Caroline & Kim wedding weekend in Sweden

We so enjoyed the wonderful wedding of Caroline & Kim earlier this month!  What an amazing day, beautiful couple and the amazing setting of the Rockelstad castle nestled in the lush countryside outside Stockholm.  We simply had a great great time during the wedding weekend!

The pictures says it all - so here they are!

Cheers

Emmy's First Week of School!

A Look Back at The First Week of School

Sweden summer - 2010 - NOW UPDATED WITH PICTURES!

Here we are in beautiful Sweden for our 4 weeks of clean air, beautiful nature and hmmm....rain!  But we've had a few nice days but mostly grey skies and rain drops.  I don't mind it at all - coming from 35 C back in Shanghai, we'll take the cooler weather any time of the day.  Max & Emmy loves running around on my parents farm picking blueberries, strawberries and all the other sweet fruits and vegetables in my mom's farm land.  We've eaten home grown potatoes, sweet peas, leaks, salads and much more.  It's so refreshing.  Here are some of my favorite pics from the summer so far!

SUMMER PICTURES

Enjoy!

Glad Midsommar!

Glad Midsommar from Shanghai!

We celebrated a wonderful midsummer here in Shanghai together with friends and a seriously delicious Swedish buffe of all the traditional midsummer foods!

We enjoyed a typical swedish weather of rain and grey skies, but that didn't put a damper on the festivities!

Here are the pictures to prove it.

Cheers/Lovisa

LOVA WEDDINGS LIVE!

So we kicked off the Lova Weddings opening on June 19th at the LAN CLUB in Shanghai - while also celebrating the beautiful wedding of Sweden's beloved Crown Princess Victoria to her Prince Daniel. We had a great night, a successful fashion show, lots of media attending (even Vogue Shanghai, whohoooo!) and a great crowd - what more could we ask for on our opening night. The website went live on the 19th although we're missing some key pieces of the collection pictuers - but a week later, this Saturday the website should be final in both Swedish and English. Many months of hard work has gone into the launch of Lova and we're very excited about the outcome. Now most of Lova's news will be featured on Facebook and Twitter where we plan to keep the Lova steam alive!

Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful well wishes we have received. We appreciate it very much!!

Lovisa

Our first Lova Customer is getting hitched!

So finally our first Lova Weddings gown has been walking down the aisle in a lovely church in Mariefred in Sweden.

We are so excited about it and will always treasure this moment as she was our first one.

We are also very excited about the wedding (and the dress) being featured on by popular Fridah Fahrman's fashion blog in Sweden. Check it out here.

More about Lova soon in a different blog specifically dedicated to Lova Weddings.

Cheers,
Lovisa

Guitarr Hero!

Max has a new favorite - Guitarr Hero on Wii! And he's good at it! He watched a movie not too long ago called the ToothFairy and in it, a boy around Max's age plays the electric guitarr and Max thought he was so cool. So we dusted off the ole' guitarr for the the Guitarr Hero wii game and now, it's all he wants to do. So at 7.30 AM after much mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy pleeeeeeease can I play before school, we are playing Guitarr Hero in our PJs!

:-)

Lovisa

Baby Shower & Celebrating the big 40!

It's not often you get the chance to celebrate someone's first baby shower and a 40th birthday all in the same day, but the receipe proved both successful and fun!

This weekend Staffan and Anna were showered with baby gifts from their closest friends, participated in the silly baby games while we all consumed way too many bottles of Champagne for a typical baby shower!

In the late afternoon, we switched gear to celebrate the birthday boy instead who turned 40 and smelly diaper games and baby triathalons turned into gifts ceremonies of swank bottles of wine and fine wiskey before we took off for the birthday dinner at Cristal restaurant in Puxi.

After an outstanding dinner and a perfect Princesstarta dessert, we headed straight to Bar Rouge where a drink table was awaiting our arrival. Many more bottle of Champagne later and dancing into the whee hours, the birthday was deemed a success and tons of fun!

Here are the pictures from a fantastic day!

Cheers,
L

Beautiful Sweden!

What a gorgrous day!  I've enjoyed a very sunny downtown Stocholm walk with my family today, a perfect lunch with "skagen rora", "gubbrora" and "norrlandsrora" paired with a cold beer - and by then,  I already knew this would be a perfect day. 

Later in the afternoon, I flew to Gotland, and after checking into the hotel, I parked myself on a bench in front of the massiv blue ocean and just closed my eyes, took a very deep breath to smell the amazing fresh, salt water air surrounding me - and knew this was home. This is such a beatiful place on earth.  Later in the evening I had the most delicious dinner at "Bolaget" - French onion soup and beef Bourguignon with a glass of Bordeaux.  In the background played the tunes of the french president's first lady Carla Brunis sweet voice from her 2002 album "Quelqu'un m'a dit".   All while I poured over, with great suprise, a new wedding magazine in Sweden called "HerrgardsBrollop" - first time I'm witnessing a wedding magazine with style, excellent pictures, less ads, great articles - finally, someone got it! 

Finally, I'm watching the Unicef gala and will spend 100 SEK/month for one year to become a world parent to support the very hard hit Haiti children.  I urge everyone reading this blog to also help out in this part of the world.  We have so much, they have so little.

Well, I couldn't spell a more perfect day that this.

Lovisa

Exciting hangers...

Not sure how 50 new hangers can excite me so much but they do! It's some of our first shipments for our stock and to fill up the Lova "show room" with items needed for our launch is just plain exciting!

Cheers!

Lovisa

The most beautiful bride of them all....

is our little Emmy!

I just love this picture of her.  I shot it this morning when I gave her a bridal gown I made for her to play in.

As most of you know, who read my blog, I'm about to launch our bridal dress company; Lova Weddings this spring. I don't write much about it here as we're keeping much of the information secret until the big launch date in the first week of June, if all goes as planned! It's a very hectic time leading up to this date and we're enjoying the amazing experiences of starting a new business. More soon about Lova Weddings!

Cheers!

Lovisa

Happy Easter!

What a beautiful Easter! The sun is beaming here in Shanghai, the trees are green and the flowers are adding amazing color everywhere.

We're heading over for Easter Dinner to our friends house and the kids will get their Easter Eggs in the afternoon, they already can't wait.

Tomorrow we're heading out for a big Easter Brunch where the food will be plentiful and the kids can color easter eggs, have an Easter egg hunt in the garden and meet the Easter bunny - should be fun!

Here are some pics of Emmy & Max making Easter arts and crafts, a beautiful cherry blossom tree in Shanghai, my new Chang & Biorck spring pillows and my Lolai Bao bag which I really like - all in happy spring colors!

Pictures

Happy Easter all!

HOCKEY!

Nothing makes me happier than to see this picture!

2 months ago Magnus was fretting the fact that his 5 year old son was not going to have a "hockey upbringing". Now he's standing in our living room in full hockey gear ready to head to his first real hockey training with coaches and all.

Every Tuesday night at 7 PM (!) Max and Magnus heads to the rink for 1.5 hour of practise. They were 3 kids with 3 coaches yesterday and Magnus is very impressed with the coaches skills and work. He thinks Coach Han has played for the Chinese national team which is exciting. They love the kids but they are tough!   After 45 minutes of practise yesterday Max had started crying a little as his ankles and legs were aching. They went off the ice for a few minutes to have some apple juice but it didn't last long - Max was back on the ice in a heart beat, skating like a master. His buddy Jimmy also cried, but only becuase his parents dragged him off the ice after 2 hours of pracise and he wanted to skate more...

When Max got home that night he was beaming. He loves to play hockey and it warms my heart so much I can't even begin to tell you all! First of all becauase my son has found something he loves to do - and it doesn't have the name Star Wars attached to it - but also because I know how much this means to Magnus!

More pics from the first day of hockey practise!

Cheers!

Happy Hockey mom

Barbie invasion!

Well, it happened slowly but oh, so surely - Barbie is now the favorite figure of the house and both Emmy & Max are into the little hourglass shaped beauty! Emmy dresses up as soon as she's home from school and before dinner one of the 14 Barbie collection DVDs is played while Emmy dances and sings through the house. She does all the ballerina moves and flips her leg up in the air, just like Barbie does in the movies. It's very very adorable. I'll have to record it one day to capture these precious moves!

At first I couldn't believe we would fall into the whole Barbie thing, but after seeing the movies and playing with Barbies, it's quite fun and I can see why she such a legend! The movies are filled with classical music, the story line is good and somewhat "educational" and both Max & Emmy loves it - so Barbie it is!

Sweet Sabrina!

How I love this girl!  She is just a beautiful little person inside and out.  Today when I visited Sabrina at the Shanghai Healing Home she lit up with a big bright smile when I reached for her. We played and did excercises for 10 minutes to strenghten her back and neck - she did great but just like any other baby her age she was fussy after a short while of some good ole' tummy time.

I told her that Max and Emmy loved her very much and they sent their kisses with me earlier that morning and I was to pass it on to her - so we kissed on the nose, the cheeks and the forehead - all love from Max and Emmy and me.

I'm now looking for sponsors to help me sponsor Sabrina's monthly cost of 300 USD which is her monthly care cost at the home.  I'm hoping to create a little Sabrina support group so we can all assist in making sure Sabrina has all her needs covered at the home.  On Friday we're attending a benefit dinner for the Shanghai Healing Home and I hope to find a good group of people there who can all "adopt" Sabrina during her stay at the Home and before she is adopted (oh, boy will I miss her then!).

Cheers!
Lovisa

Hockey in Shanghai!

We are so thrilled to have found a good hockey team and practice ice for Max and Emmy here in Shanghai only 20 minutes from our house!  Now we have a rigid Saturday and Sunday morning skating schedule and in just 3 weeks Max has gotten so much better on the skates.  

Max has taken a 2 year skating break after moving from Chicago where he practiced since he was 2.   After the summer we hope he can join the youngest kids on the hockey team.  He absolutely loves skating and we have to litterally pull him off the ice after 2 hours of wild skating - to his father's delight!  This means so much to Magnus and I swear our stay in China would be short lived unless we'd finally found Max an ice rink!  This is the age when they get started skating and building the foundation to any future as a hockey player (which i'm confident Magnus would love Max to become!).

Here are some pictures of our last practice round.

Enjoy!
Lovisa

Love is in the air!!! Congratulations Signe and Ryan!

Hot off the press - Signe (my sister) and Ryan just got engaged in the Bahamas under some very romantic circumstances - starlight skies, surrounded with candles and in the Caribbeans - does it get any better than that!!

We wish an amazing future to an amazing couple!  So excited about the upcoming wedding and all the planning leading up to it.... it will be the wedding of the year and so beautiful!

CONGRATULATIONS S & R!!

A very belated update on Max Birthday in Hong Kong!

Better late than never - here's finally some great pictures of our Disney World trip to Hong Kong where we celebrated Max 5th birthday!

We loved seeing our friends and the green and hilly scenery of HK and can't wait to go back for more (shopping!).  The air certaily felt more clean compared to Shanghai but the highlight of our trip was no doubt Disney World which Max and Emmy just loved.  Mickey and Buzzlight Year was a big hit after our trip...

Here are the great pictures from our trip to HK celebrating our big boy

Cheers!

Lovisa

A mom in her Converse shoes....

Today was one of those beautiful sunny and warm days in Shanghai. Magnus left for the US early in the morning and I decided to head to Puxi for a sweet brunch and some play in town with Max & Emmy.

When we got to our favorite Taikang Lu restaurant, a kind, older man sat next to us and chatted up a storm with Max & Emmy right away. He was an artist and could tell Max was a very creative young man with an explosive mind, which took me by suprise. He said only seconds after meeting us "let that boy talk and be as wild as he is, too many people are hushed in life and don't let him be one of them". I was honestly touched by his comment because it felt so real and it put a million thoughts about Max in instant perspective.  How could a stranger figure out my son in seconds....? Since I don't believe much in coninsidences any more and think things happen for a reasons I kindly replied back "Thank you, that meant a lot to me".

And as he was ready to leave us, he turned around and said to Max and Emmy "Hey - look, your mom's wearing Converse - you'll turn out OK!" and off he went.... I loved that quirky and off the wall comment and sat there for a minute looking after him wondering who he was. I turned to Max who had the biggest & brightest smile on his face as he said:

 "Mom, I really liked that guy!"

What a sweet day.

Cheers!