pretty-fying

A while back I found the make-up brand e.l.f. and their online-shop and got really pleasantly surprised on the quick delivery, quality and above all the price of their products. This friday a new package found its way to my mailbox and this is what I decided to supplement my make-up collection with this time.

Nail polish in the colours, Nude, Burgundy and Purple Pleaser, the lipstick is called Pouty Petal and then the eye-shadow Cream Mocha Swirl. So nice!

I almost never wear lipstick (since 7th grade when I - yes it's true - had metallic brown lips every day) but this colour is almost non-visible, so maybe it can be a good starting point.

Total price for all of this: £13,45 or NOK 129,50...

christmas-shock

Winter really just crept up on me this year. And Christmas certainly have! Well, OK, it's not even December, but I have not heard a single Christmas-song yet! Yesterday I took the first step towards getting into the spirit together with E, first by doing a bit of shopping and then making Christmas-candy at her and B's place. E is a real wiz in the kitchen, so I got really inspired and will probably try some of the goodies by myself. My pictures of the event did not turn out so good, but I bet I can get her to send some over of the finished result...

This is another thing I did yesterday - finally I have some hyacinths and amaryllis to make the apartment look and smell more Christmas-y. I'm looking forward to a lazy Sunday and the most serious thing I'll do is to find good places for these little green guys to live and grow.

I really also should start thinking about Christmas-gifts though...

i natt jag drömde

For sometime now I have had trouble remembering what I have dreamt during the night when I wake up. I'm usually very good at that. The last few mornings has been better though, so I'm looking forward to some nice nightly adventures in the future.

DIY: Müsli!

I'm so proud I finally made it, after years (honestly it's true) of planning. It might not be the most healthy type, but I simply don't care. It's tasty!

 Chop it!

I chose to use almonds, hazel nuts, coconut and oatmeal.

Mix it!

Mix the above mentioned ingredients with a bit of water, oil and honey.

Spread it!

Put the stuff on a baking sheet

Burn it!

Grill in oven, for 15-20 minutes

Can it!

If I can, you can!

My weekend in food

This weekend has been all about food and films. Me and A went out for Friday-burgers on Friday (!) but I had a turkey-sandwich instead, because it sounded so good - but it wasn't. Anyway, it was good to just get out of the house.

Saturday was a perfect balance of home-time and socializing-time. I slept in, had breakfast in bed, went grocery shopping, had gingerbread-buns and tea in bed while watching films, and the went out to eat Indian food and see the new Harry Potter- film with A, T, E and B.

breakfast

lunch

Since it's illegal to take pictures inside the cinema I'll show you that nights purse + content instead. I have a new phone. I don't understand it at all, but it's golden. The film was just ok, by the way.

Sunday was also great, another day with breakfast in bed, and the just taking it easy all day until me and A did home-made pizza for dinner. Yum.

 

"His-and-hers" pizza. But reversed.

All in all I feel very well rested and well fed after this weekend.

people are like songs

Here is a video and a song that has been one of my favourites the last five (?) years and that is on every playlist I ever make. It will make you want to jump into a fountain in you best dress and dance all night. It makes me want to throw a cocktail party. I really really should do that.

DIY: decou-pages

It's been I while since I posted any DIY-projects on the blog. Well, here is the reason: this project has been sitting on the living-room floor just waiting for me to finish it and due to my lack of energy it's been postponed. Tonight I finished it while watching the latest episode of  "Bones".

Before!

This is an old IKEA mini-chest of drawers, really boring but of good size for storage of envelopes, sunglasses and miscellaneous objects that has no other obvious home. I've planed to do something with the untreated wood since I bought it, but, you know - these things need some thinking about. And then I decided that some decoupage-ing would be the right move. A couple of torn sides from two Norwegian books I got for free at an antiquarian bookshop later - and voilà!

This is where my favourite accessories live, like the butterfly necklace.

Up close. I kept the original knobs, even though they're not the coolest ever.

I simply splashed decoupage-glue on the pages ( leftovers from another DIY) and the fronts and top of the drawers and placed the paper in a random order. Then I painted the sides of the drawers white. This was as usual made without any planning or serious pre-work like under-coats or covering of the framework, but it ended up OK. If you don't look to close at certain places.

att rycka upp sig

I'm so tired of being tired. I fall asleep tired and wake up tired. There has to be a change! So I have come up with a plan. Plans are good, just making this one has made me feel much more peppy and alert than I have in weeks. Since I like lists almost as much as I like plans I'm posting one here. My list of energisers:

1: Breakfast. I have for some reason stopped eating it, but now I'll come up with something really good and easy to prelude my days. I'm thinking home-made müsli and all kinds of juice...

2: Socializing. I need to do more. During the weekdays. Dinner and a movie anyone?

3: Exercise. Worst part of my plan. I get bored easily, but I think it's time to stop being just a "supportive member" at my gym. I've heard hard physical training is a really good way to get rid of stress and get more energy. We'll see...

4: Creativity. More of it! Should do a list of nice projects too...

5: Buy new boots.

Ok. That's it. I'm actualizing this plan next week. I reaaly need to muster up some energy to start, you see. Until then I'll probably just mope around in my amazingly comfy one-peace and eat candy.

1.000

Hooray! I have now reached 1.000 hits on my blog! I never thought it would happen this fast. And I am particularly happy that so many of the hits are from people in other countries than Norway or Sweden, which means that they must be made by people who I don't know from before. Since starting this blog has the double purpose of partly function as a tool to keep in touch with old friends and partly to find new ones all visits to my blog makes me really thrilled! But it does also make me very curious of who you are? Why not leave a comment and say hi?

I'm here

Today I take some inspiration from one of my favourite blogs and post some good old thrash-metal. This video is very fancy, and I'll just tell you, if there is a drummer out there who can outrun a shock-wave, it's Lars.

these past few days

On Friday I celebrated my 20th take off-and landing this year while going to Bergen for work and then directly to Oslo to meet my mum. So I've actually been in three of Norway's 4 biggest cities in three days! Busy times... Anyway. It was really nice to get away to Oslo for a few days, just hanging out with mum, eating good food and doing a bit of shopping. Mini-mini-vacation.

we walked around the town and got a bit lost at the School of Arts

The hotel had a really nice breakfast buffet. One of the more important things in life

The rest of the weekend was highly uneventful, all due to me being way to tired to feel up to anything but hanging out in the couch. I watched TV...

...half a documentary about a poor Romanian artist...

...half a film about a family who had a drive in movie-theatre...

...5 minutes of a boring cartoon for kids...

And then I ate some of these.

I've had Sundays that were more fun.

I could use a story

I clearly remember the book "Where the wild things are" from when I was a kid, and when I heard they were going to make a movie of it I really looked forward to seeing it. Now I have. Wow. So good. The Wild Things looked exactly like they should, the actor-kid playing Max was great, the scenery fanatsic and the music beautiful. I've recently started listening more to Yeah yeah yeah's, and was plesantly surprised that Karen O have made some of the songs - this one- among others. I cried like a baby in the end. And I wanted to run like crazy through a huge forest and howl at the moon. And build fortresses. I don't do that nearly as often as I should.

words from afar made my day

Tiredness followed me home from work but on the little stool inside the door something waited to cheer me up. I met K in Germany when we both studied there end ever since we stay in contact vie snail-mail. Letters from her is one of the best things that can end up in my mail-box! Today she inspired me to google this awesome illustrator and continued to make me smile long after I've finished reading her letter. If you like flying moustaches and long skinny guys with antlers you should look at Marc Johns homepage too.

separation anxiety

As I have shared with you before I am slightly obsessed with audio-books. And the last few months I've been hooked on an urban fantasy series (that I can write about in detail some other time). The problem now is that I'm about to start on the last book... I feel a kind of sadness and anxiety, what shall I do? Do I wait and savour the fact that I have yet one more? Or do I just plunge in to it, get it over with? This always happens when I have become fond of a book series. I miss the characters and that other world. The real world just doesn't seem as magical as I want it to be. I should have a plan what to read when this one is over. Any ideas?

I mostly read (or listen to) fantasy books and I tend to go for series that have many parts. When I've found something I like I want it to continue forever. I emerge myself in that particular universe and can forget everything else for a while - the best reason to read there is! I sometimes read other kinds of fiction - some of the classics like Bram Storkers Dracula and  Alice in Wonderland, I love Douglas Adams' kind of si-fi and when I grew up I was all about ghost stories. I recently revisited that fascination by reading H.P Lovecraft.

At least I know there will come another book in my beloved series - but that's not until next April! Luckily I'm not at all alien to the concept of re-reading books. As a kid I read C S Lewis "The Horse and His Boy" about 10 times, and I think I've read "the Hitch-hikers Guide.." three times or more. Many people can't understand this, but it's just such a nice thing to revisit something you like. So I'll probably start re-listen to this particular series that I "read" now starting next year so I have them fresh for the new one in April... Probably sooner if I don't find any substitute.

And finally, I know some people does not think as highly of audio-books as I do. It's for people to lazy or stupid to read for themselves, or something like that. Well, let me just explain to you that before I discovered how easily I could buy books for my iPod I tried on several occasions to read an actual book while walking to work and it was not very practical. Or safe. Listen is a completely different thing, and I can clean, shop, exercise on the same time. Sådetså.

I like myself and I have a lot of other great qualities as well

Daniel posted this on his blog Manhattan Nest. Made my day.



now I'm off to quiz-night at Martinique!

Lou Reed i tweed

For my Swedish (Norwegian) readers (that is pretty much all of you) I recommend this to put a smile on your face this Monday!

happy eyes

One of my favourite feelings is when I have "discovered" a new band, author, director or artist that I know will fit perfectly in to my life and taste. It can be the feeling of realising that the same director is responsible for several films I love and knowing that there are more where that came from, or finding a completely new style of music and realising that it makes me want to dance. It's not like I'm always actively searching, I'm actually quite set in my ways and lazy when it comes to find new influences. This time my new discovery came when I was browsing through a shop in Stavanger that I never been in to. My friend M wanted to take a look and thanks to her I found two of my new favourite illustrators! Martine Roch and Nicolleta Ceccoli both makes amazing images that I can hardly take my eyes of. Both are so amazingly imaginative, sweet and slightly disturbing at the same time, even though their styles are quite diferent. From my little shopping tour I just returned with two note books, but there will probably come some larger additions on the walls in the apartment as soon as I can decide what print I want the most. Very difficult choice.

Martine to the right and Nicoletta to the left

long time no see

I've had a really, really nice weekend with my three friends H, E and M visiting from Sweden. Moving to a new place results in many good things, like meeting new interesting people. But it obviously also means that you leave some things - and most importantly people - behind. I've lived in Stavanger for over a year now and I have found many new great friends, but sometimes it's just so nice to hang out with people you have known for ages. And it's fun to try to look at the new home-town through other eyes! This is a summary of what we have done:

The girls brought 1,5 kilograms of Swedish candy... mmmmm

Day 1. Walking to the city centre. Stavanger looks like such a one-horse-town!

We did a bit of shopping. I found a new friend. And a top with a huge pink bow on. Might show it sometime.

Old Stavanger. A tourist must-see. Very picturesque and pretty.

Indian food at Dehli for dinner. I highly recommend no 41. Yum!

Day 2: "hiking"

Yep. It's pretty. And it didn't rain.

November?

picnic in a tiny harbour. I'm drinking "hylleblomst" (elderberries) -lemonade. My favourite.

A night of "Carcasonne" and sticky-cake is a good way to end a wonderful weekend.

Another great thing that happened this weekend was that I got my other camera-lens back from the shop! Yey!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Skeletons

have a nice day!

i goda vänners lag

This afternoon 3 of my best friends from Sweden will land on Sola-airport. I am going to try to take Friday off from work so I'm looking forward to three days of just hanging out with some very nice people and catching up. Not sure I'll be bloging anything for a couple of days so I'll just begin this short blog-break with this fantastic piece of music history. My brother introduced me to this wonderful song a couple of years ago and it has stuck with me since. Love the dance too.

hello world!

I have been pretty bad at updating the blog lately due to some stupid tiredness and listlessness. So going in to the "statistics"-page of my blog today was a really nice surprice. I have had hits on the blog from people  from Russia and Saudi Arabia! How nice isn't that!? I just want to say hi to you, thank you for visiting and welcome back in the future. I really like statistics for this week and want to share it with you:

So this week I've had readers from 8 countries. That's so great and weird in a good way. Who would have thought... I feel new inspiration and blog-joy flowing over me!

Probably the best sweater in the world

I'm freezing. At home I'm always under a blanket or dressed in some warm and cosy leisure outfit (read: one-piece) but at work where I try to look a bit more sophisticated I've been quite cold this fall. I have tried hot tea and a small radiator by my feet but it hasn't been enough. Now I think I have found the right solution:

I saw it, touched it and loved it. Even though it was a bit over my preferred price range I just could not resist. And I think my body will thank my wallet many times this winter.

Coctail Farming from "moods of Norway"

november song

Love this song. Love this voice!