England

Hello people! Sorry for the blog silence around here but we have been holidaying in England for the last week. We are now back in Norway and I'm 3lbs heavier and my bank account is £500 lighter!
Henrik turned 37 in England, so many cakes were eaten. We ate roast dinners with yorkshire puds, baby-back ribs from Waitrose (they were to die for) Ploughmans lunch, fish n chips, drank Crabbies,Guinness and shandy. I bought 5 pairs of jeans (I never buy clothes in Norway if I can help it) lots of winter woolies, huge amounts of medicine (these are crap in Norway too)
I spent time with my family and my best friend (and Sock the boxer) and enjoyed everything that England has to offer.
I'm slightly pissed off to be back in Norway but this always happens to me after a trip. It will wear off again,  it always does.

In the countryside

1. I've been trying to eat healthier and go to the gym more but could not resist this little cinnamon swirl that Henrik bought for me. I have no willpower....
2. I sorted out all my mugs/cups today as I'm running out of space. These are staying, but many more are being given to the fleamarket. I think I may have a mug obsession.
3,4,5. We went to a cute farm today and picked sweetcorn, ate grilled corn smothered in melted butter (ooops, another thing I'm not supposed to be eating!) You could also pick your own flowers which I did as flowers are shockingly expensive here (what isn't expensive here?) but these were cheap.
6. On the way home we drove alongside Tyrifjorden and passed by Utøya. I feel choked up every time we pass this island.

The weekend

This weekend was half spent at the cottage, and half at home. The cottage is getting a wee bit chilly now at night but we are hoping to be able to visit throughout September as I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to summer yet- sob!
Fleamarket season started up and as well as visiting many this weekend we have also been travelling around finding nice neighbourhoods we think we would like to live in as we are hoping to put down some real roots here soon and buy a house. Even though the jury is out on whether we will stay in Norway we still feel we should buy something soon.....
We have now been living here exactly 2 years. I'm still adjusting to this country and I don't know if I'll ever love Norway, but for now I'll keep on trying :)

This week

It's been a crappy old week in the Kjellerød household this week. I've been ill since Saturday afternoon with a cold that kicked off my asthma (which is annoying as my asthma has been almost nonexistant since we moved to Norway) and left me unable to get out of bed for 2 days. I feel like being off sick is such a waste of time as there are so many things you could be doing with that time but your body just won't allow it :(
That's Embla waiting outside the bedroom window for a visit but in my sorry state I wasn't even in the mood for her.... I was in the mood to look through all our lovely new cookbooks and make lists of what I'd like to cook in order to tart up the boring food situation here in Norway!

Saturday morning

When I'm not woken by my alarm my natural waking time is always 8.16am.
I could easily go back to sleep but I actually love those few hours that I have to myself whilst Henrik is still sleeping. He will sleep til 12 if I don't wake him. I make myself a latte, call my mum, faff around, read blogs,watch crap tv programmes that he hates but by 11.30 I've had enough and I drag him from bed.
This morning was dark and you can feel Autumn in the air. I'm not ready yet for another long, cold, dark nordic winter. arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

A bit more Helsinki

I'm keen to get back to Helsinki as I really fell in love with this little city. It had such a nice feel and was lovely to just wander around. Everyone was super friendly and keen to speak english (in some shops they even wear name badges with little flags of the countries of the languages they speak)
We tried speaking norwegian as swedish is Finlands second language but I guess we were hard to understand so we switched to english.
The weather was hot whilst we were there and I became obsessed the the ice tea. It has a slightly different flavour to the ice tea I make at home so I asked in one cafe how they made it and it turns out they make it with roiboos tea and add some mint,honey and some sliced citron fruit. It was to die for and I've been making a batch every day since we came back. yum

Nesøya

We had a lovely little bbq the other evening with our friends at Nesøya. The kayak was blown up and taken for a spin, much food was consumed,many mosquito bites were given (Henrik had 26!) and we all caught up on each others summer stories.
Autumn is just around the corner so it's important to make the most of these last summer evenings....

I'm tired and grumpy and the laundry keeps on multiplying because the weather is so damp and it takes ages to dry.
When Henrik came home from work today I  told him I was in a rotten mood and I was going to keep out of his way.
I made a way too spicy cauliflower curry for dinner that I didn't enjoy and we watched Breaking Bad. Now I'm in one room on the computer and he is in the other watching the Olympics.
Going back to work after the summer is hard.
I'm so looking forward to the weekend.

Relaxing

 

We have had one of those perfect weekends that I need to remember when I'm having a "why the fuck did we move to Norway?" moment.
We have relaxed at the cottage all weekend. We didn't disagree on anything, we swam in 21c water, we ate sushi and drank nice apple mojito stylie drinks, we slept late,the sun was warm and there was a perfect breeze. If there is one thing that Henrik and I are good at it's relaxing. We are relaxing champions. When the summer decides to visit Norway there is really nowhere I'd rather be.