5 m x 140 cm of this fabric which I’ll sew curtains of.

Three of these pillows for the couch.

Duvet cover and pillow case.

And a black sheet to go with them.

Metal shoe stand.

Striped beach towel.

And four matching hand towels.

Yeah, I know, I’m such a colourful person. When it comes to the details of my home decor I don’t have to be though. Both the living room and hallway have blue walls so there’s already colour there. The bathroom floor is also blue. All these things fits perfectly with the colour schemes of those rooms. Blue, black, white, silver for the living room and hallway and blue, black, white for the bathroom.

I turned 27 the 29th of July and I promised I’d show you photos of what I got so here we go. Besides these things I also got money.

Rug which fit my kitchen perfectly.

Movies: Bridget Jones Diary, Push and Chicago.

Books: Drömmarnas flod (River of Dreams) by Gay Courter and Alltid Amber (Forever Amber) by Kathleen Winsor.

I wanted a cake with strawberries so my family made me one. Strawberries is a must when your birthday is in the summer.

Another lovely thing that happened this summer was the trip to Stockholm I did and the cruise I went on. The 4th of August I took the train up to Stockholm to visit my friend Milla and on the 6th I met up with my family for a one night cruise to Finland. You can look at the photos here.

As you can see the Happenings gallery is up and running again. It’s my photo blog where photos of the things I do will end up. That means everything from parties to walks in the nature. Photos of the latest stuff I bought and such will still be shown here in the blog.

Other than that today is a big day because it’s my first day of school this term. This fall I’ll study 3D modelling, Graphic design for the web, Information Technology and Swedish working class history. The first three classes are more or less related to web design but the last one is purely for fun. Contrary to most people I find politics very interesting so I’m really looking forward to this class. Studying graphics will be great as well since I’m ok at the coding part of web design but suck when it comes to creating graphics.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I want to finish this with thanking those who stick with me and my blog even though I so rarely update it nowadays. Lots of love to you.

It’s 1 AM and I’m at my parents house. They’re coming home today after spending eighteen days in the northern Sweden visiting relatives. I’ve been spending a lot of time here while they’ve been gone, watching their 90 channel cable TV, downloading stuff with their fast internet, enjoying berries straight from their garden, eating their food and ice cream.

I’m not sure whether we’ll celebrate me today or tomorrow. Depends on what time they’re home and how tired they are I guess. The fridge is rather empty and unless they pick up a cake on the way home there’s nothing suitable for a birthday celebration in the house.

I’ll be back with a blog post once I’ve got my presents. It’ll be another “look at my new stuff”-post which I’ve been so fond of lately.

Anyway, have a look at the new creativity gallery which holds my art, furniture design, sewing and photography.

Picture frames.

Strawberry shortcake lip balm and chocolate soap.

Jar and chopsticks. I’ll use the jar for pencils and the chopsticks as drink sticks.

Candles. One strawberry scented and one chocolate scented.

Stuff for gift wrapping. You can’t see it that good in the photo but the ribbon is made to look like lace.

Shopping bag.

Belt. I’ve wanted a checkered one for like eight years and now I finally have one!

Just a ordinary bottle from IKEA which I made fancier with a spooky bottle cover.

Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you. I got into several uni classes this fall so I’ll continue my studies. I’ve accepted four 7,5 point (full time studies is 30 points) courses but I’m still a back-up to a couple more which I hope I’ll get into after the second acceptance answer. Since you can apply to a maximum of twenty courses people are bound to get into more courses than they need and therefore give up their spot in some to backups like me. Even though I was stupid and forgot to apply in time and therefore only could get in at all as a backup I still got into more courses than I needed and had to turn two down. So, I’m at least hoping for the one I’m backup number two on which happen to be what I most want to study of all the twenty I applied to. Surely two people who got in will turn it down.

I’m ending this with photos of some early birthday gifts I got from my friend Milla. My birthday isn’t until the 29th but I got the gifts when Milla was in town which doesn’t happen that often since she lives some 30 (european) miles away.

Skull antislip stickers.

Sponge which you can attach to a wall.

Sponge and creative use of antislip stickers continues the skull theme of my kitchen.

Shot glasses. “Allt är borgarnas fel” translates to “Everything is the bourgeois fault”. If you didn’t know historically bourgeois was the rich middle-class and nowadays in Sweden the word is applied to not only rich people but right-wing people as well. These glasses are a humorous hint at my political left-wing stance.

Candle holder made of salt rock.

Time flies and I’m surprised at how fast! It’s been three weeks since I last blogged but it doesn’t feel like it. I guess it’s because it’s summer and this time of the year time moves way too fast. It’s now it should move slowly, it’s now that you should be able to feel every moment, look at the time and think “Only one hour passed since I last looked, it feels like five!”. But of course the only time when that happens is when life is boring, in the middle of the winter when we’re stuck at work or doing something else equally boring. I can’t believe July is coming to an end. How on earth is that possible?! Summer will be over in about a month and I feel like it was May yesterday! This is such a horror to me since spring and summer is the only time of the year when I’m truly happy. Like I’ve told you before I can’t cope with the darkness of fall and winter. Seasonal affective disorder is a bitch and living in a country where fall and winter takes up half the year isn’t ideal. Because of this I’ll try to make the very best out of what’s left of summer. I’ll spend more time outside, take longer walks and pay closer attention to the beauty of nature – while it lasts. And I have bigger things than that to make something out of the remainder of summer since I’m going to Stockholm to see a friend and then on a cruise with my family in early August.

Since I last blogged the big thing that has happened was “Hultsfred-ändå-festivalen” (The Hultsfred anyway festival) as I call it. You might remember that I blogged about the fact that the Hultsfred festival was cancelled but that people were coming here anyway. Well they did. I’m not sure how many but at least 200 people came to Hultsfred, stayed at the camping (which is part of what used to be the festival area), partied and had fun as if the festival had never been cancelled. Of course there was a big difference. Instead of six stages with some of the biggest bands in the world there was a travel trailer with a sound system and local bands playing in the grass in front of it. Sure, the festival was smaller than it had ever been before but the energy was the same just as the attitude of the people. No, the attitude was even better. Here were people who came to Hultsfred without the big rock festival. Not many people except for German tourist do so because this is a really small and really boring town. But here they were anyway, determined to not let the festival go without a proper goodbye. I love them for that.

New boots + a pair of socks I got for free with the boots.

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Rubber boots. I bought these in case it would rain at the Hultsfred festival since that turns the site into a mud field. I’ve been to the festival five times and this would have been the first year I had rubber boots but of course now it doesn’t matter since the festival has been cancelled and gone into bankruptcy.

Bracelets

Plastic glasses for summer booze picnics, the best kind of picnics.

Eye shadow palette. Kind of a disappointment since the glitter wasn’t more than a layer on top of the eye shadow. The rest didn’t glitter at all.

New oil colours and brushes since I’m working on a new painting.

Gift tags for present wrapping.

A while ago Coolstuff.se had a campaign where everybody who put up a link to them in their blog got a package of stuff for free. These arrived today:

With these you can make shot glasses of ice.

Cooling mug. Put it in the freezer, the liquid between the “walls” of the glass freezes, pour drink in et voila a cold drink without ice!

Massager

Heated heart. Press a button and it gets heated to 55 degrees celcius.

Sun cell flashlight

An era of music, fun and party in Hultsfred has come to a end. This is sad for everyone who visited the festival but especially for us who live here. Hultsfred is a small town with only 5000 inhabitants and the festival was pretty much the only thing going on here. This is what Hultsfred is known for. This was what was good about living in this town. This was the thing you looked forward to every year. But no more.

There’s a Facebook group called “Vi som åker till Hultsfred ändå!” (We who are going to Hultsfred anyway!) though. It’s a group for people who are planning to come here to camp and party anyway, even though there’s no festival. I’m obviously a member of the group and I’m looking forward to participating in some kind of party during this weekend and next week. Like I said, no festival is especially sad for us who live here so it’s wonderful that people are still coming here. It would have been horrible with a week of absolutely nothing going on when there was supposed to have been a big festival taking place. Of course this will be nothing like what the festival would have been but at least it’s something. A last hurrah.

To those who made the festival possible: Thank you for the five wonderful years of festival fun I was lucky to be a part of. I will miss it a lot.

I think it’s especially silly when people (Americans, it’s always Americans) complain about how it’s hard to follow a movie in a language they don’t understand with subtitles they do understand. Personally I think it’s harder to follow a movie in a language you do understand with subtitles in another language you also understand.

The things is no matter how good the subtitles are not everything can be accurately translated. Take humorous puns like this for example: “What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing – but it let out a little whine”. Translated to Swedish the words “whine” and “wine” have no similarity to each other which means that directly translated the joke no longer makes sense. The usual solution to this is replacing the joke with a similar one. It works but when you understand the spoken English and get the joke it’s a bit annoying reading a completely different joke in the Swedish subtitles. That is what you could call hard to follow. Hearing one thing in one language and reading another in another language. Yet here in Sweden where almost everyone understand English we don’t complain because we’re used to this.

What do I want to say with this? That people who think subtitles makes movies hard to follow should think about how we do it in Sweden and how we manage well despite the fact that most of us understand both the spoken language and the subtitled one. Dubbing makes movies look weird and re-makes… well isn’t that just extremely unnecessary? Just read the damn subtitles.