This is gonna be a short post from me…have too much going on these days to sit down and be creative.
But as I got a reminder yesterday to post the families Christmas wishes..here they are (in Norwegian this time). There are of the top of my head….If I remember more, I’ll update this list….
| Sophie | |
| Lily | |
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| Sheila |
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| Ole | |
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For now…Have a wonderful weekend!
Heard of the minc machine by Heidi Swapp? If you’ve heard of it you know what this post about. If not…take a look at this video
the wonderful Jennifer Mcguire recaps foiling in a great way
Since I have a laminator, I had to give it a try. But getting a hold of foil paper was more expensive than I thought. There are so many beautiful colors to choose from…what color to choose? Well actually I wound up with another option. Instead of using the recommended foil paper, I used foil meant for nail design, since I had it laying around from an earlier nail project. And the results…really nice
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This only works with toner printed so I printed a few transparencies with beautiful black and white patterns I found online. As I wanted to make new dividers for my planner, I cut them into size before foiling them.
With the hearts divider, I choose to make one heart in another color….so I added a silver heart…
Still waiting for a copper and turquoise colored foil for the last dividers. So still missing the last of my new dividers for my planner setup for 2017… Oh and I used these nail foils…bought of ebay of course…
- have you tried foiling with a laminator?
- what are your 2017 planner plans?
Now what to foil next?
Last week I arrived at SweetieS’ wardrobe like a big question mark. At her in-door wardrobe hung a big bag with a teddy bear and a big binder with blank pages. On further inspection, the binder belonged to Teddy. After talking to the employees I found that Teddy is a bear that belongs to the kindergarten and every week a child is picked at random to take home Teddy. In his binder you/your child documents what you have been doing the past days.
When we came home DaddyO were like “did they get inspired from Peppa Pig?” I probably missed that episode…but here it is the episode if you are interested in getting some background info about the concept.
Luckily this weekend we had plans and we weren’t the most boring family in the word….SweetieS wanted a page for each day we had Teddy visiting. So 3 pages in total! Let us just say there were al ot of hand drawn flowers on each page…
- does your kindergarten have a mascot that your kid can bring home?
This week I suddenly got the urge to look at storage options for my used planner pages. After my post about using my planner to document more memories (post here) I realized that now I really can’t throw away my old pages. With the planner community so big, I started “reasearching” how others do it.
I wanted a solution that;
- wasn’t too bulky, as I will be using planners years to come
- doesn’t take up too much space
- easy to look up/flip thru
- wouldn’t break the bank
I ordered a 6 ring folder of Ali a while back that I have used to keep my past planner pages if my planner was getting full (this one…). It has been very practical as it had 6 rings just like my planner(s). I thought about buying more of this folder to organize my “planner past”. But I soon realized that it would be too bulky. I only use week on two pages and monthly pages to the folder would be too big for a year of pages, and (I think) too small for two years. This solution might work for some…just not me. So back to the drawing board.
Yesterday I think I landed om a solution that fullfills my “wishlist”. And it is as simple as it is cheap, as I already had all the supplies I needed.
You need;
- transparency sheets
- exacto knif (or similar)
- elastic string
- some imagination
I designed a simple cover and printed on transparency sheets using my trusty laser printer. I lined up a page of my planner and marked of the holes. Using my exacto knife I cut slits where the holes are and feed the string thru.
And there you go, a flipable archive.
- how do you store/archive your planner past?
After being sick the past week I haven’t had time to write a post on the things I finished before I fell ill.
Been playing around with a new monthly layout in my planner… I’m just not happy with all the work I have to put in every month and the general layout. I posted about my previous monthly layout here. My new monthly layout is a fold-out version inspired by DIYfish. I used a monthly calendar scaled down for printing from timeanddate.com. (I just need to find a sticker of some kind to cover the timeanddate logo in the top left corner 
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updated pictures of my new monthly layout
I see I haven’t posted about the change in my weekly layouts either…changed them a while back. So here is a picture of the layout I’ve been using lately…plain and simple.
last week
I changed the weekly layout when I found that I just needed more space to write. As an early (or late) Christmas/birthday for myself, I bought me an Polaroid zip printer. So now I can hopefully print some pictures to my weekly layouts and have more of a memory planner touch to my planner.
You can read more about the Polaroid zip here, and buy it here (Norwegian store).
Memory planners is a concept that is fairly like scrapbooking – document your memories on a daily/weekly basis. All who know me in person know I’ve been scrapping for a while. So memory planners are just up my alley. (I haven’t scrapped for a while now….ever since SweetieL was born the day just isn’t long enough to do all I want and still get enough sleep). Heidi Swapp has some beautiful memory planners. Lots of videos about memory planners on Youtube. Like this one(by Heidi Swapp herself) or this one (by Tiffany Julia, her blog here).
- how do you document your memories?
With SweetieS growing…she’s already 4 years old! The need to upgrade her bling jacket I made a while back is due..The one I knitted for SweetieS after I had made one for myself (original post here).
So this week I started to look a patterns and how to make a new one slightly larger. I had som yarn left over from the first two jackets, so I thought I would have enough for one more….
or so I thought…off to the yarn store for one skein of Drops Alpaca….
Will post a finished picture as soon as I finish …until then have a nice weekend!
- fall has come to Norway, how are you enjoying your days?
This past Summer I went on a short trip to New York with my mummy. I was thinking this could be the start of a yearly mother-daughter tradition. I’ve always envied my friends that had such a tradition with their mothers. Better late than never to start such a nice tradition.
Our trip started as any other trip…at the airport. It was very anti climatic to board a Norwegian plan without wifi…as Norwegian informs of on their website (here). After several trips to Singapore with Singapore airlines, I’ve been accustomed to pretty nice inflight entertainment. So in my eyes, Norwegians offer was pretty poorly executed.
Due to heavy showers in New York our flight landed later than scheduelled. And to top it off, my suitcase hadn’t made our transfere flight. Due to the dreaded SSSS. I didn’t realise at the time, but my suitcase had been check in under my mothers name, and she had been tagget with SSSS. For those of you who have never heard of the SSSS-tag. It is a extra security check for travellers to the United Stated.
Long story short….my suitcase spendt an extra month travelling after I had finished my four day trip to New York. This weekend I FINALLY got my suitcase back. Only to open my locked suitcase to find that several things were gone! If only my suitcase could talk and give me the whole story….
Now to go thru the loops and formalities of making a claim…
- How was your experience with delayed baggage?
Not sure yet…but hoping this is the first of many future knitting projects that I can tag “my sister & me”.
I thought I had posted this picture of my latest project…tunicas for SweetieS and BabyL.
Well since this picture was taken a while ago, I have actually finished this project!
I modified the Starshine pattern by Garnstudio…with shorter sleeves and longer body I ended up with a tunica style sweater for the girls.
For this project I used Drops Karisma for the first time.The edge at the bottom, sleeve and neck were knitted in the color Petrol cerise (75), I used less than two skeins for both tunikas. The stripes are made up of Petrol (73) and Lavendel(74). For both tunicas I used about 5 skeins of each color.
Both for future reference…maybe not making stripes like these. There were SO many loose threads to finish. I had to fasten the threads over the course of several evenings.
Now going to catch me some Pokemons before I start my next project…
- have you caught them all? (yes, that’s a nerdy Pokemon reference)
The other day my yarn order from Garnstudios last wool sale arrived. With my maritime project finished I was ready to embark on a new project. I don’t like having several ongoing projects. I’m not good at following patterns to the letter, so having one project at a time keeps me “in control”.
Amongst the yarns I orders were several skeins of Drops Karisma. I’ll show pictures as soon as I’ve snapped some pictures. In the meantime…
These look so lovely together. Here are the colors Lavender (74), Petrol cerise (75) and Petrol (73).
- what are you doing this wonderful Summer day?
A while back I came over a frugal tip on how to “stretch” your favorite liquid hand soaps, on Pintrest of course. This tip to be exact. The past year it has been a very helpful tip, with kids using hand soap like it was free…
The tip is very simple. A foaming soap dispenser, hand soap and warm water. I eyeball about 2-3cm of hand soap into the bottles and fill up with warm water. Leave a couple of centimeters so the bottle doesn’t overflow when screwing on the foaming pump. Swirl or shake the mixture until the soap has dissolved completely. I have so far only used clear liquid soaps, but I have read that the creamy soaps with leave you with a cloudy soap. With a toddler in house I added a dash of Dettol for the antiseptic features. Not too much though, or your soap will have a antiseptic sting to its smell.
Well the other day the girls were playing in the shower with foam and I came to think of the above mentioned tip. Would this work with shower wash too? So I gave it a try….
Let the foam party being!
- do you have any smart frugal tips to share?
Warning: Picture heavy post….
Summer means enjoying life outside. But before we can relax and enjoy life some prepwork needs to be done. So the past weeks inbetween Summer showers, we have been painting. Painting floor board left and right, lots of fence boards..the end is near. Just a few more boards left. Note to self: don’t do both front and back patio the same year…
Still need some greenery, just not sure what we want yet. And I have big plans of “making” some kind of steps on the right side so that the girls can play on the small woods we have right behind our backgarden. But think I might have to push those plans to next Summer…we’ll see…
Now over to some kawaii. My plans for tonight is adding some new and refreshing the girls lunch boxes. Some of you might remember a post a while back about my pimping up some boring Biltema food containers. You can see that post here. As you can see, the boxes have been well used and are in need of some refurbish.
So last night I did some surfing after new designs and today I found my Sharpies and clear nail polish. ready to add some “kawaii” to the girls kindergarden lunch boxes.
I will be changing a few design, as I’m not happy with how they turned out the last time. Hopefully the new designs meets SweetieS and BabyLs approval.
Since I’m on a “blog roll”, I might as well post the part I mentioned in my previous post. SweetieS Frozen birthday with the girls from kindergarten. As always when researching…check out Pintrest. There I found inspiration and help for the birthday invites. Of course they were Frozen themed….
I can’t take credit for these. Eventhough I did make them myself, I had alot of help from Jenn Ericksons blog Jennuine. Spesifically this post about how to make your own Frozen invites. Jenn even shares the picture file needed to make this invites! Thank you Jenn I scored HUGH with SweetieS with these invites.
Of course I had to make a Frozen cake….after spending hours on a failed attempt, this was the result @1AM.
Though a failed attempt in my mind…I had sooo many ideas for this cake and wound up with none…the girls approved and had seconds. With my big plans came huge amounts of fondant. As the plans failed I was left with large amounts of marshmellow fondant…in comes SweetieS with an idea. Can all the girls also make an Olaf? She remembered Olaf being very tasty last year and wanted the other girls to be able to taste yummy Olaf. So that’s is what we did! All the girls were given a lump of MMF and some accessories…Toothpicks for stability and arms, dried mango bites for Olafs nose and cloves for eyes and buttons.
Some cool olafs were made…a huge hit with the girls when they found out how tasty he was…
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All in all, successful birthday in the eyes of SweetieS.
If I am to finish the lunch box lids before bedtime I better get cracking…
- what are your weekend plans?
- what birthday themes have you had success with?
With last weeks several centimeters of snowfall I thought for sure that Summer was far, far away. But this week the Sun finally decided to make an appearance. With temperatures well above 20 degrees Celsius Summer has started early. Norways Constitution Day is next week, so perfect timing.
With Constitution Day around the corner, so is SweetieS and BabyLs birthday. So on with the party planner hat and start cracking out ideas. This year SweetieS will be hosting her first birthday celebration with kids from her kindergarten. On the last tally I counted 13 kids. Oh my what have I agreed to??
Yesterday SweetieS put in her theme request, what other than another Frozen theme. If you don’t know the Disney Pixar movie Frozen, it’s time to crawl out from the rock you have been hiding under the past few years. Here are a few videos to start you of…
Wonder if the fictional city of Arendell has any relation to the Norwegian city of Arendal?
I haven’t been my usuall productive self. My head has been full of thoughts regarding my upcoming Singapore trip. With two toddlers and all of my extended family, there are lots of thing to remember and an equal amount of questions. Four weeks in wonderful Singapore…
This past weekend I started packing for the girls…I’m very happy with our decision to rent an apartment that has an in-house washer-dryer machine. This way I don’t have to pack four weeks worth of clothes. I look forward to spending four weeks @8 on Claymore…
- a few sets of summer clothes, from top to bottom
- swimming clothes (well UV suits)
- toiletries
- diapers for BabyL (lesson from my last Singapore trip – diapers are very expensive compared to the prices in Norway)
- shoes for hot weather (there is still about half a meter of snow outside our house)
problably a whole lot more..but still have a few more days to mull it over.
Travelling with two toddlers, it was time to buy a suitcase for the girls. We have been very happy with our old, trusty Samsonite hard case suitcases. So we looked into getting a similar one for the girls. A visit to a local store that sells Samsonite, we landed on a Samsonite S’cure. SweetieS chose the color, a very girly dark blue (not what I had expected when we gave her the options). So far SweetieS enjoyed pushing the empty suitcase from the store to the parking lot, not sure she will enjoy it quite as much when it is fully loaded. I’ll try to post our experience with this model when we get back.
In between preparing for our trip, we have had time to enjoy all the snow
Our previous attempt at building a snow man got buried in all the snow that has fallen lately…so we also had to make a new one…
No new knitting projects lately..but I have finished the knitted gift for a baby that’s right around the corner. Not to reveal too much…
a little teaser
I’ll post a picture of the finished project when it has been delivered to its intended recipient.
- how do you prepare for an overseas trip?
- how are you enjoying the Winter?
This week I put together a planner for SweetieS. Well not so much a planner as a binder set up like a planner. Just without the calender and planning part. I bought a cute planner from Aliexpress. This one to be exact. Very cute and perfect for SweetieS.
No point in having sections that require SweetieS reading and/or writing, as she don’t do either yet.
So I set it up with fire sections:
- ABC123: for all the flash cards I make/find, in Norwegian
- 中文 (zhong wen): flash cards in Chinese, preferably in Cantonese
- “free hand”; blank pages for whatever SweetieS feel putting on the pages
- coloring: coloring pages (there are tons available thru Pintrest)
- stickers: laminated colored paper for all thos stickers
I googled a bunch of Minions pictures and stuck these on dividers that I laminated before punching.
I’m pretty happy with the result…and SweetieS loved it!
 one a happy SweetieS | ||
 closed planner |  lots of those yellow little guys |  flashcards |
And to add some bling I bough a bunch of crystal keychains for SweetieS to add to the rings. Today SweetieS is in a mood for cats…
After two days of coloring I see I need to print more coloring pages…
- do your kids have a”planner”?
- what do you think of my attempt at a planner for SweetieS?
SweetieS has begun to have a growing amount of head bands. With my need for order…I set out to find a solution. Pintrest to the rescue! Inspired by this pin on Pintrest and a little help from IKEA, SweetieS now has a storage solution I’m happy with.
The solution is from the IKEA Bygel series. I used the rod, some S-hooks and two cups. Totally up to less than 50NOK!
Not off to find all the head bands located around the house.
- do you have any smart storage solutions to share?
- how do you store your head bands?
