For my Secret Santa

Dear whoever you may be (I'll find that out in about a month or so - yup, I'm gonna try to save mine for Christmas eve, which is when we open our presents here in Norway). :)

If you want to post a picture on your blog, please go ahead. :) Just, don't mention who the receiver is (me) or the country.

Christmas in November?

One might start to wonder, when this bunch of guys came in, got together and started to make secret plans. You can just barely hear them mumble through their beards.. Although, I think the second one from the right thinks it's kinda boring.. it looks like he's taking a little nap.


I finally got the bell on my "Velkommen"-stitchery! (And have sent the picture to Jordbærstedet to enter the competition.) *phew* I only needed like one bell, but had to buy a pack of 10.. :/ Anyone out there who needs any? The result is noisy and fun - and I like it. :)


November is coming to an end - and I managed to finish the November-block for the Annie's Calendar Quilt-BOM last night (it's not a real BOM, just something a couple of us decided to do, just for fun). I've made December ready for stitching too, but thought I should wait until December to start working on it. :) So I guess I've got to figure out something else to do for today. Got some plans for some Christmas presents ready (in my head, gotta get it out in fabric and stuff first), and yesterday we bought a small present (very cute! I'll post a picture some time - perhaps a post about presents, but no mentioning of names though, that'll be a spoiler..).


And, last but never least, todays greeting from two very tired rats.. Swiffer and Igor doesn't really like to be terrorised by the camera before 5PM, but I bribed them with a treat. Gizmo is on vacation - a friend of mine has a lonely rat, so Gizmo is staying with her for a little while. She's greatly missed, of course - both by the ratties here, and me and my BF.

Oh well, off to work I go (or to the kitchen.. where my sewing stuff are taking over every inch of available space..).

Hm.. almost to post nr 50.. perhaps I should have a give-away too? Would be fun.. What do you think, you out there in the world of blogs?

Finally!

Yes, finally! After about 8 tries - and one complaint to sweet BF - Blogger wants to upload my pictures again. :) So, here are the pictures I wanted to post in the previous post.



This is a picture of me and one of my collegues - Angela - wearing HUGE orange jackets during the stunt our job had. You see, our job has like 500 awailable positions, and wanted to make a stunt so that people would notice them - and hopefully be able to fill the 500-and-something positions by Christmas. So, one early Tuesday morning, about 50 of us dressed up in these huge jackets and handed out business cards, reflective bands and bags of dried fruits and nuts to people on the central train station. It was fun - and a video of us (well, I'm nowhere to be found in the video, but Angela's there) can be seen on pages like DN

Back to the weekend in Trysil..


On Friday Vigdis came over and brought her stitchery from Jordbærstedet to compare with my mom and me. Although they originally were identical, we all have different tastes in color and stitching, so the results will be fun to see. This is as far as we had come on Friday (about mid-day).


And, would you believe it, all three of us were working on the same stitchery from Cinderberry! Mine is the one with the darkest green, my mom's is the one with the lighter green, and Vigdis' is the smallest one (she shrunk the pattern to about 70% of the original size). And again, the colours are not the same - not even the threads for the stitchery. I'm using all the colours from the pattern, but I know the others are making adjustments. :)


Monday morning I was out for a walk - or, I went to the dentist. Nothing big - just a small correction and a note saying to contact him in about 18 to 24 months. Or, whenever I feel like it - but there's really no need. :) Neat! Anyway, back to the pictures.. This is taken from "our" side of the river (with my back against the mountain and facing south) an shows parts of the south side of town. And a very icy river..


Here we have a picture from the same position, only facing north. Don't you just love the fog? It's really blue back home now - almost like the blue hours up in the mountains around Røros (for those who have ever seen the Christmas calendar shows on childrens TV here in Norway).


The trees and bushes have a layer of frosting now. :)


And our house is getting wrapped in snow too (well, this is just a little snow, and it's early in the winter, but give it a couple of weeks and months and you'll see).


This is the mountain view from where my parents live (I'm standing next to the mailbox).

And here I am, wrapped up in my warm jacket, mittens, scarf and hat - but still a bit cold, as you can see from the roses in my cheeks. :)


Monday (before I went back to Oslo) my mom and I took pictures of all the things we'd been working on this weekend. Lots of progress, I should say. :) Neither of us can really remember the last time we managed to do so much in just one weekend..


We even managed to test out a patter for small purses - idea or shall we say the push came from May Britt.

Can you guess what these are? ;)


We just had to try to make these! I made the brown one - and inside it is a pair of my great grandmothers pair of scissors!


We actually managed to finish our stitcheries from Jordbærstedet - I'm going to take a picture and send it in to participate in the competition this week. Cross my fingers and hope to win (well, actually, everybody deserves to win, but it would have been fun if I did win).

Oh well, now it's back to work again, but the weekend's only three days away (and tomorrow I'm going to visit one of the other bloggers - and maybe even another one). ;)

Back from mini-vacation

Yup, I'm back from a long week-end up in Trysil. It was great! Sleeping long(-er), reading tons of magazines I never read unless I'm home, not having to cook dinner (except from on Sunday - but we don't really mind cooking), and having a bit of real winter-feeling (in comparison to the moist icy cold that's winter in Oslo). My BF really enjoyed it too - drinking tons of tea, doing cross-word puzzles and playing old Super Nintendo-games on his Mac. :)

And.. this was supposed to be the moment where you could see tons of beautiful pictures of Trysil, the stuff we worked on this weekend, and even a picture from a stunt we did at work a couple of weeks ago.. but, alas, Blogger doesn't want to upload any of my pictures.. :(

*sob*

I'll try again a little later..

A little progress..

Well, as I said in one of the previous posts, things have been kinda crazy around here lately - tons of work at work, in the NTF, at home etc etc etc. Not always easy to balance everything, and in the end, the things that get the least attention, is usually my sweet BF and our ratties.. Hopefully things will be a bit calmer now.

It was Halloween!!! :D But we got no trick or treat'ers at our door.. :/ But we had a very cozy time anyway. I made a test-batch of pumpkin-cakes (I skipped the filling, it didn't really sound very good) and they were GREAT! Yummy.. and on Wednesday we ate a good dinner, had way too many pumpkin-cakes and watched "The Nightmare before Christmas" on DVD, in candlelight. :) I'd bought two new candleholders the weekend before, and of course we had to test them on Halloween. ;)


The first one is with a witch on the front and back, and with bats on the sides.


The second one has a haunted house on the front and back, and a tree on the sides. They're very very prett when the candle inside are lit - dancing orange glows and shadows..


I was working on the thing you see parts of in the picture abowe... but something came up.. *duh* I'm a part of this stitchingclub organized by Jordbærstedet, where we get one preprinted stitchery plus fabrics (and silken threads for those who want that) a month, and then we have a certain amount of time to complete what it is we choose to make, and send in a picture - and one of lucky ones sending in a picture wins a prize. Now, in the two previous runs we've had about a month to complete the project, but for some reason, this time we have very much less time.. My mom got her package last Thursday, but for some reason I didn't get mine until this Thursday! And it has to be done (and taken a picure of) by November 17th at 12PM! That leaves me with barely 14 days (13 now.. stressed!!!) to figure out something to make, finish it and send it in (the picture that is..)! *eek*


This is as far as I got with the stitchery this weekend.. I still have to decide on a design around it, make it and finish it.. *argh* But I WILL make it. I want to win a prize too, and I want to finish it - even though I thing it's silly to give such a short time.. I heard that they hadn't even been able to send out all the packages yet, so I'm not the only one with a busy time ahead of me. (Lazy as I am today, I didn't flip the picture before posting.. oh well, I'll post a new picture when the whole thing's done.) ;)


On the other side, these little cutesies will have to wait a while for their November-friend.. These are the BOM my mom, a couple of her friends and I are making. They're from a pattern called "Annie's Calendar Quilt". They're very cute and very funny, and I can't wait to see them all finished - and maybe even all 4 different quilts together at one point - it's fun to use the same patterns as others, and then seeing the differences afterwards. :)

I've been playing with the two charm packs I brought home this summer too - not quite sure of what they'll become, but so far it's been fun, and I've learned lots. :)


Well, this is it from me for now, but if things don't get as crazy as they have been, I will be back soon. :) Right now I'm waiting for Quiltoholic to answer the mail I sent her - as a reply to her very sweet mail. ;)

Until next time, happy stitching! And remember to share some good times with a friend or two - like Gizmo and Swiffer in their little fleecehouse. ;)