Uhm. Well, things took a turn for the better at the shop. We had picked out a nice, bright pink, and I’d gone to stand in line to get it mixed while the lass and the husband wandered a bit, and then the lass came running over. She’d found a new colour swatch. And she wanted that colour instead. Was she sure? Of course she was. And I wasn’t about to protest.
It turned out the shade she had found was not available in the paint type we wanted (Jotun Sense – we could have had it in Butinox Green Room, but I used the Butinox in our bedroom and on the doors and found the coverage to be appalling. I ended up with five coats on some of the doors!), however it was a little dark anyway, so a slightly lighter version of the same shade was settled on before the lass had time to change her mind.
The original colour was “5786 Lavendel”. And here I was going to link to the Butinox Green Room colours, but no such luck, there doesn’t seem to be a web page for it. Is it just me or is that a little strange? Aaaaanyway, its not really lavender, more aubergine (eggplant), though not quite as dark as that. And the code for the one we ended up with is 4030-R50B. It’s less pink in person than it looks in the picture, and also darker (it dries darker, that is).
The lass insists on calling it pink, however. She also exclaims how beautiful her wall is. I have to agree, it’s a nice colour. I’m quite happy to be able to call it purple, though.
You know the room where I just tore down the horrid, horrid carpet wall covering? Where we meant to have the hobby/guest room? Well, progress is being made. There is now paper up on the wall where the carpet used to be, the moulding is all white (one more coat needed) and paint is going to come up on the walls quite soon. And on one wall? Probably pink paint.
See, we’ve come to the realisation that we have to move the lass from her current room. We did absolutely nothing in there, luckily, so no work gone to waste. The problem with her in there is it’s next to the bathroom and when someone takes a shower it sounds like a really bad storm or something. Which means we can’t really have a shower when she’s sleeping, whether it’s in the evening or the morning. This is, you could say, a tad inconvenient.
So. Since we’re so good a procrastinating* this realisation came to us at the perfect time, just in time to change the plans for paint in the room we’re working on and move her in there, then we can do a little bit of work on the room she’s in now and get the hobby room set up there. The shower thing will be a problem whenever we have guests, but that’s not going to happen often enough to warrant worrying about it. Once we get around to doing up the bathroom – a few years down the line, probably – we can consider a little measure of noise insulation.
And, yes, pink. I told her we would paint three walls white and that she could choose a colour for the fourth. So far she’s insisting on either green or “girl colour” (jentefarge) with a heavy leaning toward the latter. So I’ve told her she can have pink, as long as she starts calling it pink, not “girl colour”, since there is no such thing. It seems to be sinking in. Well, the calling it pink part, anyway, I guess I can’t expect to conquer the combined force of society’s genderization of colour in just a few sentences, but I’ll settle for the naming part for now.
I’d try to convince her to go for green, except I’m planning on buying closets and such from IKEA in the new Stuva series with green fronts (mainly because the pink and blue are of such insipid hues) and figure it will be easier to match with a pink than finding the perfect shade of green paint. Also, I figure it’s better to let her have SOME pink, then hopefully she’ll grow out of it at some point. If we were to be militantly against it might become an obsession, which would not be a good thing.
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* And boy am I glad we have been procrastinating on this, it would have been a major pain in the ass to discover this after having set the hobby room up with desks, computers, sewing machines and craft supplies. Major, major pain. Procrastination FTW
Before Christmas, on the 16th to be precise, I realised that there was to be a “nissefest” at the lass’ daycare the next day and that the only red garment she had was a pair of red tights, and those technically outgrown to boot.
A note on the concept “nisse”. Well, a Norwegian word of the day, if you will. Nisse is a noun, and can mean Santa Claus, but is as likely to mean something akin to gnome. That is, in the Scandinavian tradition, the nisse would live on the farm, unseen, and if treated well would care for animals and people, but if treated badly could really make trouble. Even those nisse that were treated well were fond of pranks, though. One of the things you should absolutely on no account fail to do if you wanted to keep your nisse happy was to leave out a portion of rice porridge on Christmas eve. These nisse are traditionally depicted with red hats, but normally wear a greyish knitted sweather and felted wool pants rather than the whole red get-up.
So when daycare have a “nissefest” the idea is that the kids dress up as little nisse, but they will also, most likely receive a visit from Santa Claus, so it’s all rather mixed up. Anyway, some sort of appropriate dress was expected, and I didn’t even have any idea where our red Christmas hats are (we have at least two, somewhere).
While searching for the hats, though, I found a long sleeved t-shirt that the husband got to wear at work last Christmas. Plenty of material in that, I thought and got to it:
I forgot to take a before picture, but here I've cut out the body of the dress (top left) using a top that fits the lass as a template.Cutting the arms, still using the top as a template.
Notice with the arm that I’m reusing the hem at the bottom of the original shirt, I also reused the neckline rib-finish in the neck of the dress. The less seams I have to sew, the better, especially when it’s a last minute rescue mission sort of project.
The result was pretty good, even if I do say so myself:
Yes, I've blurred her face.
The skirt is made from the bottom of the shirt, which I simply pinned on in four places with the same amount of fabric between them and pleated while sewing (also stretching the top part to create some natural pleats). The ribbon is there to hide the name om my husband’s employers which was printed on the front. On the back is printed “Merry Christmas” in quite large letters, which I left as is, it’s supposed to be a Christmas dress, after all.
Jeg har brukt opp ferien min i år. Det vil si, jeg hadde en feriedag igjen når julen kom. I tillegg jobber jeg for en sånn arbeidsgiver som gir en dag fri i romjula, så jeg kan ha fri den dagen vi skal på slektstreffjuletrefest, noe som er praktisk. Jeg diskuterte litt med meg selv hvilken dag jeg skulle bruke feriedagen på og endte med lille julaften. Og det er jeg glad for, for på grunn av litt vel mye forkjølelse og andre uhumskheter i familien har vi liksom kommet litt på etterkantmed de juleforberedelsene vi hadde planlagt. Lille julaften fri gav meg tid til å pakke inn de siste presangene, og jeg og snuppa fikk lagd en ekstra presang til besteforeldre og annen familie, en idé jeg fant på The Folding Chair nå i juleinnspurten:
Julekuler med snømenn, laget av fingertrykk fra snuppa med hatt, øyne og nese malt av meg. Det er slikt man kaller teamwork.
Og så fikk vi pyntet pepperkaker:
Man kan fortsatt se pepperkaken, altså er den ikke helt full av pynt.
Neste år har jeg planer om å ha litt flere fridager igjen når vi kommer til desember, men vi får se. Det funker på denne måten også.
There is very little happening on the interior front at the moment, partly because we’re slow, partly because Christmas is not the right time to have the place all ahoo (though my mother and mother-in-law would obviously claim it’s all ahoo right now, but who listens to them, anyway?) and partly because all three of us have been knocked out by some sort of thing going round. The husband seems to have a straightforward cold, but the lass and I have something more complicated and fluey. She seems to be better, though, and is back in daycare today, while I finally get to sit down and simply be sick instead of also being mother, at least for a few hours. Bliss.
Anyway, we visited with friends in Sweden a little over a week ago, and I grabbed the chance to shoot a few pictures of their excellent refurbishment job, mainly for my own reference, since they’ve managed to get quite a few details in that I really want to make sure we remember whenever we get around to doing something with the kitchen here. But since I’ve got the shots I thought I’d share. They were shot at night, which was a bit stupid of me, but I didn’t get around to it earlier, and there was no attempt at styling (which will be obvious). Still, here goes:
Overview
I love the red tiles with the white fronts and black floor. I also love the lamp over the dining table, which is unusual, since I hate most lamps I see. The table is a natural gathering area, I’m a sofa-person myself, but even I tend to sit at the table here – it’s in the centre of the open-plan living space (the sofa area being off to the left of where I’m standing to take this picture), and it works really well.
My absolute favourite part
Ignore the dirty dishes, look at that countertop, and most especially look at that sink! It’s huge! Certainly big enough to get full-size baking sheets and oven dishes in without any sort of maneuvering. The countertop, with sink, was made to specifications, so it fits the whole counter seamlessly. This is top of my list of WANTS for our own kitchen.
The corner
Some open shelving in the corner provides an opportunity to display a few decorative (and useful) items.
Details, details
But this, this is perfect. It’s located at the dining table end of the kitchen island and can be hidden when not in use. It provides power for laptops used at the dining table or in the kitchen for recepies, and for charging mobiles and other devices right there where people congregate. Such a brilliant detail.
In fact, apart from changing the black laminate for linoleum flooring, I’d quite like to simply adopt the whole kitchen as it is. Problem is, it won’t fit in our flat. Pity. Still, inspiration is good, too.
I finished my first (I say first, because this is such an adorable pattern, I’m going to have to make more) monkey rattle just in time to give it away to Little N when we visited her last weekend. She is just three months old, and not quite grabbing things herself yet – almost there though, cause boy, did she want to grab! – but was quite clearly fascinated when someone else rattled the thing in front of her. As demonstrated by the lass in this picture:
Ah, well, yes. Now, I wouldn’t really post pictures of Little N or the lass on the blog anyway, I guess you’d noticed? (If you know us and want to see pictures, let me know, we have a “secret” blog for such things.) However, due to something or other happening just as I shot this, this is actually the only action picture I have. Sorry.
Anyway, I did manage to get a picture of the finished rattle by itself, at least:
It’s a little uneven and lumpy, but never mind. By the time it’s been chewed on for a few months no one will be able to tell anyway.
A reminder, if you want to make your own, the pattern is by Kaptein Biff and can be found here. And if you don’t want to make your own, the real deal can be found in her Epla shop. Accept no imitations (because of course imitations exist, don’t spend good money on one, though, get the real deal).
Norwegian lesson of the day (long time since I last did one, actually):
Dillan. signifying the state of being hooked on something, e.g. jeg har dilla – I’m hooked.
Specifically, I’m hooked on making snowflakes from beads.
Snowflakes, and some other stuff
Since the lass also likes fiddling with the tiny beads, we can sit reasonably peacefully at the kitchen table and create together, which is nice. That black heart is hers, by the way. Yup, a three-going-on-four-year-old goth, obviously.
Ok, så er jeg litt treig. Jeg er i hvert fall den siste til å skrive om lørdagens bloggtreff… For Namaste var jo i Trøndelagen, så jeg troppet opp på Ni Muser, for dette hadde jeg for meg at måtte bli trivelige greier – trivelige folk trekker jo til seg andre trivelige folk, ikke sant? Og det ble det. Trivelig altså. Foruten Namaste og undertegnede var damene fra Gult hus i svingen, Skjerstad og Kreativius tilstede og dessuten kom Barbro hesblesende når hun var ferdig på jobb. Det ble skravlet. Det ble også spist. Riktignok fikk ikke Namaste den etterlengtede rekesalaten sin, og jeg fikk heller ikke eggesalat. Det viser seg at de har endret menyen på Ni Muser siden noen av oss vanket der for over ti år siden. Hørt sånt syn.
Som god matblogger (ja, jeg bedriver jo slikt også) tok jeg bilde av maten:
Ciabatta med kylling og tzasiki
Den smakte utmerket. Dessuten tok jeg bilde av denne kaken, som en av oss spiste, jeg skal ikke sladre om hvem ;)
Men bilde av de tilstedeværende presterte jeg ikke å ta.
Kreativius hadde til og med gaver! Så jeg er nå den heldige eier av disse tre skjønne julekurvene:
Jeg hang dem opp i vinduet for å ta bilde og bestemte meg for at der får de henge en stund og lyse opp, fine tingene. Kreativius, du er en knupp!
Det er dere forresten alle sammen, damer. Tusen takk for et usedvanlig hyggelig treff!
Since I finally got around to buying goggles and mask, I thought I might as well get to it and tackle that horrible unnaturalness on the wall in the soon-to-be hobby room.
Midway. I forgot to do a before.
The goggles and mask were necessary, because the glue holding the monstrosity to the wall was very dry and brittle. Thus tearing the carpet down was a cinch, getting the glue off was somewhat trickier. That is, it turned out to be easier than expected, using this tool:
A scrape
And some elbow grease, it took less than an hour in all, I think. It resulted in a lot of this, though:
Debris. Very, very dusty debris.
Which is why I thought the goggles and mask were required accessories for the job. Because, frankly, this would not normally be how I dress up of a Sunday afternoon:
Boo!
However, it’s gone. The strange and unnatural and mind-boggling wall covering carpet is gone.
I dare you to try to explain to me how this is not "carpet" but perfectly normal wallpaper.
I realise I might now offend someone out there who just looooves their wooly walls, and, well, to each his own and ours is not to judge. But first stones aside: Are you mad? I mean, fine, you’re mad, I don’t really care. Whatever makes you happy. As long as the shit’s down off our wall.
On the subject of mad: What’s with mothers? Mine thinks we should have been all moved in by now (including having emptied the storage facility). I commented that as long as we were still refurbishing it would take a while, and that the magic carpet wall was next in turn (this was before I attacked it this weekend, obviously). She then let me know that she’d thought about it and had decided we should leave it as it was (and I mean “should” not “ought to”). Apparently she thinks it might help noice reduction between the rooms. Well, I granted her the point but wondered why she thought we would be in dire need of noise reduction between the hobby room and our bedroom. Well, it might be handy whenever it was used as a guest room, she argued. Which might happen, oh, I don’t know, at least once every blue moon, I guess, but I didn’t argue, just pointed out that I’d already started pulling it down to see if I could. In which case it was ok, apparently, to continue.
Why does she care, anyway? She lives in town, she’s hardly likely to ever need to sleep over. Besides: I HATE THAT WALL. Seriously, isn’t that reason enough to tear it down? Knowing us we’ll more or less cover the wall in shelving anyway, there’s noise reduction for you.
And what’s with everyone’s haste on our behalf? I don’t care if it takes us years to be done “moving in”, it’s not as if I’m planning on moving out again. I just said hello to our downstairs neighbour for the first time yesterday and she said they’ve lived here for 39 years. THAT’s what I’m planning on. Fine, I know, I know, life doesn’t actually always work out according to plan, but does that mean we should treat this place like we’re on a short term lease? Fuck that.
We followed up the Oslo Whiskyfestival with a short cruise to Fredrikshavn, and with 12 hours ashore, we decided to take the bus down to Ålborg instead of hanging around Fredrikshavn. In Ålborg I had noted down a couple of shops I wanted to visit, and one of them was Tiger. They had a lot of almost interesting things, but very few interesting enough to tempt me, but I did find some more wall hooks, or coat hangers or whatever you’d call them. Blatant rip-offs, obviously, and normally I don’t hold with buying designer rip-offs, but what with the problems I’ve been having finding any hooks I like and that actually work, in that it’s possible to hang something on them and expect that it stays there, I thought I’d go for them. Also, they were only 30 DKR each. Later the same day I saw some others, also quite blatantly rip-offs, more or less identical, at 6 times that. I mean, if you’re buying rip-offs, why pay more than you have to?
Anyway, they are up now. One has replaced the very cute but completely useless (in that it would only hold two garments, and not very bulky ones) coat hanger from IKEA that we put up in the hall for the lass’ clothes:
See: More than two garments, and bulky ones at that. And still there's room for more!
The other one has been added to the bedroom wall, where some odds and ends have also come up:
The crooked (my fault, I haste to add) picture is a present from Tonbel, the angel from another good friend and the messy artwork is the lass’ “creation”, with rather a lot of help from the daycare staff.
Uhm. Well, things took a turn for the better at the shop. We had picked out a nice, bright pink, and I’d gone to stand in line to get it mixed while the lass and the husband wandered a bit, and then the lass came running over. She’d found a new colour swatch. And she wanted that colour instead. Was she sure? Of course she was. And I wasn’t about to protest.
