friday fun

it was indeed a Summer of Fun for sabin in the US with her cousins owen and finn.  she got home monday and although she seems to be suffering from some withdrawal from all of the fun activities which renders her a wee bit crabby, we are happy to have her home.

her vocabulary has improved greatly and while she didn't exactly acquire an iowa accent, she's clearly much, much more comfortable in english. 

i had some fun lomo-izing some of the Summer of Fun pictures on dumpr.net ...

happy weekend everyone!

a new obsession!

took this picture this afternoon of my flea market purchase the other day. the zinc watering can, which looks marvelous, leaked like a sieve, so i planted a hydrangea in it.

then, i went here and i lomo-ized it. i think i'm in love. and you can dump them straight into your flickr! 

how totally cool is that?!?!?!

the lego factor

since there are zoning rules in denmark about how much of your property the main house can take up (20% in our case), we weren't able to build on as much as we would have liked. however, you can use 25% of your property for buildings in general. we took this seriously. we have built a greenhouse (which doesn't count in the 25%, as it's under 10 square meters).

we have my writing playhouse and

a shed for lawn mower and firewood (on the right here).

husband's workshop

and another shot of the storage shed on the left in this picture.

still to come (behind the writing playhouse) is a sauna.

this adds up to quite a collection of buildings. there will be five plus a roof on the other side of the house for parking bicycles under when it's all finished.  this got me thinking. and i've come to the conclusion that it's all because of these....

lego, as we know, is a danish company. the name comes from the danish words lege godt--play well. my dear husband, as a good little scandinavian child (whose father was an architect to boot), grew up playing with lego, just as our daughter is doing. i didn't really grow up with lego (i had a pony, after all), tho' i knew what it was. but, i think it has a marked effect on the psyche. you build small buildings, you arrange them, often around a square green lego base, and then play.

it dawned on me as i looked out the addition yesterday that husband is assembling three small buildings around a square base (decking). he is strategically placing other small buildings around the square of the property. he's playing with lego in adult size. it seems that play in childhood really does prepare you for life. i'm just relieved he played with lego and not with matches. 

the expanse of possibility

yesterday, this space was opened up right beside my desk. it's the former end of our house, now open onto the new room (which is still in a state of extreme unfinishedness). there were four windows in this space until yesterday, when husband took them away to reuse them in his workshop that's taking shape in the garden. although there were four large windows here, the difference it makes that they and all of their framing are now gone is simply amazing.  it's so open and light and expansive now and although it's unfinished, it's amazing to be able to look at the room below and out onto the back garden.

there will be a frame around this opening so that it feels finished , but it will remain open and lovely like this--no new windows or shutters or anything will go in. 

i feel a thrill of excitement at the possibilities it opens up. we do want to be able to have a shade of sorts in this space, so that we can close it for privacy--it is, after all, our bedroom here upstairs and will be the dining room in the addition below. our desks are at each end of the room right now and although my computer and creative space will move into the writing house in the garden, there will still be a desk here on each side.

so, i'm sketching and daydreaming about making a fabric shade that looks good from both sides. so many influences are tumbling in my head and i'm trying to sketch them all out, to get an idea of which direction to go. i'm pondering a natural linen base for the shade and color palettes for each side--blues and greens for the bedroom and reds and oranges for the dining room below. although i'm currently obsessed with helleristninger (nordic petroglyphs), i'm going to try to do something else. a sort of a modern quilt-feel with perhaps shades of turkish influence. i'll share some sketches and maybe even fabric swatches soon.

she's not in kansas (or iowa) anymore!

this little face came home yesterday all by herself on SK944 ORD-CPH. she immediately turned on her computer and started watching the kids' shows she had missed out on while she was gone on the DR website. her clock is topsy turvy and she's hungry and sleepy at the wrong times, but we are SOOoooo happy to have her home!

along with her suitcase full of fun electronics that make mommy's heart race! and the sun is shining! what more could one ask?

flea market fabulosity

these are some of the fabulous pictures (not that my pix are fabulous, it's the STUFF i mean) i took at the big "blue market" near haslev today (janni, isn't that kinda close to you?), where i went with my friend maj. pix tomorrow of the stuff i bought. i didn't buy any of this, tho' there are two things below that i'd like to go back for. guess correctly which they are and leave your guess in a comment and i will send you something fun via snail mail (my first RAK!! fun!!!). next sunday, i'll tally up the right answers and let you know if you've won and need to supply me with your snail mail address.  everyone who guesses correctly will get something fun! 

recurring dreams

my dream posting from the other day prompted an email exchange with my cousin about all kinds of dreams. we got on the subject of recurring dreams.  as i said in the previous posting, i have more of a recurring location (that giant and partially abandoned mall) in my dreams, but there are a number of recurring dreams i've had over the years.

in high school, i played annie oakley in annie get your gun. for years afterwards (and now it's been 24 years), i have dreamed that i had to perform it again with no rehearsal...just jumping into costume and going directly onstage. it is always a bit rusty at first, but then i warm into it and do ok. "anything you can do, i can do better..." 

i've had some pageant-related dreams for years after my pageant phase as well--that as recently as in the past couple of months. they usually involve embarassment over suddenly having to wear a swimsuit and high heels in public.

apparently my recurring dreams are related to being onstage. that's a bit weird.

my cousin's dreams are work-related. she spends lots of time on cruise ships and has lots of dreams about them. like me, she also has flying-related dreams where the plane crashes (and she is as unworried about it as i am), but where she's usually in the cockpit. i'm never in the cockpit in my plane crash dreams.

she and i were both denied comic books as children on the grounds that they were a waste of time and money and had to illicitly read them at other people's houses. she still has dreams about that. i must have less guilt over it, as that topic doesn't show up in my dreams.

talking to her made me remember that i used to have a recurring dream of losing my teeth during college and usually i was somewhere with her father, my uncle red, at the time. he was a veterinarian, not a dentist, so i'm not sure what sense that made, but then, dreams don't always make sense.

the person who was my best friend through most of high school, but who turned on me at the end for some reason still unknown to me and called me "miss king bitch shit" while we decorated for our graduation, showed up as a recurring figure in my dreams for years. she was never a central figure in the dream, nor even someone i interacted with, she would just be there in every dream, standing somewhere on the sidelines. i got so i even looked for her. but she hasn't been there for years, so i must have gotten over it.

i have a lot of dreams where i'm precariously balancing beside some yucky water of some sort. i almost always fall into it and it's thick and sludgy and hard to trudge through, but strangely never as bad as i feared it would be. my cousin has a similar dream and thinks it's when she's not getting enough exercise. mine is no doubt that too and it simply never occurred to me! either that, or i feel i'm on the verge of a problem and that it won't be as bad as i fear.

in any case, it's fascinating thinking about dreams and what they mean. i'm still convinced i'm living a parallel life over there.