Waiting for Christmas

On Sunday it was the first of the 4 Sundays left before Christmas and as tradition goes we light the first candle and put up the star and the lights in the window. It is really lovely to look at these lights in the dark nights we have now. 

Linocut

I am finally finishing my linocut project, I have planned to make christmas gifts of it, will make a family tree print and give to my sister and brother. Have not decided yet if I will print the family tree on the print it self of make it a transparent sheet on top. I will also make Bookplates as I mentioned here previously - has just taken a bit of time, ahem - almost been a year now.. I had a plan to do lots of creative projects this year but has not gotten very far - hopefully I'll finish these things before Christmas at least.

Speaking of Christmas, just did some shopping and have sorted out a few of the gifts already. Even for my husband and my sister which is normally the most difficult ones! Since this will be the first Christmas as a family of three (!) I have bought Christmas stockings that I will decorate from Panduro with gingerbread figures, and I have small paper-bags that me and my husband fill with a little something for each other and we open every second day. I do love the pre-Christmas time! Have planned for a get together with some of my friends where we will make cookies and and drink mulled wine.

I am really glad we have the Christmas to look forward to in these dark winter times, now we are having a storm outside and I hope the large trees outside our house still will be there tomorrow..

Kelly Moore

I had to show you my brilliant bag from Kelly Moore that I got to store both baby stuff as well as camera & laptop gear! Brilliant I must say :) I was looking for a nicer bag a while ago when I was doing lots of business trips but didn't find any that really fulfilled my need, but this one does! So I can totally justify the price;)

Talking about combining things, in this case a bag that can be used in my job as well as as a mother - today I've been reading some very interesting articles about the trend currently with all these blogs about cupcakes and interior and how that apparantly is working against feminism and gender equality - we are supposedly going back to the 50's just because we appreciate making a nice home for our family and baking now and then. You can read about it (in Norwegian) first here and it has been commented here and here - very interesting read.

I do believe we should be able to do both - to be a career women and enjoy traditionally female activities, we are not men and should not try to be - why would we? We should use our strenghts as women in working life and together with men that creates a sucessful recipe - the same way that diversity with different cultures are creating successful businesses. Feminism is not trying to be men - I believe that freedom of choice to do the things we enjoy the most is what we have gained these days. In the 50's women did not have the same possibilites as we have today, now that we have a choice we can choose to stay at home with the kids if that is what we want - but we dont have to. I guess many women today try to achieve the right balance between work and home, having a perfect house and a good career is the goal. Of course this can lead to the 'good girl' syndrome of exhaustion but we need to be realistic and smart about it -and I think most women are! Nobody's perfect and bloglife is just a part of who we are:)

There have also been a lot of discussion about breastfeeding in the media lately - Audun Lysbakken has sparked a lot of heated discussion, can read more about him here. The discussion tend to get lost in is breastfeeding good or bad which is not his point, and people think that he wants to remove the woman's "right" to be at home as long as possibly with the baby, for those who are not aware we have very generous maternity leave in Norway, can stay home one year with 80% pay or 10 months with 100% pay!
He believes in equality and that women should not suffer in their career when becoming mothers, and that women should be able to go back earlier to work without beeing stigmatised, freedom of choice for the families. As well as the very justafiable right of the fathers  to spend more time with the baby the first year. I havent read his book "Frihet, likhet, farskap" yet - but have bought it for my husband for his first Fathers day! I will read it after he finishes. So a blogpost that goes from shopping to career & feminism to motherhood - thats me ;)

Footprints

Looks like I started making gingerbread right? But no, last night my dad called, he had a request for a Christmas present, so today I just had to get to it! Back home at my parents place they have some stuff that us kids made in the kindergarden when we were small, it is handprints in cement, so now he wanted that of his grandchild as well :)

So what I did was make a dough of 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water and a little oil. This makes something called 'Trolldeig' in Norwegian, it was very popular in the 80's! We used to make all kinds of little figures out of this dough and they last 'forever'.

So I wanted to make hand and foot print of our little daughter, she is 6 weeks now and want to capture how small she is! The hand print did not really work out as her little hand just didn't want to be outstretched, so I ended up with both her tiny feet instead, and think it worked out quite well!

I had to use the rest of the dough for something as well so thought I'd make decorations that can be used for the Christmas tree - will decorate with white paint and hang them in nice string. I used some food coloring to get the right ginger bread colour.

I also made some prints with purple paint on paper to use in the book that I keep to remember all the things for the first year of her life. So - have been a bit creative today! Thanks to a relative good nights sleep - they don't come so often at the moment ;)

New projects

Image from the thepatacakebaby

Looking for projects where I can use lots of retro fabrics I got from my husbands parents, and have 2 ideas now, it shouldnt be too complicated as I am not experienced with the sewing machine!

This kind of bib looks very nice and I have now learned that it is very useful to avoid having to change clothes several times a day.. :)

Another thing that I have been planning to make is Owl pillows/toys, are looking for inspiration online, these look quite straight forward so I migh manage this :)

Image from Pinterest

Or these ones - very cute!

Lovely gifts

Look what I just got! I really like the jewellery from this brand Snö of Sweden, and for my birthday this week I got this bracelet from some friends of mine, I also got lovely flowers and stuff for our baby.
My husband has been on a worktrip to Paris, this time we couldn't go together of course but he mostly spent the time in the office anyway. He brought me these gorgeous Macaroons! I love.
Happy days

Baby girl

Our baby was born a month ago! A precious little miracle!