:: this moment ::

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

via SouleMama.

Thoughts on November

It's early Thursday morning, Nora is still asleep and I sit next to her. The room is completely dark, but I see it slowly getting lighter outside. Soon it's November, which I think is the darkest month of the year. I know December is actually the darkest one, but then we've got all Christmas lights and decorations. In November it's just ... dark. No golden leaves on the trees anymore, most likely no bright snow on the ground yet. Still I like November. Its a month of indoor activity, a month of preparing for Christmas, a month of longing that now, when I'm a grown up, passes by so fast but, when I was little, seemed to last forever.

In November I plan to:
Go to the "sewing fair". There are many more craft things than those connected to sewing, like some paper crafts, yarn etc.
Make Christmas things for my shop. I'm planning on some felt decoration kits, amigurumi patterns and hearts with cloves. I hope I have the time.
Go visit my dad & co who live on an island 5-6 hours drive south of here (together with Nora).

What are you up to?

End of October

My little tiger

I have a little tiger in my house. She's been a tiger for quite a while, but noone saw her stripes and her tail so I made her a tiger costume.



Do I have to tell you she wears it every day?

Someone is 7 years old today

Inspired by SouleMama:

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Visiting our story tree

Visiting our favourite tree, the story telling tree. This time she sat on my lap and I told her a story about an elephant family and a snail, celebrating Christmas (all at her request).

Nora's purple cat

This is "lila katt", purple cat. Nora has a made up cat and she says it's purple and called Pooh Bear. (She also has a purple car, equally invisible but often used.) One evening I made her this purple cat. I made it really fast and made several mistakes, but I does resemble of a cat and, most importantly, Nora likes it.



I was thinking it'd be stupid to make her invisible cat this visible, that I should incourange her imagination instead of making it into a "thing", but I shouldn't have worried. The purple cat very soon got three invisible kittens *smile*

A small gift

I made this little felted soap and the tea for a friend of mine. The tea is herbal and from our garden, it's apple mint and blackcurrant.

Bracelet

I have a blog friend who is so sweet and creative and who inspires me a lot. Still I haven't "talked" to her for ages. I feel so terrible bad because of that, but still I postpone writing to her. I think it's because I'm ashamed, and because I have no good excuse. It's so stupid of me.



I made her this bracelet. It's not my own design, but I thought it was nice to try someone else's design for a change. I don't know whether she'll like it, maybe it's too pink, but then on the other hand she can give it as a gift to a friend of hers :-) I thought if I make her this, then I will send it, and if I send it, then I'll have to write as well. I really want to stay in touch with her.

Are you ever doing or feeling like this, or is it just me? Since my daughter was born (and it's 2,5 years ago!!) things like this happen to me.

Thank you

We got married in the beginning of August, but not until now have I finished writing the thank you-cards. As always when I'm crafting I cannot make many things looking the same ...



The delay of the cards was because there were problems with the photos, but in the end we got what we wanted and now I'll send them all out. I love paper crafts and have dreamt of the beautiful cards I would make when we'd get married, but in the end I made really simple cards as we had a "simple" wedding and I wanted it to match. The same for the thank you-notes.

Soap felting

Nora and I tried to felt soap.



Well, I felted soap.

She:
Put liquid soap in the water
Put wool in the water
Put liquid soap on a soap bar and rubbed it
Took a bath

:: this moment ::

Inspired by Soule Mama:

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

I was inside working and when I looked out through the window Nora and Magnus were busy :o) (And yes, Nora is all about Christmas at the moment.)

Behind the scenes

I'm busy working with my new webshop. I had one before, but now I'm changing to a better one. I'm photographing mei tais and baby carriers, writing code, uploading photos, deciding on prices ... etc



This it what it looks like behind the scene. I guess the finished result - the shop - will look neat & nice, and hopefully inspiring, but behind ... there's a mess. So today I'm taking some time off and clean our bedroom (which is ALSO my studio).

In our garden

Before the rain and the wind:



So many, many, many leaves have fallen down since I took this photo.

Our garden is small, but I love it. I might not take care of it as well as I should, and one might think I shouldn't have a garden or all those flowers, but I do anyway. I love the flowers. I planted summer flower seeds, but they didn't bloom until August and many of them are still beautiful.

It's windy and rainy, but I've still got some summer flowers.





But I guess this is a good bye to summer. Good bye summer! See you next year again!

Feet, shoes, socks, paws

I often see photos of shoes, just like this one. With one exception. The shoes are pretty. My shoes are not. They're intended for walking with my dog and I use them every day. They're very comfortable. But they don't do well with skirt. Or on pictures.



Zam has white socks. Like always. (Except when they're dirty, but they seldom are as he hates walking in water or mud.)

Corners of our home: Kitchen

Hej. How was your weekend?

I will begin this week with showing you a corner of our kitchen.



As it is, an ordinary day, in the middle of a little crafting and tea drinking. I found the red curtain at a flea market a week ago and I really like it, it adds warmth to the room yet let the light in. Out kitchen used to be pink-light purple-apricot until we painted it in July. We didn't have the same taste as the previous owners ... You can see it here.

The cupboard/sideboard is from the 1940s and my grandpa's parents let build it for their home. The kitchen table is not that old, however I grew up with it so it's not new either. I like furniture with history.

wishing you a ...

Corners of our home: Nora's room

This is what it looks like in the middle of playing, and in the middle of Magnus' folding clean laundry. So many things are still half finished, but as with the rest of the house we let it grow slowly into becoming "our" house.



It's a mix of old (flea market finds or our own old things) and Ikea. Over the bed I have put to illustrations from an Elsa Beskow book.



And I've painted several small illustrations on the walls. They're not mine, but instead from talented Cindy at Scherenschnitte. They are intended for paper cutting, but I transferred them to the wall and painted them black instead.



I have many plans for her room, but one step at a time ... :)

What does your childrens room look like? (Always as tidy as in the interior design blogs?! Not here, we live and play and make a mess *smile* )

Corners of our home: Entrance

I decided to show you some corners of our home. Not styled in any way, just like they are at the moment. This is the first you see when entering our house:



The key cabinet (which is decorated with a picture made in wool!) is perhaps placed a bit strange, but when putting it there we had other furniture and things instead of the blue bureau we've got not. I painted that bureau when I was a teenager, actually. It's starting to loose some paint, but I still like it. The top drawer is the one with junk + dog stuff ;) The red box on top of the bureau is full of dog treats. And, by the way, the bureau is normally not this clean on top, it's just this week as I'm trying to figure out what to have there (and I think I know now, but will show you once I'm finished). The glass vase is from Småland, the part of Sweden I come from. That part of Småland is also called "kingdom of chrystal" because of all glassworks there. Magnus had the white shoes when he was little. The blue car with Nora's hat and coat is from my mom. Nora choose it - she loves cars.

Tote bag

This week at craft café:



Made by me and Nora. Beautiful? Not so very much. Fun to do? A lot. Useful? Very. Nora can carry her things or her library books in it. She could hardly wait to show it to dad :)

Garlic and decoupage

We made this one at craft café last week:



I painted it light blue and decorated it with a bird and a flower in blue + brown, using decoupage technique. When we came home we planted garlic cloves. The sprouts tastes of garlic and can be used as a spice when cooking. We put it in our kitchen window.

Swedish childbook - Mamma Moo

Mamma Mu (Moo in English) is another favourite here. Perhaps you didn't know, but she's acutally our neighbour. I'll show you ...



Mamma Mu is a very unusual cow. She's definetely not eating grass all day long, like the other cows. Instead she's very curious and playful. With her friend Kråkan (Crow) she learns how to ride a bike, to go on the swings or to build a tree house (however Kråkan wants her to behave more like a normal cow). The books are written by Jujja and Tomas Wieslander, but it's Sven Nordqvists illustrations that makes them stand out. They're detailed and funny.



I said she's our neighbour. Well, at least according to Nora. She wants to show you Mamma Mu's tree house. It's just a few minutes walk from our house.



And behind our house is a farm. They have sheep and cows. That's where Mamma Mu lives. To the right, high up in a tree, lives Kråkan. You can see the farm on the top photo (below this text) and if turning around you can see our house, as on the bottom photo, almost hidden behind the trees. We hear the cows and sheep from our garden and every night Nora asks if Mamma Mu and Kråkan are asleep already. I say they are.

Morning meeting

Early morning meeting at work. Business breakfast.

or

Nora and I drawing, drinking tea and eating bread, wearing pyjamas.

There are many thing I love about working at home. (There are other things that are difficult, too, like the constant lack of time ...)

Best of September

It's already October. I can't understand how time flies and that September is already gone. This last week has been wonderful. Chilly mornings, the sun warming a bit in the middle of the day, the leaves are turning red and yellow. We had our first frost night here yesterday; it's time to bring in my olive tree.

This September has been good. Not like we expected, but good. Nora was supposed to begin kindergarten in August so that I could focus on growing my business, but she didn't like it there at all. We decided that she should stay at home as long as she needs. To many of you living abroad this may not sound strange, but here in Sweden it's not common to let your 2,5 year old child be at home (maybe with an exception if you have baby siblings) and because of that we're the only ones (with children) in our neighbourhood being at home during the day. There are some small babies as well, but I don't see much of them. That's very unfortunate as Nora has no one to play with and I have no one to talk with. So we begun going to something called "Öppna förskolan", "Open kindergarten". It's not really like a kindergarten because the parents are there with their kids and you come and go and do as you want. Mostly it's just babies there too, but on Mondays it's "Craft café" and then some older kids (3-5 years) attend as well. At the craft café we can paint with pens, pencils, acrylics, we can make cards or necklaces, do decoupage, play with clay ... and many other things, just paying a small amout of money for the material we use. I love craft café! Öppna förskolan is open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays too so we use to go one of those days to play, read books and just get away from home for a while. In the beginnig of August I had no idea that this was what I would do in September :-)

Despite never being alone I actually have managed to make some progress with my business. That's good.

And September has been full of walks, of the last flowers of summer (picked by Nora), of good food and good friends. I've learnt to make raw desserts! Who could have guessed that by the beginng of August? Not me.

September has been nice. Now I'm welcoming October. I have lots of plans and things I want to do, and things I need to do. What about you? How was your September and do you have any plans for October?