paris

we are going to paris this june!



picture from here

since i've never been there, i'm naturally very excited - both to see the city and to see if my rusty french will stand the test of reality...

do you have any suggestions of what to do and what to see and where to eat and what to avoid? please share! the internet offers such an overwhelming amount of possibilities and tips and whatnot that i have become positively confused and would prefer to hear some personal best of paris tips..

märta

ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce: my thrift find of the year! can you guess what this is? i can tell you that she is called "märta", and she is swiss made.





the story behind märta is as follows. i visited a friend in sweden last week, and on the first evening of my visit she showed me this thing and asked me to guess what it was. of course i didn't have a clue and after some unsuccessful guessing she told me. it's such a smart thing to have! she also told me she had found it at a thriftstore and had never seen another one like it since.



a few days later i went thrifting on my own and guess what i found! but, the inner part was missing. so i searched around for at least ten minutes when i suddenly saw the inner part on one of the shelves - guess how happy i was (jumping up and down trying not to show too much excitement for fear of the shopowner raising the humble price of 25 kronor...)! and of course the first thing i did was sending an sms to my friend, asking her to guess what i just then had found =)

edit: cara came quite close. it's a juice press for lemons and oranges and lime! you know how lime can be a little difficult to squeeze and you never get all the juice out of it? well, märta takes care of that now...

spring on a brooch

svenja held a give-away with selfmade bow-brooches, and i won one of them. i was allowed to pick the pattern myself and chose this one with pink flowers and light brown stripes:



it fits perfectly with my bright yellow cardigan.. another case of instant spring, this time on a brooch! thank you so much svenja!

sunshine in small doses

when i think about spring i get really homesick.. i hear it is 15°C in germany, with sunshine and snowdrops and crocuses and ice-cream!





so, until the sun finally decides to come out and melt all the snow away we have to make do with sunshine in the form of colourful sunny tulips...



instant spring for little money!

new old things

this last year i've tried not to buy too many new things for the kitchen/apartment/livingroom, because we were supposedly to move away soon enough and i wouldn't want to pack it all into boxes to haul it to the other end of the world. also, norway is really expensive, even when you go thrifting and buy secondhand. however, here are a few things i bought a couple of weeks ago:





matching sugar bowl and creamer, to be used as candle holders (the costa boda "snowball" was a guest present form my swedish exchange partner back in 1998). i also got the table cloth quite recently at a thrift store - i love the print!



salt shaker and toothpick holder, in a wonderful art deco inspired stand. the pepper caster is missing, but that's nothing to be worried about since i prefer fresh ground pepper. now i'm looking for a nice vintage pepper mill...

slow sunday

i have a little cold, so i take a slow sunday and don't do that much. apart from reading blogs, getting lots of ideas for our new apartment (we'll be moving in two weeks), drinking tea and packing my bags for a short trip to sweden. i'll visit friends and since we'll invade the local thrift stores and fleamarkets i pack very lightly - my luggage will probably be a lot heavier on my way back.. this is todays outfit:



a comfortable dress with pockets, warm tights and a nice belt.

dress: zara
belt: vintage

rabbit ring

as you might know, i kind of started to collect rings. it wasn't really intentional, but i love wearing them, at least two or three at a time, and i love variety. so, i thought i'd give it a try and show my little collection here on the blog. not necessarily on a weekly basis, but a piece every now and then.



i have admired bjørg jewellery for a long time, and at one point last year i decided to buy one of the pieces that struck me the most: the rabbit ring. it has tiny ears and small crystal eyes, but looks really like grown up rabbit who might just start talking to you, telling you stories of all his wild adventures...



i ordered it online but was a bit unsure about the sizing, so the ring turned out to be a tiny bit too small. that means, i can only wear it on cooler days when my fingers don't swell up - nothing for a hot summer day. well, we don't get too many of those here in norway.. however, it is also a piece that one could easily wear with a chain, as a necklace. do you have any rings that you keep even though they don't really fit?

dirndl

just as svenja and dotti, i love a pretty vintage dirndl.



i bought this one last summer during our trip to helsinki. i had to take it in a little and shortened it, and since then it has been well worth the 4 euro i spent on it.



it has a lovely print with small austrian ladies and gentlemen (mark the gun!).





yesterday, i wore it quite traditionally, with a white cotton blouse with ruffles and lace trim, and with a necklace i won a while back at vintage, a love story.

dirndl: vintage
blouse: mango
necklace: carnosa
tights: c&a
boots: goertz via ebay

the melody festival

every year, my favourite person in the world and i sit down and watch at least one of the many episodes of the swedish songcompetition "melodifestivalen", when sweden votes for their contribution to the grand prix d'eurovision. also, it has become a tradition for us to find fault with each and every song and band and of course to make fun of them. after all, most of what is on offer might as well be classified as to trigger acute ear cancer.

however, every now and then we face the problem of - fasten your seatbelts - a nice or even great song! something we actually could imagine to put onto our spotify-playlist!

this year it was a song that might not be the best in the world, but it really makes me happy. so happy that every time i hear it i start loughing because it is so hilarious and funny. and sweet:



i mean, really - those dancers with their trumpets and pretty mod dresses! and the video in the background, the clapping hands and dancing mushrooms! and the perfect timing of those smoke clouds! and no wind-machine! and he can actually sing! but what i probably like best of all is that the whole thing doesn't take itself so serious.

flowered tights

i'm really heartily sick of the snow and the cold weather here in oslo. even though we've had a couple of milder days now it's not warm enough to stow away the warm pullovers and thick winter boots. i long to be wearing outfits like this one again:



this picture was taken on our trip to bergen last august, at a mountain stop where the train waited for another one to arrive. the train ride from oslo to bergen takes around 9 hours, so we were glad to strech our legs and enjoy the magnificent landscape..

tights, skirt and t-shirt: h&m
boots and bag: zara
scarf: monki
cardigan: gina tricot
belt: vintage