HOME(S)

Or, why we have two.


Sometimes it may seem confusing posting pictures and stories of two kitchens and two different bedroms, from two homes. Where do I-we- really live?

Well, we live both in the apartment uptown in the city, and out on the farm. For me the city home has been my main home, for my husband the farm.


It is not uncommon over here to have a "summer house" or country/weekend cabin, either owned or rented for the summer, often shared within the family trough generation(sisters, parents, uncles aunts and cousins and so on), and often rather plain and simple without running water. Like my family's place in the archipelago, bought in the 1930's, which does not even have electricity, or the small cabin from my grandmother's side. But the farm house is not like that.



Even though we tend to stay out on the farm during the weekends and holidays and practically the whole summer, it's not what one would call a leisure or vacataion house or a weekend home. My husband grew up on the farm and was living there when we met. He now runs the farm with his brother, who live in another house on the premises. So there is a lot of work involved, and Eddi often goes out to the farm after work to work some more, even when we stay in the city.

The farm is about (a little less than) an hour away from town, so it's possible to live there and work in the city.

But why do we then have the flat in town? It of course results in a double set of bills. And it can be a bit annoying dragging  kids and cats andthings between two places. And as I sometimes tend to joke, hard to keep plants alive in two homes.

Well, there area lot of things to it,  but in short it has been the most -and only- practical solution. Eddi's two older boys, now in school and high school,  live with us every second week and their mother lived in the city so they went to school there. Our flat is close to their school, my studio and Eddi's work. And while I was working from 5:30 in the morning or until night in the harbour the shorter the way to work the better.


We rent the flat from my grandmother and after I sold my old small flat downtown we renovated it before we moved in. It's in the same part of town where I grew up in (so we both have ended up in our childhood homes, sort of).


We have been renovating and renewing the farmhouse too, as you know. And as it tends to be with big old houses it is something of a never-ending process, and there is still a lot to do. Like open up the roof and take out some more windows so we can get a few rooms more and more use of the upstairs. And open the floor down to the ground in another room downstairs before it can be renewed...

As we have been renovating the house on the farm we have also been staying there more.  One day we will move there out permanently, as keeping two places and going back and forth is not the most economic solution.  But if that is sooner or later is yet to see, now it's one week at a time.

And well, one week at at time is actually literal, as from the start of this year, with a very short notice - as everything tends to be so from that behalf- the boys moved with their mother (for every second week still) to a small town west of the farm, and now go to school in the countryside. So from now on, for now, we will basically live every second week out on the farm and every second in the city.

Bedside in the city. (this is my most pinned and shared image btw. Sadly not the most credited one...)

THAT TIME OF THE YEAR

It's been that time of he year again.
Bokkeeping time.

Such a dreaded period - and I don't even do the business' books myself, just organise and gather it all for our accountant, but that itself is a challenge. (This here is halfway trough already, the starting point was much less pretty.) And it would of course be less of a challenge would I be nicer to myself during the year  and not leave it all for the future January-me to sort out ; I always plan an improvement for the year to come, to be more organised, and that plan is the same year in and year out, but there is still just a big messy pile of papers and a box stuffed with receipts (not to mention the print-list) waiting for me each and every new January. Are there really people out there who get this done nice and clean every month? (And yes yes I know there is, somewhere...) It always makes me strangely content to hear others who are not among those people complain about the same thing.

Well, I got it done now, and hopefully this was the last year I went trough this mess - because I can't change the world still can and now we got ourselves a phone app that will do a lot of the work for us! Yey for that!

BLUEx2, RED AND BLACK

Soft blue and red are one of my favorite combinations.

After a long wait and scouting for a cardigan that would suit everything (or close to it) and not get floppy right away I landed for this baby blue one. It's the Paloma cardigan from Hellbunny that a lot of you recommended me.

The striped knitted top is from King Louie.

FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW.

Or well, the other night actually, as I fell asleep before I posted.

Came home very tired and happy after a long weekend and treated myself with some organic cold cava and chocolate -

because, as some of you know (if you follow my FB page), I have started studying towards becoming a mat pilates instructor! The first very intensive but also rewarding weekend behind me now.

 Made myself a hot long bubbly bath, which my body I had been longing for the whole weekend after some 16 hours of working it.

Altough, a nice relaxing bath and moments of solitude do not remain relaxing and alone for that long. But it doesn't matter.

Pre-Fall 2015 colour trends

As it's still the first month of the year I feel like I'm still allowed to make some new years resolutions. One of which is to be more consistent with my blog posts, an essential part of this will be to keep up to date with trends over the next few months as it is Premiere vision in February and the new collections for Autumn/Winter 2015 will becoming out. In the spirit of this new resolution I have started looking over all the Pre-fall 2015 collections to identify some trends to watch out for in the fall collections in February. This post is the Pre-fall 2015 colour trend post...

I am so pleased that blue seems to be taking over the runway. By far my favourite colour, there is a shade of blue that works for everyone. Although most people seem to opt for safer navy and ink blues, I could not be happier that it is the brighter cobalt blue that the designers have opted for. 

This is by far my favourite colour trend from the Pre-fall 15 collections. Pairing blue and yellow creates such a fresh new colour combination. I love the way Sachin&Babi and Missoni have worked this colour scheme into their collection through colour blocking and pattern mixing- it seems a lot les frightening when toned down with pattern. This being said, Giulietta and Alexander Lewis have opted for block colours but have made them work perfectly with 70's styling and toned down shades of ochre yellow and denim blue.  I will definitely be embracing this when the rest of London resorts to their winter uniform of black, navy and grey.

The popularity of lime green on the S/S 15 catwalks has darkened to jade and emerald shades for the Pre-fall collections.  These shades fit perfectly into the movement towards jewel tones for Autumn/Winter 2015.

Another addition to the overall jewel colour trend is a variety of purple shades from darker indigo to mauve and lilac. The collection that seemed to champion the jewel tones for Pre-fall 15 was, undoubtedly, Bottega Veneta.

Orange!!!So SO much orange! I always think of orange as being an extremely hard colour to wear as if you're skin tone is even remotely pinkish(which mine definitely is)it tends to clash. Despite this I do love the vibrancy of this colour trend and can see how there are ways of making orange work. The Alice&Olivia orange skirt has to be my favourite way of introducing orange into a collection, By toning it down with a darker top and adding pattern to break up the solid colour orange suddenly becomes a lot less intimidating!

Warm earthy cinammon, rust and camel tones provide some balance for the bright jewel colours that are set to be popular in A/W 15. Sonia by Sonia Rykiel and Chloe have worked this colour scheme into their collections perfectly by keeping the warm tones together.These warm tones are also featuring alongside varying shades of blue, Gucci with rich dark cerulean and Rag&Bone with Ink blue.

Khaki has gained a lot of popularity in the Pre-fall collections. It seems to have been absent from the runway for several seasons but has re-emerged in full force with designers such as Burberry Prorsum, Alexander Wang and Chanel all featuring khaki tones in their collections. Designers draw inspiration from the world around them and with the current increase in military presence in so many countries, it is to be expected that colours and styles associated with the military will begin to feature on the runway.

So those are the main colour trends that I have picked up on. If anyone has noticed any other ones I have missed I would definitely be interested to know!I'll be posting the Pre-fall 15 print trends over the next few weeks before the Fall collections start coming out.

P.S Some of you may notice that I have changed my blog background to a houndstooth print made up of some of my own patterns. I'm pretty convinced that houndstooth is going to be a key print trend for Autumn/Winter 2015. I'm going to try and change the background image of my blog with each new season.

BABY BLUE MIMMIS

Because it's snowy and wet outside and we are in the middle of winter I naturally got myself a pair of summer shoes!


Well, thinking in advance, thinking in advance.


I had been eyeing these for some time already and now that they were on super-duper sale I decided to strike and be prepared for blue skies, dry streets and a warm breeze, come the day. I have another pair of high heeled clogs that are very comfy and they will last a lifetime if properly taken care of. And you can wear them to the playground sandbox too.


Pupuppi-duu.

My mind is also set on a pair of red clog sandals for summer. And then I will never need to get another pair of shoes again. (Well, sort of.)

(Most clogs I've tried are true to size; so are these. I go for the smaller size since I am often in between.)

PASTEL POP!

The Itty-Bitty Tease Cabaret anno 2015! We are pairing up with Lady Laverna and miss Amber Storm this year resulting in being, once again, a troupe of five. (And we are doing something totally different for this year's festival!)

We haven't actually had a mutual group shoot in two years, and due to shitloads of work and different schedules we got ourselves into a hurry to get a something promo picture of the five of us taken. But we managed to do  a quick shoot ourselves at our studio just before Christmas. Even though it really is no photo studio, we have done quite many shoots over at our workspace in the end; it has rendered itself very useful in many ways...
This time, we went for pastel-pop-candy-fluff-crazy.


And that we are.
Photos and post-production by me*.

*) Altough I would save me some time would we just iron the drapes ourselves instead of doing so in Photoshop... For the next time then!

COLOURS VS. GREY

Just as I blogged about what a lovely winter we had going on it started raining and I got my much hated wet grey mush all over instead.


But hey, at least I got a colourful nice dress!

(Which also is soft and stretchy = win. From King Louie. )

ICE CREAM GORE

The worst and saddest story about ice cream you'll ever see.
by Steve Cutts.

SEWING FOR TWO

Sometimes I manage to surprise even myself with the amount of things I am able to get done at the same time. Or, in some (most) cases; the amount of things I manage to do when postponing something else that I actually should be doing.

So because organising my paperwork for my bookkeeper brings out the creative need in me instead, I sew a slipover for Dag -

A slipover pretty much the only thing I can come up with to sew him "just like that" as he is not a little girl I can sew dresses for  -he could have worn those kind of mini muumu-style baby/toddler dresses when he was smaller if I'd made him but I think he's beginning to be to old for such. So slipovers it shall be!

I made this for winter out of a warm stretchy soft fabric. Might try to give a pair of (simple) pants for him a go too!

As I was on it I also sew myself a skirt! I always had this cute-and-stupid idea of making matching mom-girl dresses if I had a girl but I can do it like this instead!


It is something of a 1/4-circle skirt -normally I always measure and do the circle-skirt maths, but because I was kind of in a hurry (=wanted to wear it straight away) and since the fabric is very stretchy and easy, I just measured it on me from one corner; how much I needed to get it to cover my behind. Then I sat down and cut the quarter of a circle straight on the fabric. I sew it together in the back and added a two small darts in the front and two in the back for a slimmer fit, and then attached a thick waistband afterwards.


I also added suspenders.


The suspenders can be attached or removed with small hooks for variation.


And now we are adorably silly and matching!

The fabric is from Eurokangas and my knit top is from KingLouie, shoes Frollein von Sofa. I've worn them all Christmas whenever we went somewhere.