Mads is away for a few days, which means that tonight I’m home alone with the girls and a sore throat. I put the girls to bed a while ago, and Ronja actually lost her first tooth, while we were brushing her teeth – that is quite an event for a 6-year old, and she proclaimed she will be expecting a visit from the tooth fairy. I don’t remember tooth fairies from when I was a child, but I guess I should probably find a coin or something.

Today has been spent on the couch under a blanket, sleeping and drinking lots of tea with honey, and yesterday was rather similar. The next few days I am attending a conference called New Media Days that takes place in Copenhagen once a year. I love going there to expand my knowledge on current development and the future of digital media, and I am so hoping to wake up tomorrow just a little bit better.

It’s been a busy week, this past week. I spent a couple of days in London – it was work related, but we had time off as well. I like London a lot, and I would love to go back there before long. We didn’t overdo sleep, so Friday back at work was a long day.

The origami crane mobile you see on the left, are some that I made Saturday (if you want to learn how, you can find instructions here), when I went to yet another blogger meetup with the inspiring group of crafty, blogging women that I am lucky enough to be part of. Those days are great, and it’s always hard to leave – we spend an entire day talking, laughing, sharing, doing different kinds of crafts, enjoying snacks and great food – and well – joining in conversations about all the things that we have in common, as well as the things we don’t. Thanks, girls! The glass bead at the bottom of the crane mobile was made by Anne, who has taken on glass crafting – she makes some gorgeous stuff.

The week before this one, we went to a check-up with Frida. As some of you recall, she was born with a cleft palate, and had surgery when she was 18 months. We have been visiting a speech therapist to make sure her language would come along as it should, and also to determine whether she would need further surgery or not (elaborated here). Getting all the sounds right has taken a while for Frida, but we are so getting there. This time, visiting the speech therapist was just so much fun for Frida as well as her proud parents. She went through an entire book, describing what she saw in a bunch of pictures, and her pronunciation as well as her attitude towards the task was just a pleasure to witness. The therapist told us she had no reason to believe Frida would need another round of surgery, and I so hope she is right. We can do without.

When you look at my blog, it does indeed look like nothing much is happening. However, going through my recent calendar, and my recent pictures you would be getting an entirely different impression. I was just checking to see what should be included in a much needed update, and from that, I can totally see why I haven’t had time for blogging.

I miss my blog, my blog reading, and all of you guys out there (if anyone’s left), let me just say that first. However, these past few months work has been terribly busy and quite energy comsuming, which is good because I love what I’m doing – it just takes a few sacrifices. And as if business at work wasn’t enough, we also took on a project in our family – more about that further down.

I’ll give you a picture wrap up – so let’s see what we’ve been doing the last few months.

So – briefly:

Mallorca in July

Canoe trip to lake Immeln in Sweden in July

Ronja starting school in August

Ronja’s 6 years birthday in August

I made these adorable goodie bags from Minimega’s printable pdf for the occasion when the class was visiting – just had to show you!

And now in this look-back we’re approaching September, and of course, in our family we just always need 2-300 things keeping us busy, so we started looking for a sail boat (this is the project I mentioned at the beginning). Our new love will be a separate post (or several, of course), now that I hope I will keep up the posts just a little more than I have the past 3-4 months.

We spent all of our spare time for a month driving around the country (and southern Sweden as well), dragging the children onto all kinds of sail boats that were more or less fit for a family of 4 – in all kinds of weather. Which is a lie, actually, ’cause it was raining almost all the time. We finally found the boat model Shipman 28, which is a good Swedish design by Olle Enderlein from 1969. It seems to live up to the things we were looking for in a sail boat, that is meant to host future summer vacations, and numerous sails during the sailing season – within the price limit we were willing to spend. So check this out:

We named the boat ANNA after my amazing grandmother who died 4 years ago. She was a woman who radiated warmth, wit, interest, and just a presence that anyone around her felt and was struck by – she always had a strong ability to gather the family. So those are the qualities we humbly want our new love to possess – or perhaps rather the name stands for a lot of positive things that we want to carry with us when we are sailing and spending time on the boat.

We have spent quite a few weekends with her by now, and we all love it. The girls are getting used to saling step-by-step, and we cannot wait to spend a summer vacation with Anna.

On to the next thing:

Frida’s 3 years birthday in September

All these things have put quite a strain on the calendar, and remember, this is without the stuff that has been going on in our work lives, which at least in my case has been quite a bit. And did I mention we started renovating the bedroom?

This post reflects very much my need to do a wrap-up before I can move on to the next blogpost. It may seem like nothing, but this is just not really what you want to be doing when you have a blog – you want to write whatever enters your mind at the moment, right? Not much crafty stuff here, and the time-issue is in part an explanation for that, but I have been doing minor things. I’ll let you know more soon.

Pappersbruket is just a 5 minutes drive away from Denningarums Gård, and we arrived there after a brief afternoon detour into the woods for a geocache. It was somewhere around 4 in the afternoon, and we had plenty of time for a shower and some clean clothes before dinner. Jessica who runs the place together with her husband, greeted us and showed us to our room.

As soon as you set foot in the hallway of the hotel, you cannot help but know a lot of love went into the creation of the place – it’s just really beautiful and filled with atmosphere! After we freshened up, we went downstairs and had a look around before dinner.

Every detail in the pretty hotel has been tended to carefully – from the beautiful wallpaper panels to the furniture and the colours. After looking around on our own for a while and being shown around by Peter, Jessica’s husband, we sat down for dinner. Though the host couple were totally sweet with the children, it didn’t take Mads and I long to agree that this would probably be a place we would be more likely to go without children. The girls loved the acoustics and space of the hall and the restaurant – does that tell you anything at all? Calming them down was rather difficult – good thing we were the only ones in the restaurant that evening… Dinner was amazing, by the way!

The girls fell asleep late, and Mads and I stayed up talking, seated in the soft couches. Next morning we had breakfast before Peter took us on a tour of the rest of the site which is used for events of different kinds, and it just showed us once more that everything is so well accomplished it’s hard to believe. It would be a truly great place for a company event of some sort or a large party.

After the tour we borrowed a canoe, so that Mads and I could take the girls out for a little while. We both weren’t too optimistic about how that would work out, expecting the girls to not be able to sit still for more than a little while. We were soooo proved wrong. After a little while the rain started pouring, and we got out the raincoats for both girls.

At this point things could have been way more challenging than they were – the girls were singing most of the way, and in fact they just seemed to really enjoy our quiet trip down the stream – and so did their parents. Mads and I have been canoeing in Sweden quite a few times before we had kids – now I think we may just try a few days trip again soon.

When we got back, Peter was there to meet us with umbrellas and while we got into some dry clothes, Jessica made us a cup of tea. After that we said goodbye and went back to Denningarums Gård to have lunch.

Finally, we were all tired and ready to go home after a great weekend of Swedish impressions – this cool bus is what you see close to the town when you go there – but don’t believe what it’s saying (Helvetets Port = gateway to hell), because Östanå definitely has something to offer.

And now, we’re so off to Mallorca – see you when we get back!

Hi guys – long time no see. I want to start out by saying thank you SO much for the concern in shape of comments, as well as emails and messages on Facebook and Flickr. Don’t ever think you can just wander off in the blogosphere and disappear – no siree! I’ve missed you all, but I had to take a break, due to – busy life, I guess. No blogging as you know (not even blogreading), no sewing, and the camera has been taking a bit of a vacation.

Where were we? Oh yes, the kitchen arrived and was installed. The pictures below give an impression of what it all looks like now, if you want to see more, go here.

We are missing a few details, but we love the kitchen, and we so enjoy using it. The finishing touches will be there when we feel like it. The pictures were taken on a sunny day in December, and they don’t even quite show the kitchen the way it looks now, because some wall cupboards are missing, but I’ll show you sooner or later.

But so many other things happened during November and December, and I’ll just leave the very short version here – wouldn’t know where to start otherwise. In November they had mass lay offs at Mads’ work, which happily he avoided. Frida’s hearing kept getting worse, followed closely by her speech, which caused her to have new ear tubes inserted in December – it’s all much better now. My father passed away late November, which kept me busy emotionally and led to lots of thoughts. We all went to funeral in December, and in spite of the occasion we had a nice day with the family. And then of course winter colds, flus and the likes to top it all off. Just before Christmas Frida had the chickenpox, followed closely by Ronja on the morning of New Years Eve.

We have had our share to deal with over the last couple of months, but during the Christmas break we have done nothing but relax. Nothing! Stayed at home, gone for walks, watched movies with the girls, had friends over for dinner, spent an afternoon at Tivoli’s Christmas Market as we do every year. It has been great, and we could’ve easily spent another month like that.

That’s pretty much it for now – but I won’t be gone long this time. Finally I just want to show you the beautiful picture of Ronja walking in a Lucia parade in the day care – even though it has been a while.

I had a wonderful weekend. Saturday, I met up with a bunch of open, creative, strong, sensitive, wise, funny, inventive, remarkable women. The day contained humour as well as seriousness and many good talks – it was a bloggers meetup, and though it took place a two hour drive away from here, it was definitely worth the trip, and it left me with a feeling of having connected to a bunch of wonderful women outside my usual circles. Thanks, girls – and Yay for blogging – did I say that before?

Sunday was all about kitchen (I’ll get back to that) and kids – and visiting good friends in the late afternoon.

So back to the blue Monday. I was tagged by Annette in a colour game, and I wasn’t sure whether I would find the time, because as you all know, time is a luxury around here at the moment. However, I started looking for light blue items in my home, when I wasn’t thinking about it, and finally I couldn’t resist getting out the camera.

I thought it would be difficult to find light blue around here, but while there may not be many totally light blue items, it’s still a colour that pops out here and there.

Like in the new issue of Ottobre, which arrived a few days ago – such a gorgeous girls tunic pattern in there, by the way!

There is one among Frida’s crayons…

In this painting by Ronja, a sweet girl has light blue arms – or is that wings?

And this blue wire will help spread atmosphere in our kitchen to be – they’re coming out of the walls everywhere.

I managed to find light blue – so I’m sending on the challenge:

Marina, Amy, and Lisbeth – would you play along and find 7 green items in your homes?

First up, I had ordered some stuff from jcaroline creative a while ago, and I’m telling you, if you love ribbon that is the place to go! I was just stopping by for a few pieces of ribbon, and I ended up going a little bit crazy. Check this out – and this is just a small selection of my order:

Sorry guys – I know this could be an expensive acquaintance…  Note, that if you’re from Denmark, you could have a little trouble checking out – I did, as the shop system didn’t accept my Danish credit card. Don’t give up, they were so helpful and it ended up working out just fine.

So guys, do you remember a while back when I entered my light summer tunic to Rae’s Spring Top Week? And it went and won? Well, Rae just sent me a package full of gorgeous stuff that had arrived when I came home yesterday afternoon! A few peeks:

And there was a beautiful handmade belt and a sweet card as well! And she mailed me the pattern for her wonderful Toddler Backpack which will be perfect for either one of the girls, when I get around to making it. This has to be my favourite, though – the Lickety Split Bag!

I’m going to agree with her – it’s a perfect bag for nearly anything! It’ll find great use here – for outings, trips to the beach, visiting friends, etc. And she even included the pattern, so I’m definitely going to give it a go!

Thank you so much, Rae – I love it all! Next time you do something like the Spring Top Week – i’m in!

I myself have done a little bit of sewing – I made Ronja a summer dress from the latest Ottobre. It’s called the three-way dress.

Actually in my version, it’s going to be a two-way dress, because I’m not too much into the third version that has unattached sleeves, but I am going to make the little wing-like sleeves in the second version to attach to the ribbon. However, I ran out of the kid check fabric from Michael Miller, so now I’ve ordered some more here – I’ll finish when it arrives. In the meantime it’ll be a one-way dress… 

I have to tell you about the fabric, because I think it’s gorgeous – I got it from Fabric.com on sale, it’s designed by Jane Sassaman, and comes from a line called Prairie Gothic. There are several colourways, but this is my favourite – no question. I hope Ronja will find it girly enough.

Also I promised you pictures of Frida wearing her chicken-pants, so I got some yesterday. They have been washed and sun-dried already, and this must be the fourth day of wear for these pants.

The peonies didn’t take the rain very well – the flowers are way too heavy to endure an attack like that, so they are almost flat on the ground now. I’m sure Frida is trying to make them better here…

A few days ago, I received a package from a very dear blogging friend of mine. She had seen the most recent issue of the Dutch children’s pattern magazine Knippie, and thought that I would like it.

And I do – it has some wonderful patterns, and I will definitely be making some of the stuff in there. I’ll probably need her help for a bit of translating, and perhaps my Dutch sister-in-law will be able to help me too. Also the card and the little tissue holder that came with the magazine are greatly appreciated. Thank you so much, Mirre!

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things“

As I have mentioned previously, I am a keen reader of Ulla’s blog. Well, she just awarded me this award.

Thank you so much, Ulla! I even had a great laugh when reading about it on her blog, because one of the things she wouldn’t want to be without is raw potatoes. I have this peculiarity as well – it isn’t shared by many, but I love sharing it with Ulla!

Along with receiving this award, I have to mention 5 things that I cannot live without – not counting family and friends. I do tend to avoid these kinds of listings, because I can never make up my mind – you know, questions like “who is your favourite writer” make me go blank. Honestly – how on earth would I know? It’s not like I have a grading system…

So anyway, I’ll give it a shot, and here is a list of 5 things that I really wouldn’t want to be without.

• The Internet - an amazing wealth of possibility and inspiration, right here on my laptop!
• Tea
• Time to Myself – just essential
• Sewing - has quickly become such an important part of what makes me happy
• Summer

I’m sending this award on to two fabulous bloggers, that I’ve come upon. I found Jennifer’s blog Moving Hands just recently, but I’m sharing the link with warm recommendations! Another one that was added to my rss reader within minutes of finding it was Sharilyn’s blog LovelyDesign - so drop by those two, and be sure to find tons of inspiration – ’cause they’re both Fabulous blogs!

I found this blooming shrub when we were walking in the park Saturday, and actually I just saved the picture for this occasion, because I thought it would fit the purpose wonderfully!

So I wrote all the names down on little pieces of paper, and had my stay-at-home God of Fortune (if you need that elaborated a little bit – go here) draw the winners:

Winner of the Flower-Bib:       ♥ Julie ♥

Winner of the Elephant-Bib:     ♥ Ria ♥

You two can start looking for an email from me - congrats to both of you!

To the rest of you: I’m sorry I didn’t make more bibs to put out here, but Frida needs quite a few! Honestly, I wish I could ship one off to every one of you! I really appreciate you playing along, though, and I hope you will stop by in the future!

We did go sled riding the other day (Frida’s first), and it was lots of fun, even though the girls were too tired to be at the toboggan run for very long. Afterwards we went home to have some hot chocolate – Frida hasn’t tasted this before, and while she was skeptical when first looking into the cup, the next two cups went down within minutes! It was sooo funny to watch her while devoting her entire attention to her new obsession!

And now I want to thank Mette for giving me this award!

The award is all about nearness, and I really appreciate it. Mette herself has a wonderful blog (in Danish) about her life, crafts, and her three beautiful boys. I’m going to pass on this award to other blogs that to me are synonym with nearness.

So go check out the following:

Lille-Ursus – I have been following her blog for as long as I’ve been sewing, and her warm descriptions of family and friends, as well as her attention to detail and things that make her happy – these things make me want to give her this. Also, Ulla gives out a lot of herself to her blog friends, and I’m proud to be among them.

U-handblog – One thing is her amazing generosity when it comes to all of her awesome tutorials. But really, because this award is about nearness, I also chose her because of the way she writes her tutorials – not too formally, but rather like you’re with her in a room having a laugh about the challenges on the way. That’s quite a skill you’ve got there, girl, and it’s a pleasure to read your blog!

MADE - because when I read Dana’s blog, I feel like she’s talking to me. Her pictures add an atmosphere of intimacy, and last but not least – I love her creations.

Colorfool – they’re hit by life at the moment, so the blog doesn’t come 1st priority, but when she posts, there’s plenty of nearness.

That’s all for now – but hey, I made something for you guys! More about that tomorrow – and remember the coupon code for Fabric.com is still valid!