Archive for September, 2009

I kind of wish it could be summer temperature all year around, but I guess I would have missed the beauty of the changing seasons. At this last day of September we’re heading for late fall and soon-to-be winter in our areas. Soon we’re changing the tires on the cars and packing ourselves in thick coats.

We’ve had a nice 24 hours in our new home, MT had fun visiting his new school and I did do some unpacking and building of shelves – but the day went fast and there is still plenty to do….

When the car is packed we’re going to our new house to spend our first night there (we’re moving for good later, this is a test drive of our new living quarters. Kind off. ). It’s exciting. I’m trying to remember to bring all that we need from the kitchen; coffee, cups, things to eat off and with… I feel there is something I’m forgetting, hoping it’s only a small thing.

Tomorrow MT is spending his day at the new school while I unpack and have a meeting with my new boss and coworkers.

You can be sure that I’ll bring my camera and blog about our new home later, but there is no broadband in the house so I’m going to bit my fingernails tonight. No, I’m kidding – I’ll be watching a movie while getting my new office up and running

See you later (and if you want to be kept updated through this whole event (haha), follow me at twitter – I’m Limefjord).

Needed something new to look at today, so I made a heading I’ll probably change it soon to something with less images, but just now it fills it’s purpose. Let me know if it looks strange on your part.

Happy Fall Season!

God certainly went out of his way to make our world beautiful!!

It’s starting to get really colorful outside.

Fall is all around us – and in a few days we’ll have another few nights of frosty grades; if the forecast is right that is…

I love all the colors and the other day I did some leaf holding business to catch a few leaf shots even though the moving and packing keep me busy elsewhere…

Just wanted to share before I head for bed; today has been a day of rest – tomorrow I’m going to pack a few more boxes and later on we’ll heading to our new home to do some unpacking there…..

Another 2 weeks to go before MT starts a new school and I’ll start ministering a new congregation. We both look forward to this, even though moving is tiering and long….

A few things, finds and happenings lately:

1. Monday September 21th was the first day with morning frost in my area. It was beautiful and cold! And a reminder to go looking for those thicker jackets; in the mornings we really need them. (Just a few minutes after I took this photo the sun was covered in clouds again; so glad I managed to get the gorgeous light of the early morning.)

2. I love going to IKEA, but why on earth do they have to make their packages so heavy??! Some of us are not bodybuilders… (yea, I know, it’s a shock!) I had so much trouble getting them on to the trolley all by my self. I guess I looked kind of funny struggling with package after package of the Billy shelves kind. When we got to the car I had to unwrap each package (almost) and put the items in one by one to fit it all in the car. It took forever, and MT nicely pointed out: “Mummy, your face is red! Hihi..”. Very kind of you, kiddo! (He was right, though.).

3. I placed my first 4 boxes in our new house last Friday (September 18th). They were filled with books from my office. Can’t wait to go there and put the shelves together and start putting the books into them. My goal is to get the home office up and running as soon as possible. Here is a few photos of the room where I want my office to be :

4. MT took the bus home on Monday and Wednesday, all by himself. I’m so proud of him! Monday morning he was so close not to do it, since I wasn’t going to be there putting him on the right bus and all (some of the point of him taking the bus is for me not to drive the car up there in the first place.. ahem.). Imagen how happy he was running towards me from the bus stop by our house. He did it. (with a bit of help from his teacher and the bus driver, but still). He’s going to take the bus this few last days at this place, when we move to the new place we are living even closer to the school than here…

5. I get a little scared when I think that my brother is coming here with his truck to help me move (most of) the furniture to our new home in just a couple of days . Eeek. I’m packing books and glaswear, hoping to get the most important stuff to our new home now (we can always get the other stuff later…).It’s making me a bit stressed out to be honest, but I can’t wait to start putting it all together in our new home!!

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A year and some months ago I downloaded PSE (photoshop elements) determent to find out if doing digital scrapbooking was as fun as Valerie told me it was. And, man, was it ever. I’ve been making a lot of layouts over these months and have had so much fun.

my two very first LO’s, to the left a quick page – to the right using a template. click image for credits!

Lately I’ve also started making cards and gifts as well; what most scrap bookers call hybrid scrapping. And that has been more fun and giving (and time consuming) than I ever thought possible.

click images for credits

This week I received my new 8×8 albums in the mail and I’ve started to print out some of the layouts I did last fall to put into them; one album for us, one for places and one for family & friends. I’m so happy for the memories I have preserved (some I have forgot ever making). I’m learning new stuff about PSE every month and many of the older layouts make that clear with their lack proper shadowing and other things I didn’t know how to do back then. A few of them are really not my best work (to put it mildly), but I have decided to keep them as they are (more or less – I’m adding a bit of shadow on most and removing some of the more heavy shadows on a few). The layouts themselves tell a story about my way as a scrapper and I want to keep that intact too.

I’m now, sadly, out of photo paper – but can’t wait to print out the rest of it!!

mini albums to my favorite twins

Right now I’m also working on a few gift for some very special girls (have been working on and off on this for the last month took me some time to get the rings and things for them….), I’m now ALMOST finished and I’m so happy with how they turned out. Hoping the girls will love them too!!

I’m going to bed now, only have one more mini album shot more to show you; the dangling one Loving this one! And, by the way, all photos are SOOC (straight out of camera). I usually only edit photos when I’m going to use them in a layout or print them or make gifts…… I used a hight set ISO and lots of ugly indoor lights to capture these beauties :p

Looooving the view of all the papers; some thin, some thick (the thick one have images on both sides).

Soon we are moving to a new house and in a month I will have started my new job and MT will be at his new school. It’s exciting and fun, but also scary – and I really don’t want to move from this house. Even though we had a walk through the house on our own a few weeks ago and yesterday I mad a scrap page about that, especially with my thoughts (and fears) on moving… You can find an English version of his if you go to my gallery at scrapmatters: here. And it was a thrill to join in on a speed scrap, even though those hours go faster than snap and I really feel the pressure. But I made it on time and I’m happy to see that some of my pages doesn’t take days to finish (I don’t sit all day, off course, but on and off throughout the day(s)).

Click image for credits.

I have a few other photos from that day that I’ve been thinking about scrapping. Hopefully I’ll get around to it, I dreaming of making a little book about our moving into this new home. We’ll see if I ever get finished with that, though…..

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On another matter; I did manage to vote yesterday (I had even did it before my father called me to remind me to do it ) – AND I remembered to buy toilet paper. (So now we don’t have to use paper napkin any more; thankfully). But off course I had to forget something; we won’t have oven baked fish for dinner as planned……ahem, I completely forgot to take the fish out of the freezer last night – so it’s still frozen solid; not so good for dinner today. Mom is coming for dinner, so I had planned something special that we all like very much!

So I’m really glad I bought a pack of broccoli & cheese filled fish on a whim yesterday and now we can use that instead (it’ll be good too ).

Today is Election Day in Norway. I keep reminding my self not to forget to go and vote. I think I have all this time before they close up, and then I tend to get busy doing other things. So I have to keep reminding my self about it, because I really would like my vote to count. I should go right now, come to think about it, but I won’t I have a few things to do before I’m ready to leave the house today. See what I mean? It’s like when I go to the store to buy toilet paper and then arrives back home with milk, bread, cheese and a few other things – but no toilet paper. That is so frustrating. And a typical thing I can’t seem to change; I even do it when I’ve made shopping list.

Note to self on Monday September 14th 2009:

Remember to vote and buy toilet paper!!

Anyhow, I’ve had some fun with photo in Lightroom2 this morning (so that’s what I do when I forget other important stuff!) – can you pick a favorite??!

You can find the individual photo here:
1. pink flower orginal, 2. pink flower soft, 3. pink flower vibrant (light), 4. pink flower light

Better go and do a few things on my TO-DO list. It’s long today… First hang up the laundry, the weather is sunny and windy – so nice time to dry the clothe on my porch; I love the smell they get after some time outside. A weather fact: it was 3 degrees (C) this morning at 8:00, now it’s 12:41 and 15 degrees. The fall is SOOOOO here!

We went to a fair on Saturday.  It’s called Dyrsku’n (dyr = animal) from the beginning when farm animals (horses, cows etc.) where more important then carousels and cutlery.

The fair is local to us and one of the biggest fairs in Norway. We were one of ca. 30000 visitors that day – about 70000 visitor in total for the weekend – and that is in a village of ca. 2500 people. I can remember going to the fair every single year when I was kid; a great September tradition in our family.

MT went there for his first time last year. Now he was eager to get past the gate another time. There is a lot to see, a lot to buy and a lot of people. This time we even took time to watch the horse show.

MT was most interested in the amusement park part of the fair, though – and he went through his tickets like fire (he only had 6 and then his cousin got two so no wonder it went fast). But he got to do what he wanted to (at least almost, because he was too small (thankfully) for a few of the larger carousels and one cost more money than I was willing to pay).

Here he’s driving electric car and below he is in the Ferris Wheel, both with his cousin. He also got to walk through the fun house and jump on a trampoline (his all time favorite last year – this year I think it was the ferry wheel that topped the list).

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1. red berries w blue sky, 2. red berries w blue sky, 3. red berries w blue sky, 4. red berries w blue sky

Photos from yesterday. It was a mighty nice and beautiful day of rest and quiet. I even took my bike out of the garage and brought MT home from school on it.

He was so happy (he love riding on the bike with me – and it’s almost all downhill from his school so it’s easy for me as well) – and I got some fresh air and a bit exercise as well.

When we got back home I brought my camera and went down to the mailbox on foot to capture some fall shoots. MT joined me riding his bike. Nice

We’ve had so few sunny day this summer (we’ve had some, but according to me: not enough!) – so this sunny September is highly appreciated!!

There is something fresh and crisp with fall sunny days. And it’s easy to catch a cold too, because the weather really isn’t that warm(!) In the morning it’s been only 4-5 degrees above zero (Centigrade). And that is cold enough to wear a thick jacket if you ask me (and not MT). Hoping it’s stays above zero for a few more week… although I long too shoot macros of  the deep orange and red leafs too (and usually we need some nights with frost to get those colors in the leafs).

I’ll miss summer – I really love that season and the ease of life; but now I’m ready to embrace fall season – hoping for more sun than rain, though

MT has stated practicing his writing skills.

We’ve been busy running around meeting people today. Some familiar faces (thanks for dinner SIL! + for candy mom!) and some new faces (nice to meet you new colleagues!).

We visited my new office (where I start in October), I’ve been interviewed for a local newspaper right outside one of the churches (the only one of three that I haven’t been inside off) – and only a few 100 meters down from the new house. [Being interviewed is always both a bit scary and a bit fun, I only hope I found the right words and that I didn't say anything stupid(!) - I probably did.] Then we walked to the store and bought a little lunch snack before we headed back to town and stopped by my brother’s house. I so look forward to doing this on a regular basis when we move closer! At around 4:30 pm MT finally got his wish for the day a stop by a indoor swimming pool(s) – he had so much fun and I promised we’ll return once we’ve moved there. He’s getting really good at practicing his swimming, not long before he actually can do it (and not only say that he can swim). [But in the end he got to confident and got into a little trouble. He broke the not-in-deep-water rule, one of the few really important ones when I'm not in the water with him. So he won't be taking another swim in the pool this month.....not that I planned it anyhow.] At the end of the the day we met mom and dad outside the store, just for a quick little chat. Nice to see them too. Not many photos from today, though…

Tomorrow he’s going to a farm with his class. Better figure out where the farm is(!) Night!!

So I did it. I upgraded my WordPress blog to the 2.8.4 version; hopefully wormfree(!) I dared to do the automatic upgrade – and it did the work in barely 10 sec. No, I’m not kidding. It was really fast. I am not that fast upgrading normally, so this was super!!

And then, off course, I had a few plugin problems – but I think everything is solved now (and the bad plugin is deleted from the system). PLEASE let me know if you find anything wrong, strange or not working

I’m heading to bed soon, another early morning tomorrow.

I should really do a recap of the last months (or years?), but I’ll hold that for a day when it’s not this late…. I’ve been a really bad blogger the last years, but I can’t even imagine giving up this blog even though not many comes here to read any more. I write for me. Mostly. And then off course I really would like to share a few thoughts and photos with you too. Today I renewed my oldest domain, I don’t know what to do with it right now. Still, can’t part with it either. I plan to make a plan for it one of these days….

I’ve spent a lot of time behind the camera this year and I LOVE it. I love edit the photos and presenting them in a way that do the story behind them justice. I wish I could do a lot more with them, but I’m so glad for whatever I get around to make for a scrapbook page or for an album or something. I’ve been using PSE (photoshop elements) for a year and it makes my photos sparkle. LOL. I can’t imagine doing scrapbooks without, but for a while now I’ve been wanting to try out Lightroom as well. And tonight I downloaded it and started to mess around with it a little. I love the presets, but I also see that I need to figure out a whole lot more about how the program works before I can use it for what it’s made for I have it only as a trial for the next 30 days. I guess I won’t buy it after that, but I wanted to figure out why so many photographers use it for their photo editing. So I guess you won’t see me blogging much more in the next month… ehe.

Anyhow, we had a wonderful walk in the woods. The photo above is from today, only with an added aged effect in Lightroom. Okay. See you around!!