Let it shine

Happy New Year

 light has returned

as an evidence 

of something new,

another year is coming 

Join me for Christmas Coffee

- I'm so glad to see you! I hope you feel my warmest welcoming hugs when we get inside the Old shop and Café. Outside it's cold and snowy so we all long for a warm cup of tea or coffee together with something sweet. (you can click on the following photos to enlarge them)

We find that the little room with the fireplace is waiting for us with its small antique tables and chairs. We're chatting about our lives and how we're going to celebrate Christmas. I think that our talking also will concern serious subjects of tragical incidents in the world, but I hope that we also share stories of the good news. Tell each other about people with so much of benevolence even if their deeds never will be on the headlines. 

This is also a place for tranquil moments which I think is on the top of the wishlist for many of us. Before we all return to our RL we look around in the shop and maybe find something for our selves or a present to someone we know.

 It's getting late and it's time to go outside, say goodbye and wish everyone

A Merry Christmas!

Books for Christmas

While I'm doing all the preparation for Christmas I also like to decorate the house with books that we've bought to our children for Christmas when they were younger. But a favorite I've got is a book that my husband bought to me in the early nineties when he studied English. It is The Jolly Postman, I love it  and my nieces too, so I will put this one in the guest room when they come for Christmas eve.

The book is like a postbag of real letters to well-known characters like Goldlock that you can open and read. And now we're talking REAL letters like we wrote in the "good old days"! Not an  e-mail or SMS...

The Christmas Coffee tradition

I think it's mesmerising (a new adjective I learned this year!) that it will be the third time that I ask you to join me some days before Christmas. I will follow the tradition and have this cyber meeting in the old shop and café not far away from my where I live. This time I'm sending you the invitation already now so you can put a notice in the calendar. I will be here waiting for you from the 18th of December  and I hope we can admire all the things in the shop and have a cup of coffee while we're catching up with all that have happened.

I'm looking forward to this very much, to see you all and you're welcome to send my invitation to other cyber friends that you would like to meet here. There's a place for everyone, we just put one more chair around the table.

Mist and snow

Out for a walk along the river, it was grey, not rainy but the mist was dense, and someone I met called it a horrible boring weather. Before I got out I had the same thoughts about the weather, but when I stood there I didn't agree as I just had told myself to stop taking photos as I was out for a power-walk. 

I really enjoyed the environment and the air felt very clean and easy to breath. It was so beautiful, the landscape was covered of something that gave a very calm and soft appearance. I decided that I was going to show some of the photos on the blog and without any kind of retouching, just with frames. 

I wasn't alone, there were a lot of people along the path this Sunday morning, many of them with their dogs. Another animal that flew over my head several times was the Canada Goose. They came howling in V-formations and I tried to get them which wasn't easy as I only had my mobile. I missed them all the time! When I was almost at home I heard them coming along the river. 

- Now I'm gonna "shot" them! 

 

Like a hunter with it's prey I felt really pleased , but the photo wasn't the sharpest so I permitted myself to play a little with this one only. If last weekend was Grey November, we can call this weekend White December. This is what I woke up to this morning: 

Studded tires

My studded tires have given me strength and courage. We haven't got any snow yet but there have been mornings with frost and ice. I'm so pleased when I have the time to take the bike instead of the car. I know that there will become mornings with inches of snow but I hope I will make it at least some days in a week even though.

One more chance

It was in the afternoon and the sun went down from the sky to a very low level and caressed the treetops. The sunbeams left a magical light on the steeple. I was hurrying up, running on the frozen fields as the sun beguine to get down behind the forest. I felt like I was competing against the Sun herself. When I was close enough I raised the camera and pulled the trigger....

...nothing happend!

The battery was empty! I had been out for a while and it was a little chilly so I guessed that was the reason to the quick "quietus" of my battery. Oh, I was so disappointed that I had missed that chance.

Than something got into my head, some kind of fighting spirit. I didn't want to lose. I picked out the battery from the camera, opened up my jacket and placed it on the naked skin in my armpit. I stood there for some minutes and saw the sun getting lower and lower, but before it disappeared totally I took out the battery quickly to avoid the chill outside my jacket. And, pulled the trigger again....

....it worked!

But only once, but that didn't matter to me because the sun vanished and I returned home as a winner.

Seeking the roots

Yesterday I saw the start of the seconds season of the reality show Anything for Sweden. I followed the first season where ten  American participants return to a country that someone of their ancestors had left for about 100 years ago. Most of the ancestors had left a country that suffered with crop failure for a land where everything was possible and sometimes their only hope.

It sounds amazing but one in five residents left Sweden from 1800-1920 which was about 1.3 million, but some of them went back after some years like my grandfathers mother Frida. 

  

                                               

There are very much of emotions in the TV program when they get a chance to know more about the places and life that their ancestors had left. The winner on the first season was the charming priest Brian Gerard who talks about his experiences in the show Great Day Live

Worship of light

From one week to another

Going to work with the bike takes about 40 minutes so I have to get up quite early to be in time, and that wasn't any problem when it was as sunny and light as it was the morning when I stopped and took this photo. I really appreciate these mornings and even if I get a bit tired it also gives me energy for all I have to deal with during a day at school.

Sometimes I go by car with my husband (his working in the same direction), but with the bike hanging in the back of the car so I can take it when I go home in the afternoon. I guess that will be more common to me now as it's dark now in the mornings. But I have decided to make the bike more safe and put on the winter tires so I can handle the snow and ice....

......because that is what we have had in the beginning of this week. But now the snow is gone and I'm looking forward to a sunny day tomorrow.

Happy weekend!

Favorite place in October

I'm catching a moment when my youngest and I took the bikes and got out on this small island on the river. It was a  sunny Saturday and we brought some lunch and hot chocolate with us. I wanted to show her this wonderful place not far away from our house. I told her that I have been here all by myself earlier but now I enjoyed having her with me. We watched the migratory birds far away exercising for their long flying trip to warmer places. I love to come here especially in the autumn and now I remember that I also had written about it on the blog. 

This photo of my legs is from that post two years ago,  I still have those trousers when I'm out....

Sneaking in others garden

Morning in october with long shadows

Have been living in "my" town for about twenty years now but I still have thoughts about where I belong. When I visit my parents and siblings families who live in the village where I grew up it usually feels like I'm "coming home" and I think that I always have had some thoughts about going back ...some day.

A place for barbecue with friends

But something, I'm not shore about what it is, has begun to change. I remember my thoughts that Sunday morning when I did this walk through an area that I hadn't discovered before. I had passed it with the car hundreds of times, but too far away to really see the beauty. I realized that knowing a new place, even after twenty years, takes time and demands that you discover it from new perspectives. 

Have seen these allotments (community gardens) from a long distance but this morning I decided to walk close and take a look.  It was early and none of the owners where there and it wasn't any fence around it or signs about "unauthorized take no access!" So I walked around, enjoyed it very much and took some photos. But I couldn't help that I felt like a little snooper. 

I didn't plan this walk, I just got here so I only had my mobile to take the photos but I'm glad that I have it when there are occasions like this that I run in to something that means a lot to me.

Some allotments in other towns also have small cottages but this one only have gardens, but many of them had chairs and benches which was a surprise for me. I thought that they only cultured vegetables. But with so many beautiful flowers they must have something to sit on to admire it all. I guess this is a great possibility for those who live in apartments and now can have there own garden.

I guess that all community activities demands cooperation and this sign was about a "cleaning-day" to get together and also to eat hot-dogs!

Fall is here and we have had the first frosty mornings, my blogging has been a bit temporary as there are a lot of things going on but I'm thinking about you all my readers and wishing you all the best.

Maple and Ms Becky

This post is a greeting to Ms Becky and her post where she had a wonderful photo with a seed catkin (I don't know if that's the correct word). She's a very good photographer and blog friend! She always have many comments to her posts and I also wrote a comment about the maple:

Last week on my walk along the river I found them and asked my daughter to help me. I'm glad that she accepted her mothers strange ideas and also said that I could show it on my blog. 

River Walk

I was very close to take a little nap on Saturday after cleaning the house the whole morning. I was so tired, not just because of the "house fixing". I guess it was something that came over me after two weeks of starting up with the class at school after a long summer holiday. But instead of getting close to the bed (it was very tempting) I decided to go for a walk instead and I didn't regret that decision!
This hour of walking along the river gave me so much of energy, impressions and time to think, but also some raspberries to put in my mouth...

I tried to walk very fast and also took some running steps which made me exhausted when I got home, but it was a different kind tiredness than I felt earlier that day.

The beauty off darkness

The period with our light nights are over for this summer and it's getting darker now in the evenings. Last week we spent some hours in the forest by a little lake. It was a wonderful evening together with my family, with hamburgers on the grill, a fire to warm up and a sky that shifted colors through the night.

Rusty words

I'm having some kind of writer's cramp right now, both with my own post but also when I want to express myself in the comments to others. I think the worst is my rusty lack of adjectives. When I want to tell someone that I like their photo SOOOO much it feels like the only word I always use is:

Beautiful

and that word has always given me some very strange thoughts. I guess that the Beau -part is French, but the ironic with the last part of the word Ful is that it means ugly in swedish....

Translating verbs is much easier, the adjectives can mean so many different things to people depending on ages and  where they grew up. I think that there's also a fashion style with adjectives. I remember some years ago when the youngsters here in Sweden beguine to describe things they liked very much as "asom". It was very popular to say it and I didn't understand that word (had never learned it in school...) But I soon realized that it was an English word spelled awesome. When I grew up we used a word that my parents didn't say and it was Cool, but I think it was used like awesome today.

Pop music is a perfect way for children to learn English words as they usually repeat the words many times. A word that every kid here couldn't  have missed is Amazing, because of our music competition this year. I've written before that Loreen won with Euphoria but I think the song Amazing with Danny took the second place. His show with lamps in the clothes was a bit special so if you have some minutes and by the way, I think he also have the word awesome in the text.

A man from Idaho makes my dinner

- I've decided what we'll have for dinner, my daughter told me today!

Yes! I thought and off we went to buy what we needed at the store. But she wasn't sure about if we were going to have parsley or cilantro. We bought parsley but after watching the film again we realized that it should have been the cilantro...

The thing is that she made this only by watching Shayloss with Shaytard. She watched and stopped when it was necessary and it became very good result. I know that both my teenagers have followed Shay and his family on their vloggs a long time and I think they learn a lot of English thanks to it but learning about some healthy food is also very good. 

Here is Shay Tard's vlogg where he makes the dinner that I have been eating today. 

They have decided to have meatless Mondays, which I think is a very good idea that they will inspire others to, but I've had some thoughts about adults like Shay and his wife that show the life of their own children so much.