The Holidays aren't quite over yet...

After spending almost 2 weeks in Stockholm over Christmas and New Years we are headed upstate this weekend to enjoy one last Christmas celebration with my side of the family. I definitely missed waking up super early to retrieve our stockings and wait for the Rents to get up and open up the bigger gifts, but Stockholm is so pretty this time of year with all the Christmas stars in the apartment windows and candles. We also may have enjoyed far too many Julbords this year ;) 

I am bound to get tons of festive photos this coming weekend, but in the meantime I thought I would post a few pics from Stockholm and of the mini-julbord we enjoyed with Magnus's mom on Christmas Eve:

* Strandvagen 

* Gamla Stan (old town Stockholm)

Now for the food and holiday celebration:

* Clockwise from the white matter on the left side (which happens to be my famous Skagen), we have cooked red cabbage, prince korv (mini sausages), a couple kottbullar (swedish meatballs), julskinka (christmas ham), smoked prawns, aoili, fish roe and in the middle of the plate, rodbetssallad (red beet salad, my personal fav)! This was all accompanied by some hard bread/cheese and vort limpa (swedish christmas bread)... YUMMO people!

* Though a bit jetlagged and tired, Mags is super pumped for the feast!

Leaving on a jet plane...

Tomorrow Hubs and I are jetting off to his motherland to hang out with the fam-in-law and catch up with some long lost friends for 2 weeks.  The trip is bitter sweet because selfishly, I like to spend the holidays with my family since I have a couple siblings to keep the Christmas spirit alive (and wake up at the butt-crack of dawn with). I am looking forward to a little vacation though... even if it will entail social obligations pretty much everyday, all day.

We made a quick jaunt upstate to the Haven this past weekend and we took a butt load of pics with our Nikon... however, tis the season of being beyond busy and not getting anything done or uploaded.... *sigh. I did however manage to snap a few shots on my iPhone as usual and have posted them below. The pics are from our newly painted upstairs... which used to be orange...can you even imagine?

* Bookshelf that needed some freshening up!

* You can see in the back bedroom the wall that has been patched and ready to get primed...

We hope everyone has a fantastic holiday and wish everyone a happy, prosperous and healthy New Year!

I have the best intentions of blogging while away, but I have to be realistic with myself and not make any promises that I would be unable to keep.

Puss och Kram (xoxo)!



T-minus 9 days...

until Hubs and I take off to Sweden for a nice vacation. I feel like I have so much to do in terms of getting ready for this holiday before I leave and can finally feel relaxed. All our family gifts have been purchased and only half are wrapped... I have TONS of sugar cookie dough in the fridge just waiting to be made into holiday shaped cookies..... I haven't even begun to think about packing and I need to make sure our cat has all her provisions before shipping her off to her UpstateHaven (haha) to be with my family for the time we are away.

This past week, as you know, my Mom and Brother were in town on Friday night and then my friend Melis was in town for Saturday night.... I felt overwhelmed at the thought of so many guests in one weekend, but once the actual weekend rolled around it felt fantastic to have so many loves in town with me. We also met up with one of Hubbie's childhood friends on Sunday for a coffee in the afternoon. It was a very social weekend indeed! We did get a chance to go for a long walk and do some window shopping on Sunday before meeting up for coffee..... while we were perusing the windows, I came across this sign at a bakery:

* While this may offend some parents out there, I think it is absolutely hilarious!

Hoping to have some good quality decor posts after this coming weekend when we will be up at our UpstateHaven for the night on Saturday. There has been some painting going on in the upstairs part of the house and we finally got some new gutters.... oh the excitement ;)

I will leave you with this picture of our annual Christmas tree (please excuse the horrible lighting and bluriness) ...

For some reason this year we have been experiencing major light outages from our strands of lights and it is super frustrating to come home to half a strand out pretty much weekly. What gives?



Why oh why....

must my place of employment be oh so very rigid with their employees on when they can leave on a sleepy Friday night when the persons family is in town? I come in 30 minutes early every single stinking day... I think that constitutes leaving an hour early on Friday's don't  you?  *(long) sigh

TGIF folks....

It's been a long week of work/getting the ready for the holidays, prepping the apt for guests and putting together the MOST difficult Ikea wardrobe known to man. I don't know about all of you, but the Hubs and I both have a love for clothes and shoes and we had run out of storage space ions eons ago (thank you Marcus).... resulting in clothing piles in basically both bedrooms of our apt. With guests coming into town and and my strong dislike of sifting through clothes piles daily to find what I need, we broke down and finally got a new storage system for our bedroom. The wardrobe looks fantastic all put together and the red really adds a little something extra to our white/gray room, but boy oh BOY was she hard to put together... we are talking a two day project (being married to a Swede, that is pretty much unacceptable ha). I will be sure to posts some pics of the final product though after this weekend :) It really did clean up our space TONS!

So tonight my mom and brother are coming into town (they are actually en route as I type this) and I am so excited to do some shopping/dining with them if only for a few hours. My friend Melissa also comes to stay with us this weekend after my family leaves on Saturday. We have big plans to go and see "Martha Marcy May Marlene" and I am pretty pumped! Tomorrow night we will be having a leisurely dinner with some good girlfriends and that pretty much sums up my weekend plans.

You will have to excuse my lack of posting ... there is really no excuse, but with the holidays coming up I feel like I have been 150% go go go.

I am ill prepared with any fun UpsateHaven pics or new Wardrobe pics, but I thought I would leave everyone with a beautiful hair style and hair accessory that is beyond gorgeous for the holidays or any peeps tying the knot anytim soon ;)

* Photo via WhoWhatWear (I only WISH I was this creative with my own lifeless locks)

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and make sure to dress warm as those wintry temps have finally caught up to us!

xoxo

Temporary rooms and furniture...

First off, I need to excuse myself from my lack of posting. The winter doldrums have been setting in, even though the weather has been more like summer the past few days ... the excitement of the lights going up around the city and Thanksgiving already upon us.... it just hasn't felt that festive yet this year. Due to the non-festiveness of it all, I have been lacking in the creativity dept and the blog suffers as a result.

Last weekend we celebrated the 1st birthday of my friend Jen's son, Rowan. It was great to see all the little tykes running around and of course some of my highschool girlfriends that I don't get to see all that often. We also hosted our friends, Kristen and Andrew, at our house for an overnight! Since we have been prepping for the big Turkey day at the Erhardt residence and for my MIL (mother-in-law) to come over, we turned our office into a temporary guest bedroom, just until she leaves. As of right now we have a blow-up mattress in their for our guests. Now, one would think that the bed would have started to deflate by now or that blow-up beds are really not that comfy.... let me tell YOU... this bed is a queen size blow-up with built in pillows and is the height of a regular bed. It is beyond comfy and our guests have never had any complaints. In fact, I think it's a shame to even replace it with a real mattress/boxspring. It even looks convincing:

* This pic is abnormally small and will be replaced later today by a fullsize.

Another temporary situation was the double bed we were using as a makeshift until our queen size mattress/boxspring is delivered this coming weekend. I have to say, since I have become accustomed to sleeping on a queen size mattress the double was sheer torture. Coming from a couple who do not like to be in close proximity to eachother once nodding off... it was seriously the pitts! YAY for new beds and for how our bedroom is shaping up (sorry, another terribly small pic... these will be adjusted):

We will leave you all with one final picture for the day.... our living room has recently had some new additions to it.... 2 side tables (instead of one large coffee table) and a new TV (hiding in the right corner). We had debated whether or not to even get a television set for our UpstateHaven since it is supposed to be a weekend retreat.. however, with the MIL coming into town and upstate weather (which is super unpredictable) we figured it may be a good investment:

One day we hope to have "grown-up" chairs in our living room... we just haven't fallen in love with anything yet!

Quiet days ....

on the UpsateHaven front. We have no new projects to report on and we haven't been upstate in over 3 weeks... it feels like a lifetime! The next time we are at the upstate home there are so many little things that need to be done in order to get the house ready for Thanksgiving and Magnus's Mom's stay..... cleaning/arranging some new furniture (although nothing big) and more cleaning haha. You could say I have cleaning issues.... it is how I take out my frustrations and also it keeps me calm (even though while I am in the process of it I can get quite surly).

As I've reported in previous posts, we are hosting our families annual Thanksgiving dinner and instead of only celebrating with either my Mom's side or Dad's side this year, everyone is invited! I would love to be able to zoom through the next few weeks and just get to Thanksgiving already. The thought of hosting so many people (18 if everyone attends) is nerve racking... but making me more excited than anything to show how the house is turning out, our festive tables and all enjoy some yummy potluck style Thanksgiving dinner... I'm drooling just thinking about turkey/stuffing and green bean casserole (wouldn't be a holiday without it!).

My ultimate TGiving table would look something like this...

* Pic from Decor Ideas via Pinterest

everyone will just have to settle for some good old gords/tea lights and pumpkins.... maybe some antlers from my parents very own garage if we are feeling extra festive!

Any recipes out there that we should bring to the table this year other than the usual Thanskgiving staples? ..... green bean casserole..... fresh cranberry sauce with orange zest..... pumpkin pie... definitely looking for something new this year to accompany Tom Turkey.