Summer impression ......

Hope you are all enjoying the summer-time ..... with these pictures i'll give you an impression of our summer !

The table from the pictures above looked quit different when we took it away from behind the shed where it had been standing for many years !

The wooden top was rotten so we took it off and gave it a nice new top.

After a few layers of paint it lookes like this...

Freshly digged potatoes from our vegetable-garden.

A very old "linen-rack" in use in the orchard. I also use it when i wash the covers of our sofa's .... for drying the covers because the washing-line is to small !

View from the orchard... the grain starts to ripen.

New Dawn in full blossom.

My first Sweet Pea is flowering. And what a fragrance !

Sitting in the orchard.

Roses are flowering everywhere, even i an old bucket.

Making jam from the strawberries.

We have now started picking berries.

Wishing you all a fantastic summer-time !

Till next time,

Janneke.

More white .....

Lately i've showed you a lot of pictures from our garden .... maybe because i did not do much about the deco inside the house :)) But this time of year i like to add some more of the colour white into our house .....

You can see i swapped my lampshades for the more "summary" ones !

And in the autumn i will swap them again .

I have a few white jugs and this one in the kitchen is filled with flowering herbs from the vegetable-garden, hmmm they smell lovely !

In the vegetable garden i also grow cutting-flowers so now is the time to fill the house with them !

While i was taking pictures of the table-cloth, Mara was following me ofcourse...here she's sitting on the window-sil waiting for me.

I finally finished the patchwork table-cloth which i made of fabric that i bought at the thriftshop and an old sheet from my grandmother !

And with this heart i want to thank Gea from G-Style for giving me the Lemonade-award !!!! Thank you so much ..... i will get back to that next time :) And i want to say thank you to all the bloggers out there for all your nice and supportive comments !!

Till next time,

Janneke.

Outdoor-living .....

Last week the weather has been wonderful, so we've been outside a lot lately ! Not so much time for blogging, oeps ! Enjoying outdoors by sitting in the sun .....

And do some reading and crocheting .... i had some yarn left from the patchwork-blanket i have been knitting so i bought a few extra colours and now i have started on a few pillow-cases !
I'll show you the result later on.
Sitting in front of the house and enjoying the front garden ......
.... and watch the blackbirds flying in- and out of the hedge, feeding their babies.
In the garden of the farmhouse close to us, a little wren has build a nest at the beginning of the clothesline...
Every time when our neighbour is hanging out the laundry this tiny little bird is really prostesting !!!
Isn't the nest a piece of art ?

When the weather is so fine we spend a lot of time in the orchard, also having our meals there .....

... and have a morningcoffee in the sun.

Even Vera the chicken is sun-bathing ....

And so does Rosa .... no further comment :))

Till next time,

Janneke.

Garden update.....

May is one of the best months of the "garden-year" i think. Everything is so fresh and green and i am so happy with all the perennials that are coming back in the borders.... If you see these pictures below of the frontgarden that were taken in april....

All the plants are starting to grow and the hedge is still brown.

And in a few weeks time it turns into this .....

Every year i am amazed about the power of nature !!

These are 2 pictures of the side-garden ..... i decided to take all the plants out and remove them to the frontgarden because they did not grow well in this part ! The only thing growing well were the boxhedges.

So when the borders were complete empty, we planted this big ball-and pyramid shaped box back. I had them in my white back-garden and they had become a little bit too big for that border so that was very handy! And on the righthand side we planted an extra boxhedge to "close" the border.

Now i have bought a lot of "cover-plants" to get the soil of the 4 borders nicely covered, then there will be not so much weeding to do :). I chose a Vinca minor 'Gertrude Jekyll" (maagdenpalm) which is white flowering ! And in autum i would like to plant loads of springbulbs in as well !!

This was the orchard/vegetable-garden in april, still a bit bare.

First thing i was sowing was spinach, we have been eating it now for a few times... delicious !

This is how it looks now...the strawberries do a great job, the potatoes started last week.... also the herbs are enjoying the lovely weather we have had lately.

I have been sowing and planting endive, lettuce, green beans, beetroot, onions, carrots,cauli flower, tomatoes and also zucchine.

I like to sit in the orchard and we have our coffee and lunch there and sometimes i feel like picking some herbs and make a wreath.

I had an old green iron table left and i have put it in the vegetable garden so i can even decorate a little overthere :)

Till next time,

Janneke.

A treasure-barn & Drobak.....

I promised you to show you some of the treasures we found in Norway.

Here you see some beautiful bottles ( like milkbottles, a limonade bottle and a medicine-bottle) and some linen and photographs that we brought home.

On the land where Hanne and her family live there is a huge old wooden barn ... we were asked if we would like to have a look inside and ofcourse we couldn't say no !! Hanne said it was full with old stuff and i LOVE old stuff and especially the stories behind them. So Liv, Hanne's mother-in-law, went with us and told us a lot of stories about the things we saw there!

I could not believe my eyes when i saw what was inside, it was like a museum !! I wil just show a few pictures so you will get an idea!

We saw all old farmhouse-tools, furniture, sledges, a cooking stove in pale blue, ski's, pictures-frames, paintings etc. It was a fantastic experience ! So now you know where i got all my bottles from :)

Later on that day we went all together to Drobak !! A wonderful village near the Oslo-fjord. All the wooden houses are beautiful and the shops also :)

It is obvious what they make in this little "factory"!!

Ofcourse you understand we had to go inside all of those shops ...

In one shop, called Little Dove (pigeon), i bought this soapdish for our kitchen.

This old linen was bought at the fleamarket in Drobak.

When we came home it was fun giving all my treasures a new place in our house ....

The milk-bottles are now for decoration in the kitchen.

Hanne uses the bottles also in daily live.... she put them on the dining-table and fills them with wine or like here with water; great idea, isn't ??

Every day when i look at my "finds" i am enjoying them because they remind me of the wonderful time we had in Norway !!

Till next time,

Janneke.

Lovely Norway .....

Can't believe we are back already from our trip to Norway ! Everything went so fast .... therefore we have seen and done quit a lot of things :) And we had the most enjoyable stay with Hanne and her family.
Today i will show you some pictures from the nice things we've seen on our way up to Hanne's house and on our way back to the airport.

We took the countryside roads up to Hanne's house and we came across lovely villages .... some of them had these typical Norwegian wood-build churches that they call "stavkyrkje". There are not so much left and they are always very old.

Just a nice detail...

We also passed some villages along the Oslo-fjord and had to cross the fjord with a little ferry.

What a fantastic sight....this is the village of Fagerstrand.

We alway have to take home some pebbles or shells :)

Later when we had to drive back to the airport we came across the village of Holmestrand. We had a nice walk around this fishing-village.

Another nice church and church-yard on our way ......

A very old corner on the church-yard, as you can see by the looks of the tree !

This picture is a preview on my next post ..... it will be about treasure-hunting in Norway and the things we "found" !!!!!

Till next time,

Janneke.

Oslo here we come .....

Have to tell you something very special, at least for us it is very special :)
On thursday we will leave for a trip to Norway ..... last year we were there in the summer and had a fantastic time. There we came across a CD from the Norwegian singer Kurt Nilsen. Maybe you remember him as the winner of World Idols. We found out he had done a fantastic tour in 2006 with 3 other Norwegian singers .... they are really super :)

And guess what... they've come back together again for a tour in 2009.
Believe it or not but we are going to the premiere on the 9th of may in Oslo ! If you want to have a preview, please click on the link below and look and LISTEN to one of the songs they will be singing then ......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYw9E0bW9RE

You must admit their voices sound fantastic !!!!!

Another wonderful and exciting thing that will happen is the fact that we are going to stay with Hanne; my dear blogfriend from "Min Verden", and her family. We will have a real blogmeeting because Tone from "Tone's hage, mat- og hverdagsliv" is also coming over and we will all have dinner together !!!!!!!! Doesn't that sound exciting ???

Really cannot wait until thursday : )
I'll take a lot of pictures so i'll have a lot to tell and show you when we are back !!

Till next time,
Janneke.