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February 2, 2012#

Forty fast facts

I haven´t had a lot of time to blog over the last week and a half, so I am breaking the silence with a list post stolen from Maria. When you are done reading it you can skip on over to my brand spanking new portfolio section if you´d like. It isn´t perfect, but it´s a start!

1. How old will you be in five years? Thirty-one.

2. With whom did you spend at least two hours today? My wonderful colleagues.

3. How tall are you? 180 centimeters, or 5´11″

4. What was the last movie you saw? Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. It wasn´t very good.

5. Who did you call most recently? My gym to let them know I couldn´t make it to the classes I had booked for today. I donated blood yesterday and just didn´t have the energy to work out.

6.What did it say in the last SMS you got? It was a summary of the contents of my bank accounts, so I am going to keep that a secret!

7. Do you prefer calling or texting? Texting. I worked in a call center for more than 2 years and I´m still not able to chat on the phone just for fun with anyone other than my parents. I have filled up my phone-chatting quota for a lifetime!

8. Are your parents together or split up? Still together.

9. When did you last see your parents? On the 27th of December.

10. What colour are your eyes? Light blue.

11. When did you wake up today? I get up at 6:30 on weekdays.

12. What’s your favourite place? My bed on a Saturday morning, my parents´ veranda on a warm summer day, or just about anywhere if the company is good.

13. Where do you think you’ll be in ten years? I don´t know, and I prefer not to know. This does not mean that I don´t have goals, it just means that I would like to be open to any possibilities that might come my way.

14. What used to scare you most as a child? Santa, my plush orangutan and “Rädda Joppe, död eller levande“, a Swedish TV-show for children. Rädda Joppe messed me up!

15. Lately, what made you laugh uncontrollably? I think it might have been Karl Pilkington.

16. What do you wear to bed? That´s none of your business!

17. Where have you lived? Molde and Bergen.

18. Do you prefer shoes, socks or bare feet? I love thick, warm socks. Marius actually bought me another pair of my favorite socks the other day – I might have squealed and jumped up and down. And clapped my hands.

19. Are you a social person? I am, but I do need alone time in other to collect my thoughts and unwind, probably a little bit more than the average person. I wouldn´t make a very good socialite.

20. Favourite ice cream? Mövenpick Swiss Chocolate, oh god. Just writing this made me send Marius out to get some.

21. Do you like Chinese food? Anything Chinese that is deep-fried in batter is like crack to me and I am trying to cut down on it.

22. Do you like coffee? Yes, but I don´t drink it every day, I´m much more of a tea girl. I treat myself to a double latté once in a while.

23. Do you sleep in a special way? Not really. But if you´re going to share a bed with me you better be prepared to defend your space, because I will squeeze you out and steal your duvet if you let me!

24. Do you know how to play poker? Nope.

25. Do you want kids? Right now? No. Later? Who knows.

26. Have you ever been in an ambulance? Never!

27. Do you prefer the ocean or a pool? The ocean.

28. On what do you spend the most money? Besides the boring things like rent and bills and food? I´m tempted to say clothes and accessories, but I think I spend at least an equal amount on gadgets.

29. What’s your favourite TV show? These days it is Game of Thrones – I am eagerly awaiting season 2, and can´t wait to watch season 1 on Bluray.

30. Who’s the funniest person you know? This one is tough! I have a handful of really funny co-workers, actually. I´m not going to name names, but if you´ve ever seen me wipe away runny mascara from laughing then you know who you are.

31. What’s your ring tone? A standard HTC ringtone. I can´t have a song as my ringtone, because then I won´t recognize it as my phone, I´ll think it´s the radio!

32. Do you have any garments from when you were a kid? Seeing as I have a younger sister I am pretty sure a lot of it was passed down to her and to our younger cousins, but I think my mom might have saved some of it. She loves to donate things to the salvation army though, so you never know :)

33. What thing do you have closest to you now that’s red? A book on graphic design.

34. Do you flirt a lot? Most of the time I have no idea if what I am doing is regarded as flirting or just being nice. I think you´ll have to define flirting before I can answer that!

35. Do you know how to change the tires on a car?  I can´t say I´ve done it, but I´m sure I could if supervised.. Maybe?

36. What was the last book you read? I am currently on the last pages of A Game of Thrones, the last book I finished was The Gift of Fear.

37. Do you read the paper? Online, yes. A couple of them.

38. Do you sing in the car? I don´t have a car, but I sing a lot in my living room!

39. Can you tango? I cant dance my way out of a paper bag.

40. Are you happy? Yes I am :)

January 19, 2012#

Skanky legs

Today I thought I would tell you the story of my legs. You see, they are magic. Amazing magic legs! But let us start at the beginning, which is one day a long time ago when I hung out with my friend Maren.

Maren and I are pretty similar, body-wise. We´re both 5´11, we are roughly the same shape and we both have mouths shaped like giant Ds. Peas in a pod, you could call us.

Let me illustrate by showing you this awkward drawing I made of us in our underwear. Now, let me clarify – we do not hang out in our underwear. At least not with each other. What she does on her own I can not be held accountable for. My point is, we still look similar, and most importantly, our legs look pretty much the same.

But one day Maren and I happened to realize that we had bought the same mini skirt. Now, two girls with the same legs in the same mini skirt – you would assume that they would look the same wearing it, would you not?

WRONG. It appears I have skanky legs syndrome. We can wear exactly the same skirt, and in theory we should look the same, but we don´t. You know the eternal tale of the two friends who wear the same top, where one of them has giant breasts and one has small breasts and how they are perceived differently even though they are wearing the exact same thing? I have come to the conclusion that I have giant breast-legs.

That´s right. Giant. Breast. Legs.

I blame the skank fairy.

December 31, 2011#

New Years Resolutions for 2012

Oh yes, it is that time of the year again – 2011 is almost over and it is time to set some goals for 2012! I started making notes in my planner back in November, but then again, I am pretty obsessive about lists and goals. If something is on a piece of paper with a checkbox next to it, shit gets done. I checked nearly all my boxes for 2011 ( 9 out of 11), and I already have my hopes up for 2012 .

So, without further ado…

New Year´s Resolutions for 2012

  • Start seriously saving up for a house/apartment.
  • Work out at least 3 times a week.
  • Shut my laptop every time I catch myself wandering aimlessly around the Internets. Life is too short.
  • Buy less stuff. Even though I have been on a shopping ban for half of 2011, I have still managed to throw money out the window, so there is plenty of room for improvement.
  • Get rid of things that do not serve a purpose. If you only really look at something when you clean the dust off it, why even have it in the first place?
  • Take more walks.
  • Draw more. I want to have a great looking portfolio to show for by the end of the year.

That is it! Or, to be honest, there are a few more, but I would like to keep those to myself. A lady needs her secrets, after all. If you would like some tips on how to choose (and keep!) your New Year´s resolutions, A Beautiful Mess wrote a wonderful post about the subject :)

Happy New Year!

October 26, 2011#

Maria’s closet bootcamp

As I mentioned earlier, Maria of lost in a spotless mind unleashed her fashion consultant skills upon my closet this weekend. I cannot tell you have excited that made me, because how often do you get the chance to have a professional go through all your clothes? And when that person also happens to be one of the nicest girls on the planet, you just know you’re in for a treat.

What we did was basically to set up camp outside my closet for an entire evening. I tried on all my clothing items, one by one – all my jeans, tops, skirts, dresses, shorts and all my outerwear – and Maria sat on a chair commenting on colors and fit and asking probing questions like “what does this piece of clothing make you feel?” and “how long has it been since you last wore this?”. It was like clothing therapy, I swear, and I could feel myself getting defensive over silly things like terrible cotton tops. “But but but.. It might get tropical, you never know!”

As the evening went on she made me reconsider a lot of items that I had previously been unsure of, made me aware of how other things were not as flattering as they should be, and she also showed me how I could combine things in ways that I would never have thought of myself. All in all it was a great success. We did end up two garbage bags worth of clothes to give away to the Salvation Army, but I can honestly say that I won’t miss any of those clothes,  and we also ended up with a iron/mend/modify-pile that I need to get control over. Most importantly though, she made me aware of my sartorial strengths and weaknesses:

  • I own a lot of basics. This is fine – everyone needs good basics – but one also needs non-basic things to make the basics look more exciting.
  • I need to work on my accessories. Since I have a lot of neutral clothes I need a bit more added drama. They also need to be “young”, seeing as a wardrobe that mainly consists of basics looks pretty grown up.
  • I apparently need to learn how to fold my jeans properly. I was folding-scolded!
  • I buy weird things in sales. Must beware of sales.
  • I am good at everyday clothes. However, I did not own a single blouse. I need things that fill the slightly dressier gap between worktime and partytime.

She also made me move my clothes iron permanently into the same room as my closet, and commanded me to buy a lint remover to get pilling under control. She was tough but fair.

The next day we felt an urgent need to go out and fill the gaps in my wardrobe. Yes, this is a clear violation of my shopping ban, but as it was under the supervision of a professional I feel like it could be excused, and besides – we were not merely shopping, oh no – we were filling sartorial gaps! If that’s not a great reason to break my rules then I just don’t know what is right and wrong anymore.

This is what we found to fill my urgent need for a blouse. When I say “we” I mean Maria, as I would have walked straight past these and not offered them a second glance. I can assure you though that I fell in love as soon as I put them on, and that they will see a lot of wear.

We also found some accessories – I must admit I was very reluctant to shop for jewelry at first because I am such a creature of habit when it comes to these things, but Maria gently pushed me in the right direction, and before I knew it these shiny trinkets had come home with me. I also spotted some cuff-style bracelets that I really liked, but I’m a little afraid to go overboard and think I need to pull back a little bit. These are a great starting point, after all!

So that is what we did this weekend in between the eating, talking and youtube-watching. I can’t believe how nice it was of Maria to do this – we literally spent hours going through all my things – and I had such a great time. This is not the first time I let her push me out of my comfort zone, and it sure won’t be the last time. Infinite brownie-points for Maria.

October 18, 2011#

Shopping ban: Redux – halfway there

It is now the middle of October and we are two months into my shopping ban, so I thought I would give you a little update on how things are going. The first thing I have to say is that it really hasn´t been that difficult. I started in the middle of August, and since then I have made a point of not really going to shops unless I know that there is something I need to get. That means no window shopping, no wandering around “just to pass time”, and I have been meeting friends at cafés instead of in stores. This means that I have eaten slightly more cup cakes than usual, but hey, at least I didn´t shop.

This does not mean that I haven´t bought any clothes, however, because I have. In the spirit of the public nature of this project I have made a little Polyvore showing you what it is that I have bought over the last months, so that you can decide whether I have cheated or not:

The striped tops were necessities because I managed to wash all my favorite breton tops with a pair of pink sweat pants. Rookie mistake, I know. The tights are self explanatory – winter is coming – and the Dr. Marten´s are as well. My engineer boots are at the start of their third fall/winter season and need some rest. I did a wee bit of cheating when I bought my silver leaf necklace, but I needed something big to go with my simpler tops and dresses and it was almost my birthday so that´s my excuse.

But I didn´t do this just to test my willpower, oh no! I am doing this because I need a new laptop. I am going for a 13″ Macbook Pro this time around, and those babies don´t come cheap, so the question is: has the shopping ban helped at all?

Indeed it has! I know that it is considered impolite to discuss money in public, but as the entire point of this project was to save money I don´t see how this can be avoided. By my calculations I will be able to order my laptop in mid-December at the latest, and I might be able to buy myself a much needed point-and-shoot camera as well. So far I am willing to call my shopping ban a great success!

But hey, we´re not finished just yet – I might slip up royally and spend all my money on costume jewelry on eBay in November – so in order to know for sure you´ll have to stay tuned…

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