torsdag 30 juni 2016

Sunset

Hello readers! Apologies about the absence of a post yesterday, but I was so horribly tired. I don't even know why, but I was super tired and I basically just laid half-asleep in bed the whole day. At the same time I couldn't sleep, because I thought I might feel more energized after a nap or something but I couldn't fall asleep. It was weird, I feel good today and I don't know what the problem was yesterday.

Anyway, as you who have read this blog for some time now know, I'm obsessed with sunsets, especially the summer sunsets. The thing I love with the summer sunsets are how soft they look, and they are very colorful. So I just wanted to share these two photos of a summer sunset. Since they moved the yellow house that I otherwise always had in the background of my sunset photos, I'm currently trying to find a new favorite spot for that.



tisdag 28 juni 2016

A rose

Hi readers! Today I wanted to share this photo of a rose I just took. I was in the garden, looking for some flowers to take photos of and then I saw this rose. It was a little bit too dark, especially because I had to aim the camera towards the ground - where the rose was. But I believe the photo turned out good in the end. I did take more than one photo, probably around twelve or something like that, but this was the only one where the lighting was good enough.

Another thing I also really wanted to do today is to blog, it might seem strange but the whole idea I have - at least at the moment, it might change - is that I rather write a little post with a few photos every day rather than a post every two or three days with more photos. I just think it is a bit more fun, to update a little everyday. I am also really trying to blog everyday, and it's getting better!


måndag 27 juni 2016

Book review: Reality: A Very Short Introduction

Title: Reality: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Jan Westerhoff
Genre: Philosophy
Year published: 2011
Pages: ~160
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy it from Bokus or it that is not the case you can buy it of Amazon.
Previous book review: In Every Moment Are We Still Alive

Interesting idea

This book has four chapters: 1. What is real? Dreams and simulations, 2. Is matter real?, 3. Are persons real?, 4. Is time real?. There is also an introduction and a conclusion etc. In the second chapter the writer gives the reader five different definitions to look at reality, such as the 'apocalyptic definition' where only things that would still exists if there were no humans are real. I'm not going to go through all the definitions, but hopefully you will get an idea of how the book is built up.

I find this idea interesting, but the thing is that with only five types of ways to approach the questions in each chapter, the book gets unnecessarily narrowed down. Of course I understand that it is in fact a very short introduction, but I think it would have been more interesting if it wasn't in this almost "locked" position because of the limitation of the five definitions. A little longer book had been something I would have preferred.

Angled towards realism

Even with the limitation I wrote about above it is still a good book, because it is after all just barely 150 pages and it is covering a lot of big topics, so I can see that some ways of limitation is necessary. But something I can not get over when reading the book is how the author constantly goes back to providing overwhelming amounts of evidence for realism. I don't  like that at all, I expected this book to be more open minded. Second of all, I hate to read books that are clumsily angled towards something, whether I agree with it or not. I prefer when the writer serves the reader facts and let them decide for themselves what they think is right or not.

After all that, I have to say that parts of the book get interesting. I especially liked the third chapter (3. Are persons real?). Whether I recommend it or not is hard to say, because it sure is an interesting book but it is a bit flawed. To be honest, I think it is up to you if you would like to read it or not, because I'm pretty sure some will hate it and others probably love it (as with everything).

söndag 26 juni 2016

Video: Short time laps

Hello readers! Yesterday evening I set up camera and film for about 40min before my camera battery runs out. Then I have the idea that I'm going to be able to speed up the footage to around 3min and then post the video the same evening. This all happened around eleven in the evening and I pretty soon realized that it was not going to happen at all. In the end I uploaded it today and it took about 1h to upload every 10min of footage. I did something wrong the first time too, so the whole file was unusable so I had to do the whole thing twice.

Now I realize that I didn't have anywhere close to realistic expectations yesterday, but the video is up today and I found a good piece of music that goes well with the length of the video (Gymnopédie no. 1). So everything is well and good now! Here is the video :)


fredag 24 juni 2016

Midsummer

Good evening readers! Today is the Swedish holiday midsummer. It usually rain to some degree, but today has been surprisingly nice for once. Last year I was just recovering from eating something very bad, but this year everything was good. I did write a little bit about midsummer in last years midsummer post. So if you are interested, you can click the link above and read the second paragraph (the post will open in a new tab).

Last year I just posted some photos of the cake, but this year I changed it a little to make it more interesting. First of all, I was playing around with shapes in photos and I found it interesting to put a round bouquet in a square tile. The flower arrangement in the photo is also made by my mum for midsummer, so it goes together. The second photo is this years cake. I love, love, love the strawberry cake my mum makes for midsummer. It's my favorite cake of all cakes and it's so delicious.

Anyway, back to the photos. The third photo is just Maja laying outside and having a good time. She was just laying there, napping, looking at people in their gardens, eating some and hunting flies. I thought she looked cute just being relaxed and all. And that pretty much sums up this years midsummer! :)




torsdag 23 juni 2016

Sticky banana&chocolate cake

Hi readers! Today I want to share a delicious sticky cake with banana and chocolate. I topped mine with a sliced strawberry and caramel sauce. Inside it was bits of molten chocolate and the banana gave a creamy texture to the cake. It was my mum who made it, I only decorated and took the photos, but it was really delicious. I also really liked the photos, the lighting was perfect and the white plate didn't give any kind of weird reflection - that can be a big problem sometimes. To be honest, I don't know if the cake itself or the photos were best.




tisdag 21 juni 2016

Being forgetful...

Hello everybody! I don't know why I'm suddenly so forgetful. Every time I say I will blog every day I forget about it the very next day. It's so annoying, but now I've made a notification on my phone so hopefully I won't just forget about blogging anymore. Blogging every day is something I really would like to do, but I just keep forgetting about it. I almost forget about blogging today as well. I don't know why, but I just think that I've already done it - and I clearly haven't - and that's it.

Anyway, today's very quick photo is just one of Maja that I took today. She was watching people walking past outside of our house and I left the door a little bit open so that she could stay inside - I believe it was too cold outside - and still watch all the interesting things that happened outside. She only looked at me when I called her name, and that was only for a second, so she was obviously very buzzy looking at the people that walked past.


söndag 19 juni 2016

Tigra

Hello readers! I can agree that it is a bit ironic that I missed one day of blogging the day right after I said I probably would start blogging every day. But, I'm here right now and I'm hopefully not going to forget about blogging too often in the near future. Yesterday I did actually remember, but then it was already too late so the post would have come technically today instead, so I didn't bother.

Today's photos are of Tigra. I feel like it was a while since there was any post about the cats, and I don't often post photos of Tigra in general. She is quite shy and also loves the outdoors so much, she is the one who is home the least. But today the weather was bad, it was cold and windy, so none of the cats spent much time outside. These photos I took of Tigra when she just went back to sleep after having a bit of food.



fredag 17 juni 2016

Green leaves and rain

Hi everybody! Yes, I've blogged three days in a row now. Originally it was because I missed one day, but it does feel like a good time to start posting everyday, just like last summer. Now when I'm not in school I do have much more time to put into going out and taking photos, editing etc. But I do want to warn you a little bit, I might miss some days here and there so don't get alarmed if that happens. I'm also going to - starting with my next review - not only review fiction but all kinds of books. And of course, you are still welcome to suggest any book you want me to read by sending an email.

I took these photos yesterday, but I really wanted to post my bread recipe so I decided that these ones could wait a day. It had just rained a little and when I went outside I saw the raindrops on these green leaves and took a photo of it. Nothing more complicated than that.



torsdag 16 juni 2016

Fast and easy bread

Hello readers! Today I wanted to share with you a bread recipe. I'm usually just putting sweets and things like that in the Eat and recipes category, except for that one noodle soup I did one time. But today I'm going to share a fast and very easy bread. I've done these breads quite a few times now, I started of doing them from a kind of base recipe I found on the internet, but then I've eventually changed it, and it's now my own recipe down below.

For gluten free bread, use gluten free flour. For more of a wholemeal bread, change part/all plain flour to whole wheat flour and use a little less water.
16 small breads
Ingredients
35g butter
350g water (3,5dl)
50g fresh yeast or 12g dried yeast
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
510g plain flour (8,5dl)

How to do it:
1. Melt the butter. Then add the water to the melted butter and heat/cool until the mixture is 37°C (98,6°F), then add it to a big bowl. Crumble the yeast into the same bowl. Stir until the yeast is completely dissolved.
2. Add in the salt, sugar and olive oil and a little bit of the flour. Stir everything together and keep adding in the flour until you can knead the dough without it sticking too much to your hands. (You probably won't need all of the flour!)
3. Knead the dough for 5min, then let it rise for another 5min.
4. Divide the dough into 16 pieces and roll them to buns. Put the buns on a baking tray with nonstick baking paper on cover them.
5. Turn on the oven to 250°C (482°F).
6. Let the buns rise for 15min while the oven heats up.
7. Put the bread in the middle of the oven for 7min.

onsdag 15 juni 2016

Book review: In every moment are we still alive

Title: I varje ögonblick är vi fortfarande vid liv (In every moment are we still alive)
Author: Tom Malmquist
Genre: Drama, life
Year published: 2015
Pages: ~317
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy the book (in Swedish) from Bokus.
Other: This book has not been translated into English, but I've translated the title and the book might get translated in the future.
Previous book review: The Sense of an Ending

Daughter born, wife died, father died

The name of the main character is Tom and in the beginning you really get thrown into the story. Tom's wife, Karin, is pregnant with their first child when she suddenly gets rushed to the hospital. The doctors decide to put her in a respirator to try and keep her and the baby alive. In order to keep both mother and child alive, the doctors make an emergency c-section and so Livia, Tom and Karin's daughter, is born. During all this time at the hospital Tom has stayed with Karin but after his daughter's birth he divide his time between the two of them. Karin is dying and treated at the intensive care, while Livia is growing and full of life.

Not long after Livia is born, Karin dies and Tom returns home with his newborn - and too early born - daughter. Both his parents and Karin's parents come to stay in his apartment to help him out. When Tom start to get a little used to being a parent his father dies after a long time of fighting cancer.

You also get little flashbacks to when Karin and Tom first met and their life together before she died.

A good start but then... not for me

Pretty much the only thing I like about this book is how the reader is thrown into the story in the beginning - it starts when Tom and Karin have just come to the emergency room - but then everything gets too slow. Of course I realize that Tom is grieving both the sudden death of his wife and later the expected death of his father, but I don't feel anything myself. The characters are too shallow and I don't care about them at all.

Throughout the entire book there isn't a single quotation or anything to mark when people are speaking, and sometimes that made me unable to understand who said what even if I reread it. It's basically just large blocks of text and sometimes I read an entire flashback without understanding anything at all because I didn't get that it was a flashback because it was just another block of text. It's also hard to read through these blocks, because they can stretch over several pages.

I also feel like Tom just have conflicts with everything and everyone. Sometimes it's a reasonable cause but sometimes I don't get why he's so rude. Sure, he's sad, but in the picture I get from his flashbacks is that he always has been bad tempered. Some parts even give the idea that Tom's temperament has became better over time. Because you only get to meet the grieving Tom, it's hard to distinguish how sad he actually is.

Shallow

I don't like this book, I don't think it's well written in any way at all. Still, a lot of people seem to like it and find it "touching", but to me it's just too shallow. I just feel like the writer killed two characters and said: "They were close to the main character. Look how sad he is now!" It's a nice idea to a story, but a nice idea alone doesn't do it for me. I can not empathize with a character I don't care the slightest about, how sad the whole scenario might be.

söndag 12 juni 2016

More photos from Thursday

Hello everybody! I was looking through my photos from this Thursday and I realized that I had taken a lot more photos of the flower bouquet my mum gave me, and some of those photos was really worth showing you, I thought. So that is why today's post is of my flowers that I've already posted one photo of.

Upon looking through the photos, I also found this photo my mum had taken of me when I was holding Sessan. I am laughing because Sessan can never get enough attention and she is always going around your feet, but the moment you pick her up she just want to be left alone. It's a bit silly, and she looked so miserable when I picked her up, and I only hold her for about ten seconds before she escaped. So there's that. I'm planning another book review, probably coming up very soon, in case you are wondering.





fredag 10 juni 2016

Graduated 9th grade!

Hello readers! Yesterday I graduated what I - after doing some research on Google (very scientific and all...) - believe in the US is considered 10th grade, and since many of my readers are from North America I thought it might be a good idea to write out what American school system grade I'm graduating from. In Sweden it's called 9th grade and that's why it's in the title, but it's basically the year when you are 15-16 years old. It is also the last obligatory year of school in Sweden. (But I am going to continue school for quite a bit longer than this!)

I just wanted to make a post about it really, because it's a little special, like finishing high school I think(?). Anyway, I spent yesterday with my friends, we had a ceremony at school, went home for some hours and met up again in the evening and then we went out to a restaurant and ended at my home. My mum got me flowers and of course I had to put in a photo of them here too.

The quality of some of the photos of my and my friends are really bad, I know, but my phone is sort of broken and it won't let me e-mail or transfer photos from my phone to my computer in any way I've tried, so I took screenshots but that lowered the quality. If I manage to get the photos out from my phone, I'll post them in better quality.







onsdag 8 juni 2016

White peonies

Hi everybody! Tomorrow my summer vacation starts after a few hours in school before noon. I'm very excited and even though I don't usually make posts about my actual life - because I'm not a lifestyle blogger - I think that I'm probably going to make such a post tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow if I don't find time to do it right away. A lot of you have, surprisingly enough, been asking for me to more posts like that. It's probably my most read and requested kind of post after the book reviews. I'm happy for your feedback, so now a bunch of you finally get what you've been asking for, and I hope you will enjoy it.

Moving on to talking a little bit about today's photos. They are of my mum's peonies and the just started blooming. I took some photos of them yesterday I believe, but it was very sunny and that gave the photos a "sharp" look. As you might already know I don't really like the sharp look direct sunlight gives, but I think they turned out pretty good anyway.




måndag 6 juni 2016

Sweden's National Day

Hello everybody! Today, 6th of June is Sweden's National Day and we usually eat a little pastry, mostly with strawberries, on this day. This year my mum made a pastry called "nationaldagsbakelse", and that can be directly translated to "national day pastry". Last year we ate a fresh strawberry pastry, and that was also very good. But I really love this years pastry, it tastes delicious. The base tastes like almond paste and I love almonds, so it's perfect. It was topped with a strawberry dipped in chocolate and a lemon balm leaf.




lördag 4 juni 2016

Update post...

Hello readers! As you have probably already noticed, I don't really post every other day. Barely every week, and it's because interests go up and down, and right now I'm not really feeling like blogging. My interest for that is quite low at the moment. So that is that, now you know the reason of my absence. But my interest is coming back, but as I just said, it's going up and down.

I'm going to have summer vacation soon, the 9th this month. I also want to start blogging every day, even though I feel like it would be good to not take week long breaks first. I've also gotten tons of books from the library, and I'm hoping to read all of them this summer! Reading is the only thing I feel like doing right now, so I'm just going to read :) And to explain the photo of Sessan, it's very warm here lately, around 30°C, and that makes the cats very sleepy.