I have bought cute curtains in pink for my little girl

I have tryed to make my little darling like other colours but pink.She has a determent mind and often refuse having anything but pink. I have surrendered. Her room is now filled with her favorite colour. I can show you her new cute curtains with princesses and pink.

These are to be found at both www.Halens.se and www.Cellbes.se for only 138 krones.
Sheap if you ask me.

Hope you are having a great time
Anna

White is the Nordic colour

Now and then we go to Ella garden to have a nice brunch on a Sunday. This is a photo from one of those occations. Italian fresh food in a swedish way. The best thing is the Swedish enviroment. An old farm made into a big white dining room.

All the best
Anna

Hello there! It´s been a while. I have had my hands full with Easter and sick children. When everyone thought spring was coming it started to snow like never before. We haven't made a snowman in two years and suddenly there was enough snow for that kind of activity last Sunday. We were out all four in the family enjoying the snow. I think I was the one enjoying it the most. Today most of the snow is gone with the rain. Hopefully we have some warm winds coming in soon. Could you send some here... I know I have some visitors from places like Hawaii, China, Portugal, Africa and other places with agreeable climate.

In Sweden we have lots of space and green areas. The older generation live in their houses in nice enviroments. The younger generations pay huge amounts of money to buy their place to build and live. Me and Fred have been dreaming about a house for several years. The house prices have increased in a frightening way the past years. One thing is for sure: we should have bought a long time ago. Today you have to put everything you can earn in a house if you want one. Today old houses are as expensive as new houses so we are thinking about building one. To build a house in Sweden is like living out a Kafka story. We have lots of green areas and lots of rules what to do with them. We found a spot where we wanted to build a house. The owner wants to sell. The neighbour doesn´t want any new people around. Some time ago when the road comittee in this area was having a meeting the members joked with this man and told him that he ought to come up with some rare kind of sponge so that they wouldn´t have to have any newbies coming there. After this that guy told the town council about a very special kind of sponge only he has seen. They trusted him. Since it is difficult to find a place to build here we are anxious to do it right here where the owner wants to sell. We are also much into green living so if there is a rare sponge we also think it should be protected and it would have been safe in my garden. The problem is that no one seem to have seen this sponge and we wonder if it is only in this guy's head. It is strange in Sweden cause the owner of this land can do whatever he want with the area as long as he's not building a house.
We never thought the city council would object to this for a fungas noone care to go out and confirm is really there. Do we have people from the petticoat government ruling our city?!
This seem like a funny story that is not so funny for us and we would sure need some help to solve this.

So one thing to learn from this is that if you don´t want someone to build in sweden just come up with a funny sponge. It seems to work.

Audley End, Saffron Walden, England

Yesteday I was out surfin at Youtube trying to find a film from Audley End in Saffron Walden. We were 4 visiting this summer for a picnic concert and it was a great day even if it started raining after a few hours. I looked at this film and suddenly I saw a photo of us in white rain coats. It is Mr H showing cause we were so much into listening to the music a revival from the eighties with lots of great artists (tpau, belinda carlile, limal, james ure etc.)

I can really recommend the picnic concerts in England were they set it all up in a beautiful park with a castle in the background. No crowds. Every one is sitting and enjoying old times. http://www.picnicconcerts.com/

All the best from me
Anna

People aren´t prepared that the robbers are in the bank

Something that seemed so difficult to understand has suddenly become pretty clear to me. I am talking about the savings 70% of the Swedish people are doing in funds for the retirement: Tonights show of “Uppdrag granskning” (a Swedish TV-show that investigates supposed injustices) showed that Swedes rank in the top all over the world when it comes to this form of investing money. They are putting all of their savings into pension funds and at the end they realise that they have given away approx 38% of their money to the bank because of all the fees?! Is this what we want to do?
They explained a lot of things in this show last night like noone are supposed to understand where the bank got their index from. They just want you as a customer to believe that you have put your money in a good place and feel safe even if the funds are hitting an all-time low. That is what they use this index to. They just want the reader to see the headline and that is meant to give you a good feeling. The journalist asked a retired CEO of a bank department, if he and his wife could understand the meaning of the information that followed with the fond payment at the end of the year. And not even they could understand the essence of the information. The reflection after realising what the real profit was: that they were trying to hide it and to make the fees invisible. As I see it the only winners here are the banks. Yesterday I was thinking about saving more, but now I am certain that I should save in other forms (like in the matress) or spend the money, but to do it myself. I can lose a great deal of money and I wouldn´t have lost anything if I would have done that since I don´t need to pay the bank fees any longer. Like one of the guests at this show said: “People aren´t prepared that the robbers are in the bank.“

All the best from me
Anna

How to be more Danish

Imagine yourself 6 billions of ants walking around in a small space. They are walking in groups in a hurry to be in time at a spot at a certain time. Some of them are carrying special leaves from certain trees and are valued higher as a member in their community because of this. This sounds silly for us looking at them from above. They spend time in groups and in each group the patterns are important. Everyone must follow the stream, otherwise you´ll not be accepted. When you go down into one small group of one little percent of this huge amount of ants they have their own language and their own traditions even if they are a small part of the big scenario of billions of insects. If one of the ants communicate a little differently from the rest of the group they are valued a lesser member of the group than the rest. They have to work harder and better to achieve the same status as the rest. When you look at the whole picture and have all those billions of ants walking around in groups you don´t understand why this little group can take it so dead seriously following the pattern in different ways. If you convert this picture into humans and their ways of living there is one thing for us Swedes to consider. We are rated high in the world as diplomats and employees. We are always very dedicated to our work and reliable. But there are some things I think we should consider in all of this. I am not saying that all Swedes follow this stream but we have a way of value members higher if they are alike and are doing like the rest.

When you dive into this community of time tables, status, values, languages and look around you, you can see that everyone is chasing that leaf or that language or whatever. I think for us Swedes it would be good to see everything from above once in a while. Perhaps we could loosen up a little bit and don´t take everything so seriously. Swedes have lots of good talents but we also have some we should get rid off. One of them is planing so much in details and be so deternminded in following our plan. We ought to reconsider our plan everyday and be more flexible. The world is moving faster and there is not time for timetables. I thing we ought to do more like the Danish. They are more relaxed at least from my experiences. They must be doing something right cause you are seeing danish companies everywhere and they are managing to go from one success to another. I have heard many Swedes being annoyed of the Danish when they are changing their plans and look at the time table as something flexible. Perhaps this is a good thing. At least for us Swedes to learn. Some people seem to want to follow a time table, a budget, a prognosis or whatever when the most important task should be to get higher profit or be happier. Don´t you think?

Have a nice weekend
Anna

I wonder where is Madonna now when she needs her and not the other way around!

Here you see my favorite car and it is made by Neo. It is an embroidery. Neos Christmas gift for dad!

Everyone knows that teenager are revolting against their parents. That is nature when you are 16 and feel big as ever. I remember when I was 16-18 years old. I don´t think I ever felt as adult after as I did then. You are supposed to test your abilities without your parents. I did as well with lots of make up and strange clothes that I liked. This is common sense. Most of us tend to ask for advice from our parents or help, if we got into truble. This is reasonable because hopefully the adult lead the child the right way. Imagine yourself a child having so much money that you can buy anything in the world. Being one of the most famous in the world. Everybody is reaching out for you and you get everyone’s attention. Everybody is looking at you. Madonna is wearing your name on her shirt at a concert. It is natural that you end up with people who cares only about money around you. You are an easy target.
These are not good parameters for a young person and there is a big risk that this person get stuck with people trying to feed on you and your fame. I don´t think anyone of us parents would like our child to be in that situation.

I am of course talking about Britney Spears. What could her mother do?! I don´t know much about the history of this girl but something tells me that her mother and people who care for her haven’t had the ability to reach her. Britney’s life has become very tragic and it is not strange that it has come to this when she has been exploited at such a young age.

I am not much for her music and I have never identified with the characters in any of her videos. I guess there are a lot of men drooling while seeing her dancing. She has been a product of men in black suits and she has given them a lot of money. Where are they now?

Lately I have really come to feel sorry for her. Being a mom you suffer when you see someone get hurt like she has been, and loosing the most important she got in this wheel of commerce: her children. From what I understand she hasn´t been the best mum but she is the mum and she is in a very delicate situation with everyone’s eyes on her. I can´t imagine myself being in her situation. I wish more people around her thought more of her best than how much money they can earn on her.
The worst thing I have seen is this site where you can bet on when she will die. That is awful. What kind of people do that? I wrote about a line you shouldn´t cross morally while buying things. This is surely such a line. I read a quote yesterday where a guy said; “Please keep her alive, otherwise they will play her songs for weeks”. It is not a nice society we live in.

I wonder where is Madonna now when she needs her and not the other way around?! I wish I was Madonna just to be able to help this poor girl. Cause I don´t think she will listen to many people today.

Turn this wheel around and make a nice thing for someone you don´t have to today.

Sleep well
Anna