Thank you 2009!!

Hi my friends.

This is the last day of 2009, and I've pondered over the year that flew by so fast. 2009 brought me so much joy, so many beautiful moments, so many things to be grateful for. But also loss, tears and hard days - one year of everydays, holidays, sun and rain, summer and winter - but I like to remember the good things 2009 gave me the days of smile and laughter - these are the memories that will keep me going. So I gathered some of my favourite photos and some favourite memories from this year - and I wanted to make a LO to say:
THANK YOU SO MUCH 2009 for all the good days you bvrought!
I feel blessed to have 4 wonderful kids, the kindest husband, friends, family... happy memories to save in my heart.

Wanted to say THANK YOU to YOU, all my blogreaders too!! Your kind comments and all your love are so heartwarming.
I hope to see you here on my blog in 2010 too.
And like all new beginnings I have some plans .... I want to improve .... I want to get things done ... so please, pop by in the new year too. Maybe Some of my dreams and ideas for this blog will come true ;)

Thank you for the year that just flew by, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
xo

Happy scrapper

I have really, really enjoyed these wonderful days off, with beautiful winter weather here in Oslo. Ice cold (-16 degrees Celcius), lots of snow, clear sky and beautiful winter-sun.

But as you might know daylight is just for a couple of hour here north (even if I live in south/eastern part of norway) and at 2 - 3pm the sun set and we move inside, light the fire and ...well do cozy indoor-things like (in my case) scrapbooking :) :)

Here are two of the LOs I've created lately. Both LOs inspired by some of the wonderful sketches over at Pencil Lines sketch blog. Thanks for popping by!

xo

White Christmas :)

Hi My friends. Hope you all've had a wonderful Christmas.

Here in our household we have enjoyed time together, alot of yummy, yummy food, beautiful gifts from friends and relatives. We also have enjoyed a wonderful white christmas and the great outoors. It snowed so much on christmas eve and the 25th. :)

Here is a picture of Sol feeding the ducks at the fjord.

And here are two LOs I've made for Lotus as well. enjoy.

And:

Thank you for all your love in 2009.

My best wishes for 2010.

xo

Home for Christmas with gifts and little ideas. :)

Hi my friends.

Guess you are all busy, busy, busy doing the last preparations for Christmas.

I'm preparing the last minute gifts, wrapping and making tags. I also need to plan some more cookies and what to cook for this christmas. :)

Today I'll share some affordable, heartwarming last-minute gifts.

The snow and FROST came to Oslo this week, and it is freezing cold ( - 10 degrees Celcius). I have a fire going on in my oven upstairs and downstairs - otherwise we'll freeze our toes off. ;)

This reminded me I must make sure my friends don't freeze too. I have gathered some smaller wodden sticks and tied them together with a pine branch and a matchstick box I decorated. Ready for a cozy fire.

This might seems like a strange gift to those of you that live in a warmer climate....but you know....in cold Norway we allways appreciate a cozy fire :)

Here is another fun and eartfriendly little gift for smaller kids. I found this idea at my friend Gigis blog, and I was delighted. I really LOVE the idea of reuse old crayons and make cute new ones that han be used by new little artists. :) You can find a great how-to tutorial on Gigis blog :)

The kids had their last day at school today, and they all wanted to bring presents for their friends This year - as we use to every year - we made some homemade gifts. And we chose to make homemade soaps and homemade raspberry candy.
Soap is easy to make, and the kids love to add scent and color and put the melted soap in the mould, and then take them out and wrap them in celophane when the soap has cooled.

Home made candy is really fun to make too. But it is WARM! so be aware. This is not for small kids. I have made candy with my kids for ceveral years and they love it.

This is a super affordable and pretty fast made gift. Perfect for little friends :)

Every year at this time I'm in need of cute gifttags, but I never seem to find time to make some.... So I decided to use leftover tags from 3ndypapir patterned paper, and then I bought some cute traditional scandinavian ornaments at IKEA and added with the tags
This serves as a extra gift too :)

And for some special presents I decided to make this super cute homemade bow.

Here is a step-by step how to make it:

Cut 8 stripes of patterned paper 3/4 inch X 4 1/2 inch
and one strip 3/4 inch X 3 1/2 inch

Using the 8 longer pieces, loop each paper, and glue to secure.

Adhere two loops together with adeshive in the middle.

glue two pieces together to make the first layer of the bow.

Glue the remaining two sets of loops together in the same way.

Adhere the two layers together.

Make a little circle of the shorter piece of paper and add it in the middle of the bow.

Voila! Bow is complete!

You can make a larger bow with one more layer too. :)

Thank you for popping by! And have a wonderful last week before Christmas :)

xo

HOME for christmas :) :)

WELCOME my friends!!

And again THANK YOU a million for all your sweet well wishes and comments.

I really feel better now. :)

And today I'm ready to invite you HOME for Christmas :)

I have started decorating my home a little bit. It is tradition for alot of people in Norway to decorate the tree and most of the house on the 23rd. We celebrate christmas eve on the 24th.

But because I LOVE all this decorating and creating and this season SO much I start a little earlier putting up little by little of my decorations.

I made these cute paper trees, and they are now standing in my livingroom.

They are so fun to make, and can be made in many different ways.

I'll show you how I made my circle-tree. :)

You'll need a foam "tree" a pot, a little bit of Oasis, hot glue / gluegun, a 1 1/2 inch circle punch and LOTS of punchout paper-circles. I've used scraps of patterned paper to punch out circles. bead-headed pins (if you want)

Glue the circles on to the foam tree, and secure with pins if you like.
I started on the bottom of the tree and glued circles round and round in a kind of random way.

When you have covered the tree with circles you can add a little wooden stick on the bottom of the tree. I found a little branch from a tree in my garden. I tucked the stick into the tree and glued it to secure.

I put the Oasis in the pot and put the tree into the Oasis, and glued to secure. Then I found some nature fiber to cover the Oasis.

Voila!

A fun little tree to brighten up your home :)

----

As you know I have this advent tradition with my kids, we do different kins of things every day in december as our calendar.

Recently we needle felted some woolen hearts.

They LOVE to needle felt, and we use to do this every year.

this is one of the things they are really looking foreward to.

Here is one of the hearts we felted.

I've put it up in my candelair over my dining table.

To needle felt is SO FUN and easy, and I tell you, even my husband loves it, and he have some skills! This year he felted an ice-bear. (I'll show you pictures another day)

Eirun is one of the master-felters in our family. Here is her heart that got wings :)

Here is a mini step-by-step how to do it.

You need real lambs-wool, a styrofoam block to have under your project and a special felting needle. And then you just felt away! :)

OK

This was it for this wednesday.

See you back on friday for more christmas inspo!

:)

At home

Hi my friends, and THANK YOU so much for all your sweet and heartwarming messages. And thanks to the very best Lene that posted last post when I was in hospital. You all made me so happy, and I'm sure all your love will bring me a quick recovery. :)

As you understand I'm at home now, but I'm still on medication, and I feel so tired, but I hope I'll be my "good ol'self" real soon.

Just wanted to say a million thanks to you all for all your love and well-wishes.

See you on wednesday for a new "home for christmas"

:)

Gudrun sends her love!

Hi, this is Gudruns friend Lene, with a little hello from dear Gudrun herself! She sends her love and just wanting you to know why there was no "Home for Christmas" post yesterday, and why there will be no post for tomorrow either.

Last night Gudrun was admitted to the hospital with pyelitis/nyrebekkenbetennelse :( Believe me..that is so the last place she wants to be right now. I bet the doctors have to pin her down to keep her from running around ;) Knowing that pyelitis is extremely painful, I hope she´s a good girl, taking her medicine and doing as the doctors tells her, so she will recover real soon.

(Take care sweetie! We love you, and wish you a fast recovery! Hugs!)

my Stamp BOX blog hop :) :)

Welcome to the "Let's Party!" blog hop for myStamp BOX!

If you have just happened upon my blog, you'll want to start at the beginning our blog hop.

Take the time to leave some love on each design team members blog post for the blog and you could be be picked to WIN a myStamp BOX stamp set of your very own!

You have until Friday December 11th at 6pm EST to leave your comments for a chance to win.

The blog hop winner will be announced on the myStamp BOX blog on Monday December 14th.

Here is our blog rotation for this evening:

mSB Blog/Bettina

Virginie

Trace

Nathalie

Liz

Jolene

Ellen

Tracey

Tina

Marci

Leica

Kim

Gudrun ~you are here! ~

Elisa

Ally

I have created an invitation-card and some place-cards. It's allways nice to recieve a handmade, handwritten party-invitation. I made mine as a pocket. Inside is a card stamped with Where, Who , When, from the "just add notes"-set.

The front of the pocket and the place-cards are decorated with embossed christmastrees from "Oh, Christmastree".

I stamped my trees on old book-pages to give them a vintagey feel.

The edges of the card and placecards are painted with ghesso and Shimmerz-paint to make them look "frozen".

Now on to Elisa's blog to catch more fun ideas for all kinds of parties! Don't forget to leave a comment on each blog to be eligible for

our blog hop prize!

Good luck!

sweets

Hi my friends.

It's snowing in Oslo today, and it's starting to look more and more like a white Christmas :) I like winter, and I like snow. I like how the snow cover the landscape and nature and make everything "go to sleep" until dear, warm, sweet spring arrives.

Snowy weather makes it good to stay indoor too. Light some candles and the fire to make it warm and cozy.

I decided to decorate a little bit today.

I got myself this cute "merry christmas" wire-hanging, and I decorated it with some "vintage cards" by 3ndypapir and some miniature ornaments.

And I have made some sweets :)

Honey-Ginger snaps
and Whalnut fudge. :)

Yummy, yummy!

Would you like some?

Honey-ginger snaps.

I LOVE these little spicy bites with some tea. :)

Ingredients
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. finely chopped crystallized ginger (I've used ground ginger and a little bit fresh chopped ginger)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper (optional)
1 egg, lightly beaten
Powdered sugar

Directions
1. In a small saucepan, combine honey and butter. Cook and stir over low heat until butter melts. Remove from heat. Pour mixture into a large bowl and cool to room temperature.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, granulated sugar, ginger, baking soda, and if desired, pepper. Set aside.
3. Stir egg into cooled honey mixture. Gradually stir in flour mixture until combined; knead in the last of the flour mixture by hand, if necessary. Cover and chill about 1 hour or until dough is easy to handle.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Divide dough into 12 portions.* On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion into a 10-inch-long rope. Cut ropes into 1/2-inch pieces. Place pieces 1/2 inch apart in an ungreased shallow baking pan.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 6 to 8 minutes or until tops are very lightly browned. Transfer cookies to paper towels to cool. Roll in powdered sugar.

For my European friends:

You can easily convert the amounts to kg, litre etc and Farenheit to Celcius HERE:

http://www.worldwidemetric.com/Measurements.html

And here is the recepie for

Whalnut fudge.

I use Whalnuts instead of Pecan nuts. :)

Ingredients
2 cups packed dark brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups broken or chopped pecans (I use whalnuts )

Directions
1. Butter the sides of a heavy 2-quart saucepan. In the saucepan combine brown sugar and buttermilk. Cook over medium-high heat to boiling, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to dissolve sugar. This should take 6 to 8 minutes. Avoid splashing mixture on sides of pan. Carefully clip candy thermometer to pan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until thermometer registers 234 degree F, soft-ball stage. Mixture should boil at a moderate, steady rate over entire surface. Reaching soft-ball stage should take 20 to 25 minutes.
2. Remove saucepan from heat. Add the 2 tablespoons butter, but do not stir. Cool, without stirring, to 150 degree F. This should take about 30 minutes. Remove candy thermometer from saucepan. Immediately stir in pecans. Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until candy is just beginning to thicken, but is still glossy. This should take 3 to 4 minutes.`
3. Quickly drop the candy from a teaspoon onto a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. (I just put the entire candy-mixture into one rectangular box covered with a baking sheet. I cut the fudge in squares when it has cooled. If you want to make pralines you have to work really fast. The candy will soon get stiff.

If it does you might stir in a few drops hot water, or put the saucepan on low heat to make it all melt a little bit. )

Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee. :)

Have a great WEEKEND!!

HOME for Christmas :)

Hi my friends and WELCOME to my "HOME for Christmas". It's 2nd of december today, and here in Oslo the weather finally changed from grey, wet november-rain to ice-cold, crisp, frozen december-winter-weather. We made the seasons FIRST ginger-bread yesterday, and the gingerbread smell fill the house. We also decorated LOTS of gingerbread "lollies" for the christmas marked next weekend. These cute lollies makes great gifts for the kids friends and the kids in the neighborhood.

I used pre-made gingerbread dough. (I don't have any really good gingerbread recepie :( ) Anyhow, the premade from IKEA works fine too :)

I cut the cakes with a round bowl and used a small cookie-cutter to make the shape in the middle. Added a lot of cruhched candy in the "window" before baking the cookies in the oven. The candy will melt and make the cute window. Let the cookies cool of for a while before you take them away from the baking-paper.

I've decorated the cookies with sugar frosting. :) Here are some pictures from cold, sunny Oslo today. Look at the frozen rose. Amazing, huh?:

Maybe some of these....or some other of the outdoor pics I took today will find their way to some friends walls during christmas. Beautiful outdoor photos allways makes great gifts :)

I made this little giftbag and filled it with a secret gift for my SIL today. Have to make one more for my BILs wife too ;) ;) The bag is super easy to make. You can download the pattern below. :)
Perfect for a little gift or to fill with some sweets.

Have a WONDERFUL day! and THANKS for popping by!