our kitchen

A week ago I took some pictures of our kitchen when it was cleaned and fresh :-) here's a litte collage. Black, white wood and yellow!

A project is finished in one day!

It's not often that I show a project that I want to do and then show the finished result....No, I'm all about starting a new projects and never finishing...But today is an exception!

I'm soon off to work, but enjoy this fine Wednesday!

Ceramic Tuesday

We haven't had that in ages here on the blog! I still take my classes, I just don't feel great about the end result so often...But now I have a few things to show you!

I made a vase in the porcelain clay and added a pale green glaze to it

I found the patter on the vase on an old plastic mat and rolled it out on top of the clay before I assembled the vase shape

I thought the pattern turned out so great, I started to do all kinds of things in the same pattern.

These flower moulds almost looks like snowflakes and hanging on twigs like this, it looks like a perfect winter decoration!

Here's some behind the scenes pictures. Here's Picasso "helping" me...

and here he is "helping" me some more by biting the twigs I'm using...

Organizing my environment

First step towards getting more inspired is to organize your stuff!
So I did!

That was one shelve...

I have a plan!!!

I have a made a list and now I have a plan for 2009!

I made a calender this year, using this printer: QOOP

God Jul & Gott nytt år alla!

this is my last post for 2008. I just want to say Thank you to all how have commented and I've gotten to know over the year. You very often make my day! Thank you!

I leave you with a picture of our lonely little kitty

and a blossoming Amaryllis!

Have a merry Christmas and
a happy new year!

See yo in 2009!

Do you Christmas shopping from home

it never made it to the front door...

I guess most of you have to buy Christmas gift and if you are like me you hate shopping this time of year...I found that online shopping is less stressful! So sit back and relax here are some of my favourite links:

• Etsy; you have to shop at etsy! handmade is the best!These are my favourites
• I love Abigail A. Percy's jewellery!
  
• This is a Swedish online shop but I still have to show it to you: Russinet
• Another Swedish interior decorating shop: Syster Lycklig
• I haven't bought anything here but love just looking around: Snirkla.se
• Some Danish interior decorating at grønlykke
• Sandra Juto makes beautiful things!
• Order prints from your photos and give them as gifts! Here are two I've used QOOP & MOO
  

the two Christmas trees

Finally there was enough daylight to take pictures of them!
This one is in the living room together with this little arrangement. I have put newspaper in the pot so that the little accident from yesterday won't happen again!

Here's the other tree. This one is upstairs and I can see this one from my desk! I have put some nice red felt fabric in this one. just to be on the safe side...

Are your Christmas decorating coming along?

Monday the 8th

Monday the 8th and I have started the countdown for our departure to Malaysia...As much as I love my job and decorating for Christmas, I need a break, a nice and long one! But before I go away on my trip I'm going to show you something here everyday. Today is the last pictures from the nice crafting from nature decorations that we made a couple of weeks ago:

a heart wreath made from moss both green and white and twigs with blue berries on.

and of course an amaryllis, a true Christmas flower with a little wreath and a red Christmas heart. This was so simple to make and looked to great!

The Christmas monster has stroked again...This time he broke one of the tree ornaments and dug a big hole in the pot where the little Christmas tree is....There was soil everywhere! Do you want him?

New Christmasy placemats

New Christmas placemats

I got the inspiration for these from my new Japanese craft magazine Cottontime. There was one in pretty pastel colours. I love that you can make these from fabric scraps from you stash. I gave a pair to my mother (the two above) and kept to for us:

Too bad I can't use them after Christmas...

..but then I guess I have to make new ones! :-)

Soft trees

This year I made them in time! It was last December that I discovered this free pattern from Stephanie. I love the simplicity of these soft tree. Then I bloged about it a while back and now finally I can show you pictures!

Some snowy white trees...

and two black and white trees for the living room!

happy 4th of December!

The Christmas monster

The Christmas monster lives here at my place. He can take on all kinds of disguises, here he looks like the cutest little kitten. But don't be fooled by his appearance! He attacks when he doesn't think you can see him, he eats the Christmas decorations or plays with it...

He is looking innocent...but moments after he was on the table eating the moss from one of the decorations!

And here he is in the act!

Can he come live with you during December?

Black & white

Finally the living room is coming together! All that's missing now is something on the walls and curtains in the windows! But that is the easy part (and inexpensive). The theme for this room is black and white but I want to ad another colour to it too. I'm thinking aqua or lilac of some sort...

If you look closely you can see the little soft trees I've been making. You'll see more of those closer to Christmas

I've been busy with the black paint and painted this old table I've had in the basement for quite a while now. Isn't the shape of the table beautiful?

Since I had the black paint out I painted some IKEA frames to show off my ATC's a little better

This is how the hallway looks at the moment. Here too, black and white is the theme...

baking...

I'm not so much a cooking kind a woman, that I leave up to my man. But on the other hand I like baking, preferable something sweet. But now and then something healthy sneaks into my repertoire. Here I have some nice food muffins made from spinach, chick-peas and carrots. They make the perfect lunch together with a salad!



8 1/2 dl wheat flour (or another kind of flour)
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoons of salt
3 eggs
3 dl water
1 1/2 dl natural yoghurt
1 dl olive oil
50 grams fresh spinach
1 big carrot
400 gram caned chick-peas
about 100 gram chopped cashew nuts on top

This makes for about 10 big or 20 smaller muffins. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Then whip the eggs, water, yoghurt and olive oil together. Mix the dry ingredients with the egg mixture and blend it all together until it's nice and smooth. Then you add the spinach, carrots and chick-peas. Add the mixture into the baking tins and sprinkle the cashew nuts on top!
Pop it into the oven for a about 30 min on 200 °C or 392 °F

This is my first time converting a recipe from Swedish to English and do tell if there is something you don't really understand!

Some reasons to why I didn't post so much this week:

1. Fika, I love the Swedish traditions to have coffee and something sweet and I guess we have it a lot...This time to celebrate Mårten gås! (This is supposed to resemble a goose:)
2. Our home looks like this! (view from the couch) We have so many project going on at the same time now and we never have time to finish them!
3. I had a migraine twice this week! I spent a lot of time on the couch with this little guy as comfort. Had to go home early from work one of the days...
4. We have ourself a new TV...and I've been looking at Pushing daisies! I love this TV show, it's the sweetest show I seen in a long time and I never wan it to stop! But TV takes up so much of the creative time....

But this week I'm back again and I'll even try to get back to some of you!!

Before & after

A before and after picture of the chest that I found in my mothers basement. I has been my fathers from when he first moved away from home. It's so much nicer in black, don't you think?


You can see on the light of these picture that it's getting darker here even in daytime. Fall is definitely here now. This week we are going to have a fall theme at work. We are going out to look at different trees and we are painting leafs and are going to see films about Swedish trees. Talk about getting fall from every angle! maybe I can show you the paintings here later. have a good week!

A view of my home

Here's a little view of my home. The hall to be specific. It's a before and after picture of the mirror I painted last week. It's an old mirror that used to hang in the house that I grow up in.
So many people that are no longer with us have looked in this...and I like the thought of that! The theme for that hall is black & white & wood. As I will show you more of my home you'll see that the black is a theme for every room in our apartment.

after

Before

a creative mess

I never got around to paint yesterday, I was sick and I still am...Instead I'll show you a bit embarrassing picture and some new ATC's!


Here I am, crafting away. I didn't even see when Mr J took this picture! I've been very inspired by paper craft lately and if I can muster up some strength I'll do some more ATC's today!
I've forgot to tell you that I have started my ceramics class again. On Monday I had my first class! And we now have a new clay, a nice smooth white porcelain clay. I've collected lots of inspiring shapes from nature and started to make light holders. We'll see if they turn out to be good...Any how, Ceramic Tuesdays will be back soon!