Last week of September gave us nice sunny warmnweather. Thank you September for compensating for a rainy and cold summer. Weekend in Lundsätter and the forrest is mass-producing nice big chanterelles, I love it. The forrest is my element and it makes me happy and satisfied to walk up and enjoy the trees, the moss and the silence.  I was also doing some smaller projects in the garden. My honeysuckle that I planted last year has grown strong and it needed something to climb on so me and my dad built a small support. I love fixing in the garden, in my way with the philosophy it is better to do something the way I want it with trail and error rather then aiming for perfection because then the magic is lost and the nothing would grow in the garden at all.  After the autumn market I got a few orders of warm hats with fleece lining for smaller kids. So I focused on making quit a few cute hats with fleece linning for 1-2 year olds. I will add them to the web shop this week....

  Talking about Autum-break here comes a few pictures from our break. We had a great combination of calm country-life at Lundsätter our country-house and Stockholm with my sister Sofie and my mother.  Seeing friends and family, enjoying the forrest and the beautiful October weather with clear sky and bright sunshine charged our batteries. We are so lucky that the kids have good friends to play with while we are home and extra extra bonus is that we have stable and pony to go to.  In Stockholm we did a couple of cool museums which we can very much recommend - Paradox Museum   -Museum of Natural history 

Lena Andersson is a Swedish children's book illustrator and author. I am brought up with her books, pictures and the characters Linnéa and Maja. I loved her stories and I think mostly because her characters are close to nature. The books are educational about trees, flowers, the different seasons but also one very poetic book about the alfabet. One of my favorite pictures from Maja's Alfabet is P as in Peonies. I don't know how many times I have tried to draw a copy of that house on the peony leaf. I also think that the flower peony is one of my favorite flower. At our country house I planted peonies 10 years ago or maybe even more. The past at least three years I have missed when they start blossoming. That magical day or couple of days when the peonies big buds bursts into a beautiful flowers. By the time we have gotten summer-break and flown from Düsseldorf to Sweden the beautiful flowers have became so heavy and laying down full of ants. But this year my dad decided to ...

Vi flög till Stockholm och hängde några dagar hos mamma i deras nya lägenhet inne i stan. Barnen testade leka i Vasaparken rakt över gatan. Första vårsolen värmde äntligen lite. Det kändes härligt och konstigt att folk satt på uteserveringar och att restauranger och caféer var öppna. Prinsesstårta, semla och påskbakelse på en uteservering. Jag passade på att klippa mig eftersom frisörerna varit stängda sedan december och min man vuxit sig lång. Jag följde med Sofie ut till stallet och red hennes fina häst medan barnen hade movie night med mormor.  Nere i Vingåker fick vi äntligen träffa Bozze och morfar. Leka med bästis och grilla med farbror Christer. Min morfar var färdig vaccinerad och bjöd oss på våfflor. Barnen gick till frisören och blev kanonsnygga i håret. Lekt mycket med grannbarnen och njutit av att kunna spring och ut hur och när man vill.  En morgon vaknade vi till snö. Aprilväder. Filip och jag gick en före-frukost promenad i skogen för att njuta av snön. Eftersom...

Jag älskar påskpynt - det är färggrant och roligt och det är alltid lika spännande att plocka upp påsklådan för att se vad jag har samlat på mig under åren. Mina favoriter är de traditionellt målade trääggen vi köpte i Prag för några år sedan. Helst vill jag ha dom framme året runt. I år gjorde jag och Mila påskkärringar. Med en limpistol blir allt pyssel roligt och därför började jag massproducera kärringar. Mila tröttnade efter ett par kärringar men jag hade svårt att sluta.  På Lundsätter hittade jag min påsktupp som jag gjorde i slöjden på mellanstadiet. Några galna mjukdjur hönor och diverse ägg och porslinstuppar. Färggrant och omatchigt funkar fint för mig. 

 Ja det blir så ibland  Det blir en massa saker men inte just här Kreativiteten används på en massa sätt och på en massa olika sätt och i olika faser  Som till exempel har jag fått utlopp för det skrivande på en sommarkurs på Linné Universitet "Att skriva barn och ungdomslitteratur". Det var kul. Jag började skriva en berättelse om en tjej som ska få vara med på sin första övernattning på ridskolan. Det liksom bara flödade ur mig. Ganska så mycket själv upplevt även om det verkligen inte är en biografi. Jag fick bra feed-back, det var kul. Jag har svårt för kritik annars även så kallad konstruktiv kritik. Så att jag säger att jag fick bra feed-back då fattar ni att som var snälla mot mig. Nu har den berättelsen fått vila ett tag men jag planerar att illustrera några passande bilder till inledningen och se om jag kan skriva vidare. Kursen var lärorik med en blandning av kurslitteratur och skönlitteratur.  Jag valde att analysera två böcker - Gropen av Emma Adbåge och ...

This is how I left Lundsätter a couple of days after new year when we flew back to Düsseldorf. I like to leave it as tidy as I can and I put the chairs on top of the tables because my dad is very nice and letting his robot vacuum to work in our part a few times before we come back. This time I also removed curtains upstairs because one big project this year is to change our big beautiful windows to other more modern windows which will be easier to open and also energy classed. The one we have now is very old, the frame is falling apart and last summer it is a small crack in the glass. What I realized when removing the curtains is that I the room feels so different naked and gives a great open feeling. With the new windows I can leave it like this because I have ordered built in blinds. Blinds or curtains are necessary because it gets very warm in the summer when the sun is strong but also with Swedish light summer nights it is hard to sleep without. Hopefully we will have the new wind...

A new year is here. The year 2020 is here. A new exciting year that I am hoping will be filled with fun and happiness. This will be my 10th year I am writing my blog on and off and it is a great place to keep memories, stories and experiences. It is fun now to have 10 years worth of memories in texts, illustrations and photos in one place. This year I have the ambition to write more frequent because my writing process flows better and it is much more fun if I do it more often and also because it is such blessing to experience living in an other country and country and I want to keep my thoughts and experiences and share them. Lets aim to do an update once per week and see how that goes.  What hopes and expectations I have for 2020  - That my family and friends are blessed to stay healthy and happy - To explore more places in the area around Düsseldorf - we have many cool places both in Germany but also in France, Holland and Belgium to check out which is only a few hours awa...

Thank you Summer 2019 for a great mix of weather and a long break from routines We have spent our vacation in Sweden. We left Düsseldorf and flew to Stockholm Skavsta on 4 of July and stayed all the way until 18 of August. At first I was stressed to get as much as I can out of this precious time we call Summer and to meet up with family and friends while we are in Sweden. How stupid to get stressed and so I stopped with that and could enjoy fully instead. When we first arrived in Sweden it was cold - no but really I mean cold cold as in 15 degrees. We had to drive to the Outlet in Vingåker to purchase fleece jackets, wellington boots and long pants. When we left German in was hot and I couldn't even imagine that it could be such a different 2 hours away (in an airplane) But the weather picked up and we have enjoyed warm weeks where we have been swimming in the lakes but also rain and cooler weather - and to be honest I think this big variation is the magic with Swedish Summe...

Oh My God how many wallpapers is their to chose between ?! No I don't have the interest or energy to go through all and I get into a give up I can't pick at all kind of mood pretty easily. So I have a plan. My plan is grey and white stripes. Stripes makes the room look taller and grey is neutral enough. Same brand as in the other room same stripes just a different tone. Great plan. And so I head to the store and all the colorful funky patterns are waving at me. I am trying to keep focus. Looking for grey! Looking for stripes! Looking for same brand as before! Writing down the numbers of the grey stripes and then I just can't resist a funky pattern next to me. I managed to sell in the concept pretty easy at home that we will have one funky wall that will stand out and I call it a "fuck you wall". A wall that is not grey or white or boring in anyway. A wall that maybe will be too crazy or that we will get bored of real quick but who cares. And I don't care ab...

Lundsätter buildning project number 155 at least.. Isolating and making second floor on top of my dad livable  We have had builders here for nearly 4 weeks now = it will be very expensive but hopefully very good... Just hope it will be useful and worth the kronors put in to it. I am already starting to think about wallpapers and colors. Grey or stripy white and grey that is the question. 

You never know and I never know what inspires me to an illustration in my sketchbook journal. Sometimes the inspiration and creativity is gone with the wind and feels like it will never return ( I am sure all you creative souls can relate to that feeling...) and sometimes something normal as an apple can inspire. 2016 has been a real apple year. Not that I have one single apple tree in my garden ( although the cottage next door that we are renting out has one very small apple tree but our tenant has cut it like he was very upset with that tree and it will most probably never carry any apples after that treatment... So it doesn't count as an apple tree anymore...) but at Mila and Filip's kindergarten they have heaps of red very taste Ingrid Marie apples. And people in the stable has brought bags after bags with beautiful and tasty apples of all different sorts. Here is my illustration on the topic in different stages.