Summer love

Fresh mint/green tea.


And this one running around in the garden. Life is good.

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.

Life in the garden

Not much happening here at the moment. And that's because LOTS of things are happening in our lives - so there hasn't been much time to spend in front of the computer. More about that later - and maybe some photos as well.

Summer is here. And it's HOT (unusually hot, +30 degrees Celsius) and it's dry and it's clear blue sky... It's wonderful. Most of our time is spent in the garden; digging, planting, weeding, mulching, watering. Lots of construction/carpenter type of work going on as well - a shed for our rabbits (arriving in a couple of weeks or so), a chicken shed is going up, the terrace is being rebuilt, our daughters playhouse/cottage needs to be painted and decorated. We're already finished painting the walls inside - the color was her own choice - purple like lilacs. I'm so glad she didn't want pink...


We don't have much vegetables this year - the vegetable plot has been marked out and is ready to be milled/harrowed and mulched. We're hoping for some help from one of our neighbors who owns a tractor. It would have been fun to use a horse and manual labor though but... We don't own a horse (yet) and tractors are kinda convenient ;) Next year will be our first when it comes to growing vegetables on a larger scale. This year it is just some carrots, a couple of tomato plants, sugar peas and quite a lot of black currants, red currants, rhubarb and lots of herbs. I still have a pumpkin plant in a pot in the windowsill, but I don't know where to put it... Oh, all the things growing, buzzing and singing...

OK, just one more thing and I'll shut up about the garden. My latest purchase - black chokeberry. I have looked for it for awhile and found it yesterday. Black chokeberries (aronia or Aronia melanocarpa) has has small, white flowers in the spring - dark green and shiny leaves - striking color foliage in autumn - and gets lots of black berries . And these berries are one of the most potent source of antioxidant you will ever find! Although they don't taste very good raw - they're wonderful for making wine or jam.

And what about lemon verbena... Yes, what about it... It's just so lovable! I got one last year, but it didn't survive the winter. So I just had to buy another one - I just fell completely in love with it. And my lemon balm didn't survive either - so I'll have to get another one....

And willow has been planted - a living tipi in the play area! Photos are coming soon - but they are still very small (the willow that is...)

I'll have to stop now - plants need watering and me needs sleeping :)

Whats for dinner?


Stinging nettle soup!

And for dessert?

Rhubarb soup.

Homemade play dough

Play dough is a wonderful thing. But most of what T got for her birthday last year has already shriveled in and dried out. We had to throw most of it away. I must say I wasn't too sad - whats in that stuff anyway?

So we made our own. We found different recipes in books and on the internet, an landed on one based on baking soda and corn starch. We've made different kinds of dough before, mostly salt dough (or trolldeig as it is called in Norwegian. Troll = troll, deig = dough). This one felt much more like "real" play dough than the salt dough does. But baking soda is hard (if not impossible) to find in big quantities here - so we just had enough to make a little batch. And we didn't add food coloring since we wanted to paint and decorate it.

I think it is great for smaller children, as it is very soft and pliable and easy to work with.


I don't know how long it keeps in the fridge, but if you put it in an airtight container/bag, I guess it will last for at least a few days. It got a little dry but we just added water (we used ours within a couple of days). The creations were left to dry on a plate for two days and then painted. The final product:


Beads! Pretty pretty. Just got to love them.

If you wonder about the recipe; 1 part baking soda, 1 part corn starch, 1 part water (and food coloring if you like). Mix in a saucepan on low heat - stir constantly - until it gets lumpy and looks like mashed potatoes. Take it off the heat and pour out on the table/sheet/board and wait until it cools. Knead until it looks like play dough.

Who am I and what am I doing here?

Hello there! I'm a woman in my late twenties, Norwegian, mama of two little girls (aged two months and 5 years). I'm married and we live in a remote location in the south(ish) east of Norway. We've been here for four years now and we love it. We have two dog, several rabbits (flemish giants and french lop) and lots of other animals grazing outside our front door. Horses, cows, sheep, goats, geese, chickens, turkeys... So as you probably can imagine - we live "in the country". We don't own a farm, but our neighbors are mainly small scale farmers, and we're hoping to turn our lot into a high yield permaculture garden - some day...

This blog will be about "the ordinary stuff" - moments and glimpses of our everyday lives. To give you an idea of what that includes and what I probably will write about - here are some of the things that are important to us:

Permaculture. Simple living. Thinking globally, acting locally. Paganism. "Traditional" Scandinavian shamanism. Asatru. Attachment/connection parenting. Photography and film making. Stop motion animation. Creative, poetic and thought provoking documentaries. Crafting and creating. Knitting. Crafting with kids. Writing. Thriftshops and fleamarkets. Anything and everything vintage. Food. Cooking. Vegetarianism. Preserving food. Herbs. Country living. Small scale farming. Self sufficiency. Gardening in general. The vegetable garden. Creating stuff out of willow. Animals. Natural building. Educational philosophies and (natural) learning. Waldorf education. And still more...

We'll be so happy if you leave us a comment!