Busy times.....

Since the end of April Mr. M and I have been working very hard painting and renovating the house. Every spare hour for almost 2 months was spent scrubbing, scraping, sanding, hammering and painting until at the end of June we were done with the ground floor. We still have the upper floor to do. That treat we are saving until August/September due to sheer exhaustion! But we are happy with the results so far:

While all this has been going on, my bead business has been going from strength to strength. Yay! The rainy summer has possibly been good for business as people seem to be staying indoors and creating. Some of my bestsellers at the moment are my flower cabs and the colorful skull beads that I got in a few weeks ago (almost sold out!)

Staycation

Having a staycation this summer and am enjoying it immensely. I've bought lots of lovely plants for the veranda and my favourite has to be the gorgeous pink hydrangea.

June glorious June

Is there anything better than these lovely Swedish summer days? It is just after midsummer here and the evening light is gorgeous. This photo was taken on my veranda at 8.30pm this evening and it was still 27 degrees. The barbeque and rosé wine added perfectly to the atmosphere. Cheers to many more similar evenings......

Back in the day

The snow is finally melting, but this was a winter that is going to talked about for a long time. But today my thoughts turned to summer when I was playing around with a few photos that I'd taken a couple of years ago on a beautiful June summer's day. Alice and I had taken the ferry over to the island of Visingsö on lake Vättern and had rented bikes to cycle around.

My digital SLR was still a new toy, and very few minutes I'd had to stop and take a few shots. Unfortunately, as is the fate of many of my photos, they have ever since remained unseen on my hard drive. That is until today, when I decided to play around in Photoshop to try and give a few of my snaps the vintage feel that is so popular at the moment. I saved them as photoshop actions which I can then apply to other photos in the future, but there are many available for download on the net. The site moderskeppet explains them here, with some links.

These are the results of the morning's endeavours:

The Cake Barn

Well, Garnheim's Bed & Breakfast (aka. my house) has officially closed its doors for the season after a month of guests, mainly family over from England. We have had lots of fun and eaten LOTS of cake.

The cause of this cake gluttony is several visits to "The Cake Barn" as we have dubbed it - or "Lustfyllt" which is its Swedish title, a beautiful converted barn with an all-you-can-eat cake buffet.

If you happen to be visiting Habo (18km north of Jönköping on road 195) then this is the place to go. There are also many antiquey bits and bobs for sale, as well as the owner's pottery. A lot of thought seems to have gone into this concept as every corner is like a scene from an interior design magazine. Judge for yourself from the pics I took.......