Happy New Year!

In reality this should have been a "Merry Christmas" post, but Christmas flew in a butterfly flap and I have also not managed to create a proper post about Christmas' Eve dinner and Christmas lunch and... Well, hopefully they will soon come :-)

Laputa

Kiki's delivery service

Nausicaa 

During 2013, a big Alphonse Mucha's exhibition took place in Japan. I guess as tribute to him and as celebration of such an event, some Miyazaki's masterpiece has been "posterized" as a Mucha artwork.
You can read more about all the art in this article.
Thanks to Mattias' Christmas present, we have now three of them ready to take place in our house!

Second Sunday of Advent: the Christmas Tree

For the first time, we have our own Christmas tree! And if the one my family has been having has been always in plastic, this is even a real one. Not only: we went and chop it ourselves (or better, Mattias did, while I was taking care of a whiny Isabella, hating the cold and the snow) at Holmeja Sågverk.

Chopping the tree

Considering the weather conditions, the tree was completely full of snow when we brought it home. We had luckily some old shelf in the basement where we let it get dry before bringing it up and starting the decoration.
Just on Saturday, we had been to Vellingeblomman where we forestalled all the decorations we had in mind.
While Isabella was sleeping, since the tree was dried, we decided to start the work and tell her the morning after that Santa Claus had fixed the Christmas tree for us.
Just some decorations were left out so that she could help as well, and we finally managed to complete the work together today.

The Christmas Tree

Adding lights and few balls

Let's continue...

Detail

The complete tree (even with presents)

By night

Hazed pic

Nativity Scene

Clearly, this year we are putting a lot of efforts on the Christmas preparations. Afterall, this is the first Christmas we are spending in our own home and we want to make it very special!

Some things need to come from the Italian tradition. It can't just be a "Swedish" Christmas!

Something that I have been missing for many years (here, that is) is a Nativity Scene. Also because it has been very hard to find it. Shops sell all sort of Christmas decorations, but nothing that resembles any mystical aspect of Christmas. It is not surprising considering that here it is almost more important to celebrate watching a specific cartoon of Donald Duck on Christmas Eve, although one should of course remember that the root of this festivity is pagan.

Enough with blabbing!
Today we went to Vellinge Blomman and walk on the Tomtestigen covering the 5000m2 of whatever one wants to wish for Christmas, including...a Nativity Scene! First, one with standard dimensions and 3 real donkeys and a sheep (where did the cow go?) and then the leftovers of a nice collections of items for making your own Nativity Scene.

Lambs and kings

Warming up some food

Maria and Joseph waiting for baby Jesus

The nativity scene

Will this survive Godzilla?

Godzilla

Uhm, what is this for?

Photo #1

Photo #2

I bet only the Swedes can recognize what is this for...let's not spoil it yet!

Happy Easter!

And the last item of the collection is what in Swedish is called Påskkrans, Easter Wreath (for the ones that do not celebrate Easter, this is instead a Vårkrans, Spring Wreath.
Doors wreaths are actually popular the whole year and this is something that I have never seen in Italy (although historically we have the laurel wreath coming from the Romans).

With this on our door, it is time to wish Happy Easter!

Easter decorations

Since I lived in Sweden, I have noticed how different is the concept of "decorations" respect to Italy.
We have only Christmas. That's basically it. But Sweden brings whatever festivity and occasion to be an opportunity for decorating your home.
And I know why: the weather sucks so much that one has to have a very very cosy home for surviving!
Hence, decorations are brought into another level by our Nordic friends!

Having the duty (but not the time) to fill up the house with few items, so that it doesn't necessarily feels like a trench, I have decided to embrace the so called "Påskpynt" activity, although I didn't have the energy to produce anything by myself.
I surfed few websites, got some ideas and especially, scanned Tradera and won a few auctions (and got few items from friends and from Isabella).

The result? Here it is!

Two chicken arrived today

And they were anticipated by two fat hens

Our Easter hunt starts from the doors

Also an egg ad found its way on the handle

A rabbit family is hiding from Pico and Romeo

Look who is hiding there! A small chicks nest!

My first Påskris

I decided to mix a bit traditions, starting from the concept of "Easter hunt" which I think is mainly an american concept. What I did was, instead of hiding eggs, to put small decorations in very odd places.
From the Nordic side I took instead the Påskris. This is something done for welcoming spring (not this year, clearly). Branches, typically from birch, are put together and decorated with feathers and, also, with eggs. This is the answer to the Christmas tree!
I am lucky that I could cut whatever plant I wanted in my garden (but not birch, of course), so I put together a nice "bouquet", then I decorated with feathers and put small wooden and handpainted eggs (at least, most of them) hanging from the tree.
Tradition wants that at home, one would put the branches in water, so that they would bloom for creating the "green" that there is not all year round.
My main problem is that I have to hide the Påskris, because the cats wants to play with it and that would be a broken vase and a big mess everywhere...

Our kitchen table, tablecloth, eggs, chick and flowers decorations bought on Tradera, hen from TGR, candles from Lagerhaus, vase and narcissus from Plantagen

I decided to put few items on our kitchen table to make it more colorful. Possibly, some stuff from the 70s (wild guess) are a bit a "fist in the eye" (as we would say in Italy), but I thought the general view was acceptable.
One of the nicest decorations are the narcissus flowers. In Swedish they are called Påskliljor (although there is also a variation for Pentecost, Pingstliljor, Pinkster Lily) since they bloom around Easter time. There are several variations, of course, and I bought few different tipes.

Narcissus Salome

Two little chicks hiding...

Hand embroidered table cloth from Tradera, pink egg from Åhlens, small egg and chick from Isabella,  candles from Lagerhaus, candle holder from Ystad Metall, "Lilja" from Mattias' mother

Differently than in Italy, in Sweden there are no enormous chocolate eggs with a surprise. The eggs that the kids have to track down are made of cardboard and are usually filled with candies or small chocolate. I must say though that, although the surprise is usually questionable, the Italian eggs are much more striking.

Hand embroidered table cloth, eggs and chicks basket from  Tradera/flea market, vase and narcissus are a present.

And for making all of this completed, at least for this year, there are few things missing, but they will appear tomorrow!

Isabella's crib

Isabella has soon outgrown her carrycot; well, we are still using it, but just for talking walks, not for sleeping at home any longer.
It has been then necessary to investigate the cribs-sector and few requirements were floating in mind: it should be practical, possibly beautiful, with a drawer, moving sides and maybe wheels. Also, it should have two levels where to put the baby, so we could avoid killing our backs when trying to make Isabella sleep.

We went around and discarded the IKEA models pretty quickly: they didn't seem super "robust" and they were a bit too plain for our tastes, although some of the recent models, like HENSVIK, have a quite ok line.

There are also other options, of course, at IKEA, about 5 models more than this one, but no one could really convince us.

At XXXLutz we could actually look around for more choices, from a transformable Brio  to one that actually caught our attention, with a quite nice line.

I was though still not fully convinced, since I don't think the last one could have the mattress in two positions.
Trusting some of my Italian mamma-friends, I looked into what they had: a simple model from Pali. Actually, I had in mind some Foppapedretti models as well.
I contacted both companies to see if they have retailers up here, but why wondering...
They have of course web retailer (actually, FP were available to investigate the purchase directly from their site). Anyway, FP's prices are a bit higher while I could think of afford a Pali's crib and the expedition costs, without too many problems. Even, it would have been cheaper than buying the crib at XXXLutz!

We went for something very simple, although decorations  and fancy stuff were quite tempting. This model had simply all important characteristics that we were searching.

We finally ordered it and after two weeks the big package was at our door. Mounting it was not IKEA-simple, but not incredibly hard either. We eagerly went and buy mattress and head protection (Mattias decided to take something with Laban) and ta-da here there was the bed ready!

It is surely a bit "cluttered", it doesn't look as "perfect" as all those beds in the pictures of the catalogs, but we like it and we hope Isabella can like it too!
PS: W Italian quality :D

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 ;)

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 :-/