The multi talanted couple Charlotte Öström and Rikard Gartmyr spend almost all of their time together: The live together with their children Alice, 5 yrs, and Karl, 6 yrs, in a house in Bromma, Sweden. They also run the company CharlieCharlie together. A company that is all about stop motion animation, character design and illustration. With big clients like MSN and Greenpeace and the Swedish Postoffice they do really good for themselves. And all is produced in the basement of the house.

After they have taken their kids to school and daycare, in the morning, they return home, make themselves a cup of coffee and go downstairs to the studio basement and start working. And of course the dog Arne tags along to the cool basement where he has his own little nest. The basement, however, will not be covered by this slideshow, I will post it in a separate slide.

The house is built in 1937, designed by Edvin Engström. This family moved in 2004 to find the house in very good shape. The person living there before them was actually the daughter of the original builder of the house. Underneath the linoleum carpet they found beautiful wooden flooring in perfect condition. All the walls got a fresh coat of white and the kitchen was left untouched. The bathroom, however, got redone and the garden needed  a loving hand.

Like myself this couple like to buy a lot of toys for themselves, not only for the kids. They seem to love Tim Burton, who´s characters are found all over the house.
But best of all is this family´s passion to create and build things and that is seen all over this house.

Like the customized i phone docking station that Rikard made out of an old transistor radio. Or the wooden R2D2 or the amazing tree house in the garden. I was so inspired by this creative couple and I think you will be to.
Enjoy!

Click the image below for the whole slideshow or the small thumbnails for single photos.
Related posts: CharlieCharlie´s dollhouse click here! Rikard´s brother and family´s visit AprillAprill click here! And Studio-basement sooon here!

I shot this home for the Swedish mag. Mama last summer.
The family has since then split up. They do not live here anymore, but they still wanted me to share my photos with you readers.
Anna is still running the webshop Bon Vintage but at another location.
This is her own words:

Ever since the bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen was built it has become quite common that Danes move across the sea for a house in Sweden.
The house prices are a lot lower here and thanks to bridge it is really easy to commute.
And I have visited one couple who did exactly that.

Erik and Heike, a Dane and a German, who met each other via the internet - on a discussion list about Douglas Coupland, author of their favorite book Generation X. After a couple of years of off-topic mails, they finally met each other in real life,as Heike traveled from Germany to Denmark, and they have been together ever since.

Heike found work in Copenhagen and the couple moved in to a small house just 3 kilometers from the Copenhagen airport.
It did not take long for them to grow tired of the noise from the airport, and they both felt they wanted out of the city.
And some years later, in 2007, they found their dream-home in beautiful Skåne, Sweden.

Today, after three years of renovating the house and completing all paper work that comes with moving to a new country,they feel that they have landed exactly where the wish to be.
In fact, the only thing they can think of when I ask them if there is anything that they miss, are some of the more odd local foods from Denmark and Germany, that they cannot find here.
And that is sertanly not a big deal when you’re in a country, that has concepts like godis (sweets) and bästis (best friend), as well as very lovely grannar (neighbours)! Heike tells me.

For work, they both commute to Copenhagen every day where they work with communication and the web, and have had interesting job-titles such as “web consultant”, “communication specialist” and “editor”.
They blog - more seldom than they would like to - about living in Sweden as a Danish-German couple here: svenskhus.wordpress.com

Click the image below for the whole slideshow or the small thumbnails for single photos.

One would think that the reward should come on Friday when you are done with everything. But I can not wait that long.  Some of you might already have guessed what the reward is.

FLOWERS of course! Bring as many as you can into your home. After a long and cold winter this is exactly what my heart desires. Buy them or pick them just as long as you have them.

Just look at that promiscuous Magnolia ready to burst. Lovely. Or those very rare Manbuds below, they make me happy.

I took these photos for our guest blog appearances at Design Sponge a while back. But some of you might have missed it.

So here it is again:
One thing I really love about traveling  is grocery shopping. I enjoy walking up and down the aisles filled with the colorful and fun products.

So for all you non-Swedish readers here are some Swedish grocery, maybe you will find them as interesting as I find yours.

I added some models from an old sewing book to spice up my photos. And I like them so much I think I will keep them in my pantry for that extra spice all week long.

Smaklig spis