Hi!
I thought about blogging this yesterday but it was election day here in Sweden and my mind was way too focused on that for me to sit down and blog.
It turned out to be a very depressing election because the racist party became Swedens third largest party and the feminist party that I voted for didn't make it into the parliament.
It's just so awful.

But let's focus on something else entirely for a while! Something interesting and weird and hauntingly beautiful in its ugliness.
The car cemetery David and I visited during our road trip a couple of weeks ago. This day was our wedding anniversary and we filled it to the brim with amazing adventures. (For part one of this day click here )
This place is situated far into the woods close to the Norwegian border and people go there to look and be fascinated by the surreal atmosphere.
There are said to be a couple of thousands of old cars (some of them go as far back as the 1950's) in this car cemetery and the land is owned by two people who live on the property as well.
I've read that people in the area think of it as a sort of cultural heritage that needs to be left as is, but at the same time nature is not really loving it; the trees are not healthy and the ground must be filled with toxic waste.
No matter what, it's an extremely interesting and strangely beautiful location and the entire experience made a huge impact on both of us.

It's a place that get's the imagination going and we felt like we were thrown into a post apocalyptic world where everyone else was dead except for the few of us walking around the remnants of a long ago destroyed planet.
Fascinating, scary and very exciting!
I hope these pictures can give you a little bit of that feeling.

Nature takes over.
Imagine the years it must have taken for the trees to grow this big, that's how long the car has just been lying there untouched.

Mossy license plate numbers.

Indecipherable.

Almost melted together.

Cars almost entirely eaten by nature.

Forever queuing.

I stood here for quite some time just staring, my mind reeling with fantastical movie scenarios.

The moss intrigued me to no end. I have so many photos from here of cars covered in moss. It just loks so beautiful.

Really really old cars. But the grill is still shining.

Old signs from local businesses.

Can you feel it? That deserted, surreal feeling of being all alone in a far away future?

Sooooo, new week! Monday means theatre rehearsal for me, but before that I'm going to be working on my etsy shop for a while. New pretty things to be added soon!

Until next time:

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Hey!
I'm finally back with the second day of our road trip adventure.
It was saturday and we woke up in Söderfors at the beautiful mansion Söderfors Herrgård.
After a nice breakfast in the gorgeous main building we packed our bags and checked out because we had places to see!

David waits patiently for his wife to finish taking photos.

We had read about a greek temple in Söderfors. Built in 1795 and a replica of the Theseus temple in Athens. It's situated in an English style park in an old Swedish industial town and it's such a weird mix of everything we just had to go check it out.

This place just begs to be danced in, right?

When we felt we had seen all of the temple and my damaged heel had had enough of jumping we went back to the car to continue our journey.
This is the town of Söderfors, by the way.
It's kind of interesting to see how divided the town felt. It used to be a thriving industrial town and the historical parts are still there as in the mansion, the english park, the greek temple. But the rest of the town just feels so lonely and sleepy.

Our next stop was another old industrial town, Gysinge, that used to produce iron.
This place felt a whole lot more lively than Söderfors and lots of tourists come here to look at the historical parts with the river and rapids as the soul of the town.

Gysinge Herrgård, such a beautiful mansion!

And they had fluffy trees! Not many things make me as happy as fluffy trees!

After Gysinge we drove on towards our stop for the evening. But we had to stop in Karlstad to eat.

We found the sushi place Happy Kitchen. Super tasty, as you can see!

And then we arrived in Jössefors. Another old industrial town. We unpacked and rested for a few hours before we took our cameras and went outside for an evening walk in search for the lake Glafsfjorden that we had seen through the car window on our way to the bed and breakfast.

Aaaah, there it is.

We were a little late to find a path that reached the lake so it was hard to capture the fog that lay thick over the forest, but I think these photos are perfect anyways. It was so beautiful there. So still and silent.

Such a great ending to a wonderful day.

Then we went back to the bed and breakfast that had incredibly high ceilings that made me look oh so very tiny.
We were so tired after a long day and the day after was going to be filled with adventure so we needed our rest.

The post from the last day of our road trip is going to be epic. Epic, I tell you. So let's hope I can show you soon! There's a lot of photos to edit before that though, so off I go!

Oh, and today my vacation is officially over. Back to work!
The smell of autumn in the air makes everything so much easier, doesn't it?

See you soon!
Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Last friday David and I set out on a little weekend roadtrip to celebrate our first year as married.
We often travel south in Sweden so we wanted to go on an adventure up the country this time. Sweden is an incredibly long country (1572 kilometers to be exact) so we didn't go very far north but still far enough for nature to look a little bit different.
We started in the morning and had plans to go check out an abandoned factory about an hour from Gothenburg. Well. It had been torn down in 2007 so we kind of missed the opportunity by 7 years...
Our next planned stop though was the National Park in Tiveden. All we knew was that it was supposed to feel like stepping inside a John Bauer Painting and that was exactly how it was. Truly magical!
When I edited my photos from friday I realised I didn't take a single one outside of Tiveden National Park (At least not with my Nikon, there are a bunch of iphone photos that I might show you later), so this entire post is dedicated to this amazingly beautiful and enchanted forest.

We followed the trail towards Stenkälla (translates to Stone well) as that was what we've been recommended beforehand to do. We had no clue of what was awaiting and that made it feel even more like an adventure!

David took photos of me up on that rock for a little project I'm working on. To get up there was easier said than done. At least for me. David jumped up there like it was a piece of cake, but I of course had to leave a little blood behind...

And I ripped my only pair of pants! Oh no!
The things you do for art.

David is a daredevil!
No, he didn't go any further than this. I took photos and screamed "Oh no no no you don't!" at the same time.

Taking a break.

Then we got a little lost.
Maybe it's this way?

Or that way?

No! This way!

And here was Stenkälla. A crystal clear well underneath a HUGE rock.

Kind of hard to understand this photo but to the right is the way out from under the rock and to the left is the water with a perfect mirror effect.

And that is part of the huge rock situated on top of the well. And David is just a teeny tiny human being next to it.

Hi!

David in the root.

David is an airplane.

Where's David?

There's David!

And then we reached a beautiful lake.

And nothing makes you feel smaller than a forest like this one.

Me and my Fjällräven looking at the view.

When we went into the park we had no clue of how it would look there or how long it would take to walk through, we just knew we wanted to see this place. It took us at least 1.5 hours and it was so worth it to be a little bit behind schedule. It was such a beautiful forest.
I am one of those people who hurt myself in the most ridiculous ways possible and earlier that day I was attacked by a rest stop toilet door. I know: ridiculous. I was on my way into the bathroom and misjudged how fast the heavy door would close and got the lower (and very sharp) corner right in my heel and achilles tendon with quite the force. It hurt so much! I stood there, clutching my heel, swearing loudly to myself for a while before I could even stand up straight again. It still hurts a lot but when we were walking around the park it was really bad. And then I banged my shin on the rock...
Yeah. I'm prone to these types of stupid incidents.
When we reached the hotel in the evening my heel was very swollen and red and since I didn't have any bandages I used my tights. Haha, it worked like a charm! The next day the swelling had gone down. Still hurt like hell, but nothing that would stop our adventure!

I'll be back with day two tomorrow hopefully, so stay tuned!

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Hi!
I'm in serious vacation mode and can't understand how the days seem to be disappearing a whole lot faster than normally.
There HAVE been days though, the photos in my iPhone tells me so, and when looking through them today I thought it would be nice to take a little peek at what's been going on these past weeks.

Light testing in the Sandberg/Losten household looks a little bit like this.

One day my sister came to Gothenburg and we spent a big part of the afternoon in this park with flamingo showers. My niece and nephew are cuter than possible.

My new sunglasses arrived! The golden shades are a little bit too shiny but the black ones are fantastic.

My dear friend Fia who lives in South Africa is in Sweden visiting family and friends. She came to Gothenburg for a few days and it was absolutely wonderful to see her! Fia is the one in the middle, hugged by Kristin and me. The little cutey on the ground is Fia's daughter Moya.

Fia's husband Christo and little baby Moya again.

David helped me make my video for This Growing Collection. This is from the first of two days of filming, during the wonderful golden hour.

I worked hard on getting everything ready for launch last monday.

Took a break to catch the last rays of sunshine in my hair.

As a rule my hair seems to look the best when it's time to go to bed.
Here you can clearly see my anger and frustration at the entire situation.

Last week I cut my hair for the first time in about 15 months. It was about time.
As always the hairdresser insists on flattening my hair to the point of ridiculousness. It looks sort of nice in this photo but in real life it looks weird. Like I haven't got any hair at all. I have really thin hair but the natural waves makes it look a lot thicker and I just don't understand how hairdressers can't understand that flat and shiny is not always a good thing.

One morning we were out of coffee filters and I do what I always do when that happens (Yes, it's a reccuring thing).
Toilet paper!
I have the character Lelaina Pierce in the wonderful 90's movie Reality Bites to thank for this useful tip.
Yep, it works surprisingly well and only tastes a little papery...

And here's a glimpse of how it is to be married to David.
You'll get a drawing of a cat pushed under the door while you're on the toilet.
Who needs a cat when you can have a David?

The day after I released This Growing Collection was a slow and tired kind of day. Didn't do much more than take this self portrait.

David and I went to Österlen for a few days.
On our way to the family house we always drive through this wonderful beech forest. This time we decided to go back there to take some photos and explore a little.

What we found though was a fairytale forest right next to all the beech trees!

We loved it so much we had to go back the day after as well.
I got an idea during the night and the last thing I said to David before I fell asleep was "We need to go back to the forest again tomorrow!" So back we went.
I took a lot of photos and hopefully I can show them to you soon.
Both of these photos are taken with the self timer app TimerCam and edited with Snapseed.

An evening walk in a painting.

On saturday my mother, David and I went to the garden cafe Kaffestugan Alunbruket. Such a beautiful place!

Astor the cat was adorable as always.

On our last evening in Rörum for this time David and I took a walk through the little village and talked about creativity, film ideas and autumn arriving.
I can feel it in the air, summer is almost over. The best season is coming.