torsdag 24 mars 2016

American pancakes

Hello everybody! It was a couple of weeks since I made my last post with something edible, so I thought today might be a good time to make another post. This time it is American pancakes. I topped mine with raspberries and a bit of powdered sugar, but you can really eat them with anything you want. They will be delicious either way.




tisdag 22 mars 2016

Coltsfoot

Hello readers! I and a friend of mine was outside and took some photos today. We biked a bit and found some really nice scenery. The problem was that I could only get nine photos, then my camera battery died. I picked out the best photos of these nine, with them a couple of photos of coltsfoot. The scenery was really great and I'm so sad I couldn't get more photos of it. But I'm probably going to try and bike there again on Friday.





söndag 20 mars 2016

Spring sunset!

Hello everyone! Today was a really nice day and the sunset was beautiful. I tried taking some good photos, and I hope you like them. Every year, from spring to autumn, I regularly post photos of the sunset, I know that. But it's just such a pretty sight and I really want to capture it. This evening was the first really nice sunset this year, something that really makes it feel like spring.

This week I only go to school until Thursday and then I have easter holidays. Because of that I was thinking about maybe posting more often, every day if I can. I don't want to say I'm going to post every single day, but I'm defiantly going to post more often now when I'm not going to school. So if I post more than normal, you know why.




fredag 18 mars 2016

Purpule pansies

Hi everyone! The weather has been very good the last few days and it really feels like the beginning of spring. So I decided that the best thing would be to post these photos of purple pansies. Today the weather, unfortunately, was cold and windy compared to the other days, but the day itself is getting longer and that is very nice. It's not dark when you get up and dark when you come home anymore, as it is during autumn and winter. That makes a great difference. So I thought it would be a good time to post these photos today.

Hopefully we won't get any more snow so I won't have to post any winter-like photos until much later this year. I also hope you enjoyed my review, I have more coming up. My goal is to be able to post a review every other week.




onsdag 16 mars 2016

Book review: The Sorrows of an American

Title: The Sorrows of an American
Author: Siri Hustvedt
Genre: Drama, Slice of Life
Year published: 2008
Pages: ~320
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy the book from Adlibris or if that's not the case you can buy it of Amazon.
Previous book review: Islekar

The Davidsen family

Erik Davidsen is the main character and the story is about him but also the lives that cross his path. We get to follow Erik and his sister Inga trying to solve a mystery around his recently deceased father who left a strange letter. But the reader also get to follow the beautiful but cold Miranda - whom Erik fancies more and more - and her odd family relations. You also get to read detailed descriptions of his patients stories (he is a psychiatrist) and his dreams.

I found it quite hard to keep all the different Davidsens and their relationships and stories apart in the beginning, but after some time I got a hang of it. The book changes character perspective, place and time without any notice at all and I got a bit confused in the beginning. But when I got further into the book things got better and I could puzzle the stories together.

Believable characters, lacking story

I'm going to be very honest and say these characters, and mostly Erik since he is the main character, could have been real people. They are really complex to the point I had to ask myself if I was reading a biography of Erik Davidsen or if it was fiction. When that's the case the writer have very much succeeded in the making of the character(s). That lifted the story from being a little bit boring, but I have to say that the story is too slow.

Never throughout the book I get the feeling that I just have to turn page to get to know what happens next. It's more like a nature documentary that feed you with facts and then ask some questions and then give you new information that answers those questions. Not really thrilling, but great and believable characters. I recommend reading it to see and feel how real the characters are, not for the story.

måndag 14 mars 2016

A couple of winter photos

Hello everybody! I know, it's March and it's supposed to be the beginning of spring. And yes, I do have some spring-like photos coming up, but I wanted to post these couple of winter photos before that. I just didn't want to wait with these photos until it's too late to post them. But since it's still only March I figured it might not be too late just yet. If anyone is curious, I didn't take these with my camera, they are taken with my phone, but I liked the photos anyway so I decided they were worth posting anyway.

I'm going to post the book review this Wednesday, so you can be looking forward to that hopefully. It wasn't ready today and since I post every other day I think it will be ready to the next time I'm going to post. Until then you get this post and these photos to look at!



lördag 12 mars 2016

Tigra

Hello everybody! I know today's post is a little later than usually but better late than never. This post is about Tigra. I got some nice photos of her today and the lighting was very good in my opinion. She didn't look away from the camera so the photos of her turned out good. Usually it's a little hard to get good photos of her since she often run around or she is outside.

I have another book review coming up, it's a book in English this time so everyone will hopefully be able to find a place to buy it. The review is coming up some time during next week, hopefully towards the middle of the week. I just wanted to let you know because I know a lot of you readers like the reviews!




torsdag 10 mars 2016

Easy noodle soup

Hello readers! Today in school we made a very easy noodle soup and I really liked it. I took a couple of photos (with my phone and not my camera this time) and decided to share the recipe with you. And yes, I decided to post today because I couldn't post anything on Tuesday. The soup is really great and you can change the spices and vegetables for your own liking, this is just the recipe I followed when we made it.

Ingredients

½ red pepper (or yellow/green if you prefer that)
1 carrot
20g of leek
120g noodles
250g chicken breast
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper
1 chicken stock cube
5 cups of water
1 teaspoon of butter

How to do it

1. Slice the pepper, carrot, leek and chicken breast.
2. Heat up a casserole or pot and melt the butter until it's starting to turn golden.
3. Add the sliced vegetables and chicken to the pot and fry them lightly.
4. Add the water and chicken stock cube and bring the water to a simmer.
5. Simmer for around 5 minutes.
6. Add two pinch salt, four pinches of pepper and one pinch cayenne pepper (and other spices too if you would like).
7. Taste and add more of something if you would like that.
8. It's ready to eat!



onsdag 9 mars 2016

Early spring sunset

Hi readers! I know I didn't post anything yesterday, but that is because the television and internet didn't work. Apparently someone had dug through the cables. But today when I came home from school, around 4PM, the internet was restored. Now I've had dinner and done my homework for the day so now it's time to blog! I took these photos before dinner, it's the sunset seen from a different angle. And it's also some photos of the sky with it's clouds and some treetops.

It's still snow outside but today was pretty warm so I'm really hoping the snow will go away. I feel like winter had had it's time, now I only want to see spring flowers and green leafs. The cold is just bothering me right now, but the sunsets are starting to get prettier and it doesn't rain as much anymore.




söndag 6 mars 2016

Some photos of Sessan

Hi readers! I almost forget about posting - that's why this is up so late - but I remembered in the very last minute before turning my computer off. Today I didn't do anything at all except read (currently reading Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt, review is coming soon!) and then take a long bath just to realize that something was wrong with the drain so all of the water basically just flooded the floor. So I didn't take any photos for today's post but I had something else planed instead so it didn't matter. I saved some photos of Sessan that I've taken just randomly when she looked cute of when she interfered with me whilst I was busy taking photos of other things.

She is always interested when I take photos and it's really fun. Maja and Tigra don't like the camera that much and don't seem to be interested in it at all. That makes social little Sessan perfect for photographing since she doesn't run away but is instead curious of what I am doing.




fredag 4 mars 2016

White orchids

Hello everybody! I know that the book review came out one day later than I thought but that is because of my cold. I really didn't feel good this Tuesday and I slept basically the whole day, so I didn't even open my computer that day. Because of that, I didn't post the review that day.

Today I'm feeling better, and I decided that maybe flowers would be good to make a post about since it's Mars now. It snowed yesterday so it's a thin layer of snow outside right now, but at the end of Mars I'm hoping to see some flowers starting to grow. But until then I have to stick with pot plants, because of that: here is white oschids that looked pretty spring-like.





onsdag 2 mars 2016

Book review: Islekar

Title: Islekar
Author: Liselott Willén
Genre: Drama
Year published: 2008
Pages: ~270
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy the e-book of Bokus.
Other: Not translated into English. I managed to find a 'real' book and not an e-book in a closing bookstore but I couldn't find anything else than the e-book to link to.
Previous book review: Utan personligt ansvar

Almost bullied Alexandra "Alex"

This story is about a girl named Alexandra but everybody calls her Alex. She lives in a small village on Åland (an island between Sweden and Finland). Her biggest wish is to get noticed by her mother but none of her parents care that much about her. In school she's almost bullied but escapes the terror because of a girl called Lisa. Lisa is overweight and because of that everyone in the entire school bullies and hate her. It's only when Lisa isn't in school that the bullies go after Alex.

Alex doesn't have any friends and she really want a friend. When a new boy, Jakob, moves to the island from Sweden he also get bullied but doesn't seem to care. Alex and Jakob develop the slight beginning of friendship but then Alex's mum begin to seemingly care more about Jakob than Alex. This makes the girl furious and her feelings shift and she hate him after that.

During the same time Alex and a mysterious girl called Sarah slowly get to know each other and the two girls from a friendship. But everything isn't what it seems and Alex love the feeling of friendship so much she is basically willing to do anything to hold onto it.

Complex but predictable

I like the plot and the way the story is formed with information coming a little bit at a time. Everything is tied together nicely at the end and I feel like the characters are complex enough to be very much real. It's a great book but the reason I don't find it stunning is because the story is too predictable. The reader get too much information and just because Alex can't fit the pieces together doesn't mean that the reader can't either.

To me, the parts that are suppose to be shocking just isn't because everything leading up to that moment made what was going to happened too obvious. That is really sad because everything else is great. The book spoiled itself while I was reading it, but besides that it was a good book that I would recommend if you can find it!