since I never again would buy lots of unecessary, cheaper handbags. And they will. But not on their own, because there would be followers...

Some months later I got an invitation for the Midsummer sales at Mulberry - so I invited a friend (the only one I have as crazy as me about handbags, well, nearly as crazy anyway. One might say I'd drawn her into this swamp of expensive-handbag-delirium...) to come with me. I sort of had my eyes set on the big, lovely model Elgin, olive.

When we got into the boutique there wasn't any such bag left - and we'd been second in there - big sighs of disappointment. When we turned our backs to have a look at the other goodies on display it suddenly appeared though. Or re-appeared, since a woman had grabbed it, but regret the choice and put it back on display.

My friend immediately grabbed a hold on it, we took a few rounds around the boutique, I had a look at a Tooled Bayswater, but no, I didn't want to spend THAT kind of money at one handbag, on sale... It was just Elgin, and in Olive, but since it was the same longing in my friend's eyes - and she was the one holding on tightly to it - I was generous enough not to put up a fight for it and I tried to push the thought "why did I ever invite HER to this sale" far, far back into my mind. And yes, it's a GOOD thing not to invest in a piece of poor cow-skin, to save money, pay bills and even get some money left over after that.

So she came out of the boutique with a big bag and a happy look all over her face, I came out empty handed. We had some lovely breakfast at a café across the street and then decided it really would be neat to make a quick stop at NK's sale, maybe they would have a sale at their Mulberry-department too?

And yes, of course, sale, sale, sale. A quick browse showed a lack of Elgin, olive though. And no, unfortunately no such models left. But hey, what's this, a Tooled Bayswater in Olive, gorgeous, and yes wouldn't that be just what one would need when one gets a new job some time in a foreseeable (or not so foreseeable) future? So I held on to that when we made those obligatory rounds there. Ah, they sell Luella here too, cute, but well, not as cute as the Mulberry models...

So another investment was done, a big sister, or perhaps a cousin to Blända and Rosa. Tindra is her name. Not yet been used though, still a virgin, still beautiful, still unblemished in life.

Soon there would be a cut in the sales-prices, from 30% to 50%. I couldn't get a Luella model out of my now slightly delirious mind. Well, I could have a look, couldn't I? What's the harm in that? But of course I couldn't "just have a look" - 50% off, that's really a bargain, isn't it? A pale cream coloured Luella Stevie tote, who can resist that... The colour even shifts from pale cream, to vanilla, to mustard to linden green depending on the light.

Milda is now her name and she shares house with me. And yes she is beautiful too, both in model and in craft. But oh so heavy, both with and without things in it, it's like carrying around bricks when you're about and about. So, sorry, I haven't been using her all that much. But at least I bought her on sale, big sale, yes I did!

On holiday in Hamburg I was happy to find the tiniest little Mulberry boutique, very off-side. I had a quick look - did anyone thought I wouldn't? - not much on offer, but hey, what was that little baby-bag? A baby-Bayswater, olive in colour - absolutely to die for. And on sale. But I was stoic enough to get out of there without another handbag, and a second time, and well, what the h-ll, third's a charm - I bought her (of course it's a her!). This tiny baby-sister of Tindra, the model being Ledbury. But she's called something as original as Lill-Tindra (i e Little-Twinkle).

She was with me on the town the other day. Did very well I think, although even though she's been waterproofed she did manage to get a stain. But I suppose that makes her more personal. In the pic above you can see both Tindra and Lill-Tindra posing for the camera, don't they look fabulous?!

Wow, there must be something wrong with me, writing this much about handbags, five of them, all happily living in my house now. But well, they are truly a sight to be seen and seen with, so no, no there's absolutely nothing wrong with me! I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't take drugs - so why shouldn't I indulge myself with utterly important parts of life like silly expensive handbags!

Some pictures from yesterday

Well, let's see if the Blogger-adding-pictures-function wants to cooperate more today then...

Aha, at least, here the picture of that pretty new skirt and the nearly as pretty bag it came in. Something to be happy in when Autumn comes!

And of the two great suspense novels. Which I'll have to wait and read until I've finished the ones I'm reading right now (John Irving: Until I find you and Stephen Booth's latest).

And the tiny little, colourful things called... well, very small socks that hopefully won't show when wearing "low cut" shoes. An no, the blue and patterend things on top in the pic aren't knickers, they are socks too...

My beautiful new Autumn asters, that hopefully will makes the flowerbeads inspirational too watch a long time this Autumn...

And the lovely bright green arrangement platter will sure be inspirational indoors!

So how about that, some nice buys I did yesterday, huh?

A brand new header & then some shopping

Oh I've got a brand new header in my blog, isn't it lovely?! From the blossoming cherry trees in Kungsträdgården, Stockholm in May. Sweet looking and in pink - it was absolutely gorgeous during a week or so there... Anne, from Anne's food, has been kind enough to help me with the right size and some good tips. It'll be even better when I get the font and colouring just right. But in the meantime I do enjoy the lindengreen background and the soft pink flowery header...

Today - which has been a lovely sort of Indian Summer day - I went into the city with my mum. We did some shopping, or rather I mainly did... Had some lunch at Hurry Curry at Hötorget. The lassi with cardamom yummy as ever.

So what nice things did I buy today then (apart from the lassi)?
Well, a cute, easy to wear flowery skirt (which came in a nearly as cute pink, flowery cotton-bag);
a couple of nice suspense novels (one from the great Swedish author Arne Dahl and the other from the equally great English author Reginald Hill);
three colourful Autumn asters (which will be planted in the garden tomorrow);
four pairs of small socks (so I can finally, hopefully wear a pair of shoes I bought on holidays);
a bright green arrangement platter that makes me happy just to look at;
and finally a couple of fashion magazines (the Swedish Damernas Värld - The Ladies world. Yes it really sounds silly in English... - and the British Harper's Bazaar - which I think mainly consists of adverts...).

Unfortunately there's absolutely no chance for me to add anymore colourful pictures from today, since the uploading here at Blogger is as slow as syrup it seems...

Right now I'm waiting for Mats to come home from work so we finally can EAT - I'm starving, I'm soon to be only skin and bones, I swear! It would be nice to then just jump right into bed for the night... But it's an episode of Midsomer Murders on TV, and one really can't miss that...

Travelling high & low

Travelling, that's one of my favorite past-times, if you might call it that. Of course that interest is restricted by the fact that money isn't, unfortunately, an unlimited resource to me. But now and then I get the opportunity to travel where at least a little piece of my heart wants to go. And now I'm also able to write about it, publish and share my travel-impressions at the Katter sister-site, Resor iFokus (i e Travels inFocus). So if you feel like brushing up on your Swedish and/or are interested in travelling, feel free to do and be that with articles on

Azores (Portugal) & Copenhagen (Denmark) & Lübeck (Germany) - also Hamburg (Germany) soon to come - and the wonderful gardens of Norrvikens Trädgårdar (Båstad, Sweden).

Above you can enjoy one of the amazing photogenique views I found at the Azores at Christmas-time 2005. Bliss!

In the middle of the night

When it's sort of in the middle of the night and you can't sleep, what can be better than writing?

These past six months I've more and more come to realize - well it didn't come as a surprise I guess, since I've always been a night-owl - that I'm really creative and full of ideas in the middle of the night.

So lots of unique jewellery have seen "the night-light" then and also many ideas and thoughts of mine have been put to "paper", either in my Swedish blog, as Internet-articles or just in my computer. For my eyes only.

Fun, fun, fun, to find ones very own written language and also therapeutic in a way I hadn't thought of before.

And when I don't write these things, I read, read and read some more and I've found new favourite books and authors these past months. Full of wit, stories with a personal twist, litterature is such a big part of my life - even bigger than I realized before. I really feel I can't get enough of the words, I starve for them, I long for them. Each syllable, each letter so dear to me. In ones native language (in my case Swedish) it's such an adventure to use the words in a personal way, twist them in a new direction, give them a new meaning, an ambiguous implication wide open for interpretation.

I've also been listening to a lot of old, a lot of new music and re-discovered artists and their fantastic lyrics, both Swedish and English and yes, sometimes even Spanish. It's amazing and simply wonderful how many different emotions a few lines of letters in a song can bring to the surface of the listener's mind!

And, of course, another creative part of me that has sort of blossomed again is photography. Others and my own I suppose. Nature and life is in many parts fantastic and stir the imagination. Some days more than others. Some nights even more.

Sleeping sickness or not, that is the question

It's been a sort of lazy weekend, maybe I suffer from sleeping sickness... Or it was just a whole lotta needed sleep dammed up and I just took the opportunity to do something about that need. Anyway, now I feel sort of energetic again, hope it'll last at least this week out...

When I haven't slept I've cleaned the house and prepared food for our dinner party this evening. It turned out really well, apart from the barbecue part it was all new food and it was really appreciated by the guests, and myself too. Though afterwards we realized we'd forgotten the hoummus in the fridge...

The grilled food consisted of yummy halloumi, mushrooms, squash, paprika and som horrible meat (being av vegetarian of course!). Served with a sallad of watermelon and fetacheese with mint (such a good taste-mix, believe it or not!) and another sallad of bulgur with mixed grilled vegetables.

For dessert it was mixed fruitsallad (in this case blueberries, raspberries and peach) with pecans and a lovely white-chocolate sauce.

That in combination with good company - a lovely evening indeed! And of course, waking up the day after, to a newly cleaned house is never wrong either...

Rupert Royal Pavilion & Rutger Ragley

Since a photo of my two "little" beautiful darlings Rupert and Rutger, mentioned in the blog of Sunday, November 06, 2005, mysteriously just disappeared from that same blog, I thought they should get their own photo-cavalcade here instead.

These absolutely drop-dead gorgeous blue-white British shorthair boys who never got to move to THE right home, since no-one serious wanted to buy them - one of life's great mysteries that is!! Now they've just turned 10 months old and it's just such a pity that they have to stay on here with us, beautiful or not, they really should have the opportunity to embellish and brighten up some other cat-lover's home and life...

The pics above show them at the age of two weeks and up until now. Not in the exact order I see, but well here they are anyway!

Some people...

...are just so completely annoying and irritating. And one just have to be so very grateful one doesn't have them closeby on an everyday basis.

But still it's rather interesting to discuss them and their weird personalities - the human nature in its many shapes and forms never seize to fascinate and amaze...

A pity though that these weird personalities never ever seem to get over their childish and immature behaviour, never seem to want to grow up. Of course it's even more sad when they for some reason decides to have children of their own...

Along their path of life the keep on hurting other people by their way of expressing themselves, and never ever take responability for their own shortcomings and mistakes. Of course it's simpler to blame it on others, stress, tiredness, pmt, too much alcohol etc etc...

And they keep repeating themselves like a broken record... - I just heave a deep, deep sigh and try to avoid these not so bright-not so mature-not so right in the head-department people as much as I can...

And sometimes I just sit in the grass and shout as much as I possibly can.... "HELP!!"

Food experiences part I

A friend of mine, Anne at the fabulous blog Annes' Food, said I should do something with all the nice pics of food I tend to take everywhere I go nowadays (since I got my new cool, handy camera earlier this year I use it for documenting the everyday life, can't imagine a life without a digital camera anymore...).

So here comes some pics of some of the yummy food experiences I've had so far this year.
Picture A (from bottom to the top) - a delicous meal at Riz Raz vegetarian buffé in Copenhagen.
Picture B - a yummy, classic shrimp sandwich at the Lyran café, Bredäng, Stockholm
Pic C - an equally yummy egg-curry sandwich at Hurry Curry, Hötorget, Stockholm
Pic D - an enjoyable Swedish Midsummer-plate for a vegetarian
Pic E - a vegetarian Ceasar sallad with veggie thai-spit, at Café Pladder, Vinterviken, Stockholm
Pic F - a truly lovely meal with perchfilet, homemade tartarsauce and fennelsallad at Blidösunds Värdshus, eastcoast archipelago, Norrtälje

The desserts - and believe you me, I do not skip dessert if I don't absolutely have to (but I always skip the boring starter)! It's the most important part of a meal... If a restaurant have a well-concoct dessert-menu, well then it's a fine restaurant as far as I'm concerned... - will get there own blog-space in due time.

Enjoy!

Late August

Oh, now it's sort of only one week left of our glorious Swedish summer... I can't really say "where did it all go?" because I do believe we've had a long and sunny (sometimes too sunny...) summer with many experiences and happenings, good food, yummy drinks, great company, kittens and cats extravaganza - oh yes, and great summer sales too!!

My garden is still luscious and green, the white clematis still overflows with flowers and buds, and I've bought some autumn plants and flowers to try an prolong the flowery-season.

Not that I really hate autumn - not anymore - being an autumn-child myself (late October), even if it's sort of the season of death in some aspects, it's also a season full of fantastic, inspiring colours and the opportunity to wear those neat layering autumn outfits, lots of shawls and enjoy big cups of tea by candlelight once again. Even if the weather forces you to say goodbye - for now - to those fun, Swedish clogs (which I invested in this summer and they sure bring back childhood memories...).

Another thing I've been thinking about is wether to continue writing this in English or switch to svenska, men jag antar att det är bra att även på detta sätt försöka hålla engelskan en smula levande...

It's been a long time

It's been a very long time since I last wrote something here... Basically I've been busy with life I suppose. And being the host of the ever growing Swedish cat-site Katter iFokus - www.katter.ifokus.se - and having a sort of blog there too (in Swedish) I do keep very busy...

Apart from that I also got the everyday life of figuring out what to put my energy into, what I want to do with my life from now on, jiggle my money around and put the little I have in that area nowadays in the very right place - which, even if you might think so, isn't always on a new, pricy handbag... (see picture above)

I actually have come so far in this figuring-ot-process that I have applied for my first job in ever so long, and this time not at all in the legal area - phew, I'm through with that for now! - but for an editorial position at a publishing house. It sounds so frightfully funny and interesting and even if I might not have the "right" education for it I most certainly have the right ambition and skills and would absolutely do a great job!!

Anyway, if I don't get it this time - and a slim chance it is to even get called for an inteview applying for a job from an advert in the paper in Stockholm these days... - it just wasn't THE job for me. I'm just glad I've come so far as to even look at job-adverts, think about applying for a job, updating my CV etc.

Apart from working with my sort of inner demons (very small ones, not always mean, but still I have them too) since I last wrote here, I've always managed to do some travelling to broaden my horizons. Very much enjoying new environments, people, sometimes really bad food, sometimes great food, shopping and sightseeing. Even if travelling is sort of exhausting too, and mostly costly, it sure is a fantastic way to clear your head from negative spiraling thoughts!

Over Christmas we went to the Azores - which you can read an article, only in Swedish, about at http://resor.ifokus.se - in April it was time for what have almost become an annual trip to wonderful Copenhagen (an article can also be found at Resor iFokus), in July we did a short trip by car down to Lübeck and Hamburg (yes articles about those cities can be found at Resor iFokus too)- Hamburg being one of my favourite cities ever, fantastic shopping and lots of things to see, experience, do and also great restaurants and cafés.

I planned for a weekend trip with a friend to Athens in September, but unless I get a really good income of some sort until then that's not going to happen... Our planned journey back to Miami and Key West is off too, since we plan for a journey to South Africa in the beginning of 2007 instead. That'll truly be an experience I believe!! And for Miami, well I guess I have to get my longing for returning there comforted by new episodes of "C.S.I: Miami"...