Spring breakfast!

Among the various Christmas presents, I forgot to mention another of my mother's creations for us, which is really ideal for having breakfast when the sun is shining outside.

We got four small tablecloths, which I think will be perfect for use in these occasions.

And since it seems that the spring is finally coming (let's hope it is not an illusion), it will be nice to start to use them for some serious business ;)

More baby theme

Of course, like every mom-to-be baby things are quite an obsession, especially near the end of the pregnancy. Let's not talk about the fact that we are behind all preparations, but let's focus on what we have mainly got so far, instead!

We got this funny snake directly from Israel, the first extremely foreign present, which is colorful and have a lot of fancy sounds:

The best though is the expression of the head:

We can go back into the normal field of clothing, thanks to grandma' (farmor):

To be combined with:

Or this (the pink hat was a present fr:om Italy, instead). I think the white hat might be a good "first hat" depending on how big the head will be...

Also Mattias' mother has done some handcrafting for our baby, this is a nice soft blanket that she can have when it is a bit chilly outside:

But when it is a bit warmer, we can reuse this coming from my brother (I mean, my brother was the first to use it):

Or maybe we can experiment with this sleeping sack instead of using sheets and blankets:

But maybe she will like to have these smalls and warm dresses as pijiamas instead?:

Operation "Walk in closet" aka, "it never ends"

Maybe stating that "it never ends" is not exactly correct. The work per se is not a 200 hours work, but the problem for us has been to find the time to do every single step of this operation.
We started this autumn and we have come as far as now it is time to put back the objects in.
However:

1. we could not remove properly the wooden strips. We managed just on one side and then we had to glue it up back because the constructions was badly done from the start. This meant that where we put the wallpaper there is a strange "cut" and the wallpaper doesn't go behind the strip :-/
2. we totally forgot to look for the floor. We didn't think at all if the floor would be matching the wall so now we have some sort of linoleum floor that is not exactly beautiful and we can't remove it due to the wooden strips. I am thinking of putting just another layer on top, but we need to consult some "expert" before doing this or we will do a mess
3. putting up the wallpaper was not exactly as easy as we thought, although we bought an "easy up" wallpaper.
4. we had to buy a good deal of tools to handle several steps and this means that we need even more storage place for all of this ;-/

Nevertheless, this is the result so far!
Detail of the wallpaper (I really love the butterfly motif and the silverish shade):

I think we did a good job with the color choice, it is not that pink to be lame:

We put back one of the shelves after covering it up with the wallpaper. I think it became pretty nice:

Next?
First put back some of the things that were originally there. Part of the plan is to try to label properly the boxes and cover the ones that have no special pattern with some nice colorful paper.
Try to see how much space is left and what we need still to put in. For example, it would be a nice idea to buy some shoe furniture that can store many shoes.
But we want also to have something fancy, like a mirror, that could cover the panel with the fuses. Like this one:

And this needs to be done asap, since the guestroom is covered in all these objects and we need to sort them out before our baby come! A lot of her clothes are in the pile and they still need to be washed :-/

Swedish style tapas?

I believe it is one of the latest trends to open restaurant that instead of serving big portions of food, serve smaller portions (and of course a smaller price) in order to make it become more like a tasting party of different dishes. I also think that this is inspired by the tapas concept and why not, it is not that bad afterall if the bill doesn't become too high and the menu is not too ambitious.
The risk with this concept is to try to cover too many dishes and too many kitchen, but yesterday, we were at Plockepinn and we thought that that was a good implementation of such an idea.
There was some asiatic inspiration in the dishes, but all together, the dishes we took were nice and the menu rich but not absurd.

The high peak of the evening (if we exclude the extra scratches on the car and the fine)?
* Some simple french fries with mayonnese, which were really nice
* Korean inspired seeweed sallad
* Deep fried scampi, with a nice dip sauce
* The lemon sorbet

I guess Mattias might have had other high points, but I think these were the best for me.

The restaurant itself is located in the choklad fabriken building (Mazetti house), with a feeling (or ceiling) of industrial/office taste which was not that great in the attempt to make the place look cozy, although designed with a modern taste.

Decent service, quite fast, a bit strange way of booking (we had a table between 18 and 20 - then I think they eventually would have kicked us out?), a place where we might come back, but that has not taken our breath away! 3.5 stars?

Celebrating birthdays!

February is a birthday month in almost every Wallergård's home. That is because (due to a special coincidence? ;D) 3 over 4 of the Wallergàrd's clan children (that are not that children anymore...) are born within one week.

This has always been an occasion to celebrate them all together with some dinner tradition and after breaking the chinese (almost new year) tradition, we have this year tried a new place: http://www.halltorpsgastgiveri.se/

The place seems to have quite a good name, and it is understandable why.
It is big, it has a nice view, you can organize whatever event there (they even put the beloved Swedish flag on the table, if you wish so) and they serve quite nice food. And finally, they have tablecloth on the tables!!

It is a pity that they have a fixed menu, or at least, they had it when we were there, but of course, it would have been nice to pick a look at a more a la carte menu.
The menu was Italian inspired and, with a quite odd (?) coincidence the waiter/sommelier was Italian (from Busto Arsizio!), hence he entertained mostly me and Mattias with jokes and comments, while explaining the menu.

The appetizer was some chicken-lever pate' served on a crostino, and even Mattias who is not fond of this at all, ate it with taste. For me it was perfect in order to raise the amount of iron in my blood ;)
The first dish was a minestrone with an omelette. Odd the combination with the frittatina, but it was nice since it had a ricotta background taste. The minestrone had the "home made" feeling, although I am in love with the frozen minestrone you can buy in Italy ;)

The main dish (or actually the second one) was some veal-roll filled with mozzarella and served with "sicilian vegetables" (artichokes and I don't remember what) and some sort of arancino, not arancino. but similar to arancino (that unfortunately had some mushroom background taste). The meat was good, but a little bit dry, the sauce of course helped a lot.

Finally, for dessert an heart-shaped cookie (sold as "biscotto della nonna"), a strawberry ice cream and a small little cake with vanilla cream and berries.

The best? I can't decide between the ice cream and the crostino. Personally, the thing I liked the least was the veal, but it is also true I am not a big meat fan and I am extraordinary picky on meat quality. However, it was a surprisingly good result for being a French chef and who knows if this will become a new tradition or we will create a new one to try out some other food and see if the quality will be consistent ;-)

Where to change a baby...

Or where to wash her!
That is: how to avoid to have 200 pieces of furniture floating around in your already tiny and squeezed apartment?

Well, I really didn't want to buy that many additional objects for all of this, so my initial proposition was to reuse an Ikea Malm drawer, put on top a changing mattress and be happy like that. Then, the thought that it was just big enough for the mattress, that I would have to fight with the wall and that I would have to carry around water and so on in the bedroom made me change my mind. When I saw our old changer that my mother still use for all the babies of the next generation, I realized maybe having something more "comfy" wouldn't have hurt that much, since it was just one piece of furniture and not 300.

We first saw this:

which can be found in Babyringen in Malmö, which was cheap and practical. However, we thought it was a bit "too plastic" and slightly instable for our taste.
We then jumped directly into an offer for this item, instead:

and we went to the shop, but thanks to the really nice price, the item was sold out. We are now waiting that they will bring it back in stock (and that we get the time to go there again). We would like to have it white and not natural wood, since it will be better in our bathroom.
In this way, we will gain a drawer that can be used also later on, since both the changing table and the bath part can be removed and just covered with a wooden surface.

Another item for the baby! Check!

Buying a pram

As many other parents to be or quite recent parents, we have experienced the nightmare of the pram choice.
There are simply too many possibilities and too many models. It is a jungle and one needs quite some luck in order to get out of there, sane.

We had the opportunity to borrow the complete pram from my brother, but we decided to use it instead as "base" in Italy, giving us the freedom to travel much lighter. At least from here to Italy.
The choice then was narrowed to models that would be possible to find in the Swedish market and we were quite confused on what we wanted for several months, also because, due to the dimensions of our bedroom, what we would have been buying would have been connected to where our baby would sleep (or at least to understand what to buy based on our pram choice).

Initially we were thinking of going for a pram without a carrycot, so that we could buy a moses nest for the sleeping part. However, buying a moses nest here in Sweden seems quite expensive (even though this item in UK is instead quite cheap) and we ended up surfing for prams and finding other models.

The first is a moses basket from Mamas and Papas, while the second is a version (not the nicest colors combination though) of a Teutonia Lambda without carrycot.

What we were after was something that could be a practical city pram (no big wheels both on front and back), with turnable front wheels, not too low (my back could not take diving into the pram to take the baby up), with all sorts of decent functions a pram, these days, should have (adjustable handle, good space on the bottom, compact when folded).

We got slightly interested in a model that seems though really hard to find in Sweden, but we could not find the original producer.

This is a Queenette Cross Fire

Finally, digging out similar models we ended up in a Polish brand, Tako. They have few models in different versions and it seemed to have all the characteristics we wanted.
Included a really nice price, nice dampening (if you see above the Queenette has quite flat tires) for Lund's cobblestones and quite light as well.
So now, we are simply not sure of which color combination we would like to have. But it is matter of hours, since we have decided to go to the shop today!
Will it be this?
http://pyretosnackan.se/barnvagnar/tako/jumper-minerals-barnvagnar/jumper-minerals-3-in-1-gra/

This?
http://pyretosnackan.se/barnvagnar/tako/jumper-minerals-barnvagnar/jumper-minerals-3-in-1-svart-orange/

Or this one?
http://pyretosnackan.se/barnvagnar/tako/jumper-gt-barnvagnar/jumper-gt-3-in-1-1/