Thursday 31 January 2013

JANUARY ON INSTAGRAM



I'm somewhat addicted to Instagram, so thought it'd be fun to do a post with my favourite shots from January. As you can see, January's been a cold month! It reached as low as minus 13 during the day! Low temperatures but still lots of sunshine, perfect for an ice skating trip with my sister (she's the black silhouette in the first picture in the second row). You can also see a couple more treasures from my grandmother, as well as a handful of pretty skies. I like taking pictures of pretty skies. :)

Saturday 26 January 2013

WHAT I'M WORKING ON - CROCHET BLANKET



Yes, another crocheted blanket. As I left the hexagon one I was working on in Glasgow, I decided to start a new one here. And since it's been so cold recently (it was -12 the other day!), it's been nice to have this to work on inside in front of the TV! It's so easy to get yarn here as well. Whereas in Glasgow there would be a handful of shops selling good quality yarn, I picked up this 100% wool yarn at my local groceries shop. You know, in between the milk and the frozen section.


On a completely different note, yesterday I managed to drop my laptop down an entire set of stairs. It bounced on every single hard wooden step, and then landed on the stone tiled floor at the bottom. Screen popped open and everything! I spent a few moments standing at the top of the stairs with my jaw open, holding my breath. Amazingly, everything seems to be working fine though! Managed to pop in the screen again and it made some annoyed noises at first when I turned it on, but so far I've had no issues with it. Phew!

Monday 21 January 2013

TREASURES FROM MY GRANDMOTHER


My grandmother has been alive for a very long time. She was born in 1912, and we celebrated her 100th birthday last summer. Just to give you a bit of perspective of how long ago that is, it's the year the Titanic sank, Harriet Quimbly became the first woman to fly across the English Channel, and New Mexico became the 47th state of the United states. Cowboys were still kicking about. World War I hadn't even happened yet! In other words, she's lived along time, and acquired a lot of cool, old stuff.

She's recently moved to an old peoples' home though (recently, as in after her 100th birthday), and as she won't be moving back into her house again and can't take everything with her at the old people's home, the process of dividing her things and selling her house has begun. At first I didn't think there would be that much I'd be interested in. I knew she had a lot of books, but I didn't think I'd want anything else. Once I was there though, it was a whole other story. There were so many treasures!












As you can see, I ended up with a lot. These pictures don't show everything though. I ended up completely falling for a set of china (not the teacup set pictured above), and two chairs. One is briefly pictured above, while the other is a wooden chair that was painted bright orange by mother in the sixties, as part of her orange painting spree where she painted half my grandmother's summer house in the same colour. We used to spend summers there when I was a kid and I loved the bright orange then, but the coluor has faded a bit now so I have grand plans of giving the chair a new lick of paint. Mint? Grey? Or maybe follow my mother's bright example and go for a bright pink?



I also ended up with these adorable dessert bowls that I've already started using to keep my make-up, jewelry and hair accessories. Makes my dresser that much easier to keep tidy.


 And yes, the coat hangers. I know this is potentially where I got a little bit too carried away. But then I hate wire or plastic hangers that get stuck in each other and break easily. These are all lovely and wooden, and I love the lettering on them. Not to mention the awesome coat hanger (pictured way above), with Svanhild embroidered. Yes, that's my grandmother's name, and yes, I'm named after her. Also, if you notice the coat hanger in the middle with the initials A.H. in the picture above, those are my great grandmother's initials. I don't think I've ever been this excited about coat hangers before.


Then there's the chest, which is probably my favourite. This chest once belonged to my grandmother's step father, and has his initials E.G. on the front. He was a train driver and this was his travel chest. As you can see, a sticker from Lillestrøm is still there. I absolutely love it and feel like I've got my very own treasure chest!


Oh and of course, a million books. I feel like I have a whole library wing now. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever have time to read them all!

Tuesday 8 January 2013

FIFTY-TWO WEEKS

Since we're at the start of a new year and whatnot, I've been toying with the idea of doing some sort of a 2013 project. I love the idea of doing a 365 photo project or something but have a very strong feeling I'd forget and miss days more often than I'd remember. I've thus been more open for some sort of week based 52 project. And as I've been spending a fair amount of time lying in bed and recovering lately and while doing so I've also been spending a fair amount of time on my laptop browsing the wonderful World Wide Web. The Internet is so inspiring. More specifically, I've been particularly enjoying this blog and this blog, and was particularly inspired by this journal project.

I used to write lots of journals when I was younger, documenting my days and my life and moving to new countries and I like looking back at them. When I first moved to the States, I started writing my journal in English in a concious effort to practice the language. When I lived in the Middle East and 9/11 happened or the war broke out in 2003. I wrote about these things too and it's strange how things I was writing about seemed completely normal then, but a bit out of the ordinary now. For example how we were given a leaflet in school showing us how gas masks worked and an evacuation plan in case of emergency (which had a brilliant map with a rectangle representing our school, and a dotted line leading from the school to a "?" representing the evacuation plan. Anyone else remember this? Wish I kept it!).

It's been years and years since I last kept a journal now though, mainly because I couldn't find the time and my entries ended up being too irregular for my liking. This time around, I plan on making it far more visual, using lots of pictures in stead of text. I use my phone every single day to take pictures, and I plan on using a lot of them, as well as pictures I've taken with film and gotten developed, and other random things like cinema tickets, etc. And in stead of my old massive paragraphs detailing everything that happened that day, I want to try to just remember one little particular thing that happened on that day that I particularly enjoyed, emphasizing positive thinking. It will also be on a weekly basis, making it more of a routine thing, but not a routine that's too time demanding. I also like how I'll be able to work in retrospect, in case I end up becoming too busy (though I hope it won't happen too often!).




For my 52 WEEKS project, I'm using a moleskin journal (that I actually accidentally stole from Graeme), which I've just covered in some craft paper as I plan on doing something with the cover later. It's got one of those elastic straps that holds it together, which will probably be very useful as I'll be adding lots of pages to it and it'll probably end up being huge by the time I'm done. I also plan on using some of the quotes Elise uses in her project, which she's made available to download here. Other than that I just plan on using whatever I have around and I'm leaving the rules pretty relaxed, as I can see my format ending up changing as I go along and get more of a feel for the project.

Thursday 3 January 2013

12 MONTHS IN 12 PHOTOS

I know I'm a few days late with the whole New Years post, but I was visiting Glasgow over the holidays and  I only got back last night. I had a lovely time and it was great seeing these two, but it went past far too quickly and there were far too many things I didn't end up having time to do and far too many people I didn't end up getting time to see. I will definitely have to prioritize better next time!

Now that I'm back I've already managed to get myself sick with sinusitis and so I haven't exactly been overly active. I thought it'd be fun to do a little post with a recap of 2012 though, so without further ado, here are 12 photographs I've taken in the past 12 months.

Ringing in the New Year in (December/)JANUARY:







A coffee break in FEBRUARY:

A photo adventure to a trampoline in MARCH (Diana mini):


APRIL's weekend trip to Dublin, Ireland:


A sunny day in MAY (Diana mini):

The Glasgow School of Art's street party in JUNE (Fisheye):

JULY'S trip around Spain in Cadiz, Sevilla and Bilbao (Diana mini):


That day in AUGUST when I caught a big fish and Graeme proposed to me in Hausvik, Norway:


A photo adventure in SEPTEMBER to Irvine Beach, Scotland (Diana F+):


A fishing trip to Loch Long, Scotland in OCTOBER:


Moving to Sandnes, Norway in NOVEMBER:


A failed snowboard trip to Cairngorms, Scotland in DECEMBER:

2013 is gonna be a great!