old becomes new

Fretex is the Salvation Army's secondhand outlet in Norway. Fretex has now made petty little dresses in a cute, nostalgic 40s style out of old curtains and table cloths. The dresses are sold in a few chosen shops in Oslo, and I nearly bought one when I was there this weekend. They are really pretty. What put me back was the price - 1400 kr, which is about €177/£142/$280. I love the concept though.

Read the article (in Norwegian) here. The photos above are from this article.

Also, take a look at this (make sure you have the sound on). "Se din kjole" means "look at your dress" and it refers to a children's song called "Se min kjole" meaning "look at my dress". The song is about all the colors of my dress.

The model in Se din kjole is Hege Golf. Read more about her here.

In other news, I bought the shoes for my wedding dress when I was in Oslo this weekend. They are flat silver sandals, and they were much cheaper than the ones I found at NET-A-PORTER. I'm happy! Also I decided to continue using my IKEA dinner plates. Thanks for the great argument, Emma!

Imperfection and contrasts

I love clean-cut, minimal interiors. There is something with it that I’m instantly attracted to. It pleases my eyes as I flip through the pages of glossy interior design magazines and coffee table books. On the one hand the interiors are elegant in a glamorous, high class, expensive way. There are shiny objects, fluffy fur and champagne galore. On the other hand these interiors can be elegant in an understated, subtle, back to nature way. Large white surfaces add a backdrop to wood textures, woollen blankets and an otherwise muted colour scheme.

As much as I love the look of these clean-cut, minimal interiors I could never live like that. Mind you, I’m an organized, tidy, champagne loving girl, so it’s not that I would make a complete chaos with my presence. But I think that just me being in a scene like that, would make me feel like I ruined the perfect picture. Like being underdressed for a fancy cocktail party, if you understand what I mean.

I love homes where you never feel underdressed. Unpretentious yet style conscious homes where you can sip cocktails in your sweat pants. Well, no, hang on. That is taking it too far. Sweat pants is never ok unless you actually work out. Hanging around the house wearing sweat pants is just too cosy comfortable and so darn unsexy. There are other loose-fitting, comfortable alternatives available, like cotton dresses, linen pants or even a silk bathrobe.

Let’s get back to the cocktails. I’m not taking about the multicoloured, super sweet cocktails with little umbrellas in them. I guess they are ok if you have an itching sweet tooth and a love for kitschy food and drinks accessories. Think classic, timeless cocktails a la Dry Martini, Margarita, Mojito and Manhattan. I prefer a Cosmopolitan, with an extra dash of cranberry juice. Most of all I prefer champagne, but that is a whole different story.

The best place to enjoy the Cosmopolitan is sometimes dressed up at a fancy cocktail party and sometimes in a crowded big city bar, but most times it is best enjoyed on a Friday night in front of the fireplace in my second hand orange sofa, that was bought for 450 kr at Fretex, while resting my feet on the wooden, stained stool, that was rescued from an abandoned mountain cabin. I listen to anything from the Magnetic Fields and Zero 7 to Detroit Kobras and Violent Femmes, while I catch up on international lifestyle magazines with light coming from candles, IKEA and Artmide lamps.

I like to think that an unpretentious yet style conscious home is a place you can enjoy Cosmopolitans, champagne, beer, wine and other juices. It is the home of someone who has great interest in anything visually good, like arts, design, architecture, film, and also music and literature. This home is an eclectic yet elegant contrast of styles; old design classics, prototypes from up and coming design students, vintage grandma-like nick nack, walls filled with big print photographs and book shelves brimmed with films – classics and blockbusters. The CD collection is a nice mix of contemporary pop music, underground hip hop, experimental jazz, violin concertos and old school rock and RnB.

Pierre Bourdieu would have loved to do a field study in this imperfect mix of high culture and popular culture. Ugly stuff meets pretty stuff, and we love it.


This is a little something I wrote recently, for a new international magazine that unfortunately didn't hit the shelves after all.

all week monday-itis

The procrastination I mentioned yesterday, continues. I realise it is not just procrastination, it is also a case of all week Monday-itis. Instead of fueling up on a healthy meal to get energy to continue "working", I just stuffed myself full of marzipan. I am on a serious sugar high and I have a deadline tomorrow. All I want to do is repeat last night; The Devil Wears Prada on my big screen and a (big) glass of Cointreau on ice. (The photo above is from the movie, found on imdb.com.)

Anyone know what I am talking about?

I think I have mentioned this before, but it is worth mentioning again. So beautiful.

Also, I played a little with Picnik today. Finally I can easily do fun and good looking stuff with my images, other than auto contrast and auto levels in Photoshop Elements 2.0.

life after vacation

I am hit by a terrible case of procrastination. It is very inconvenient since I have too many deadlines coming up. It is so hard to get back in real work mode after the 9 fantastic days in the mountains. Adele's song "Chasing Pavements" is spinning in my head and I have love and celebration on my mind. Yesterday I booked the hotel for our wedding night. Yay!

Photos for my state of mind: 1. my favorite, 2. cutting the cake, 3. Lovers dream., 4. 67366

I added a few more photos to the Svalbard set. Soon I will start posting photos from the amazing trip I had to Finnmark in the beginning of March. But before that there will be photos from the Easter vacation. So, there will still be a lot of Norway and nature in my Flickr stream.

I am going home soon to cook something nice, pasta maybe, and watch a movie on the huge screen.

By the way, have you seen this and this? Love!

cabin life

I am off again. Not for work this time. We are spending the Easter holiday in the mountain cabin seen in the photo above (photos taken by Sølve during Easter last year). Here are some more photos from the cabin. I am really looking forward to more than a week of cross country skiing, good food and wine, and playing board games with our friends.

Enjoy the holidays friends!

winter and spring

March is officially spring, so I have changed the blog header to get in a bit of spring mood. Although my mind is still very much set on winter. I had a truly amazing weekend at Svalbard. I have never before experienced an Arctic winter so far north. It is so exotic and unique. It really took my breath away. I am going north again for the weekend. On Thursday I fly to Finnmark, close to the North Cape.

The Svalbard set will be filled with more photos when I get the time to sort through them. And I will of course bring home lots of photos from Finnmark.

Here are a few projects I am really excited about. Be sure to check them out if you don't know them: Lines & Shapes - before and after - 44 times two

I also want to welcome Nicole back to blogland. Welcome Nicole! And finally, check out this. A lovely meeting between two people I admire; Jenifer of Nectar & Light and Matt of MattBites.

I'll be back in this space next week with new bits of inspiration.

winter wonders

Hei guys!

I'm leaving the wet, grey, 10 degrees celcius warm life in Bergen for some days, in change for winter; snow, magic artic light and some 20 degrees below in polar bear land. I'm going to Svalbard on a work trip. Yay!

Here are some winter inspiration from around Flickr:

1. Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, 2. Unstad, 3. #1, 4. snow, finally, 5. Untitled, 6. biwako #4, 7. Untitled, 8. silence, 9. winter im sielbecker moor, 10. white is the colour, 11. Untitled, 12. Frost on the window of my grandparents house, 13. Untitled, 14. Hallingskarvet, 15. Lone Horse, 16. Graphical Aspiration of a Tree (2), 17. Fence, 18. barn dusting, 19. first snow part two, 20. Untitled

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

everyday life published

I have always been an eager photographer, and I have lots of albums filled with snapshots and great memories of things I have done in life. Digital photography and Flickr have made me see things in a diffenert way. Before I got my first digital (slr) camera in June 2004, I would for example never photograph a plate of grapes, the evening sun light or magazines like this. I guess I saved the film for capturing my family and friends having fun, and not just for remembering ordinary things. As time went by I started noticing these mundane things and moments in life, and I started photographing them. I also created a group on Flickr called my everyday life. It's a place to collect these mundande things and moments in life, almost like a photo diary.

As of today the group has 865 more or less active members. So it seems, I'm not the only one fascinated by everyday life. Karen is one of those people. She is not a member of my Flickr group, but she publishes a magazine - Karen magazine - made out of the ordinary. I don't remember when and where I came across Karen's magazine, but I was happy to find a personal note from Karen when I recieved the magazine by mail (you can see it in the photo above). See more photos from the magazine here.

Karen magazine has been mentioned in several publications, and it has been nominated Britain's best kept art secret by a journalist in the Observer. (I know several photographers on Flickr that see everyday life as art, here is one example.) Recently D2, the weekly glossy magazine published by one of Norway's financial newspapers, Dagens Næringsliv, published an article about Karen and her magazine (in Norwegian).

Read more about Karen magazine here, that's also where you can buy it.

baby you can ride my bike

This morning while eating breakfast, I flicked through an issue of Australian Donna Hay magazine (thanks so much Deborah!). I instantly fell in love with this bicycling story. Such a lovely summery feeling. And so different from my own bicycling experience today. One word - snow...

I'm off to the mountains to celebrate a friend's 30 years birthday this weekend. Have a fun weekend - whereever you are in the world!

PS: Click on the images to see them a little bigger.

new year

Hei guys. Happy new year. Hope you had a fabulous celebration. I sure did. Didn't get much done work wise this week. So hard to get into the work mode again after the holidays. Know what I mean? Hopefully there will be more activity in this space from Monday. I already kickstarted the activity over at my photoblog. Have a look if you are interested.

Hope you are having a great weekend. I do. It involves organizing and cleaning around the apartment, lounging, the West Wing on dvd, wine, food and Sølve :-)

Christmas

Just checking in to say hei. I've had a great week of Christmas celebrations home in Sandnes with my family and my in-law family. Now we are back in Bergen, getting ready for a fabulous New Years party on Monday.

There will be more activity here in the new year. Thanks for stopping by this space. I really appreciate it.

Hope you are all doing well.

magic light

Today I got up at 0630 am, which is quite early for me. I normally get up around 0830 am. It is so dark at 0630 am! It doesn't get bright until around 9 am. And then at 4 pm it is dark again. Only seven hours of daylight. I am glad I don't live further north where the days are even shorter.

It is only natural that I am attracted to the magic light these days. Here are some current Flickr favorites:

1. Untitled, 2. Untitled, 3. Untitled, 4. Untitled, 5. the light, 6. woman in last light

I have added a new little thing to the right on the blog here; listening to...

I think I'll change the music choice from time to time. A friend introduced me to The Detroit Cobras at a party a little while ago. I bought the CD today. It is so great I just had to share it with you.

Sølve and I are off to Paris for the weekend. Au revoir!

work and food

Hei!

I have a plan to post here every day, but sometimes life takes over, and there's less time for online fun. You know how it is, don't you?

I was quite absent from this space the last week, which was filled with lots of work and great food. For those of you interested in what was on the menu, take a look at my Flickr photostream. It seems like this week will be as busy as the last, so I'll probably not be around here much this week either. When life slows down I'll take some time to write about Scandinavian design, which I got a question about in a comment on one of my recent posts. I also have a couple of other things planned to share with you. In the mean time I'll probably find time to upload photos on Flickr daily, like I normally do.

Have a great week friends!

a long workday

You all know the feeling of a long working day, don't you? The first part of the day, when it's still daylight outside, your energy and spirits are high. At lunchtime it drops a little because you are hungry, but after a quick bite you are ready to go again. Then, at about 4-5 pm, it's time for another meal. At least for me it is. I eat small meals often. This last meal was an organic sunflower seeds whole grain roll from Godt Brød with a homemade spread of mayonnaise, eggs and scrimps bought at Kjøttbasaren. It was so, so good. But it did not lift my energy level at all. I'm so tired; all I want to do is sleep. Its dark outside, so why not?

What is your trick to keep going the second part of a long workday, when it's dark outside and all you want to do is go home?

The photo above was taken some weeks ago when I biked home from work. Close to my home there is a steep hill through a church yard. I never bike up the hill, it's too stressful. As I walked up the hill, I saw the moon shining through the tree branches. It was pretty nice, so I took this photo with my old analog slr. It's not the best moon shot in the world, but who cares?

That's all. Now I'm going to work.
Astrid out. 6 pm.

Kirsten Hinder

Blue skies and sun in Bergen today, the snow from the weekend is almost gone, but it's still cold. My bike was all white of frost this morning. With three layers of wool the ride wasn't too cool. The writer Astrid Hagen has busy days, but I enjoy stopping by blogland and Flickr for some instant inspiration. And hopefully also to inspire you.

Today I want you to take a look at the beautiful photography of Swedish Kirsten Hinder (via style files). On her elegant website you can browse through photos in the categories interior, food, people and product.

There is an interview (in Norwegian) of me over here at Frilansliv (translates to freelance life).

yes, I got comfortable

Yes, I got plenty comfortable on Thursday night.

As expected the ride home was wet. Raindrops dripping from my nose kind of wet. But I wore rubber boots and rain gear (I have been a girl scout for many years and I know how to dress in bad weather), so it wasn't too bad.

I came home to candles, roses, a lit fireplace, chilled Chablis and a super delicious salmon dinner. Sølve arranged a surprise date. How can I possibly ask for more?!

In other news:
Some of you have already seen this, and if you haven't, you should: Jen of Simply Photo has made a beautiful simply breakfast book.

My sister and I finally got a chance to work together again this weekend. I'm writing an article about bananas, and my sister took photos. Here is a couple of behind the scenes shots. At last I got to try mav's famous banana bread. Oh yum!

comfort

The image above is from Domino Magazine. I saved it on my computer a while ago, and I stumbled upon it again today. I like the colors and the rustic, comfortable atmosphere.

Comfort is something I need today. My workday has been busy yet fun. You know those kind of days when so much is happening at once, you just have to take a time out, breath, and make a list of to dos for the rest of the day. I made the list and it calmed me down. I only checked one item on the list, but now I know what to do tomorrow. New things are happening and I enjoy it.

Now, at 5:50 pm, I'm getting ready to bike home. Local media says Andrea, which the storm has been named, will hit Bergen tonight. Sounds like "tonight" is now. It is going to be a very wet ride home. No doubt I'll light the fireplace and have some red wine when I get home. I'm sure it will make me plenty comfortable.

happy, rainy Wednesday

There are certain things that make this girl happy on a very rainy, very wet, very grey autumn day. Crisp bread with Philadelphia creme cheese, Provence ham and cucumber is one thing. I have already had 8 of them today (!). Buying tickets to Berlin to meet up with a certain German couple and a certain Canadian couple is another thing. Knowing that she is going to lounge on the sofa with her boyfriend tonight and watch more episodes of the West Wing on DVD, is even another thing that makes her happy.

And then there is the one thing that makes this very magazine addicted girl super happy - 25 % off all foreign magazines at Narvesen for three weeks. Knowing that most foreign magazines usually cost around $22/£9/€13, you might understand why this gets me so worked up. I'm ready for magazine galore!

roadtrip notes

I'm back from my roadtrip, and you can see the photos here. I uploaded some photos today, there will be more later. It was a really long drive, 10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Monday, almost 1500 km all together. Sølve is a great driver and I try to be a great passenger - serving him snacks when ever he wants some, being DJ Astrid who plays great music (nothing to slow because that always make us tired in the car) and audio books, telling him the names of the places we pass on along the way, telling him how much I love the sights and nature we drive through... You know how roadtrips are, don't you?

The photo is from Lærdalstunnelen. Pretty cool tunnel.

rainy sunday

The dinner party on Friday was a success, and meeting up with a group of girls last night was a blast. Today it's Sunday and time to relax. It's real autumn weather outside, with wind and rain hammering on the windows. I want to light the fireplace, but I don't want to go outside in this weather to get the firewood... Sølve is i Cannes, France with his job, so I have to do it myself. Big challenge today ;-)

Since I'm home alone, I'm making something Sølve isn't a big fan of; rice pudding. Yum! More photos here.

Hope you have a good Sunday.