around the corner

I don’t get out enough, a realization that always hits me whenever I do go somewhere and immediately feel refreshed and inspired by new sights and sounds and smells.
The good kind of inspiration, not the Pinterest kind of inspiration that has you in awe and whispers ‘you could never make anything this awesome’.




Last Sunday afternoon I needed a walk, a breath of fresh air and a change of scenery. It had been raining all day and I had been working away in front of my computer. Late afternoon, the rain stopped and it started looking friendlier.
J and I drove out to a nearby village and went exploring, walking in the woods, admiring the old streets and generally soaking it all up.



Sleepy German villages can be utterly charming and I fell in love with the place immediately. The streets and gardens were lovingly decorated with flowers and there was beauty around every corner.




Remind me to get out more.

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easter weekend

I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend! All too quickly those four days have passed, between entertaining friends, giving the apartment a good spring clean, working on the balcony garden and just doing all those small chores and to do’s that fall by the wayside in busy days and pile up, staring at you accusingly from the to do lists and corners of your home. Maybe I should just not make lists. But then, I fear I would never get anything done.

Anyway, I have finally gotten the better of my spring tiredness. We had an Easter brunch with friends on our balcony, the strong spring sun burning my nose so badly that my face glowed all weekend. I made tasty spring lamb cakes from my mom’s vintage baking tins. Being a very bad blogger (but a better hostess for it), I completely forgot to take photos.

We dyed some eggs, trying to make patterns with rubber bands and found out it’s one of those things that looks a lot easier than it is. I vowed right after that next year I would put some thought and research into it and do a better job.

This time last year I was on a dutch island, going on long beach walks and watching the snow fall. A far cry from this year’s warmth and flowers.

norway – part 2

Here comes part 2!
After the first two hikes we felt quite comfortable in our hiking boots and gear so on our next tour stop in Seljestad near Odda we decided to hike up to the foot of the Buarbreen glacier.



The hike was beautiful and quiet amidst wildflowers and roaring glacier waterfalls and streams. The mountain air is wonderful for hiking, so clear and fresh (more so in my memory since I’m writing this from a stifling hot apartment).




Getting to the top is always exhilarating! This hike also featured some rather alarming bridges over the fast streams and some passages where we had to climb the mountain sides with ropes. I’m scared of heights and not one for sporty rock climbing, so this was a real challenge for me.
We drove back via the magnificent Latefoss waterfall.



Until then, we’d always done one day of hiking, one day of driving. Since we were staying a day longer at this location, we decided to go hiking two days in a row and tackle the hike up the 612m Langfoss waterfall next. A hint: if the Norway-tourist page says it’s a demanding hike, don’t do it when you’re already tired out. The hike itself is beautiful, but climbing 600m in height within two hours on rocky ground is hard. Really hard.




You’re probably tired already of reading about this hike and that hike, but I’ve one more to share: the glacier, blue-ice hike we booked on our last location was hands-down the highlight of our trip. This was walking on the Nigardsbreen glacier itself, with spikes on our shoes and ice axes to help the climbing parts.


The blue ice is magnificent!


We had a lovely norwegian girl as our guide but most of the other guides were actually Sherpas from Nepal with Mount Everest experience, who come to Norway during the summer months to work as glacier guides and earn some money for the family back home!

Two more parts to come with fjord and fjell pictures as well as some lovely shots I took in Oslo!

loving

this spring and sunshine. So, so much!



Maybe it was the long winter and cold this year, but I’m still soaking up every ray of sunshine I can get and watching my balcony and the world around me come to life feels invigorating.

Hello, italian mint!

The ponies are happy too, finally it’s time for freedom and green grass again after spending winter in their stalls.

Love these little flowers! My mom gave me a few from her garden last year but they never bloomed. I kept them all the same and this year they’re blooming in lovely colours from pale rosey to bright orange to lush dark red!

And finally, I’m feeling creative again after a late winter lurch and look forward to getting back to my sewing machine soon. The dress above is from Zara, it was so gorgeous I had to have it even though it’s polyester. Oh, all the Downton Abbey inspired prettiness of Zara’s spring collection! I love how TV inspires fashion. I spent all weekend trying to wrap my head around how it is made so I can make my own copy in a cotton silk or even (imagine!) some luxurious washed silk.

spring!

So, my mood has increased exponentially in the last few days because it is actually, finally, spring around here! Warm wind, sunshine and the earthy smell of nature waking up.
All the better because I had a day off today and spent a wonderfully relaxing morning on the balcony, soaking up sunshine and the “Call the midwife” series by Jennifer Worth (SO good). I literally feel like a new person, and this even though I spent all day Sunday scratching old wallpaper off the walls of a friend’s new house and should logically feel tired and sore today.



The balcony is coming to life with a few flowers I picked up at the nursery and the sight of them cheers me up no end. Some tomato and pepper seedlings are thriving indoors in my trusty light box. I can’t wait for nature to really take off this year!

Ok, here’s something I meant to blog about last year but never got around to: Ever since coming across vermicomposting on a stay in Canada four years ago I had been meaning to try it. So well over a year ago, despite all funny looks of our friends and relatives (vermicomposting is virtually unknown here) we set up a worm bin and bought a few small red worms at a nearby fishing shop, crossing our fingers they’d be the right type of worm.


I started off well, feeding them reguarly with heaps of kitchen scraps and wet newspaper. And then…I kind of forgot about them. I guess there is no excuse for neglecting animals in your care, even if they are only worms but there you go. The bin was in a hard to reach area and out of sight and the worms didn’t exactly complain about being hungry. The box never started to smell and it just sat there, through summer and fall and winter until I mustered up the courage to open it this weekend and take a peek.
Well, you can all breathe a sigh of relief if you were feeling sorry for the worms because I am happy to report they are alive and well and in the course of a year have reduced a full box of kitchen scraps to this:

Wonderful, rich compost which my tomatoes and peppers will love (and they’re still working on the egg shells apparently)! Awesome job, wormies, and I promise to feed you again and not forget you for another year!

rainy summer days

Our unusually hot spring has been followed by a cold, rainy summer. For days we’ve had fog and drizzle and heavy rains with only few bits of sunshine in between. And the forecast says much of the same is to follow in the next days and weeks.

I’m not complaining.

Living in a top floor apartment, hot summers can be hell. We had some unbearably hot weeks last year . I actually like a fresh wind and though I could do without constant rain, I don’t really mind that much. I have a good rain coat and on barn days both the pony and I are much more eager to work when it’s cool.

Other than that we’ve been lying low at the weekends, sleeping a lot and trying to catch up on emails and friends and ideas (oh, the ideas…). By the way, I got on Pinterest and now I’m hooked. And so inspired. More and more ideas.



This is the best tea I’ve had in years: Fresh peppermint leaves, fresh ginger or ginger syrup, limes, honey and candy sugar. Heaven.

I couldn’t resist another photo of the kitties. So sweet those two.

out on the pastures

Because I still haven’t gotten around to photographing all the sewing that is going on here and because I won’t have time to blog in the next few days, here’s a random collection of shots from my pony for you all.


These were taken when our pastures were still beautiful and lush and filled with flowers.

Since then we’ve had some wet and rainy days and they’re all turned to mud.


Have a good start to the week!

a peek of red

Fresh strawberries from the balcony. Since growing them I never buy strawberries anymore. Not because I have enough homegrown strawberries (I don’t), but because once you’ve tasted what a strawberry should really taste like the storebought stuff loses all appeal.
Same goes for cucumbers and tomatoes btw.

More gorgeous poppies. If only these fields didn’t make me sneeze quite so much.

A little plant at the barn.

I’m off to Italy to photograph a wedding, wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

poppies

The best of all spring flowers. Now if only my pollen allergy wasn’t in full swing I could be outside for hours this time of year.

By the way, sorry for the lack of posts. I’m feeling a little uninspired about this blog lately for no apparent reason, but I do hope the words will come back soon.

travel diary: amsterdam

After we had to cancel our plans made for an extended weekend unexpectedly, my friend and I quickly had to think of something else to do instead.
We found the perfect solution when a friend offered us the keys to her student housing apartment in Amsterdam, where she had been doing an internship for 6 months which was now finished.
Amsterdam is less than 3 hours away and we left very early on friday morning. We dropped our stuff off at the apartment and took the tram into the city center.
Our plan was simple: see much as much as possible and spend as little as possible. We did have to get typically dutch friet speziaal (fries with mayonnaise, ketchup and onions) for lunch though and some yummy dutch cheese.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, green and full of flowers and beautiful canals. Despite the many people and an unusual number of cats about, it is one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen.

There are of course bikes in every variation and color and dozens of ‘coffee shops’ where people can legally buy small amounts of drugs.

We strolled around the main sights like the flowers market but also tried to find little treasures off the tourist routes.


When we got to Prinsengracht (a beautiful large canal), we found the prettiest house boats and I kept clicking away, with my friend having to shove me off the streets when I was threatened to be run over by cars and bikes.


All in all, our electronical counting thingy showed we’d walked a good 20km that day. No wonder our feet were killing us!
After a long day we had enough of the crowded city and went back to ‘our’ apartment and sat down at the canal in the warm evening light and had a perfect dinner with our delicious dutch cheese, some fresh baguette and grapes and a bottle of white wine.

I’ll have day 2 (at the beach) and day 3 (Amsterdam on a quiet sunday morning) up as soon as possible 🙂