Summer projects: a garden playhouse

Yes, it was summer and we thought of resting. The thought disappear very fast when, when being in Kalmar, we saw the playhouse in Mattias' parents garden and Isabella. We had a summer project to accomplish! The restoration of the 30 years old small house!

It looked like there was no hope

The playhouse structure was simple, but very cute. A very heavy roof has made the roof support a bit too fragile and the lack of maintainance had made few boards rotten on the little entrance. Otherwise, we thought it would be enough to refresh it a bit.

Interior with small piece of leftover 80s posters

Somebody wrote a note on the masonite 

The yellow interior was definitely not inspiring and although the outside pink was not too bad, we thought that "falu red" would fit better with the rest of the buildings of Wallergården and would make it having a more traditional Swedish look.

A first layer of paint

Unfortunately, we were time optimist and we were hoping we would manage to at least complete the painting task before leaving Kalmar. We didn't count on having to deal with an Isabella that wanted to help by provoking us and painting herself instead of the walls. Luckily, we had the great help of farmor and her experience on the subject.

We were sad to have to drop the project on Mattias' parents, but the result was in this way better than if we - amateurs - would have tried to complete everything by ourselves.

The floor of the little verand is not yet painted, but everything else yes!

Farmor had some fun shopping second hand toys and decorate the little room. It became a very cosy place which Isabella adored (we a bit less, forced to sit on the small chairs getting served some coffee and tea).

A prepared dining table, with a beautiful textile hanging on the new peach colored walls

A very modern kitchen

What is also missing now is fixing the roof - those tiles are just not the right ones to have on such light building - and the floor. Maybe a nice piece of parquet would suit? :)
In any case, Isabella loved it and I hope she (with Oscar in few years) will have a lot of fun playing there when we go and visit her grandparents!

Wool wedding anniversary

For celebrating our wedding anniversary (7 years is "wool and copper"), we have decided to move east for the day and visit some nice place in Österlen.
It had been a while since we could visit Buhres, a very nice restaurant and fish shop in Kivik.
We were very much longing for a nice herrings buffet - which we haven't been tasting for a while, since few years ago, the restaurant was burnt down and it was not so long ago that they reopened it to the public.

New interior at Kajplats restaurant

The place looks again very beautiful. The interior has a strong connection with the marine style. It is light and fresh and each table is unique with the decorations.
We were though disappointed when we couldn't see anymore the spectacular buffet we were so much looking forward too. We looked at the menu and everything seemed very tasty and fish oriented. There should be more places like this also on the other side of Skåne - but possibly, half price ;-) The prices seem to have gone up to the sky!

We ordered the suggested three dishes menu. The waiters that were attending us didn't really wait that we would feed the kids for starting to bring us food, so we had to do, as always, a bit of multitasking.
We ordered a child hamburger for Isabella, which tasted absolutely ok, but was surely not made of hyper high quality meat. It was quite ordinary, still the price wasn't.

Our appetizer (unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it) was supposed to be a Toast Skagen (a toast with a creamy shrimp topping), but it turned out that for that day they had it with crayfishes instead. We went for it anyway.
Beautifully served, the dish was in line with my expectations. It is a bit hard to fail such a dish, I suppose, when you cover the "fish" with a lot of cream fraiche and dill and afterall, you are just putting everything on top of a toasted bread.

Char swimming in butter

The main dish was a char filet with a potato mesh. The fish was beautifully cooked and the potato mesh tasty and creamy. There were nice vegetables to follow and I didn't mind them at all. What I did mind was the amount of butter on which everything was served. Totally unnecessary. It made the dish too heavy, too rich and too greasy. What a pity!
On top of that, the waiters forgot to bring us bread for the whole meal. At that point we were still hungry, so we asked for some. First they agreed in doing so, then they wanted to bring the dessert anyway...Luckily, we managed to get some bread in our bellies before proceeding with the meal.

Nice but is this a kid portion?

The dessert was presenting a typical Skåne speciality, a spettekaka, a merengue based dessert. It was just a small bit of such a cake, served with whipped cream and strawberries sauce. It tasted marvellous, but it took the waiters about 20 minutes to bring them to our table, after the bread accident and it was definitely a small portion.
Maybe they are trying too hard to be too sophisticated?

After eating, we decided to take a walk at Stenshuvud National Park. We have been discussing for ages to go there and we finally took a chance. Unfortunately, the weather was not really on our side, so we had to deal with a lot of rain at the beginning of our excursion.

We are finally getting out and walking a bit

We didn't have any specific plan, but I decided we should visit the beach.

Krivareboden

The beach was absolutely worthy to be on. The sand was beautiful - and managed to go everywhere, especially since Isabella decided to wet her feet in the ice cold and jellyfish populated water. The scenario was breathtaking, with the high hill, the blue sky and the vastity of the beach extending on the small bay. There was also noone there, except that at a certain point we heard a very common language...italian!
An half italian family arrived and we ended up having the kids playing with each other. That was nice for Isabella, who probably had the most boring experience of the day at the restaurant.

The beach

I had planned to go on the high hill of the park, thinking about the view from there. However, time was running out and we were supposed to present some form of snack for Isabella, so we decided to challenge the rain and direct ourselves to the nearby cafe'. Annorlunda.
The place suits us perfectly. Cosy, old fashioned and service a very interesting home made cookies buffet for a decent price. Nice service and also nice ice cream. Isabella got a different version of "Twister" that tasted much better than the original ;-)

Cafe' Annorlunda

Unfortunately, we had just half an hour to enjoy ourselves there. The cafe' was closing and for us, it was time to go home where dinner and the evening routines would take place.