Day 30 and 31

Ok - the last two days of the month :)

Yesterday, the weather was gorgeous. No wind, slightly chilly and sunny - just beautiful, especially when you have thin layer of fresh snow everywhere :) It's also the first day where it's noticable that the days are getting slightly longer - which is fantastic!! So, my photo for yesterday was the view from my balcony. This is without any zoom - we have a small glacier practically in our backyard. This is the glacier that Jules Verne used as the entrance to the Center of the Earth :) It's pretty LOL this is the north side of it, when you see it from the south, it looks bigger because it rises straight from the ocean, but it's still more beautiful from the north side. At least that's my biased opinion!!

This morning I decided that on the last day of each month I'm going to take a photo of my girls together. So I got my camera in the afternoon and decided to pose them. NOT easy LOL - let's just say that they had other ideas!! And, one piece of advice: Never try to take photos of your children while Pippi Longstocking is playing on the TV...

See - this is what you get!!! Eyes only watching Pippi - not me LOL. Out of all the photos I took, this is the only one where I can see both faces and one or the other of them is not squeezing their cheeks together, or sticking their tongue out, or hiding their faces in their hands, or whatnot!!

I've already scrapped 4 weeks worth of overview layouts and they all look the same - basically a QP that I made using Kristen Rice's Project 365 kit. I thought I was going to make all my weekly layouts the same, but figured it would get boring, so I'm doing something different for the next weeks.This is a sample of my first four weeks :) I like to journal on my layouts and since this is strictly a memory album, I love that this template gave you quite a bit of space to journal for each day.

Thank you for stopping by - and I hope you're having a great weekend!!

Days 27, 28 and 29

The photos for today and the past two days :)

January 27

This is our shoreline, what we see when we leave the house and walk 20 steps to the left. I love this view of lava rocks and wild ocean - and the slight layer of snow just adds to it. The ocean is always a bit wild around here when it slams against the rocks - even if it's calm further out.

January 28We went to the library for the first time yesterday. I've been meaning to take the girls, but it's open at odd hours and not the same hours every day, so I usually forget. Yesterday, I was quite determined and the library was open from 4-6 pm. The girls loved it! We sat in the children's section and I read a few books to them, they sat for a long time looking at books themselves - and then they got to choose a book each to take home. I also got one - and these are the books we got. Matthildur got a really cool Icelandic children's book, called Heimsk Ringla - which is a play on the title of a very famous book from the viking ages. Lovisa got a book about how the earth came into existence and life on earth until the Roman Empire. And I got a novel by and Icelandic author which I've wanted to read for a while. The girls made me promise to make this a weekly outing on Wednesdays :)

January 29

The month is almost over and I haven't missed a day yet - sometimes I almost do, like tonight. That's when the cat comes in handy. He was playing on the kitchen chairs when I remembered that I hadn't taken a photo yet today. So armed with the camera, I went to check it out - and I got the same look as I get from the girls when they want me to stop with the photos already LOL The look says it all: Get this thing out of my face!!

Almost a week!!

First of all, I've been challenged by Magda :) I had to go to my photos folder, find the 6th folder of photos and then the 6th photo in the folder. I have to post that photo on my blog and describe it. Since I only have 2008 and 2009 in the photos folder on my computer, this is what I found.

My lovely girls taking a bath at the beginning of February 2008. They have their good moments - and bath time usually brings those moments out - especially of Lovisa gets to wash Matthildur's hair LOL
And now I challenge these fine bloggers...

Kristi
Tammy
Kimberly
Dawn
Helen
JoAnn

I've been taking photos - but time just flies off, and there is not enough of it to post to the blog!! Or maybe I just forget :)

Anyways, here are my photos...

January 22

Lovisa Lin waking up. It takes her awhile these days - quite unlike time before school LOL What happens to kids in school? All of a sudden, my usually happy early riser, who I never had to wake up, is a grumpy little person in the morning!!

January 23

Friday was Husband's Day in Iceland. It's a very old tradition and marks the first day of the hardest winter month according to the old Icelandic calendar system. On this day, we are expected to be extra nice to our men - and Lovisa, Matthildur and I went and got DH some flowers (which he never appreciates, but always gets LOL) and some chocolates - which he always appreciates!! Lovisa Lin looks forward to this every year, because she always gets to help dad finish up the chocolates :)
On this day, we also have a traditional get-together with my in-law's, where we eat traditional Icelandic food. I do have some photos of the sheep heads and shark - but thought the flowers were nicer LOL

January 24

Last week Lovisa Lin all of a sudden started talking about how nice it would be to have hot chocolate and toast for breakfast on weekends. I don't know where she got that from, but she kept talking about it - so on Saturday my husband made hot chocolate and toast for us all. She loved the toast and Matthildur Inga loved the chocolate (she doesn't care in what form chocolate is LOL). However, I guess it wasn't quite as good as she expected it to be, so there was no asking for this type of breakfast on Sunday :)

January 25Matthildur Inga and my BIL's black lab. They get on really well - and on Sunday, when he came for a visit, they relaxed together on the kitchen floor LOL

January 26

Yesterday mornings fun :) Matthildur was getting dressed and somehow her tights ended up on her head. She found this extremely funny and stood for awhile in front of the mirror admiring herself LOL

One plug...Vera Lim has her Memories Makers Collection on special. It's only $3 (THREE DOLLARS!!!) which is a discount of 92%

Day 21 - 3 weeks!!

Three weeks down - 49 to go LOL I'm actually pretty proud of this, and I did my layouts for the first three weeks today, journaling and all. Actually I decided, that in order to definitely do the weekly layouts, I needed to keep them all identical. So basically, I created a QP, into which I can just plop my photos, add journaling, and voila - I'm done :) Anyways, I'm not showing the layouts today, out of pure laziness, since they are on my EHD downstairs and I'm plopped down on the sofa in the livingroom watching Britains Next Top Model. Basically, I'm too lazy to go downstairs to get them LOL

And now, today's photo...You may have noticed that for me it's the quality of the memory, not the quality of the photo, that's important. Mostly because I'm not the best photographer, but also because I take photos and scrap only for the memory, not for artistic reasons. So, there is a story behind this butt shot of my younger daughter LOL
Matthildur had a slight fever still last night so we stayed home today as well. When it was time to get dressed, she insisted on doing it herself, so I just got her clothes and a clean diaper and put it beside her. Then I went and got dressed myself. She got dressed as well - everything backwards, of course - but at least everything was on. Around noon, I went to change her diaper and noticed that she had not taken her old diaper off when she got dressed. She had just put her underwear on top of the old diaper and then the new diaper on top of the underwear LOL

I've got quite a few layouts to show, since there are so many, I'm just going to show them without a lot of journaling...

My girls in the bath...

Using Dawn Inskip's new goodies at the Digi Chick...

My little sweetie helping me cook the other day

Using Helene Douchet's fabulous kit, Ophelia - available at Scrapbook Graphics.

And again, dancing on her grandmother's guest bed - while grandma was was making it :)

Using Edeline's Blue Wishes - it's her fabulous collab with Armina!

And Matthildur, again, mesmerized by this cute candleholder :)

Using Shabby Miss Jenn's stunning new Love Potion kit!

This is from the day we met our older daughter for the first time.

I used the January collab at OScraps, Hopes and Dreams. The perfect kit for this layout!

This one is rather personal, about how I discovered I was pregnant. Truthfully, pregnancy was the furthest from my mind - and when the sick feeling in my stomach didn't stop, I thought I had and ulcer, or a stomach cancer, anything but pregnant LOLI used Catrine Hallingstad Gold member kit at DST.

These are my nephews, visiting on New Years Day.

Using Vera Lim's new goodies - exclusively at the Shabby Pickle.

Last one - I promise LOL These are my girls on a walk we took last Sunday :)

Using Phuong Ton's fantastic Mood For Love - her collab with Miki Ferkul, and available at Phuong's Studio at Scrapbook Graphics.

Well, if you managed to last this far, thank you so much for stopping by and have a good night :)

Day 19 & 20, Awards & more...

First of all, I got an award from three people on the same day!!! Thank you so much Carin, Crystal and Chantal - it's very much appreciated!!

So, my blog is fabulous :)And now I have to list my 5 top addictions! That should be easy, but since I don't think I can list my computer 5 times, here goes - and in no certain order :)

1) My laptop
2) Digi scrapping
3) Coffee
4) My girls & DH
5) Chocolate
I'm pretty boring - I can usually be found in front of my laptop somewhere around my messy whenever I'm not in front of my computer at work :)

And now, I'll nominate these bloggers...
1) Janett
2) Kristin Vald
3) Jasmin
4) Megan
5) Miranda

I'm home with a sick kid today - my 2,5 year old had problems breathing all night. She is fine now - but I slept maybe 2-3 hours so I'm beat. I'm also totally uninspired and last night I realized I hadn't taken a single photo all day - and the girls were in bed. So I went looking through the house, and it was either the pile of unfolded laundry, or these leftover Christmas Balls...

Today's photo was taken a few minutes ago - it's my baby lying on the trampoline watching Dora the Explorer. Apparently, it makes her feel better LOL

Thank you so much for looking - and have a wonderful day :)

Day 18

It's late, I'm tired and I'm off to bed LOL - but first I'm going to upload today's photo...

We have cold weather and snow right now - the weather forecast calls for more snow, we might even get a slight blizzard LOL. Anyways, I took the girls for a walk this morning - we went out at 11 am, and it was almost light outside. You can see the sun still trying to rise over our little glacier. This is in a neighbours garden - I wish it was mine, but it's not. My garden is a total mess.
Anyways, I have lots to post tomorrow - photo, layouts, awards!!! But this will do for tonight :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a good night!!

Day 17

Today I decided that I was a lazy mother since I haven't started my 2,5 year old on potty training. She's been without a diaper a few times, but somehow doesn't seem to feel when she needs to go - and therefore, she goes all over. I've just been too lazy to clean up after her so it's easier when she wears a diaper. However, the prize of diapers has almost doubled in the past 4 months and now I feel like I either have to start having her wear cloth diapers (and I hate laundry) or just to bite the bullet and start her on potty training. So that's what I did - it's easier to clean up than do laundry all the time LOL

So I made a potty chart LOL - she gets a Bob the Builder sticker for every time she does No1 in the potty and a big Dora the Explorer sticker when she does No2 :) Today she started out quite well and did both - as you can see LOL Then, in the afternoon, I asked her if she wanted to go potty, she said no - and peed on the floor!! Oh, well - tomorow is another day, and she is quite excited about the stickers so I'm sure well get there in the end!

I have another layout with Shien's new kit, Xing Fu...

This is again from our China trip in March 2004. The photo was taken on March 3, and we had been a family for 2 days.

Have you seen Phuong and Miki's gorgeous new Valentine's kit? It's called Mood For Love - and it's just stunning!! I'm not even that big a fan of Valentine's kits since we don't celebrate it here in Iceland, but the kit is amazingly versatile...This is my 6 year old sweetie blowing me a kiss the other day :)

That's it for tonight - I'm off to bed early, since my lovely 2 year old and my pesty cat woke me up at 4:30 this morning!! I'm not a morning person, I've been grumpy all day!!
Thank you so much for stopping by :)

Day 16 and layouts

Today's photo is nothing short of terrible - the memory is great, though, and since that's 90% of what matters, I decided that I don't care. At least not too much. I can be endlessly disappointed that I didn't get a single good shot of my older daughter's first dance show, and I can make tons of excuses for it; the school was badly lit, I had a whiny two year old on my lap so I couldn't mess with any of the settings...etc, etc. However, I was just having too much fun watching her dance, and when I figured out that the few photos I took were horrible, I decided to film it instead - that also gave me a free hand to cuddle my two year old LOL

So here's one of the photos I took...She's got moves - and she's only 6!! I'm just wondering where she learned to move her hips like she does!!! Certainly not from tone deaf, no rythm me!!!

I have a couple of layouts to show today too :)

Dawn Inskip debuted at The Digi Chick yesterday with 3 new packs of gorgeous stuff.

Perfect stuff for the 365 Project layouts!!! And here is mine - this is Day 1 :)

We went to the beach on New Years Day and the weather was so gorgeous - for midwinter, at least!

Kim De Smet also brought out a new kit this week. It's called Clownerie and it's available in her OScraps store.

This is my younger daughter showing off :) She was 9,5 months old, highly mobile, just a couple of days from letting go and walking on her own - and she missed no chance showing off and just being a complete goofball LOL She's still like that at 2,5 - I'm hoping she always will be :)

Final one tonight - I promise!!!

Shien Designs released a Chinese New Year kit yesterday. It's called Xing Fu (Happiness) and it's such a cute kit.

My husband took this photo of Lovisa Lin in the Forbidden City. She was in my arms - and not happy about it!! She is looking at her dad, asking him with her eyes why he let that terrible woman hold her, when he could just as well do it himself. I can laugh at it today, because she's a complete mommy's girl - but it hurt at the time :)

I'm off to bed - thanks for looking and have a good night :)

Day 14 and 15

The days this week have been very long for my girls, my older one has dance after school this week so she's not done until 2:30, and since our au-pair has January off, my 2,5 year old is in Kindergarten until 4 o'clock - which is a long day for her. The time from 4 until they go to bed at 7:30 is sometimes very difficult because they are so tired - and most of the time it's hard to get away to cook dinner LOL So this is what I do...

They sit on either side of the stove and take full part in cooking LOL - it's fun for them and total anxiety for me because, of course, everything is either hot or sharp :) But whatever works, I guess!!

Today I have a meeting so I won't be home until late. Therefore, only a slim opportunity for photos. Lucky for me, the opportunity arouse already early this morning!! My DH came home last night, and when he's home, my younger daughter sees this as an opportunity to rise early and keep him for herself for a little while. So this morning she woke at 6 am - which is late for her on these occasions - and they went up to the kitchen and livingroom area. Instead of turning dad around her little finger as usual, she found something far more fun to do. For one hour, she jumped on the trampoline, with the kitty, and sang as loud as she could. For one hour!!! She is just an amazing morning person.

Thanks for looking - I so appreciate all the nice comments!!!

Day 13

This project is getting increasingly difficult - it's not that I don't take plenty of photos, it's just that now that our lives are in routine again, I find myself taking photos of the same stuff over and over again LOL It doesn't bother me too much, but when I start going through my photos at night, I keep thinking, hmmm - I had a trampoline photo yesterday, one of the cat the day before...what's remotely new today :)

Well, at least we had snow today LOLNot much, though! I thought there would be more since it snowed so much for about half an hour - but then it just stopped. I'm happy - I like a little layer of snow, but I hate when it gets so much that the car gets stuck in the driveway LOL

Birgit Kerr has a new kit out today. It's a collab with Alana McCarthy at Scrapbook Graphics, and it's in a vintage carnival/circus style. It's called Carousel, and it's really beautiful. I'm not good with themed kits, but this is what I came up with...

...it's not remotely circus related, but since we don't have a circus of any kind here in Iceland - I'm hoping I'll be forgiven :) This is my 2,5 year old playing twister with herself - lots of fun LOL

Vera Lim also released a new kit this morning. It's called A New Beginning.

These are my girls on Christmas Eve. They were in a rare tender moment :)

Oh, and you can check the Happy Place over at DST for a RAK game from Dawn Inskip's CT. Dawn is adding a new store - and if you can guess what it is, you'll win her entire store for 2 whole months! There are still 2 more days left - so check it out!!

That's it for tonight :) Thank you so much for stopping by!!

Day 10, 11 and 12

I'm slacking in the blogging department, but I am sticking to taking photos every day - so I guess that's good LOL We did, however, go to Reykjavik this weekend, so there wasn't really a lot of online time. Not much computer time at all, really.

We got a cat on Saturday, and my daughters love it. Her name is Kung Fu Rósalín. Kung Fu because she's a dead ringer for Kung Fu Panda and Rósalín because Lovísa wanted to call her Rósa but Matthildur didn't - so this is a compromise :) She is a cutie, though, and deathly afraid of my 2 year old LOL She does enjoy getting the occasional snuggle from my 6 year old - but she definitely prefers me :) Here she is with Lovísa - my photo for Day 10...Sunday, we didn't do much and I didn't take too many photos. I did take some of my mom's Christmas decorations, which are still up. My mom collects Santa figurines and she has quite a collection. She always displays them in such a nice manner - and my photo for Day 11 shows her collection of the Icelandic Santas. There are 13 of them, and she had all but two - until Boxing Day when the grandkids got a hold of them and broke a couple...!!!

I thought the light was nice, I used no flash but there was a candle burning above the figurines, which cast a nice warm glow over them.

While in Reykjavik, we finally bought the girls' Christmas present. There was no time to get it before Christmas so they had to wait a bit LOL Not that they minded - especially since they had no idea they were getting anything other than they book they got to open up on Christmas Eve :) We got them an indoor trampolin - and it's a HUGE hit. Hence, my photo for today, Day 12...Oh, and the pacifier goes everywhere - even on the trampolin LOL

I haven't been in much of a scrapping mood lately. Here's the page I've managed over the weekend. It's kind of strange, only having one to show, when I usually easily manage 2-4 on my days off. Granted, it took a while to make, and I'm pretty happy with it. Anyways, I used Jen Ulasiewicz' fantastic new kit, Primitive Valentine, to show my little one last February. She was 20 months old and running all over the living room :)That's it for today - maybe I'll be in a more creative mood tomorrow :) Thank you so much for stopping by!!

Day 9

Five years ago, January 9 was also on a Friday. I sat at my computer at work, with my mobile on the desk, waiting for a very important phone call. The call didn't come - and at 4 o'clock I was convinced that I had to endure the whole weekend without that call. I worked until 6, my husband picked me up from work and when we pulled into the driveway at home, the mobile finally rang. It was the Icelandic Adoption Society, and the lady on the other end announced that we had a beautiful baby girl who was waiting for us in southern China. This was, without a doubt, one of the best days of my life :)

Five years later, here she is - a feisty, happy, troublesome, independent, big-hearted, fun, smart, beautiful 6 year old girl. My subject for my photo for day 9 - and a forever resident of my heart!

This is not a good photo by any means, she was jumping on the bed, "helping" hear grandmother make the bed. She's been very excited today, because tomorrow she is getting a long awaited kitten - and she gets to go to her first sleep-over with her friend LOL

Irene Alexeeva released two new kits today, first there is Junk Treasures, totally gorgeous, of course!!This is my 2,5 year old fast asleep on the couch in the living room. She is always exhausted when she comes home from Kindergarten in the afternoon, but she refuses to take an organized nap LOL She much prefers to fall asleep here and there in various awkward postitions :)

The second kit that is new in Irene's shop, is a collab with Lynne-Marie Favreau and is called Land Of Odds. It's amazing - and perfect for all kinds of layouts, but especially altered art layouts. This is my humble attempt at altered art LOL

Not much else today, we went to Reykjavik this afternoon and are planning on staying at my mom's for the weekend. Just relaxing, visiting friends - and maybe some shopping if I'm lucky LOL

Thank you so much for stopping by :)

Day 7 and 8

I missed one day on the blog - yesterday was busy LOL, and I took hardly any photos!! Since I had gone through so many blogs with delicious looking food photos, I thought I'd try out my own and take photos of last night's dinner. No good!! All the photos looked disgusting - if I had only seen photos of the food, I would never eat it LOL
However, since yesterday I started taking down the Christmas decorations, I decided to try and take a photo of my advent candle wreath. I lit it every Advent Sunday, but only for a little while, and since the candles are big, there is still like 99% of them left LOL So yesterdays photo was to remind us of the end of Christmas :)

The photo mask is by Anna Aspnes.

Today's photo is another injury one! My 2,5 year old is a tomboy (with a pink flare LOL) - today, she came home from Kindergarten with 4 bandaids on her hand because she had gotten into another fight!! What are you supposed to do with a fighting two year old girl???!!!

The frame is a Vintage Snapshot Frame by Ziggle Design.

And some layouts :) There's a new kit in JanaM's store. It's called Es War Einmal, and it's just gorgeous! I managed a layout with it this afternoon,I started this page long ago and I've change the layout and the photo many times. I'm still not fully happy with it, but I decided it was not meant to get any better LOL This is my 6 year old a few days ago :)

And here's a little sneak peak at what's inside Irene Alexeeva's new kit, Mon Valentin, which will hit her Scrap Orchard store SOON!!! It's unbelievably gorgeous - as are all her kits!!

This is my 6 year old again, enjoying herself with indoor bombs - or actually that which came out of them! - on New Years Eve :)

And Dawn Inskip is having a CT call. It's a guest call which could turn into a permanent position. Check out Gabs' fabulous ad...

That's it for now, I think :) Thank you so much for stopping by!!