quick update

god, it's been SO long since my last update...:-O

first we had our visitors from india, then my dad, then most of tilda's family popping in!

so, there are lots of pics to put up and news to relate...first, some pics!

well, i managed to give myself a good burn not too long back. i was making a lovely chantrelle sauce and when i was pouring it over to a canteen some of it ran down the sleeve of my chef's jacket and by the time i sat down the pot and stripped it off it had done it's damage already.
it's been about 3 months or so now and though it's faded a lot...still very visible. :-( my perfect body marred! almost feel like freddy kruger! lol

lost some weight recently, thanks to cindy crawford workout tape from the 90s (shame)and our old dance mat that we had purchased for the kids (less shame). here i am demonstrating how much i've lost by putting on a pair of tilda's jeans! lol


only thing was that there wasn't enough room for my "underneefies"! (both shame and male pride battling here)

















finally warmed up after a cold winter so i took the girls fishing. here they are patiently awaiting me to pull sharks out of our lake. lol

started taking the kids to work with me during the summer...tried taking both at once but the wrecked havoc and i vowed to only have one kid at a time. :-D
erin was bored one day while i was busy so i got out the old bartenders uniform from when we used to have a pub decades ago and let her try it on...she the stood next to the cash register the rest of the day and was our host...greeting guests and taking orders!
could YOU resist anything this little face asked of you???

















one afternoon we went to erin's school here in the village to assist in spring clean-up. me and tild chose the cushy job of re-oiling all the wooden swings, see-saws and monkeybars and such. here's how tired and possibly high tild was after we'd painted a forest of wood...







another day we went to leksand's medievil market. SO much fun with all the merchants there in costume and selling handicrafts and demostrating how things were made way back when. poeple actually got put in stockade if their attire was too out of time or were caught using mobile phones or...gasp!...laptops! anyway, we stopped at a both with spices(ofcourse) and saw this lovely spice mix. to get the joke, i have to explain something. you know the hannibal lector movie "silence of the lambs"? in sweden they translated the name of the movie to "när lammen tysnar" "when the lambs be silent" so this spice is meant to be used on lamb and they named it "när lammen kryddas""when the lamb is spiced"...hmmm...hilarious in swedish anyway...*grumbles*


vera showing off her cute strawberry coin purse...almost as cute as her hello kitty hat which is ALMOST as cute as vera herself. lol





dad finally came and was good enough to bring me what i long for(besides a cold dr pepper)...a cowboy hat!



a very cute and very strangly dressed teenybopper we noticed at the bus stop. she was being harrassed by a very drunk old perv so i went up to her and asked if she'd let me take a pic of her because erin and vera thought she was SOOOOO beautiful! the stubborn old perv hung around anyway but atleast i broke his train of evil thoughts...:-P


a very blurry but VERY stunning tilda in my favorite color on her....RED! *kiss*



another beautiful pic of my wife(it's SO hard to take a bad pic of her...you have to catch her eating or asleep to get a pic that doesn't show off some aspect of her lovliness) plus you gotta love the retro 80s get-up...fabbo!




little lady erin...highheels and stockings! *faint*







vera still likes to be a little cutey pie and at this point daddy is very happy with that! lol

that's all for now i guess...will try to put up more soooooooooon. lol

Vikarbyn II, this time it's personal

Hello, once again! So soon after my last post...i feel like Dean Koontz on speed. But since i've had requests from far and wide to give more regular updates...here it is!

One of the things we love about our house in Vikarbyn is the beautiful logs that the previous own let show when he re-did the place.

They show the structure of the house and give it a real country feel. It's one of the things that made us fall for it at first sight.

That second pic is before we moved in...the day we came to see it. Matilda was already in love with it and i caught her fire and knew she was right as soon as i saw it too! THIS was OUR place!

I forgot to mention the other room we have on the property! we have an actual root cellar! It's under a grove of cherry trees and right now we have some 50odd kilos of potatoes in there.

Matilda refuses to go down there...can't really blame her though. It is a bit creepy...Everytime i go down i always stop at the door when i open it and wait to see if i hear any pitterpatter of little rat feet. :-D

Now, i'll put up some random pics that i like of our place:

To round things off, here's a pic of a happy Matilda after we had seen the place and we went in to Rättvik and walked out on the amazingly long pier there...check out those ice bergs!

Heavenly Vikarbyn

You know...sometimes a place just fits you...your lifestyle or the way you want your kids to grow up or something about it just feels "right". It's almost enough to make me believe in reincarnation...i think i lived in Vikarbyn in another life...cause it fits all those descriptions.

I mean....look at that. quite a view, eh? here's the same view in clearer weather:

That the wonderful Lake Siljan...a few minutes walk from our house. It has sandy beaches and the water is shallow(knee-high) out to about half a mile...so perfect for swimming little kiddies!

At the start of spring, they release some water from the dam down stream and the water levels lower so it's ALL sandy beach for as far as the eye can see! look:

Usually this is all covered by lovely sun-warmed water....and ofcourse since i was there alone and working while my family was back in Västerås in our old house and i missed them terribly, i took the time to do something special:



lol





There are so many pics i'd love to put up of our house...but my current favorite is one that Matilda took...catches the angle perfectly and shows the best of our new home:

That's the "backside" of our house and the guest house...just love this pic so much!

another view of the guesthouse and it's attached buildings:

That's the guesthouse all the way to the right...next is the woodshed, then the garage, then the toolshed. around the corner is one more room and small storage shed that has...it's own well! still need to have that water checked to se if i can use it for gardening. It's deep though...i took a LONG stick and tried to reach bottom...didn't (brrrr...) so right now it have a lid over it and a lot of bricks stacked on the lid and a tree trunk on top of the bricks...all to discourage curious kids from investigating. :-D

I think i'll have to break this one up into 2 posts...too many pics to show and there are a ton of dishes with my name on them in the kitchen! bye for now!

Dessert, anyone?

one of the only reasons to eat really disgusting healthy food is so that you can feel all high and mighty when you get to the real food, dessert! i think we're in agreement on that, right?
well, i'm gonna start you off with dessert...cuz i'm just that nice.

now that's nice isn't it? this was a delicious chocolate cake i baked at work a month or so ago. the center was all soft and slightly gooey, just like i love. that's powered sugar on top, cuz it wasn't as sweet as i thought some customers would like so i topped it with that for a little SHAZZAM!

now this....this is one of matilda's favorites...sweet rolls done in a pan. the thing about doing them in a pan is that they tend to rise more when they have the support around them...these were actually filled with honey and thyme and lots of butter. :-P so much so that they're almost inedible when cold. they HAVE to be warmed up to get the full effect.

this cake is also something interesting...i found a recipie for a dry mix that you can store in your cabinet and take out enough to make a cake when needed. just add egg, oil and your desired flavor. entirely too dangerous to have at home! but i make it at work quite often since the variations are endless. these 2 you see are chocolate and the other is the one that has become the most popular: apple cinnamon!















these 2 are from my summer working at the bowling place. we get the time and have the budget to get a bit more fancy there. the one on the left is rättvik's vanillia ice cream with fresh strawberries, mint leaf and chocolate spirals. the one on the right is a lightly baked choclate cake with rättvik's ice cream on one side and mango puré on the other.

this beauty i'm holding up is a perfect milk shake i made one hot summer day after working in the bowling place all day. rättvik's ice cream and chocolate...with a little milk to smooth it out. god it was GOOD! in the background you see my bike...i needed that 7k bike ride home after that milkshake!

and lastly i'll present to you my special pancake cake. that's 29 layers of thin swedish pancakes with jam between each layer. i served this to matilda on her 29th birthday morning. ain't i the sweetest husband ever????

LOL...!

hi there, faithful readers!



i know it's been a while since i let you know how life has been with us Farmers but it's been hectic and job and kids and everything that can keep me away from here has seemed to pop up all at once. plus i quit coffee...so there! :-P



i was gathering pics for my next blogg entry on food(i'm a chef, so grab a drool napkin) when i noticed just how many food pics i have in this pc...so, i decided to instead post some of the pics of me as a little kid until i sort out how to add 50-odd food piccies into one blogg post.



so, me as an innocent little brat:

and this is what became of that sweet face:

well, that should hold you laughing until i get a chance to compose the food issue...cya then!