E for embrace

Or, as my son would say: E for Ellis. I can't remember where in the blogsphere I found this, but I want it as a poster.

Retro Depot patterns books with cd

My heart skipped a beat when I saw these over at Design*Sponge today. The books are by repro depot who has collected 225 vintage-inspired fabrics for each book. Included with the books are CDs so you can print out the various patterns. I want!

Dreaming of Acapulco

Sorry for not having blogged too much this week. It's actually a positive thing as it's due to a freelance assignment I've got, doing layout for Norwegian interior magazine Maison. I'm thrilled about it – I've been wanting this type of job for a long time.

Meanwhile I'm leaving you with some pictures of a recent big favorite of mine, the Acapulco chair.

I saw it at Nordiska Galleriet in Stockholm this summer, and I'm still thinking about it. It is so sculptural and stunning. I want one. At least one.


Have a nice weekend, peeps! I'll be working...

And the winner is...

Most of Norway is preoccupied with the national election today, but here at what's blogging my view we have a much more fun 'election' to make. It's time to give away a pocket book cover from my Etsy shop, and to help me with the draw, who better than Kurt Fox – a natural when it comes to fishing out pieces of paper from just about anywhere?

So, start drumroll:
9 little pieces of paper with a name on each. Who smells the best, I wonder? No cheating, now...

Kurt doesn't hesitate, but jumps in there... Aaaaand – we have a winner!

Quick! Prise those gnashers apart before he swallows it. (Kurt looks vicious here. He's not. It's all in aid of getting it on camera.)

And the winner is:
Oktavas ene sønnedatter. Congratulations!

Thanks to all the rest of you for taking part :-) This was fun. I'll do it again some time.

The PEN Story

Having just had a 'big' birthday, this video feels kind of appropriate. Just too bad it's a commercial..

Let me also just remind you that you still have a few hours left to enter for my give-away (see previous post). Good luck!

Kånken

Tomorrow I'm sending my son off to kindergarten with this new yellow Fjällräven Kånken Mini backpack. It's a kid size version of a design classic and a birthday present from us to him. It was originally designed in Sweden in 1978 and is still very much in production, being a best seller all over the world. These bags are great for those little forest trips as they come with a seat pad.


Apart from this warm yellow (my favorite) you can get the Kånken Mini in lots of different colours. Check out the Kånken 30 years website for a fun colour picker, Kånken owners private snaps featuring the bag and lots more.


I might just get me a Kånken myself eventually. A large one, though... Oh, but what colour to pick?

PS. In case you wondered, the garage sale was no success (like so much else these days..). We're not giving up, though – weather permitting, we'll try again next Sunday. This time with some better marketing.

Sköna Hem & garage sale Sunday

One of my all time favorite interior magazines is Swedish Sköna Hem. This picture is in the latest issue, and I just fell for everything in it. (Apart from the hanging light - I would have changed that one, personally.)

I'm going to join a local garage sale today, hoping to flog a lot of items from my wardrobe. I used to work in a women's fashion store a couple of years ago, and dragged home a lot of items which just never get used anymore but are too good to just be given away... (I've been thinking of putting them on ebay, but it takes too much effort right now.) So hopefully I will get rid of stuff for once, rather than bringing more things into the house.

Swedish artist/illustrator Therese Wendt

I wish I could do work like this... I love the deco/jugend/Pucci influences in this artist's work. I don't have much info about Therese Wendt, but you can see more of her great portofolio by clicking here.

Give-away time

It's time for my first give-away on this blog! Due to passing 50 000 readers recently, I hereby give away to one of my readers - a pocket book cover that I have made from vintage fabric. It's one just like this one in my etsy shop:


Protect your pocket books from wear and tear or simply hide the topic of your reading material from nosy fellow commuters. How to participate: leave a comment on this post, and you will be in the draw. I give you one week to do so. Good luck!

Birthday parties

I had my big 40 party Friday night. We were 10 'girls' for dinner at the fashionable Bølgen&Moi restaurant. It was really good. Having to spend all next day baking cakes and preparing for my son's birthday party the day after.... not so good. But I persevered, and these cupcakes went down a treat. I quite dislike blue food coloring, by the way, but it's for the kids, right? I was thinking Jonathan Adler color combos at some point when decorating these...


Looks like just two candles, but there was 3. Time flies...

The Fatboy was popular.

As were the soap bubbles in everyone's bag of treats.

Birthday boy didn't want to take off his crown, not even when it was time for pajamas.

50 000 readers

These are my blog stats right now. Well, counting from when I set up my statistics, of course. (I think I'd had the blog going for some months by then). So – it looks like I'll pass 50 000 total blog visitors today. Not a lot compared to the really huge blogs of course, but it's a big number to me :-)

I'm thinking I should do a little give-away due to passing this milestone. So keep following for further posts...
Also, I think it's interesting to see how I used to have mostly American readers, but now, after some publicity here at home, the Norwegians make up my biggest group of readers. Australia seem to have fallen out of my stats completely ;-)

If you wonder, I use Blogpatrol.com for my stats.

And talking about big numbers – I passed the dreaded 4 0 yesterday... I don't think it has really sunk in yet. I think I'm in denial. We're popping the champagne tomorrow, though.

Patio solutions

We've been trying to decide on what material to use for our patio (above). We have been putting it off for years, waiting for our next door neighbour to do some work on their property that included bulldozing their way through our garden and leaving a huge crater where our outdoors sitting area was. This work was done last autumn and the garden was (kind of) put back together again this summer, but the decking is still not decided on. We have pebbles in that spot now. We need to fill in more pepples to raise it up to the level of that black plastic lining (protection from damp) and we also need to fix those ugly steps.

I was initally thinking of putting down natural slate slabs like these:
I think they are really beautiful. It's a costly job, though. And now I'm not even sure it's the best look for our house. We're also considering a wooden deck. That's the solution that most of the houses in our area have.

This house is from Danish interior magazine Bo Bedre. (It's a stunning house - click on the link to see more pictures.) I think the 'untreated' finish of these boards work well together with this kind of 60's architecture.

Then there's this idea, which I found on two different blogs over the last few days, both American:
Concrete slabs in different sizes, making use of the pebbles that we already have. This should be easy to put down, I'm thinking - a bit of DIY - and how much can it cost? But what about maintanance? (Do they 'stay put'?) If you have experience in this, I'd love to hear from you!

Credit: Picture with eggchair and cute little dog is borrowed from Happy Mundane blog, and the one with the fab orange chairs is from The Cottage Cheese blog, via Rearranged Design. All great blogs - go check them out.