a strawberry pastry

'caus i was worth it (ain't one always?)

'caus i could faintly smell the lilacs again

'caus the sun shone and it was the last day of may

have a lovely weekend one and all!

garden triplets

Just because they are such darlings, with a seemingly endless amount of energy as far as garden life goes. Zigne, Ågot and Ztina.

strawberry strange

I guess this is a case of 'you get the strawberries you deserve'.

I'm also rather pleased about that - edible strawberries one can always buy, this is a one-of-a-kind that decided to grow in my tiny strawberry patch. Heart.

cat clips

Sometimes the simplest things are awesome, now why haven't anyone come up with this idea before?! Granted I got this package of cat clips a year ago and they've probably been around for some time before that, but still, all those years one lived before not knowing the life and work totally lacked such an obvious thing as cat shaped page markers...!

I've recently seen them in other (non animal) shapes too, which will be perfect, l'il unpretentious gifts for friends who enjoy such "other shapes".

Animal clips pager markers from NPW

the lilacs time of the year

It is such a pretty, delicate time of the year, the time of lilacs in bloom.



Next year I hope there'll be a special white hedge in bloom too, but for now there is purple.



Unfortunately for me, I have a terrible cold (again, it's only two months since last, sigh) and neither smell nor flavour is something I can enjoy at the moment. But I hope, I really really, do, that the lilacs in bloom will linger on a while so me and my nose can enjoy them too.

cat and bunny path

Currently M's elderly parents are downsizing from a house to an apartment which means there are a lot of garden stuff they no longer need or have room for. Thus I've been on the recieving end of a lot of that lately. Granted I'm not keen on electrical equipments and garden tools as such, but I can see their usefulness - but to be honest, I see a lot of sell/give away potential there.

What I do enjoy though is silly little garden ornaments, I think this is my favourite so far. The bunny family. And lo and behold there's a matching cat in my garden. I'm such a lucky bunny!

energy balls

Found this recipe via Twitter and one of Sweden's most wellknown producers of organic, vegan products, Kung Markatta. Despite the fact that I am really not a fan of figs I thought it sounded rather nice. A healthy kind of sweet/snacks. Similar to the chocolate balls, but healthier and full of great ingredients and features.



After having made them I can safely say that they are not as satisfying as those chocolate balls (if I'm honest) and the texture is a bit too mushy for my taste. But they're kind of nice just the same, and very filling I might add.

I think it would benefit from the oats not to be included in the food processor mixing, but added afterwards for a crunchier texture. I'll try that next time, also skip the roll in coconut, they are much nicer/crunchier rolled in pumpkin- or sunflower-seeds.



Energy balls
makes about 25 balls

150 g dried figs150 dried, unsweetened apricots
1,5 deciliter oats
6 tbsp coconut oil
6 tbsp cacao
6 tbsp cold coffee
coconut or pumpkinseeds or sunflowers seeds

Remove the little dry stem from the figs. Mix the ingredients properly in a food processor. When it's a smooth mixture form them into small balls and roll them in coconut or pumpkin/sunflower seeds. Put in fridge for a while before you serve them. They freeze well.

Recipe in Swedish

green beauty

Whenever I get something in a special colour I automatically start seeing colour matching things everywhere. In this case it was the cute and quirky (the best word combination you can describe something with, wouldn't you agree?) hair stick from swoondimples that was the instigator of seeing green beauty around me.



Like the fresh asparagus.



And my latest purchase of a fabulous grassy, appleish, obviously asparagusy green nailpolish.
An old handdyed silk scarf.
Sweet apple pie organic rooibos tea.

Green beauty.



Previous sweet things from talented Heather Wynn Millican at swoondimples -
bird earrings, favourite jewellery of 2006
fortune favours the brave earrings
love clasp
make today awesome earrings

little sleepyheads

When spending most of the day taking full advantage of the garden this is how one likes to spend the evenings/indoors time. Crashed out. Sofa time. Half-sisters, sisters, friends, family, Ztina and Ågot.

Like most always - diet being the only obvious con with cats really - they're such sources of inspiration!

wordless wednesday

new flickr

i rarely make a lot of fuss when websites get revamped, eventually all will in one way or the other. mostly for the better, at least in some ways and the rest one gets used to, after a while. and after all, many website services are free, even if we as users are providing the website with their business, for free.

the other day flickr was launched with a new design. and i can't stand it. it's fugly with a claustrophobic feeling - pretty much everything i dislike with the flickr app has been adopted by the website - it has an awkward look and i loath infinite scrolling. the old interface is still very much a part of flickr and it all looks very messy and confusing as far as i'm concerned.

so far i've come across so many bugs i don't know where to begin grumping (my "favourite" might be the one where you try to change the layout to a more manageable one and it only sticks until you edit a picture then it's back to the awful infinite scrollingness. or you follow a change your layout link and end up with "oops it looks like you followed a bad link").

basically, at this stage, the only thing i like with the new design is the option to make a new cover/header.

in my opinion flickr just isn't a user friendly, easy to navigate website that offers a simple way to manage a substantial amount of photos anymore. it takes ages to edit picture details and obviously a vast amount of time doing it, which makes it massively offputting from the start. unlike before the photos and pages take forever loading. of course things can improve, but what's the point of launching something that clearly is far from ready to be launched with its bugs galore? to me it just seems highly unprofessional, premature and haphazardly done.

and, like so often in this world, why making a massive overhaul of something that basically just needed a bit of modernisation and tweaking to be awesome? newsflash, just because something is supposedly more modern looking it doesn't mean it's better or more user friendly. this is certainly one of the big drawbacks and misconceptions of the internet (and people's view on the world i'd say); just because something is new it doesn't mean it's better, brighter, smarter and more useable. 

to be honest i don't care much about a free terabyte, the pro account offered limitless storage anyway. and full resolution photos, well, how about the resolution limits set by the computer screen. if you're interested in the new/old flickr accounts this article might answer some of the questions regarding that and pricing.

i've been on flickr since 2007 with a pro account - which has been an affordable service indeed - and i have almost 30.000 photos uploaded. countless hours spent uploading, editing, blogging, communicating in different groups, admiring the never ending talent, creativity and quality of other people's photos. for me flickr has been both a great extra security online backup for my photos, a portfolio and of course an endless source of inspiration and awe.

i fear that has come to an end. i hope i'm wrong, time will tell, but i have a distinct feeling that flickr and i will not be happy together anymore. which actually makes me quite sad.

what's your opinion on new flickr?

such a nice day for a bike ride

Like any good Swedish summer day today called for a bike-ride.
And a shoe per diem moment.

Lilacs hedge with flowers bursting into full blom any day now.

Ornamental tree in bloom, out of bloom soon then covered by the white clematis.

Oh how I heart this time of the Swedish year,
when spring turns into summer one day at a time...

alpro soy milk and chocolate pudding

Ever since I ended my use of milk in tea (one of my best decisions ever, on many levels) and in that cutting my dairy intake drastically, I've also been using different kinds of vegetable based milk in baking and cooking which of course works a treat. But what I was looking for was THE perfect soy milk to make latte with (or, as I'm not to fussy when I'm at home and mostly drink tea anyway, and for tea honey is my friend not anything milky, on the odd occasion a nice cup of milky coffee).

My favourite place for soy latte is the coffee chain Espresso House - surprisingly good for a chain really, it also offers great places to have meetings and work with wi-fi - where they use this soy milk from Alpro. The professional package I haven't seen at the supermarket here, yet, this one I picked up on Åland (obviously a happening place in different ways). Haven't used it yet, but I hope my milky coffee at home will be nearly as excellent as the soy latte at Espresso House, no weird soy tang which is most often the case with soy latte etc.

Chocolate pudding has never been a favourite of mine, but I had to try this soy chocolate one and I have to say it's rather excellent, chocolatey and light, not very sweet, a nice treat.

Do you have any soy products or
other vegetable based milk ones that you recommend?

vegging on åland

Spent a lovely, as usual, day on Åland. You don't get very many hours there when you take a day trip on the weekend, on Saturday the shops close at 2 or 3 pm and the cafes a bit later so the weather better be good enough to enjoy the outdoors for the rest of the day, but the few hours you do have are always very relaxing and unpretentious - and the food is nice. Granted, they used to have a vegan cafe down by the lakeside which I miss, but there's still a reasonable amount of at least vegetarian options in the lovely cafes and restaurants in Mariehamn.

This was what I had in the way of food this time, which learnt me some lessons. Being that a) I'm not a nachos person, too greasy, too much somehow (I ate about 1/3 of that supersized portion) and I really want my food to be fresher and simpler,

b) you can never go wrong with a piece of åland pancake. And the soy latte was decent although I'd like the coffee to have been stronger.

c) whole wheat pizza crust is great, and to drizzle a bit of garlic mayo on top makes it even better. Although, again, I prefer my food to be fresher and lighter and I'm not a pizza person either.

d) green scrub mittens for vegetables is lovely, although I didn't get any but think it would be a really really great idea to embroider your regular wool mittens up with such a veggie message.

PS I know there may not be such a word as "vegging", but I think the world need such a word, therefore I made one DS

cat cavalcade

ztina sezincote, bluetortietabby colourpoint british shorthair

An overall awesome day with some ingredients being a brisk walk & talk, followed by a fun and eye-opening mini-lecture and then finally I got to try the new camera. Test subjects were obvious.


sigrid, blacktortiespotted, the grand dame of the herd, grandmother, 10,5 years old

zigne shandy, redspotted

ågot alnwick, bluetortiespotted, the littlest one

I think the results were alright for a first session. Lots of new stuff to learn and improve, it's going to be fun fun fun.

Over all this shone a benevolent sun.
A great beginning to the weekend,
I wish you a lovely one!

prosit has a new lens

In this bag hides something that makes me all ditty with delight. A brand new camera.

The old DSLR has served me well over these past five and a half years, well at least over the first four ones, the crazy amount of several hundred thousand photos taken has taken its toll and deterioration over the last year or so has been significant. It simply doesn't work flawlessly as it used to. But I'm grateful for all those photos, all that patience, any weather condition, sandy beaches, rain, snow, ice, humidity and the odd occasion of smashing into a wall, falling down some stairs (in the company by yours truly).

One of my goal's last year, before health issues hit, was to get a new camera, my dream camera. But revenues alas never allowed. And now it's impossible to be without a proper working tool like a decent camera so it was time to get one, if not the dream camera, but a darn good one just the same. And as usual, it's not the brand nor the flashy, expensive camera that makes a great photographer.  It's not the the tool you use to create, it's how you use the tool you got. The only thing a decent camera won't provide is talent. Which of course is true with pretty much anything in life. Besides, I'm not technically skilled enough to make the most of the finer details of dream camera, and I probably never will be interested in that part of photography (as in life). Thus I'm sure I and Prosit will be more than pleased with our new working friend, and to be honest, it's quite nice to save a whole lot of money by buying a great camera and not the dream camera. Even if it's nice to dream, a dream about the dream camera, there are many other dreams that are much more important, for me, to go after at this moment in time.

Prosit has a new lens. And think it's quite dreamy.

sun square stockholm

A year ago it was the Aday day, ten moments in a life captured (of which one ended up in the grand book). If it had been this year, this would have been one of the photos taken from my camera. Sun worshipping in Stockholm. The sunchairs in this square are permanent, I think it's a lovely idea and this time of the year it's most always full when the sun shines.

Off-season it holds the promise of warmer, lighter days to come.



Do you have any public art in your city that's both nice to look at and offers good use?

anneko organic greeting cards

Stumbled over these lovely greeting cards at Växplats Nybyn during the weekend. Lovely design, recycled paper, soy based inks and organic pigments the greeting cards come with a seed band which you can plant, the little cute gift-tags are in themselves seed cards with meadow mix flower seeds which you can plant.

I've seen similar seed cards in Etsy shops before, but never with this lovely, colourful design on the cards. Looking at the website, which does give a mixed message concerning the origin of the cards, I think the designer is Swedish, lives in Australia but also has a summer studio in Sweden. I'm guessing the cards are printed in both Sweden and Australia, for different markets.

Be as that may, great idea, sweet recyclable cards from Swedish design company Anneko, which will bring happiness in many ways to the reciever.

glasses, glasses

It's been two years since I last had my eyes and sight checked, not that I've noticed any significant deterioration (touch wood) but it's good to have it done anyway. Some of the glasses are a bit worn too (now that I never use contacts anymore) and it would be nice to get one or two new pairs. I still love my dotty pair and if I get a new pair I really want them to be in the same style, only another colour and/or pattern. I think my favourite optician smarteyes has had a grand assortment - alongside really pleasant staff and service and of course unbeatable prices - but admittedly I was rather disappointed when I popped by the other day to check out their current models (haven't booked an appointment with the optician yet, just wanted to check what's on offer). Unfortunately this time I found most of them rather bland and boring, not really what I was looking for. The retro style-section was very small, the lack of cool patterns obvious - cow pattern glasses where art thou?

There's also a current ad campaign featuring a Swedish artist showing off glasses from smarteyes and one of those models are simply adorable, oversized Harry Potter-style. Obviously I wanted to try them on, but was met with a "hm, I don't know, perhaps we haven't got the delivery just yet, but our other glasses in that style you can find there and there..." from the staff. And no, no other glasses where in that style. I suspect those glasses in the ad campaign will never be sold in the shops, only featured in the campaign. Nuisance.

After looking around the shop, trying out lots of frames, discarding 95% of them as boring, unflattering, wrong or ugly I ended up with two possible pairs in this section above. Can you guess which pairs?

two kinds of cookies and some thoughts

The weekend was long and rather glorious, lots of sun, summerish weather, it involved garden visits, fika moments, good food, flower shopping, window shopping (I do have plans for this year's tax refund), a bit of work and oh, and I finally, finally sold the old, supersized desk that I inherited from my father. The garden shed is now liberatingly somewhat airy and someone else will have lots of good use with that imposing, too large desk.

You know the liberating feeling of getting rid of old stuff, having more space, actually getting paid for that old stuff and thinking surely there must more old stuff I can sell? Oh I got it.

A befitting round off to the lovely weekend was a bit of baking. I made two types of cookies - again from the sweet cakes bakebook - one lemon/coconut, one chocolate sunflower/pumpkinseed. Admittedly not sure I'll make them again since they turned out a bit dry and flavourless, plus I rarely think the amount of work put into tiny cookies are worth the end result. There are so much more rewarding things to bake, I think.



But they look cute. And taste alright, if not spectacular. Plus have the bobbaloo stamp of approval, so they can't be all bad.

So, how did you spend the lovely long Ascension weekend?
Sun basking, relaxing, cookie-baking or something completely different but no less grand?

garden bird lights

Got surprised with this awesome bird lighting chain the other day. Something I had spotted at why-I-don't-like-IKEA a while back and quite enjoyed - as I adore lighting chains, but have far to few of them - solar powered and quirky. Solvinden (the name of the lighting chain) means "the sun wind".

It works brilliantly I have to say, around 10 pm, when dusk calls, the bird starts lighting up in bright orange in quite a delightful way. Each chain unfortunately only holds 5 birds so I can see how quite a few more chains would make a larger impact. Love how you can make the sun work for you, in simple ways. Of course this is just a wee little, silly thing, I would love to make less of a carbon footprint with more use of sunpower in the bigger scheme of things. But for now, I am pleased that summer evenings in garden will be lightened up by orange sun birds.

What kind of lights do you have in your garden?

under the lilacs a little loaf rests

The lilacs, a white one, sweet scented, obtained.

The remains, of the sweetest little loaf tyke in the whole wide world, put to rest under the lilacs, white, sweet scented.



The place, by tykes of another kind, inspected and kindly walked upon.

I like the notion that the cats feel this is a perfect spot to have a rest, curiously inspect the ongoings in the neighbouring garden, that little loaf will always be part of that.

Forever missed,
but now resting under a sweet scented, white lilacs.
A little loaf named Malte.

cherry blossom stockholm 2013

Since this past week has been stunningly glorious and sunny, a row of rather decent summer days really, the magical time of the year when the cherry blossoms are in bloom came quickly.



As usual I'm no great fan of hoards of people when I want to enjoy something, thus an early morning (I can't stand early mornings, but granted, you get to see places and spaces finally people free then) was perfect to visit those magical trees in Kungsträdgården (King's Garden).



The light, oh that pink light, absolutely amazing and perfect. Pink really is such a sweet, kind, magic, calming, enchanting and lovely colour in every way.




Bobbaloo excitement moment and shoe per diem moment.





I thought I'd posted a plethora of Stockholm cherry blossom pictures every year, but I can just find this post from 2009 now. A pity, it would have been nice to be able to look back in pink, even if it certainly isn't easy to be creative with these cherry blossom photos anymore, those trees and branches have been photographed in every angle imaginable by pretty much everyone imaginable I'd say.





Do you have any cherry blossom trees in you neighbourhood/city?
Are people as delightedly crazy about them as they obviously are here?