I Love Christmas

I love Christmas. I love the music. I love the smell of our Christmas tree. I love mustard herring. I love the giddiness of my children the night before Christmas Eve and the morning of Christmas Eve. I love gingerbread cookies. I love how brown sticks (my favourite Christmas cookie) are hard on the outside and chewy on the inside.

I love “Let’s get drunk and watch some porn”, my favourite line from Love Actually. I love having discovered “Rare Exports” this year. I love spending time with family and friends. I love the crackle and sizzling of the fireplace. I love the silent aftermath, when our kids have fallen asleep. I love a glass of cava. I love turrón. I love resting my feet on the table.

Merry Christmas!

everyday babies

Life is calm in Yonder while I am enjoying my last two weeks of maternity leave. Once a week I get together with four other moms and we let the wee ones play while we share our staying at home experiences. It is such a good support to have a moms group like that.



And when our babies fall asleep in their car chairs we enjoy a calm lunch and a cup of tea

After spending the last 6 and a half months at home I am actually looking forward to get back to work. Daddy Yonder will have 12 weeks of paternity leave and then it's my turn again to spend time with little a until august when kindergarten begins (if we are lucky enough to get a spot).

The smell of Christmas

There is nothing like baking gingerbread cookies to get into the Christmas spirit. Presents are bought, decorations are out and now the house smells like Christmas.

Less stress than last year (meaning I began preparations earlier), still there are always some last minute chores. Mine is to get to the post office in time to send the three last presents.

Besides that, the last days before Christmas will be spent with our kids, listening to our favourite Christmas music and making one or another Christmas decoration. Not because we have to, just for the fun of it.

I am hoping these moments, different from our every day life stress, will become part of their childhood memories.

How is Christmas coming along in your house?

garden glimpses

After Sally’s comment last post I have been searching for photos from our garden. I never meant to tease you. I am sure I took some this summer, but the photos are nowhere to be found.

It will have to do with some glimpses from about a month ago. Autumns colours dominates and the sun is getting low, but you still get the feel of how our little but cozy garden is.

PS. We even have an apple tree *joy*!
And the neighbours let us go picking plums from their tree *double joy*

The entrance and back side of our house

We like it here!

our summer progress

Thank you everyone for the encouraging words and for checking in on me from time to time. I hope you have had a nice summer filled with your favourite summer funs. With so many things to do I have not had the time or creativity to write and post. Energy is coming back and here is an abbreviated update of these last months. Just to catch up a bit.

April 10th: All the floors in the second floor have been sanded and varnished.

May 1st: Walls are being torn down, door openings closed and others opened. I have no clue as to how this will be finished by June first.

May 10th: Holes and cracks in the bedroom walls and ceiling are now filled with fine and coarser filler. Tomorrow we begin to sand it all down. I look forward to all the dust.

May 27th: Finally finished painting the 3rd coat in two of three bedrooms.

June 1st: We have moved to our new house! There is no kitchen here yet.

June 14th: There is still a lot to do and we are trying to keep sane while waiting for the house to come together. After two weeks without a kitchen sink and water in the kitchen we are delighted to do a re-entry to the dish washing routine. The cabin feeling and fun with “back to basic” of washing the dishes in the shower wears off surprisingly fast. It will be years (…at least months) before I complain about being the one to empty the dish washer. It is beginning to look more like a kitchen than a construction site.

June 20th: Trying to decide on colour for the stairs. Haven’t found the right one yet, but we are getting closer.

June 25th: The electrician was here to day to do some more work. Now we have light in our bedroom and bathroom. Hurray!

June 28th: We are going on a much needed vacation to Costa Brava (Spain)

July 18th: We are back from holiday with renewed energy to take on more work in the house.

July 20th: Our basement is floated with water because of the heavy rain the last days.

July 22th: Something terrible happened today. Unexpectedly and far from anyone’s imagination.

July 23rd: It is worse than we thought yesterday. It is a national tragedy. No one of our friends have been affected. We feel numbed.

August 3rd: We finished painting the walls in the stair cases.

August 8th: We finished painting the kitchen. One day before my cousin and her friend come to visit.

September 2nd: The door knobs are finally on all the doors in the second floor.

September 10th: The walls and the ceiling in the basement living room are painted white.

September 12th: We are still waiting for the refrigerator that supposedly arrives the 15th.

And we have one patient little girl, that we feel very, very guilty for not playing and having as much fun with as we should. There will be some catching up in the time to come.

 I'll be around from now on. Looking forward to catching up these autumn!

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a peaceful Christmas filled with the ingredients that means something good to you.

Warm hugs, Anne Marie

December goodies from around blogland

December is the grand month of sharing. Opening my blog feeder is like having my own advent calendar filled with ideas & freebies. There are so many beautiful things.

I want to share some of all the goodies I have seen these last days. Find yourself a cup with something warm to drink (or cold if you live somewhere warm), put some Christmas music on and enjoy.

• Gift list by Benign Objects (She has 25 days of freebies and Giveaways)
• Gift tags on Epheriell Designs
• Gift tags from Eat, drink, chick
• Labels for jars, CD cases (make someone marmelade or chutney and put a beautiful label on it, voila!)
• Ornaments from Whip Up
• Owl Calendar that you can costumize to your own liking and give away or keep yourself to begin planning fun stuff for 2011

Wishing you a Happy Friday!

Wedding in Yonder

{the village}


{preparation time with the girls}


{Hotel El Far}

{Fideua - energy to last a long day}

{bobbles}

{the groom ariving to the chapel}

{sweet music}

{the tradition}

{my peonies and roses}

{the party begins}

{the sun setting}

Wedding in Yonder

I don’t really know what to write this time…

We had planned this day for a year. It was time consuming, we planned it in Yonder, really we did. Neither here nor there, but with the help of internet and telephone we did it somewhere inbetween. We argued. A test. Yet another test of our relationship. We got to know eachother better (there is always something to learn). We are stronger now. Better prepared for the next test. I  had a couple of bridezilla moments (but just a few).

And then the day was there. We were determened to enjoy it. Everyone already married told us it would go by fast. We were more determined to enjoy. Every little bit of it. Every little thing. And we did.

It was a beautiful day.
One that we will never forget.
One that still makes us happy inside when we think of it.

What was the best part you ask? ...It must be seeing the happy faces of our family and friends. Feeling their happiness and love for us. Seeing and feeling how they enjoyed the day every bit as much as we did.

Oh, and of course … seeing our friends (and some family members) going bananas on the dance floor as if no one was watching!

July in Yonder

After the wedding... (did you really think I was going to show you the photos today? I am too much of a tease for that. Stay tuned, there will be a glimpse of our wedding after August *smile*)...



...we stayed a couple of days in Llafranc. Our family and several of our friends stayed as well. We enjoyed spending time with them, being able to talk more with everyone, share delicious dinners (from this restaurant), desserts, laughter and late night sangrias.







We had long and lazy breakfasts, hours at the beach, reading news papers and swimming, dinners in the shade and afternoon walks through neighbouring villages. These pictures are taken in Peratallada.





After Llafranc we spent a couple of days together with my husbands (so strange to write that word) family in the village were they live close to Girona. One of my favourite moments is when Astrid bonded with her cousin while trying on her brand new sun glasses.



July was also mosquito time

June in Yonder

We have had summer filled with blissful moments that has fuelled our batteries with energy that shall last until next summer. I am sure you have fuelled your own batteries with your own moments, but if you haven’t or if you want to take a peek into our moments stay with me. The coming days I will share June, July and August with you. Welcome back!



It rained and rained... lovely tip tapping summer rain


Astrid loved it. She loves any kind of water, ponds, ocean, pools, lakes, kitchen sinks... as long as there is water she's with it.

I layed out all my favourite summer outfits on the bed before we went to Spain. It's hard to leave favourits behind but I managed to not bring too much this summer (I had a big white dress that took most of the suitcase space).



Our balcony garden bloomed and thrived (it is still blooming). And even if we don't have bees like this Montana girl we were blessed with bumble bees and the smell of lavender.



I prepared gifts for my bridesmade and four other good friends that helped me out on our wedding day. Besides my bridesmade I had a bracelet made for my hair dresser friend, my make-up friend, my photographer friend, and one for my "you need to go for a morning swim on your wedding day" friend. They all contributed to a calm and happy bride.