Åre

Saturday we took a road trip with our friends, Craig and Heather, to Åre, Sweden. It is a little ski town about 2.5 hours from us. We thought it would be nice to see all the fall colors on the trees since we think winter is approaching quickly. We had looked at the weather earlier this week and soon realized winter has already come to Åre since it was going to be 20 degrees and snowing today. So on Friday Jason put our snow tires on the car in preparation for the trip and in reality to get ready for winter here too.

Some of the gorgeous fall colors

We had a nice drive out and saw some pretty scenery including a good bit of snow on the ground. We arrived a little before lunch and were surprised that the town was hosting an "Autumn Festival" which had booths of various sorts plus a food festival. The festival wasn't very large but it gave us something to experience. The highlight though was the herd of sheep that were herded from a field through the town like a parade. It was SO CUTE! If you don't believe me check out the video below.

We had a nice lunch at a fancy little pizza joint which had a fabulous waitress who translated the entire menu for us! After lunch it started snowing and we walked the town a little more and did some window shopping. The other highlight of the day was the fresh hot donuts on the street- what a treat in the freezing cold. On the way out of town we hit up the grocery store for Jason's favorite Swedish delicacy - chocolate covered banana chips. We had a great day and saw something new but I think it made us realize we are NOT ready for winter but it is coming quick!

Åre - fall colors and snow

Hot, fresh donuts in the freezing cold!

Sheep!

Cinnamon Rolls and Immigration

This week I had to work on Tuesday so cooking was postponed to Wednesday. I decided on cinnamon rolls. Since they are best served warm we had them for dinner with some scrabbled eggs. These were maybe the most complicated thing I have made yet but they were well worth it! They required 2 rises, being rolled out then rolled up and cut then another rise before they could be baked. Here is the recipe if you are interested but be warned they take quite awhile to make!

After being rolled up with brown sugar and cinnamon inside

After being cut and waiting to rise again

After the last rise

Fresh out of the oven

Frosted and ready to eat!

These were a treat after spending a good part of my day at the immigration office. I have been waiting for my visa renewal to be processed for 5 months. Since my visa has since expired I was told I couldn't leave the country until a new visa was issued. That caused issues since we are traveling to Prague and Berlin in 10 days! Luckily when I showed up at the immigration office and finally talked to someone they told me my visa was now processed and approved. So now I am just waiting for my passport to have the visa placed inside- I pick that up next week. The best part is now my visa is only good until May since that is when Jason's expires and due to the long wait to get visas processed Jason and I really have to apply for both of our renewals in November!

L-O-V-E

Boy do we love our dogs. As many of you may know Dopler and Stretch are retired racing greyhounds - when they came to us neither one knew how to walk up or down the stairs. Dopler learned quickly and became a pro. Stretch also learned quick but he never really mastered them and instead of taking stairs slow he tends to get scared and jump which isn't the best method on wooden stairs. Our house in Norway has open stairs which is even scarier for us and Stretch. He has fallen several times and is all around nervous on the stairs. In the past 3 months he has had 2 bad falls- once ripping out a dew claw and once cutting himself leaving a 6 inch long gash on his front leg which took a month to heal. His confidence has gotten worse and worse and we are worried he is going to fall one day and break a leg or worse.

So we decided to "carpet" the stairs. Since we are renting we can't make too many changes which left carpeting a challenge. We went to Ikea and bought 2 large plastic backed rugs and cut out a pattern that would cover the whole stair and could be wrapped around the bottom to be secured so it wouldn't spin. We were not quite sure how it would work but it turned out great- Stretch has already shown an 100% increase in his confidence. It is not the best looking thing in the world but it is not too bad. The project reinforced that we love our dogs like kids since we spent all day tried to make the stairs better for poor little Stretch!

Before

After

(Un)Events

We have had an uneventful week (like most weeks in Norway). I did get a flat tire on my way to pick Jason up from work on Wednesday. Although I do know how to change a tire I couldn't get the stupid lug nuts off the tire so I was stuck. Jason took a taxi to meet me and changed the tire in a jiff which was great since it was raining. We took the tire to the tire store the next morning hoping to drop it off and pick it up when it was done. This being Norway we were worried the tire store wouldn't open until 9:00am and would charge us a fortune. To our delight they opened at 7:00am and fixed the tire while we waited. Then the most miraculous thing happened- they didn't charge us for the repair! WHAT! It was a great morning for us in Norway.

Nothing much else to report. Jason is currently using his engineering skills to fashion carpeting for our open stairs - Stretch is not getting any better at going down them and we are convinced he is going to break his leg so we have broken down and are trying to fix the problem. It may look really ugly when we are done but hopefully it will be safer for our little dog.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

This week I made Red Velvet Cupcakes with Butter Cream Frosting. It was much better then my first attempt this past winter when I ended up with "pink velvet" and learned that one bottle of food coloring in the US is larger then it is here! Although today's cupcakes turned out well I am still don't think the color is quite right...maybe it is my imagination or maybe the food coloring is different here. Either way the cake tasted good and the butter cream frosting was excellent!

Cooling after coming out of the oven

After being frosted

The minis I made with the left over batter and frosting...decided they needed more frosting so I made a yummy sandwich with them! They remind me of these great cookies we had in Switzerland.

First Signs of Autumn

The first signs of Autumn have arrived

• The leaves have started to turn color
• We can see our breath on evening walks
• Jason mowed the lawn for the last time
• Our neighbor took down the trampoline for the season

We haven't seen anyone else take down their trampoline yet but we think our neighbor did it early because he is a communist. No joke (see the post about the elections) - we recently noticed that we can see a painting of a hammer and sickle in their house from our kitchen window. All of our neighbor's funny ways all make sense now :)

Sour Cream Pound Cake

This week's baking - Sour Cream Pound Cake from Cooking Light. It turned out really well. It may be the first thing I have cooked in a tube pan that has worked! Our last attempt was angel food cake which was a disaster. Glad this one wasn't.