Midsummer weekend 2013.

Midsummer is another great tradition over here.
Midsommar. Oh Midsommar.

When you're a child it's all fun and play. You eat good food, decorate a huge pole with flowers and birch branches (Sweden. Birch branches apparently are very important to us), play with the other kids, sing the "små grodorna" = "little frogs" and dance around the pole, family and music and friends.

Then when you grow older you'll eventually find out that that pole is supposed to represent a huge penis and it's not so much fun anymore.

Midsummer is a fertility celebration.
To this day most kids are, apparently, conceived on the glorious Midsummer nights.

I don't dance around that freaking pole anymore, believe me.
I spent a part of my Midsummer weekend like this:

Alex is always looking for a reason to pull down/up his shirt and he has great abs so it's cool though still, come on dude.

Started off innocently and then it just sort of went downhill after dinner.
Look at mah glorious hair and them fabulous glasses.

Love these guys so much.

That would be all. I just really wanted to throw these pictures out there and forget about the penis-pole.
Goodnight lovelies! (⊙ヮ⊙)

Taking the student

Good day my poor neglected blog. 

Yes, emphasis on neglected up there. For some reason I haven't checked in for a while and oops, 16 unpublished and unanswered comments (sorry Chriss, Anid and Josephine, and all the bots that have been spamming me telling me to visit their lovely sites, such as "busty blondes posing" or "nose job"). 

I'm here now, shh, don't cry dear blog. All is fine. 

I promise I love you just as much as I love my tumblr. 

Now. I suppose it might be a good idea to explain the rather suspicious title of this post. 

What the hell does "taking the student" mean? 

Let me start by saying that "taking the student" is a both traditional and a rather barbaric Swedish celebration, that goes on for a couple of weeks, once a year. Let me continue by saying that despite it being a somewhat barbaric thing, it has nothing to do with hunting nor capturing students, it has nothing to do with picking students up and carrying them away, making them your property, and it doesn't have anything to do with things you might do to the student of your choice in the bedroom of your choice, either. And let me finish - bear with me on this, I'm trying to be educational - by saying that "taking the student" is Swenglish and shouldn't make sense at all unless you speak both Swedish and English. 

"Studenten" = "the student" = also a word for "the graduation"

"Ta studenten" = "take the student" = "take the graduation" = you get it. To graduate. To be more specific, finishing high school, usually at the glorious age of eighteen. 

"Hey, I took the student this June!" 

"Congratulations on the unemployment!" 

Something like that. Swenglish is beautiful and I love wordplays so nope, not sorry.

Now, how do I even start though? I've literally rewritten this post from this sentence and forward a billion times so I obviously am a little lost here. Past years, as I've grown up, this whole graduating Sweden-style has just been something rather terrifying. I've basically known that it's best to avoid going outside as much as possible during these weeks in the beginning of June, and that's partly because all I've seen of it are drunken teenagers screaming on top of huge trucks while pumping music way too loudly, all over town, you literally can't avoid them, and then of course I've been to my cousins's student receptions and seen them come home drunk after riding those trucks, covered in booze from head to toe, and it goes on and on. You can see why I labelled this as "barbaric."

I was supposed to graduate this year too, but as you may know, I took a year off because of reasons. That hasn't stopped my fellow 1994 comrades from graduating, though, and since me and my best friend are basically siamese twins, whether he likes it or not, it's kind of like I've been taking the student through him taking the student. Though I must say, the more closer information I've gathered from this whole thing, the more relief I've felt about the fact that my student will probably look a bit different.

Let me make another one of those convenient lists;

1. It all starts with the class fighting over what the theme of the "studentskiva" (= directly translated, "graduation record", but it means "graduation party" or "graduation ball").
   
   
2. The next step is to decide which students should do what - like finding a place to hold the studentskiva, finding a "studentflak" (= the trucks I was talking about) to rent, DJ, catering for the dinner before the studentskiva, and so on.
   
   
3. A lot of fighting there as well, before everything is settled.
   
   
4. The students presents the results of their completed assignments. Here, the insane costs are revealed. And when I say insane I mean it. All together, it can add up to like 80 000 SEK. According to Alex (I just texted him and asked). Good thing is this cost will - hopefully - be paid through the students selling tickets to the studentskiva to their friends and family. Though they have to sell quite a few tickets to save their asses from having to pay up themselves.
   
   
5. The theme of the studentskiva is decided. Some more fighting here, I presume.
   
   
6. Time for some other yummy costs! Like the "studenthatt" you pretty much have to wear, whether you like it or not. The studenthatt, or "studentmössa", is a hat. You might have guessed that since the Swedish word is pretty much identical. So what's up with this hat? It's a special snowflake hat and it's expensive. You order it custom made, and you can choose colors, shape, and if you want to have something written on it or not. Every letter cost 50 SEK, fun, right?
   
   The studentmössa can cost up to 3000 SEK. I am not kidding. You can get a goddamn laptop for that.
   
   
7. Once everything is settled and ready, it starts for real.
   
   
8. The students call everyone they know, including their distant aunt that might go by the name Agda, to sell tickets.
   
   
9. Chaos and panic.
   
   
10. Finally, the studentskiva. My old classmates first had dinner with their parents, with speeches and the oh so important ceremony of handing out titles to all the students. Alex was voted "the sunrise of the class" which fits him oh so well, considering he's as least pretending to be nice to people's faces before going away with a not so nice look on his face. He's very bitter. One of the reasons we're friends.
    .
11. The studentskiva goes on with the skiva itself, once the parents have left the building. ES10B - my old class - had their skiva at a place called Wokhouse. The theme was "in the wrong time" (the themes are usually super boring, like "oops how did I get here?" or "from the seventies") and I dressed up like a cow-human from a future where the human race is dying and forced to breed with animals. Basically an excuse to just wear my kigurumi.
    .
12. People get drunk and dance. I didn't. Alcohol is expensive over here, no way I'm paying for that shit unless I'm out with friends, far away from a skiva.
    
    
13. The studentskiva is followed by a few weeks of some more chaos as the students in charge of arranging and collecting the money to pay for the skiva and the flak (again, what we call the truck-things). Poor Christian almost ended up paying for the whole thing himself since some idiots hadn't even sold one ticket and were refusing to hand in the money "because they couldn't help it that they hadn't sold more tickets, because they didn't have as many friends and weren't as popular as some of the others."
    
    Did anyone say bullshit? Yes? No? Okay, good.
    
    
14. And so, the student is completed with the "utspring" (= "run out"?). 

Yes, I've written a lot now, but I'm just really fascinated by all this. 

Can't help it. My wordvomiting can't be tamed. 

ES10B and Alex graduated June 7th. 

Not a lot of friends usually join the families of the students to watch the utspring, but since I was supposed to be in that utspring myself with ES10B, and since Alex is Alex, I was determined and excited as I armed myself with wig, sunglasses and camera and hopped on the metro that took me to S:T Eriks Gymnasium. 

Around here it hit me how chaotic the student really is.

As I've already said, I've just grown up glaring at this from a safe distance, and I might have been at a few afterparties with my cousins, but before this day I'd never been at a utspring and hadn't seen how huge the crowds are outside the schools. At first it wasn't so bad, snapped the first picture shortly after arriving, then Alex's mum hunted me down and while we stood and waited for the event to start, the huge parking lot and street quickly filled up with people and soon we were pretty much attached to the fence behind us like band-aids.

The traditional elements were all there, like the signs the parents carry with their own student's baby pictures printed on them (Swedish parents are often cruel and print naked pictures on the "studentskyltar" = "student signs"), the yellow and blue balloons and ribbons, as well as the green birch branches everywhere.

That alone was quite a lot to take in with two pairs of eyes, and then some students added fire crackers and smoke-thingys to the picture, while a couple of other students started banging drums and started dancing, screaming and singing arabic songs, of all things. And then some sort of national anthem started playing, but there was something wrong with the speakers, so it played for like three seconds, then stopped, then started over again.

And somewhere in the middle I remembered how much I hate crowds and just had a panicked little party for one.

Anyway, all utsprings are the same; the graduating classes all wear white clothes (they don't have to, but they do it anyway) and run out of the school while screaming, then meet their family and get bombarded with ugly toys and mini champagne-bottles tied onto necklaces made by yellow and blue ribbons, before they join their classmates to decorate their "studentflak"-truck (the ones I mentioned and have scared me all my childhood, that is). It's often quite fun to see, since the schools usually have big main entrances that the students just flood out from while screaming, all happy and drunk after the mandatory champagne breakfast.

S:T Eriks is a crappy school in many ways, though, one of them being the shape and location of the school. So no big happy utspring for S:T Eriks's students.

They ran out from the nurse's office onto a frikkin' 10m long balcony.
Not very impressive.

And they forgot that Alex's class were supposed to run out with the other esthetic-majors, drama, music, musical (again, S:T Eriks is a special school), etc, so they randomly ran out at the end without even being announced. Even more not impressive.

I was basically like a proud mama when Alex joined us down on the ground despite that disappointment, so it's a pretty fabulous memory, okay. I mean look at him so cute in his mössa and with his skylt just, yes.

Ugh.

I think I managed to keep my poker face though I was just ready to go "wäääähh" and roll around on the ground. Don't judge me, end exams have apparently been murderous and I've been a nervous wreck worrying about my graduating friends - especially Alex.

And, adding to that pile of embarrassing emotions, as happy as I was, and still am, for all my graduating friends, I must admit it stings a little knowing that I might not get to experience this. Not that I won't graduate, but most likely I will be taking courses from home and not be part of a class. Which means that if I were to be a part of an utspring I'd be running by myself and that would be way more sad than to just skip it and go ahead and graduate.

Feeling better about it just writing that.
As long as I graduate I'm just happy to be a part of my bro's student. Oh the cheesiness.

How about those studentflaks then?

Well here they are and the pictures are crappy, because that yellow thing is the tiniest studentflak I've ever seen, it's ridiculous. But it's the only close picture I managed to snap, so it'll have to do!

Imagine that but as big as the trucks on the first picture, and not tiny and not ridiculous.
There you go, that's what they look like.

They're covered in sheets with pretty things like penises, flowers, names and lovely phrases like "fuck you, we're coming to take your jobs." And of course more birch branches, Swedish flags, and blue and yellow ribbons.

ES10B's truck said "best class, worst attendance" - which is very true. 2000 students and those 30 were like 50% of the year's documented student absence. I think there was a penis on there too, not quite sure. Very mature choice of decorations, I must say.

These monsters drive around town for around 4 hours after the actual utspring, one class per truck, and those 4 hours are spent drowning each other in beer. Literally. The trucks are prepped with at least a hundred cans that the students throw, spray, and pour over each other, while dancing, screaming, singing, and killing all the civilians with the loud, horrible music they're pumping from always present the speakers at the back and front of the trucks. My friend Jözz, who graduated last year, told me that her studentflak didn't have any drainage for the beer spilled on the floor, so the truck actually filled up with beer and gave her feet a light frostbite.

Birch branches, war wounds and booze y'all,
Sweden in a nutshell.

That is basically it.

There is of course the "studentmottagning" (= "student reception"). Home of student x + family of student x + buffet table + cake + presents for student x and maybe an emotional speech. But not much to talk about there. The food was delicious on all the mottagningar I attended this year though.

My fingers are getting sore now and I suspect if ANYONE bothered to read this, your eyes most be sore too. So let's end this post with the outfit I wore to Alex's utspring, to squeeze in some fashion in this entry.

Cap: BOY LONDON. 

Shirt: SUPER LOVERS. 

Necklace: Homemade. 

Jeans: Help I don't remember. 

Shoes: Taobao. 

There we go! Just one final greeting to my bro and then I'm happy;
Congratulations bro, I love you to hell and back (no hetero).

Oh, speaking of nothing... I know I already wrote this when I replied to previous comments, but thank you for the kind reminder to slap myself take care of my foot. I actually had a similar thing to what started the last episode happening today. I cleaned the crap out of it. 

(And Chriss I suggest you do the same next time you get blood poisoning, seriously woman!). 

Over and out my lovely readers,
especially those who bothered to read this entry, if you exist ♡(  ᵕ̤ɜ)ᵕ̤ૢᴗᵕ̤ૢ )♡

The tale of the foot

So the thing is,

Someone actually e-mailed me and asked me what the hell happened to my foot. 

I've mentioned it a few times (and tweeted about it many, many times, because I'm... me), but this nice little e-mail reminded me that I never actually got to the point. Thank you for reminding me. Don't worry, it's neither a long nor yucky story, it's also a very nice example of how I work as a person. 

= how I don't work, in other words. 

Let me break it down for you; 

1. I stepped on something, a small piece of glass I suspect, since a couple of days before I'd been carrying a mattress from my room to the livingroom and I literally walked into a mirror and knocked it over, which of course means that it broke. Big time. It pretty much exploded when it hit the floor (I'm clumsy).
   
   
2. After a weird, high-pitched noise and a sting of pain, I looked at my foot, could see something but it didn't look like a big deal. So I didn't do anything about it and just kept walking.
   
   
3. Why the hell didn't I do anything about it?!
   
   
4. I honestly don't know (I'm both clumsy and I make questionable choices in life).
   
   
5. A few weeks went by and it seemed like everything was okay. I didn't think about my foot since it didn't give me a reason to think about it, so to speak, until one fine day (it was probably raining, but it sounds nice to say "one fine day"), it started to hurt. I finally looked at it, and there it was. A black dot right where I'd stepped on the thing that was probably a piece of glass. About the size of a pea.
   
   
6. I still did nothing.
   
   
7. I spent the night at Emilia's house with her and Jözz. For some reason I mentioned "the black thing on my heel" and showed it to them. They were not amused. They told me that I should have it checked immediately, then pointed out that I should have 24-hour surveillance, because I hurt myself so often.
   
   
8. I didn't listen to them and I still did nothing. Of course I didn't.
   
   
9. A few days before we went to Amsterdam, me and my mother were cleaning the livingroom, when I stepped on the cord to the vacuum cleaner, and the pain made me scream. My foot was really hurting by then. I was kind of limping already. Mum was about as amused as Jözz and Emilia were. She immediately called the doctor and we went to the hospital the morning after.
   
   
10. I got an ultrasound on my foot, and they did some other things. I have literally had ultrasounds done on every part of my body now.
    
    
11. They couldn't find anything, said it was probably a mild inflammation. I was sent home with some pills and a follow up-appointment scheduled a week later. We went to Amsterdam. I was limping big time. Around here I finally started to realize that I probably should have been more careful.
    
    
12. Like I wrote in my previous post, when meeting up with Dana and Naomi in Amsterdam, I ended up walking for five hours straight. I was really, really limping by then. Putting pressure on that foot was no option, and it hadn't been an option for at least a week, so my other fot and leg was quite... worn out. By the end of the day I could barely walk at all. And...
    
    
13. ...when I got back to the apartment, there was a blister the size of a cookie under my foot, where the black dot had been. Not pleasant.
    
    
14. Understandingly, I spent most of the Saturday in the apartment eating those huge delicious puddings I found at the supermarket, hopped on one leg all the way home to Sweden on Sunday, got home, 40 minutes later we were on our way to the emergency room after my dad had looked at my foot and squeaked "BLOOD POISONING?!", and the day after that I got sent back to the hospital (it wasn't blood poisoning, fortunately).
    
    
15. They did some yummy things at the hospital but I'll spare you the details. You're welcome. It got better once the surgeon worked his magic, at least. Now after a few weeks of penicillin and limping I can actually walk again. And my foot lived happily ever after.
    

The end. 

Glorious, huh? I guess this also sums up the end of my Amsterdam trip! So no need for a post on the last two days. A bunch of family stuff and apple pies. Foot. Airport. More foot. You know the deal. 

And so, what have we learned?
I honestly don't even know. I should just buy some bubble wrap and make a suit out of it. 

Yep.
What to... say now... 

Well, for starters I'm kind of brainwashed from working at the bakery, and working extra as a kitchen slave at my friend's family graduation party all weekend. And on top of that, all week I've been watching way too much Pretty Little Liars, so I don't have much to spit out. Actually watching Pretty Little Liars right now. Mona is back from the asylum and it's pretty tense in school, she found a cow's brain in her locker. Okay. I love this show, but my brain is like a damp, dirty towel. Like a really, really damp towel.

Towel's don't think that much so you can see why this is a problem.

Since fashion is my passion I'll just throw in some pictures from Saturday, with some closet add-ons. 

"Ponies forever" tee from Taobao and dotted skirt from H&M ♪ 

Oh and here's my rubbery face as well. Charming.

No I don't know what happened there either.

Goodnight friends, I hope you had a nice day and that you're less tired than I am.

Rabu rabu (づ￣ ³￣)づ ♡

Amsterdam 2.0

Sitting here with my toffee rooibos tea, ready to throw some more words at you all. Your bodies are ready.

I said my second day in Amsterdam would get a post on it's own, didn't I?
Well here it is.

Let me start with the start. Breakfast! I've already mentioned my (legit) excitement over the apartment in my first post about this trip, but since we arrived in the evening and were going out to eat almost straight away, followed by me getting locked out and then going straight to bed with a grumpy face once I got in... this morning was my first opportunity to actually experience it properly. And by that, I mean investigate the kitchen.

Me and my mum were in heaven. We have a thing for breakfasts.

There were bake-off croissants that we popped in the oven, then we attacked the freshly baked baguette the landlord had bought for us, yoghurt, fancy coffee, tea, tea, tea, dutch cookies, juice, marmalade and cream cheese, regular cheese, salami, ham, fresh fruit and whatnot. Needless to say, I didn't need to eat proper food until many hours later. So worth it. This sounds very cheesy but it was great, so again, legit. Dad only had some coffee though.

Who the hell says no to a warm croissant?
My dad is a strange man.

Well. It was a beautiful morning! Wasn't complaining about the view either.

The day wasn't all about the breakfast. Though I was unreasonably excited about it, I just wanted a little bit of text to match that lovely picture I took once all the yummy was on the table. I am never staying at a crappy hotel again after this place, just saying.

That said, this was the day I finally met up with my friends Dana and Naomi!

And who are they, exactly? Two great people, that's who. Naomi was one of the first people I talked to on Tumblr - basically, when I joined Tumblr, I spent an intense couple of days hunting down all ayabie and AYABIE fans I could find, Naomi was one of them - and Dana and I started talking somewhere along the line. They didn't know each other, but we still decided to all meet up all three as soon as I found out I was going to Amsterdam. I was... nervous.

I had no reason to be nervous, of course, I worked myself up over nothing, because the last time I had met a lives-far-away-online-friend was rather traumatizing. And now I was meeting two. Help.
My dad did not make it better running around the livingroom, going "there's someone out there, someone out there, Saga, go, hahahaha!" but I put on my best poker face and pushed my shaky legs out the door.

Again, my dad is a strange man.
Fortunately, it all went fine and we ended up having a great day together!

At first we got way too lost for our own good, looking for the mysterious "place where you eat from the walls" as my lovely tour guides nicely put it. You see that picture with a bunch of what looks like tiny ovens? That's the place. Not what I was expecting. I automatically pictured a wall with food attached to it and people climbing on it while eating. It was quite amazing though, I wish we had those shops in Sweden. I mean, you pop in a coin and get a burger, it's like a wending machine in the shape of a store? How is that not fantastic in every way possible? 

I didn't get anything from Febo - if I remember the name correctly - but that icecream up there sure was delicious. Oh, all the food to look at. I might not have eaten a lot that day, but I could literally just go abroad and look at all the "exotic" food.

Moving on.

We walked pretty much the entire time, which was awesome, because I wanted to see the city and not just a bunch of tourist-traps. Amsterdam is such a beautiful place! Got to see a lot of fun shops, parks, and oh my all the water and bridges. It looked like a fairytale, yes, I know how cheesy it sounds, but it looked so different compared to Sweden. Even more thrilling than the breakfast I tell you. Kudos to Dana and Naomi for dragging around an excited, limping, very warm swede all day without complaining.

They were both so nice in person ♪ Great memories right there!

It's so strange to actually meet someone you've only talked to online, isn't it? Well of course it is. I mean, if you think about it, you're actually sitting there socializing with your laptop, or whichever type of computer you prefer. People can be so schizophrenic with an all-capslock hyperactive personality online, and then be too shy to even look you in the eyes offline. Remember that traumatic experience I mentioned? That's what happened to me. Now, this time, I have no idea if I lived up to expectation - I probably didn't, I was very warm and in general I'm quite weird, I sometimes studder, and speaking English didn't exactly make it easier for me to behave like a normal human - but these guys were pretty much like I'd imagined them to be. Thankfully no way near another trauma here.

Enough about my dark past, let's continue!

In the afternoon, Naomi unfortunately had to leave earlier to go see One Direction live. I dislike them personally, but hey, not judging. After all I do have a thing for the Biebster. It was just sad that she had to leave earlier. So we said goodbye, and me and Dana were off to a place that at the moment seemed impossible to find, a pancake restaurant.

If my excitement for food was forgotten somewhere in this sea of text, this is a kind reminder.

Dana had been talking about wanting me to taste "poffertjes" since we started to plan what we should do on our day. She had actually given me an entire pie already before that, a cherry "vlaai", ridiculously delicious, but still insisted on treating me - which I'm way too Swedish for, so I basically wanted to apologize at least a hundred times, though I hadn't asked her to treat me, and actually tried to make her let me pay. Man those things were gorgeous.

Poffertjes are some kind of Dutch mini-pancakes, poofy little things, mine were drowned in cream and honey and clementines (I deserved it. I walked for five hours on a foot in need of penicillin. Five. Penicillin). I regret not taking a picture of them, but we were both pretty dead, so my brain was floating some place other than my head.

That was almost it for day two! It was enough for the entire trip, kind of. It was great being shown around the city by friends instead of some robotic tourguide. I hate tourist-y things, it was great just walking around. And I found a book I fell completely in love with - a beautiful edition of "Alice's adventures in Wonderland & other stories" - so much better than basic souvenirs.

I'm too tired and it's too dark to take a good picture of it now, but believe me it will be spammed one day or another. Not even sorry about that.

Thank you for a lovely day girls ♥ and for the pie. And the poffertjes. And the keychain Naomi threw at my mailbox today. We'll meet again, okay! Get your asses to Sweden.

Now here's a random picture of a seventy five year-old man. The right one, that is;

Okay, it was a lie, he's not very random at all. That's my grandpa.

I'm going to finish this post, but I have to give this charming man a shoutout, since he's the whole reason we even went on this trip. My entire family hid in a restaurant later that night, where we surprised him and I was the only one who remembered that he has a pacemaker before he grabbed his chest and thumped down on a chair looking terrified. The others had a lightbulb-moment there and realized what I had already thought about for minutes.

Happy belated birthday grandpa!
I'll leave this huge pile of words here now, quietly wishing someone will gather the strength to actually read it, haha. Otherwise it will just be a great memory I can look back on!

Sorry about the pacemaker grandpa. Happy birthday!
And thank you again dear Dutch friends!

That said, goodnight you little cutiepies.
Much love from the woman who always writes too much! ♥♪

iro ♡ Stay Cute

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and all you in between! 

I know I've tweeted about the fact that I've been writing on my second post on Amsterdam, which has taken some time because going through the pictures was way too much fun, and I couldn't resist procrastinating Photoshop-style. And, on top of that, exciting things have gotten in the way, so Amsterdam part two will have to stay in my pile of drafts for now! 

What exciting things, you ask? Well, you probably don't ask, since it's pretty damn obvious. I'm kind of shoving it in your face, aren't I? That's right. 

The prettiest deco case from Stay Cute jumped through my mailbox earlier today!

I love it so much ♪ Just look at this bad boy, 

it's like someone threw a pile of pastries on my phone and topped it off with some roses and glitter. 

The case is handmade by suteshi @ tumblr, and you can go get one yourself at her etsy shop - westaycute.etsy.com! This was actually customized for me, since she made a shoutout looking for people that might be interested in her cases. Since I have the case next to me right now, I was obviously interested, so I listed a ton of things I liked, and this was the result! 

I literally threw in every little thing I liked, so I'm surprised she actually managed to make something with a little bit of everything I like. It even sort of looks like an outfit I wore recently, haha.

Though it was customized for me and my iPhone 4, I looked at the shop just now, and it seems like you can order this design and get it customized to fit your phone too? And it seems like you can get a case with this design for iPod and Nintendo too. It says that it is available for any device with a hard case. I should probably double check this before posting but I kind of want to surprise her and... okay, going with my gut on this one. 

You can find this case right about here → click, click. 

It came with a screen protector and extra gems too, in case some would fall off.

I've never owned a deco case before so I'm a little afraid to actually move it around, but hey, my phone looks like a pastry, so I'll survive. Thank you so much Suteshi! 

 WESTAYCUTE.ETSY.COM 

That's it for today, if anyone's reading this. Sorry for being rather hyperactive. I've gone back to caffeinated tea after only drinking rooibos for a week. And I'm finally feeling a little better after spending way too much time with my couch, feeling sick-ish and PMS-ing. So there's a lot of extra energy over here. Sigh. I'm sorry. 

I'll log off now and go bother someone else. Maybe finish my Amsterdam post. Hm. We'll see. 

Take care until next time! (๑・ω-)～♥”

CLOTHINGLOVES.NET

So the people at Clothingloves.net has asked me to write a little about their website here, which I of course will since they're so nice.

Clothingloves.net is a website that offers a wide range of wholesale clothing, both for men and women. They have clothes in all different styles, so if you're like me and like more alternative, quirky fashion, or if you're more the flowery dresses-type, you'll find very nice pieces no matter what.

They have cheap dresses, very nice jewelry, and even cheap wedding dresses! In general, the prices are very low.

So go click one of these banners, visit their page and have a look around ♥ ! 

I'm sure you'll find something you like. Like I already said, they have a very varied selection of both clothes and jewelry. 

That's it for now! 

Hugs and kisses people♪

                    

Once upon a time I went to Amsterdam

I thought about coming up with some sort of clever title for this post. But what the hell. Amsterdam. I went to Amsterdam. A simple truth. I can't be clever all the time, damn it. This will have to do!

Anyway.

I realize this short little intro makes it sound like I'm not very happy about this, which is wrong, as I am actually quite overjoyed, to the point of feeling very curse-everything-and-everyone about being home in Sweden again. I had such a great time! And that says a lot, considering that after this trip, I'm on pencillin, have my right foot wrapped up in a bandage, and have to walk on my toes because my heel is completely useless.

I'll get to that later. It's confusing to start at the end instead of the beginning, isn't it? So let's rewind this a little bit. Why did I go to Amsterdam in the first place?

Well, it so happens that my dear grandpa Kjell turned 75 on the 4^th of May, this Saturday, and his wife went a little crazy. She invited me, mum, dad, my dad's brother i.e. my uncle, his wife, and my younger cousin Sasha to celebrate with them in Amsterdam. And she paid for our tickets.

I suspect she might have robbed some random bank.

I don't mind.

I haven't been abroad in a while, so I turned into a perfectionist wreck as the trip was nearing. I wrote a checklist with a million things on, re-dyed my poor hair, tried on clothes until I felt like crying, and so on. I have no idea how I managed to look normal on the picture I took of my travel-outfit. Let me just say that under the surface, I was pretty much ready to lie down on the floor and breathe into a paper bag for a few hours. Not my proudest moment.

I was quite happy with my hair, at least. Even though I ended up wearing a wig because it was quite cold and windy, and I flipped. I was also quite excited about something else. Not Amsterdam itself, strangely enough, I was just really excited about getting my hands on something from Starbucks. Yes, you heard it right.

Starbucks. Fucking Starbucks. Of all things.

It may seem weird, but the only place in Stockholm where you can find a Starbucks, is at Arlanda airport. I can't explain why I've been so obsessed with the thought of visiting Starbucks, because I don't know myself. I'm weird that way. I have a strange fascination with food and things I don't see every day. We have Starbucks in Sweden, but only in Gothenburg and at Arlanda.

No way I'm going to Gothenburg, so I was unreasonably happy about going to the airport, which was a good thing, it turned out, since the beautiful frappucino in my hand calmed me down quite a bit. Okay, I'm extremely weird that way. It just looked so... movie milkshake-y! 

Truth be told, it wasn't as good as I'd expected it to be though. It was pretty tasteless. Just my luck. But it looked beautiful, and at least I can say that I've finally, finally been to Starbucks, victory.

Once on the plane, I must admit I started to panic a little again. I like flying, but I hate starting and landing. It feels like the whole plane is falling apart. Extremely scary. In between the scary parts, however, I think everyone who's ever been on a plane can say it's very worth it.

My lovely country. It's not cold all the time, proof right here!

Look at all the clouds you can't look at because they're not there.

When we flew over the sea and above the Netherlands, all I could think about was how organised the crop fields were. It was completely ridiculous. Sweden looks like a messy quilt made by a five year-old in comparison. Everything was neatly arranged in a rectangular pattern, with little streams dividing the fields. Just, wow.

Surviving the landing came next, followed by riding a taxi for around 45 minutes with my nose pressed against the window and Sasha looking at me like I was retarded. We dropped them off at their hotel, then off to the apartment we'd rented over the weekend. Oh, it was crazy.

Look. At. This. Place.

And yes, that's my family. My dear uncle was the only one who reacted when I said that I was about to snap a picture. The rest; completely ignored me while eating tapas and talking about the view.

The last hotel I stayed at had plastic sheets, one chair in the kitchen, we stayed there with another family of three, and I had to sleep in the same bed as my friend with her feet in my face. So I was kind of overjoyed coming to a place with fresh flowers in vases everywhere, lit candles and a fireplace, enormous windows with a beautiful view, and the best part was that the guy had squeezed in everything he possibly could in the kitchen. Juice, teas, ham and cheese, like a billion cans of cola zero, even artificial sweeteners. Or wait, that wasn't the best part.

There was a tap next to the normal tap in the sink that immediately produced boiling water so I could make tea without having to wait how do I even live with that it's too much fantastic-ness what are commas look at me losing track of everything.

This must be super boring to read, but I had to.

Like I said, from plastic sheets and feet in my face, to this. I'm allowed to brag.

After freaking out over the apartment, we didn't have much time left of the day, so we met up with the rest of the family to have dinner. We went to this insane place called Bazar, a restaurant in an old, gigantic synagog, with two floors and mosaic in the ceiling, which was at least 150 m from the floor. And I'm not kidding when I say the food covered the entire table. We couldn't talk because it was so loud in there, but “låt maten tysta mun” as we say here in Sweden. That was pretty much it for the first day!

My parents went with the rest of the family to their hotel for some drinks, while I went to the apartment and couldn't figure out how to open the door (neither could my parents, once they came home, so it took quite some time), so I ended up sitting in the stairwell, angrily eating apple pie from my doggybag. Then off to sleep.

I don't know why I'm telling you this, but hey, why not! I want to remember this trip, so might as well torture you, dear readers, and write it down. Now, this is getting very long, so no more torture for today!

I say that a lot, don't I? Hm. 

Have a quick picture of the result of my oh-no-it's-cold-my-outfit-won't-work-help-where-is-my-wig-and-knitted-beanie-freakout. Sigh. I'll have to recycle those twin buns with my Weasley-hair someday soon, without the freakout.

Oh, and about my foot, saving that for post no. 2, since it happened on day no. 2. Won't make a post for each day, but day two deserves a post on it's own, just saying.

Until next time, have a nice day and enjoy the sunlight, if you have some outside your window! Seriously get away from your computer. Just because I can't walk doesn't mean you can't. I'll limp my way over to Alex's place for a movie night later, but you, go outside and jump down a meadow or something, damn it. Okay? Good.

I'm off! Good day dear people (๑・ω-)～♥”