Cozy desktop management

So I saw somebody on facebook do a more primitive version of this and I decided to take their idea further. So I made me a cozy wallpaper room. Just click on the second image for a high resolution version so if you want it.

Snapshots in Norway #9

Have recently started being nostalgic about Volda. So I put together some virtual flashbacks.

My Inspiration wall.

 Getting to meet Darinka on a late movie night. Behind is not the wall of a serial killer. It was my “learning norwegian” wall.

A little piece of Porse, our dorm, on a really snowy day.

After work moment. The boots, the umbrella, the waterproof bag – my arsenal

Let’s just say Captain Morgan was at a party that night.

Andrada and me were heading for Rokken, the student club. i think…

fairytale trees

Experimenting  with the camera.

Just love clouds

Cozy time with Jade and Astrid. Movie, swimming and sauna.

Leaving Volda before Christmas. Got to the airport waaaay too early.

Sunshine at my window

Photoshoot in extreme conditions. Frosty was my middle name.

Passing some time in the studio with Darinka.

Late night poster workshop for our play “Act SEX!”

Winter nights

Snapshots in Norway #8

Between the summer job and writing my bachelor thesis I managed to go out, take some shots and even put them up here. If there was a championship for the least persevering blogger, I’m pretty sure I would have a chance at winning. Oh well, here it goes. A little bit of my summer in Tønsberg, Norway.

Snapshot(s) in Norway #7

A lovely evening class from last week. We met up at our teacher’s place armed with copies of a Norwegian novel- Pan, by Knut Hamsun. We were going to disect the book and watch the movie.

You see those tiny lights down there? that’s where i live. and i speed walked my lungs out all the way up here. but the view of the fjord and the mountains was worth it.

Nils Magne, our guest teacher, is a specialist in Hamsun. He came all the way from “up North” to tell us more. And he brought wine for everyone . I think this is about the time he was telling about the author’s meeting with Hitler. He was almost deaf and interrupted the leader so many times that he burst out of the room. Hamsun cried after his failure. Nils Magne tries to convince us he was not an actual Nazi.

Many many chapters later we had free norwegian books and an autograph session.I will probably be able to read that by the time my grand-grandchildren will be teleporting themselves into my asylum room.

Wenche, our teacher, had the nicest cups ever, looking like Penguin book covers. I like the thought of sipping my tea from “Great Expectations”.

That wonderful moment between starving student and the tortilla chips.

Snapshot(s) in Norway #6

I never knew making an exhibit can be so much fun. Here is a little from the work we did for our Photo, Art and Illustration class this week.

while everyone else was being all serious and pro, me and Tanja were building ourselves a little dollhouse.

Ok, no…not really. But close enough. We made our exhibit as a little wonderland where you could only peek in. Alice was there too

The picture is taken by Tanja. Let’s say I was working. And yes, I am a lefty. And it looks akward even for me when I look at it.

4 hours later and a whole great deal of wasted tape , we started doing the actual work of exhibiting our photos.

At which point Tanja started feeling like she was putting up the Christmas tree. Look at her. She has the “I am hanging the angel now!” pose. I guess it was also Jan’s fault, whose music went hand in hand with the Holiday carols.

My Alice illustration doing some bungee-jumping, mushrooms on the floor, miniature Bergen houses, mister’s face as a giant, and the rabbit rushing into the Volda horizon.  Quite a  trip.

Also a snail passing by and colorful lights. Must slide or open the door-photo to look in.

Like that. Tanja is admiring our finished work. And it only took us 7 hours…

That’s when I saw this thing from the window. And I wondered if the poor guy was also spending 7 hours sticking scotch tape or punching holes through plexiglass.

Natasza all dismantled trying to figure out where things should go.

Lise also dismantled. And with extra candy lips on the side.

And my personal favorite. she did good on the colors.

DO-I-CARE-O-METER

Today’s reading is…

A mix for agonizing and reminiscing

ag·o·nize  (g-nz)

v. ag·o·nized, ag·o·niz·ing, ag·o·niz·es

v.intr.

1. To suffer extreme pain or great anguish.

2. To make a great effort; struggle.

reminisce [ˌrɛmɪˈnɪs]

vb

(intr) to talk or write about old times, past experiences, etc.

*100 years of solitude by curlytops

This is a playlist for those days when you fail to put on the happy face, when you just can’t pull yourself up from the bed to go to school or work. When you can’t eat and you can’t avoid that emptiness in your stomach and that knot in your throat. And you just lay there staring with your mind playing back all those wonderful moments on the screen of your ceiling. for those days when a little mourning will actually do you good.

I think you can listen to it HERE if you have a Spotify account.

Snapshot(s) in Norway #5

This time it is actually more than one snapshot, and to be more precise the action is set in Ålesund, a lovely town with Art-Nouveau architecture and a nice vintage feel to it, just 2 hours from Volda.

The mister and I took a weekend trip and ended up looking for cozy places since (surprise, surprise) it was raining the whole time. That is how we got to this old comic-book store which sells many more goodies like LPs, CDs, books, old magazines and newspapers.

The mister was happy enough to find his beloved batman and sandman, while i just went through and casually tore down some piles of vinyls.

*no, this one looked like this the whole time.but leaving that aside. I even found some Romanian material.

there were actually two of them. cool to know someone in Norway once owned this.

I found this slightly amusing, slightly worrying ad in a 1969 number of Playboy. nicely targeted i guess?

And there was even the special edition of a newspaper from 1939. The title says Russia and Germany on joint war front.

 

Before heading out I just had to take a snapshot of this album cover. It was Simon and Garfunkel’s first one if i am not mistaken. I just love the font.

 

KJØP, SALG, BYTTE. An enchanting message for the oldies amateurs. Buy, sell, exchange

After the mandatory smoke break we put up with the rain in the search for some stores and a cinema. In exchange for that we got to enjoy the beautiful buildings.

I guess the town decided I looked too much like a tourist, so it soon sacrificed my umbrella. And with that I finally decided to settle for a raincoat.

It got torn just after this picture.But we went on bravely.

 

and a bit jealous of those who were all cozy in their cars.

and then i saw this guy. definitely tourist. he looked enigmatically ladylike with his scarf and earrings while trying to hide away from my camera under the Thon hotel umbrella.

But finally I bumped into some local friends.Many thanks to Ina for pointing out the way to one of the coziest cafes I’ve been in around here.

 

on the way there we had to go through this very Art Nouveau tunnel, with lamposts and a photo exhibit on the walls. very inspirational.

We never made it to the cinema. The cafe, Lyspunktet (The Highlight or the bright spot?), was so charming with its fireplace, its free-refill cheap house coffee and the good music that we stayed for hours.

We concluded with me pretending to play chess. Fail.

 

I wanna go where candy grows on trees and volcanoes make marshmallows

 

something I made a year ago, maybe continuing the Stories with lonely little girls.

7 Witches I would’ve loved to be as a kid

1. Samantha from the 1964 Bewitched series.

As a kid I would’ve given anything to be able to do some magic just by twitching my nose like her. I hated her husband though. She always got him out of trouble with her skills and he never appreciated it. I guess there were some subliminal messages there to be sent to the wives of the 60s.

2. Jeannie from the 1965 I dream of Jeannie TV series.

I guess she was tehnically not a witch, she was a genie (haha…very creative writers there with that Jeannie- genie thing going on… not).She still did some magic stuff so it counts in my book of witches. I was inlove with the idea of a fancy apartment inside of a bottle. Also she was probably created to follow the Bewitched trend since she also had the magic gesture.She was the one with the blink and arms crossed. Her partner, whom she calls “master”, is the guy who much later played J.R. in Dallas …:D as many many of those who were kids in the 80s-90s may remember. In this series he is an astronaut working for NASA. There’s a funny line in the intro saying “There in this house the girl in the bottle plays spin the astronaut”. Quite timeless I say.

3. Sabrina Spellman (once again the writers did it ….Spellman ..really?)

Mainly just because she could get any outfit you could think of just by swooshing her finger. Also because she could turn people she hated into goats and her closet was a door to another world.

4.Piper Halliwell from Charmed series.

She could freeze time! Nothing beats that. Well also she is the only one to have some normal love life and she does not die during the series.

5. Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter

Just because Helena Bonham Carter plays her. And she is awesome.

6. Morgan Le Fay in Merlin tv series (1998)

For the same reason as 5

7. Marry Poppins  both from the book and the film with Julie Andrews.

Cause she can fly with her parrot handle umbrella. And because she has a nose like a dutch doll. And cause she can jump into paintings. I guess it’s questionable if she was a witch or not. Once again I thought if she did magic she was a witch. A good one though.