Stockholm - Day 3

Hello readers! Today I did not do much, just spent most of the time inside and had a calm day, and it was really nice. Tomorrow is our last day here, and I am probably going to go out and do a little bit of shopping. There are some things I really would try and get, especially since school starts in a couple of weeks. I will probably try to take some photos tomorrow and try to make a post before the train back to Gothenburg.

Today I share with you, a photo of the sunset from Stockholm's archipelago and a hot air balloon that passed by. I thought the photos fit nicely together. And speaking of photos together, you who follow me on Instagram might have notice that it was quite a while since I posted anything. That is because my phone right now is having some problems, but hopefully I can get a new phone soon, so that will be fixed.

Stockholm - Day 2

Hello everybody! I have tried gathering some photos to post since last post - as I promised in that post - and I do have a bunch of photos to share with you, but it's a little bit too late today and I'm really tired. Somehow I almost forget about blogging today, and when I remembered it was late and I was about to go to bed. So I just edited these three photos for you readers today, but hopefully I will have more time and not be as tired when I get back home - train home on late Friday evening. I've also been filming little parts here and there, maybe the clips turn out decent enough for me to put it together into a clip.

Anyway, moving on to talking about the actual photos in this post. These are three photos of Stockholm, taken from the water. I might also mention that the first photo is of an amusement park, just in case you are wondering.

Stockholm - Day 1

Hello readers! I know it has been a few days since I posted last time, it was not supposed to be like that, but I totally thought I had scheduled posts until Sunday. Yesterday I thought I was going to be able to write a book review on the train and then post it when we arrived in Stockholm, but I packed down my computer in my suitcase so I couldn't use it during the train ride, and then I forgot about it.

Today I just wanted to make this quick little post, because I don't want to forget about posting yet another day. Hopefully I will be able to get enough photos the rest of these days - I think that is totally possible - so that I can make lots of posts. Because, as you might know by now, I don't like making posts with more than 5-8 photos. Posts with more photos than that tend to take longer to load and somehow makes it lag a little bit.

Lastly, here is a photo I took right before writing this. I think the sky is very nice, the weather is a bit strange with sudden rains, but the clouds in the photo were nice.

Horses

Hello readers! I've mentioned this a few other times, but my summer job is at a local stable/shop and of course there are horses there. Today I spent a little bit of my lunch break walking around in the mares hage, and as you can see from the photos they were very interested in me, having their ears pointed at me the entire time. They were not scared at all, just curious. It was almost a little bit hard to get some good photos of them because they came too close - like you can see a little bit of in the third photo. Either way, they are really adorable and I think the photos of them were cute. If anyone is curious, here is the link to their website: Ale Ridsport

Tomorrow is my last day of work, and on Monday I'm going to Stockholm for five days. That means it is a lot of photos coming up. I will probably not be able to edit and put up all the photos from Stockholm the day I take them, so sometime next week there will probably be another book review and maybe some more horse photos - I have saved some photos for that, just in case - just so you know, but of course I will write more about that in my future posts!

Two year anniversary!

Hello readers! Today is the two year anniversary of my blog. Last year, in my One year anniversary post I recreated the very first photo I uploaded in my first post, Välkommen (Welcome). But this year I felt like I couldn't just do the same thing again. My Hoya Bella - where the flowers are from - isn't blooming either so even if I wanted to I couldn't do it. To be honest I don't have any special photos to share with you. I was thinking about what I could post today, and I decided on a sunset photo.

If you have been following my blog for a longer time, or looked back on my previous posts, you will notice that there is a fair share of sunsets amongst the photos. I love watching the sunset, and I love photographing it. Because of that, I thought I might post a sunset. I also decided to put in a photo of Maja, because she and the other cats have also had a lot of posts dedicated to them over the past years.

Another attempt with the roses

Hello readers! In the very beginning of this month I made a post with some more pink roses but the focus was not that great because it was a little windy that day so the roses moved a bit in the wind. Usually that is not a problem, I can just hold the branch or flower with my hand, but since these are roses I didn't want to because they have thorns. So those photos did not turn out perfect, but I really wanted to get some good photos of those roses.

Yesterday I decided I would try again since the roses are still blooming and there was no wind. This time the photos turned out sharp and good, like they are supposed to be. I did however change the settings a little bit between photos and you can see that there is a change of color in the photos, but I think it was alright.

Book review: Vielleicht Esther

Title: Vielleicht Esther (Perhaps Esther)
Author: Katja Petrowskaja
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Year published: 2014
Pages: ~250
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy if from Bokus (in Swedish) and if that is not the case you can buy if of Amazon (in German).
Other: Original language is German, I read a Swedish translation but the book has no English translation at the moment.
Previous book review: Gilead

Discovering history

In this book Katja writes small segments - divided into six chapters - where she shares the life of her family members. Their lives plays out during WWII, in Poland, Ukraine and Soviet. Some manages to survive, others do not. She also travels to places where past events took place, like Babij Jar. There are some photos of the people and places mentioned throughout the book, and that really gives a connection to reality. She discovers past events and ties them back to today - what had today been like if this had been different back then?

I didn't feel hooked during the first chapter, it felt like a messy way to paint a family tree that stretches far back. The second chapter and forward on the other hand was great. I was really eager to finding out more, and if there was another book with more stories of Katja's family members I would read it as well.

Turning numbers into people

Something this book did was giving another perspective on WWII. To know that 20 million people died is one thing, but to hear some stories from those who survived - and some who didn't - really turn numbers into people. Of course this is not the first time this has been done, but it was done well in this book.

It is a shame that this haven't been translated into English, because even if this is not a feelgood it is a good book and I did very much enjoy reading it. I read it in less than a week and it was really making me hooked. If you can find a language to read this on I really recommend it!

Maja

Hello everybody! I hope you have had a good weekend. I was with one of my friends yesterday, and today I just spent at home, reading. It has been very warm here, we have had a bit of proper summer heat, finally. This past week the weather has just gotten warmer and warmer, now it is around 30°C during the day and no wind to speak of. During work - I'm outside about half of my time at work - it's too hot, and I have gotten weird tan lines from wearing t-shirts everyday. But towards the evening it gets cooler and today I took the opportunity to go outside in the garden with Maja.

She was very delighted and meowed and purred a lot, and it was great. I took a bunch of photos and picked out the best ones. It was a bit hard to keep the number of photos down, but I narrowed it down to my four favorites. I hope you haven't got tired of her. To be fair, I haven't made an entire post about her in over a week.

Leaves

Hello readers! Since the successful try in the beginning of this week, I wanted to try and take some more photos in the beautiful evening light, so today I tried again. I took some photos of the leaves of my other Hoya. Now, these photos did not turn out as good as the one I took in the beginning of the week. I don't remember what day that was exactly, but probably Monday I suppose. These photos turned out more like my attempts usually turn out, not great.

Despite that I decided to share the photos, mostly because the photos are not terrible. Also the first photo down below was pretty good, or it had potential at least.

Wild flowers

Hi everybody! I found more photos that I never shared because I forgot to. It is because I was going to get rid of all my past little notes with posts that I though I had already done, but on the note for last month I found another post. The previous post with the dessert was also from last month, and so is this. I guess it doesn't matter at all that these photos were taken last month either, because it is not like the photos have turned old or anything.

Moving on to the actual photos then. This is a bouquet made with wild flowers that my mum made to midsummer. When I took these photos I was playing around with where I had my focus and so on, but I'm not that good so the photos are a bit messy. Or at least some of them are, because then the sharp thing was not far away enough from the background so it didn't look great. But it can only get better, and some photos were good so it's alright.

Sessan

Hi readers! Today I was outside with Sessan, she was enjoying the warm weather and I took some photos of her. She was sitting up, but then she got surprised by a butterfly, rolled around on her back and then she ran away, trying to catch it. You can see it happening in the three photos I decided to post. I took more photos but she was moving around so they turned out rather blurry so I didn't like them.

I'm really trying to blog every day, and I think it's going well. This far I haven't missed any posts, so it's good. I hope you readers think it's good too, even though I know I post on very different times. It's just because sometimes I blog in the evening and other days after work, or between work and dinner etc. Regardless of what time, I do try to post every day and since it's working I think it's all good.

Decorated mousse

Hello readers! Quite a while ago I mixed some ordinary powder mousse in two flavors, chocolate and lemon i believe. Then I layered them in a nice glass and topped it off with some chocolate and berries. I thought I had already shared the photos with you, because this was almost a month ago, but going back I could not find the post and I never crossed over the little note I made to myself to remember what photos I wanted to put in the post. So here they are, it's just a simple decorated two layer mousse.

I don't think it turned out great, but I guess I can just post it anyway, because if nothing else I do enjoy looking back on my previous posts and see what I did when and so on. So I can admit that some posts - like the one where I graduated - is mostly just for myself to look back on. The photo quality was terrible etc. but that was not the point of the post so it was okay.

Garden flowers

Hello everyone! Today I went outside during the afternoon instead of the usual evening, so the lighting is different. It was not raining/cloudy so that also changed the lighting a bit. I tried to stand so that the photo was under a shadow, because then you don't get the sharpness of a photo that is taken in direct sunlight. Because of that, you might see the outline of the shadow in the second photo, if you look close.

I am also very much intending to stick to blogging every day. The reason I'm blogging this early today is because I'm a bit tired, because I was working and have to wake up early, and I did not want to forget about it. I do want to take my photos in the evening, because that is when the lighting is best, but I think today was just fine too.

Evening lighting

Hello everybody! My favorite lighting of all is the evening lighting. I love the shadows and how yellow it is and the way it falls. The thing is, I don't usually take any photos in that lighting because I can't seem to make the photos look good, the shadows make it weird and it's too dim and so on. But today I tried and actually got a nice photo out of it. The plant is a Hoya, not sure which one, and I originally wanted to take the photo because it has grown so incredibly much lately. Then the photo turned out good, I think so at least, so I decided to post it.

I also took this photo of Maja, laying in my bed and being very cozy. She usually moves around a lot when she is laying or sleeping in my bed, so this is one of the rare times she actually didn't do that, so I am quite happy with todays photos. I have also decided that I am going to try and blog every day even though I'm working, because it is still easier than when I'm going to school and I enjoy doing this.

Book review: Gilead

Title: Gilead
Author: Marilynne Robinson
Genre: Fiction, Life
Year published: 2004
Pages: ~282
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy if from Bokus, and if that is not the case you can buy it of Amazon.
Other: Winner of Pulitzer Prize (2004) and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Previous book review: Reality: A Very Short Introduction

A lovely letter

The book is a long letter that Reverend John Ames write in 1956 to his young son. John Ames really go through a remarkable character development throughout the book. The tone and events described in the letter also changes towards the end. He starts out like an old man, a father, looking back on his life and writing down the stories he probably never will be able to tell his son. The reason for that, and the motive behind the letter, is that John Ames has a hart condition and he married a younger woman late in his life, so his son is only seven years old.

In his letter John Ames tell stories from his own life but also the life of his father and grandfather. It is also the story of the town of Gilead - located in Iowa - and the changes and times it has gone through. John Ames also writes down quite a lot of thoughts on passages from the Bible and he ponders the mysteries of life and death and time itself.

A truly amazing book

When I read the plot for the book, I thought it would be a slow and boring book. I was both right and wrong, because the book is very calm but there is a fair share of mysteries that John Ames sometimes starts to talk about but then interrupt himself and so the mysteries are revealed slowly. It is also a well written book in the sense of the language, the words seems like they are always picked carefully and I appreciate that.

I never found the book boring, because even during the less interesting parts of the story itself - when Mr Ames ponders the meaning of parts of Scripture for example - the language itself makes up for it and therefore carry the reader along.

Reading Gilead made me think that a lot of work and thought was put into the book, because it is very neatly done. As I said, the words seemed like they were all picked with care and I really feel like a lot of thought was behind the book as a whole. Not to mention, it truly is a different kind of book and that is why I did not really know how to give it a certain genre.

I would recommend this book to everyone who wants to read something outstanding and don't mind a book with a calm pace. The book deserves every award it has won, and more. It is some years old, but I feel like this book can never truly grow old.

Maja during the evening

Hello everybody! The Roy Fares cake recipe I posted some days ago was really quite popular, and that made me very surprised. I did not expect that at all, but I guess a bunch of you liked that post, so it is all good of course.

Today's photos are just of Maja. I love her so much and I never get enough of her - not even when she scream in my face at night because she wants to go outside instead of sleep. She was just lying outside, enjoying the warm evening and looking at people walking by. The weather these past weeks have been terrible, it has just rained all the time and the sky has been gray. Today it was sunny and nice for once, and I think she enjoyed the good weather.

White orchids

Hello readers! I believe I've already written a little about this in some previous post, but I thought it might be a good idea to tell you again. It is so that I'm working - starting this Monday (yesterday) - and I would probably not be able to post very frequently, so it will hopefully be around every other day or so. That is at least what I will try to aim for. The place I'm working at is a local stable/store and it's my summer job, so now you know.

These photos turned out a bit grainy. I don't know why exactly (bad lighting probably, as always) but I really wanted to post today, so I thought maybe it would be okay. The photos are not that terrible I guess, just a bit grainy.

Roy Fares - Espresso Cake

Hello everybody! This past week I have spent a lot of time trying to make an espresso cake. The recipe is from Roy Fares book United States of Cakes (link to the book on Bokus) and it was time consuming to make the cake, but everyone that ate it seemed to very much enjoy it. I baked the cake itself this Thursday, made one of the fillings on Friday and the next filling on Saturday. On Saturday I also put the cake together and today I did the decoration and we ate it.

Lake photos - 2

Hello readers! A long time ago, probably about two or three months ago, I went to a lake and took some photos. I tried to find the post to link it, but I didn't find it right away so I just ended up not doing that, but it is another post somewhere. Anyway, when I was there I took a bunch of photos but I only posted a few of them at the time, I probably didn't feel like editing all of them back then. Then I forgot that those photos ever happened - shocker I know, I forget to write so many posts I talk about writing... - but now I found them again, so here are some of those photos!