We wanna wish you a happy 2nd Advent !!

(Sorry to post this blog post one week too late. I know 2nd of Advent was last Sunday, but I've been trying to add pictures without luck.)

The weeks since we had Thanksgiving weekend has just disappeared on us. I've been spending my days Christmas decorating the house. Our house is the only house with "Advent" candelabras and star lamps on our street. Last night we went looking at Christmas lights in one of the neighborhoods close to our house. One of the families had gone all out, what we in Sweden would call a real American Christmas light show. The most impressive with his display was a couple of train racks that he had both inside and outside. One track was actually going through an window opening... so cool. I didn't take any pictures of this since it started raining at that point.

In Sweden we count down to Christmas Eve by lighting another candle for four preceding Sundays. We celebrate Christmas on December 24th. These Sundays are called 1st of Advent, 2nd of Advent and so on. On December 13th we celebrate Lucia. This year on Lucia Joakim and I are hosting a Lucia / 3rd of Advent / House warming fika.

On Saturday Joakim and I went to the Swedish Christmas fair in San Francisco arranged by SWEA, a group of Swedish women who live in the area. The fair was a huge success, we bought Advent candelabras and Santas which has a big beard made out of wool.

This week I'll be all busy in the kitchen baking and making candy. I'm looking forward of all the great smells, I hope I can smell them as soon as my cold is gone. I've had a cold since Friday and finally I'm feeling better.

kramar
Joakim and Camilla

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today was one of the most celebrated holidays in US,  Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a harvest festival celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November. Traditional dinner for Thanksgiving is turkey, mashed potatoes, string beans, gravy and cranberry sauce and for dessert pumpkin pie. 


Here's from pictures from our dinner:

Jocke, Robert and Adela

Post dinner pic

Don't kill me!

Dessert time

Preparing for a walk in the cold, only 10 C ;)

That's it for tonite!

Nattinatt,

Mille

The long awaited couch has finally arrived!

Hi everyone!

I'm sorry I haven't updated this blog since NYC. (I have to many photos that I need to go through and that I'd wanna post here. I know silly excuse. Since Christmas is coming up I promise (my pre-new years resolution) to do a better job posting updates!)

Today our set of furniture for the media room finally arrived. After five months in bean bags we're dancing on clouds!

Here's some first pictures

Last week we mounted the shade behind the sofa. You can call that perfect timing!

Here's also the media storage that we started working on.

That's it for this time. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving with turkey dinner.

kramar

Jocke and Mille

In New York!

Just wanted to let you know we're in NYC!



Joakim infront of Time Square.

On our way to New York

Flight is taking off in 30 min. Right now sitting on San Jose Airport waiting.



Here we go!

Kramar
Jocke and Mille

Updated reading area

Here's an update of our reading area.

Ostrich eggs

Just wanted to show what I saw in the store today, so cool!

Sunset over the Pacific

Tonight we went to see the sunset at San Gregorio Beach with a beautiful view over the Pacific. After watching the sun set in the horizon we realized that the fog come rolling in from the ocean. In no time the hills were covered in smokey fog.
We also saw this cowboy sign in a store down by the water. Kind of funny ;)
Ended the evening at a bikers restaurant up on Skyline. Great food and such a cute little place.

Well it's time to go to bed now. Tomorrow morning we're heading to the farmer's market on California Street in Palo Alto. This time of year Sunday mornings at the market is the best ;) I'll show you tomorrow ;)

Nattinatt!
Camilla

Slow

This week has been really slow here. I've been sick and Joakim has been working a lot.

We had new friends over on Sunday for dinner, Jenny and Isaac. We had homemade meatballs with boiled potatoes and brown sauce, lingonberry jam and homemade fast pickled cucumber.
Jenny and Isaac bought a house just after we did so we're kind of in the same situation. Empty houses ready to be filled ;) They told us about a furniture store that sell European style furniture made in China. This store is amazing and it would be possible to buy every piece of furniture for the house from them ;)

We bought two bar stools for use when chatting by the bar. During our dinner on Sunday I realized it makes it much easier if the guests can sit down while the food is being prepared (especially now when Jenny is 9 month pregnant).

We also decided on getting a stool / coffee table to have by the reading area. Just something small to put a cup of coffee on or / and a book.

That's it for day. Now I'm off to IKEA with Jenny. Lots of stuff to look at and still many furniture to buy.

Kramar
Camilla

Tiny steps towards a livable house

On Sunday morning we went for a walk around the Dish (in Stanford recreation area), about 6 km. The weather was cloudy but still clear, weather can be so odd here sometimes. Well, it was so clear I could even see San Francisco from the hills and that's about 60 km away. When we'd managed to get to the end it was 10 and we're just in time for Farmers Market at California St, Palo Alto. This time of year is the best there. Lots and lots of fresh and inexpensive vegetables. I bought Heirloom tomatoes for $2 / pound (those are about $5 / pound on Safeway). For breakfast that morning I made scrambled eggs with spinach, squash, fennel, pesto and tomatoes. With that I had fresh squeezed (by myself) orange juice and a couple of strawberries. Such a delicious breakfast! Joakim of course had oatmeal as usual, and I think he might have been a tiny bit jealous on my delicious plate of food ;)
(I promise to bring my camera next weekend for the walk and Farmers market.)

Last night we put the first curtain rod up, in the bedroom where we needed it the most. I haven't decided which curtains to get, but when we moved from Maplewood Ave I took the lime green  colored ones that Joakim and I installed when the old curtains were falling down.
The lime green curtains doesn't work to well with the colors on the walls, at least not with the accent walls that are dark brown (chocolate color). Plus, they are too short and are pretty bad sunburnt on the back side, but what the ..... it's a good start and that's all that matters.

Here's just a car parked like most cars park here, hardly ever do you see a car that's actually in the middle of the parking spot...

Well, that's it for now, hopefully we'll get some more curtain rods up.

kramar
Camilla

How to best read this blog

I've heard a lot of you have problems with the e-mail sent every time I update the blog. Therefor I recommend everyone to read the blog on http://joakimandcamilla.blogspot.com/ instead of reading the text in the e-mail (in every e-mail there's a link below my blog post named 'Joakim and Camilla' and that one will take you straight to our blog).

For everyone who wants to read the blog in Swedish can click Översätt till svenska on the right hand side of the page and the contents of the page will be translated using Google translate.

I hope this clarifies it for everyone who has had a problem reading and looking at pictures in the e-mail.

Camilla

My first thunderstorm in CA

Last night I heard my first thunder and saw the first lightning in California. Pretty cool since it was in the middle of the night. It wasn't like thunder back in Sweden where thunderstorms are usually coming with the rain. When trying to fall asleep I was trying to hear the rain that never came and I must way I really missed it. A few hours later when I woke up it was raining.  I wonder if today's rain will be the start of the rainy season.
Here's a picture taken from our bedroom window.

This morning I went for a walk with Adela around the Dish at Stanford. I got some nice views over the hills with clouds coming rolling in, just like they always do in this area.

Tonite we've been having dinner with the four students from KTH and Linköping Univ who are going to study at Stanford this year.

Ok, time to go to sleep!
Camilla

Walk around the neighborhood

I went photographing with my new camera today and here's a sampe of the photos I took. Enjoy!

Our street, Woodberry Ln (this photo is taken from our dining room window)

Front door. The horse (Dalahästen) is always waiting in the window for new guests. (Click the photo to see it in the window)

Front of the house.

Patio. We haven't decided on what kind of table to get here, so for now just two chairs.

Side of the house. 

Our house seen from Rock Street. We're in the last row of houses.

Common area. I usually have coffee here in the afternoons. The roof creates a nice shade, that you really want during summer here in Mountain View.

It's like Christmas months in advance!

A happy day for me and for you. You can expect more great pictures here on the blog now!

My first three weeks

I've been here three weeks today. Weather has been nice even though we've had a heat spell for a week. After so many days with temperature between 30 and 37 C it felt nice and cold when the temp went back down to 23 C.

During these weeks we've bought a kitchen table with chairs. Feels big having a table to sit at. Every meal is so much more festive than before. We've also decided we won't be having only bean bags in the tv room. A sofa is ordered and hopefully we'll get it soon.

Last week we also had washer and dryer installed. Feels kind of nice to be able to wash clothes again.

We've also had time for some adventures. Twice we've been mountaing biking up on the hills West of Stanford. It's so beautiful up there.
Last weekend (labor weekend, three days) we went biking by the bay. We're looking for a bike path that goes around NASA Ames (where I did the research for my thesis). Found the path, but it was closed of by a gate so we were unfortunately not able to bike around Ames. We also went wine tasting in Sonoma Valley on a sunny. As always we had a delicious port wine at Loxton Cellars plus we tried two new wineries. In Sonoma the wineries are getting ready for harvest. The vines were full of grapes and they were so sweet and flavorful. On the way back home we went across Golden Gate Bridge, and I took some pictures to add here.

Yesterday I went to get the last KTH student who is going to study at Stanford this year. As always there's a problem fitting the bags. Fortunately Erik was going to throw one bag away as soon as he was unpacked. Because of the space issue in the car we decided to unpack his 23 kg of clothes into the back seat of the car.
The other three students who's been here since Friday wanted to go to IKEA to buy pillows and comforters, so we spent all evening there.

That's it for this time
Camilla

Added translation to Swedish on the page

We've decided to write this blog in English since most of our friends don't know more Swedish than hej, hej då, kram, kittlas inte and tack. For everyone that isn't fluent in English I've added an English - Swedish translator on the upper right side on the blog. Just click on Översätt till svenska and you'll get the whole page translated by our best friend Google.

Now when this is working, I'll start writing posts with photos soon :)

kramar
Camilla

New blog!

Hello everyone and welcome to our new blog!

We've decided to use this blog as our diary. Here we'll tell you about what's going on in our life and update you on the house improvements made. Of course we'll also add lots and lots of pictures of what we're creating. Can't wait to start blogging ;)

You'll all get an e-mail every time we update the blog, so you don't have to worry about missing out on any info.

Expect an update about the house soon ;)

kramar
Camilla

Oops, I forgot to tell you to leave comments here at the blog!