Loving right now..

It's June!


Having the time and energy to make healthy and delicious food.


Summer reading. Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love.


New shoes for T. from Goodwill.


And a new skirt for mama. From Goodwill.

Status quo

It’s winter. Right now it’s the kind of winter that has us locked inside, or at least stuck up here. Where we live this happens some times. Not very often though. But right now, with me looking (at least feeling) like a stranded whale, a car that desperately needs an update in so many ways… Well, it was safer to stay at home. To drive anywhere I’ll have to put chains on the car (ehm the tyres that is), and then maybe we’ll get down and up again. Sigh…

So we’re here, me and the little one, trying to survive without driving each other crazy. Mostly being inside the house because of the slippery, icy, wet, windy and grey happening outside. Today was cupcake baking day. Blueberry cupcakes with so much blueberries they were really blueberries with a little cupcake added to them. Yum.

And since the husband has our camera at work, I can’t take photos of them. But I have this one… Kind of related.





Two of my cake tins, both thrifted. Old cake tins are something I always look for on flea markets and thrift shops. I just love them, and of course they can store almost anything (like needles and thread and bias tape, or stamps, postcards, the little ones beads…) – not just blueberries with a little cupcake added :).

Thrifted

In the fifties

Who wouldn't love to have a cherry red dress like this? This is from an old sewing book I've inherited from my grandmother. I don't know exactly how old it is, but I'm guessing the mid fifties. And this is from the introduction:

"As a woman, you can hardly find any better way to express your intelligence and personality..."

(Loosely translated by me.) And this one sentence kind of sums it all up. Thankfully most women have found both more and better ways to express their intelligence since then ;) Not that I don't love sewing, I do. And I love this book. Sadly the patterns are all gone, but the illustrations are wonderful. Maybe one day - when my sewing experience and knowledge has increased quite a bit - I'll try to make something inspired by these. I love dresses, but a cocktail cherry red one like the one above may be a bit bold... And when to wear it? And with the gloves and all (are these called gloves in english?). I don't have too many invitations for dinner parties and cocktail hours and proms laying around these days ;)


One of the other books I inherited was a fifties cookbook. With stains and all. So much history and memories in there. Even the smell of the book - it smells like my grandmothers house.


Lots of fifties moral, etiquette and facts in here as well. And several chapters about arranging dinner parties and what is appropriate and whats not - how to set the table, how to serve somebody - always remember to hold the coffeepot with a small napkin in your right hand... With 20 photos to illustrate the most important things to remember, how to behave and where the hostess should sit or be at all times, what to wear (a neat little black dress with a white apron for the help/waitress of course), one whole chapter about folding napkins, - and did you know that the average housewife handles about 150 items in the kitchen each day? Yeah, right! ;)


Smorgosbord for lunch... And maybe one of these cakes for dessert? (This is from yet another book - The Big Norwegian Cake Book - (yey!) it's from the eighties.