{this moment} #3

"A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week."

last day of winter

I am cutting it close with my children's Summer gifts but I am almost done with the mittens and almost done with the skirt. Almost almost. I hope I can finish it tonight since the national holiday of The First Day of Summer is tomorrow. This gift stressing moment ironically enough is a major help with not stressing over my finals and school research deadlines. Such instant gratification crafting can be a real boost of energy when times are stressful. Especially when I feel I don't have time for anything. I find that it is exactly then that it is most important that I make time for some crafting. 

So today is the Last Day of Winter, according to the Icelandic national calender. I am so ready for spring (as readers may have noticed already, ahem) and my future summer salad seems to agree since the lettuce, rocket and spinach have all begun peeking their little green heads out of the soil. Oh, yes, only four days since we put them in there. How I love instant success!

Joining Frontier Dreams for KCCO :)

the box and the balcony

Two years ago, we decided that we wanted to try and grow our own vegetables. Back then, we had a garden, but we knew almost nothing about gardening, let alone planting and harvesting food. Our first harvest was nothing much (post in Icelandic here) and even though we did some planting last year we moved out of the apartment and away from the garden before we ever found out how it worked out. So the only real success we've had with gardening are our indoor grown herbs. 

But we refuse to give up. Third time's a charm, right? So this year we're making do with what we've got - our balcony. It shields from the wind and faces south so those should actually be the right conditions. Plus we wont have any bugs or stray animals interfering with the crops, either. My co-worker gave me this huge wooden box last summer (takk, Berglind!) and Oddur just worked his magic with the saw and then filled it with 200 liters of soil. He also came up with tying a string across to make it easier to give each vegetable it's designated space. Úlfur then drew a map of the box, should we forget what went where. I went to the thrift store and bought a 400 ISK wooden box, perfect for lettuce and such, which we plan to hang on the balcony fence in a few weeks. 

We also planted some more herbs, rosemary, mint, coriander, and some vegetable to grow indoors in pots, like tomatos and peppers. Everybody got to participate, even Ósk. (Up to a point, at least). Now we'll have to wait, water and wonder. Was our planting any good? Will it snow more? Is spring really here? We think it is... we really do! And we have plans for making our balcony garden super nice to make up for the fact that we don't have a "real" garden. A part of that plan is to use almost only thrifted things and buy as little new as possible. I'll post more about that as we go along. 

Best wishes!

Sigurlaug Elín

together

Úlfur's flock of pine cone chickens. The popcorn? Their eggs. 

The little house under the dining room table.

Morning porridge apparently tastes better when sharing a seat. 

I finished Clue #2 in the MKAL...

... and had some help photographing it. 

By chance, I found this yoga book for kids at our local library last week. Úlfur wanted to give it a try.

"Look, mamma, I'm a tree!"

Our herbs have now officially survived the Icelandic winter. Heroes of the plant world. This basil plant is a promising source of some yummy future homemade pesto.

Yet another quiet weekend has passed. Well, not entirely passed maybe, we still have a few hours 'til Monday Morning hits us. I am impatiently waiting for Game of Throne to be on in two hours, Season Five, yes, welcome to my life! I have been waiting for you a long time! However, the reason our weekend was so quiet was the usual; The Everlasting Winter (ironic, since I'm a GoT fan, I know) preventing us from too much outdoor adventures and also The Everlasting Master Studies being performed by me. Studying has been my focus this weekend, well, along with some much needed mkal knitting... my hands need that for my brain to function during all the reading.

But I have been thinking about our weekends and how they tend to always be so quiet and very, hmm, filled with family time. We kind of stay together at home a lot in the weekends. Me and Oddur try to work hard during weekdays and our kids are in daycare/school every weekday from 8-4. That's a lot of hustle and bustle! I think we really enjoy all the staying at home and being together during the weekends (even though we do fight and get irritated with each other as well, it's not quiet all the time...). And I also think all of this time spent together in the apartment is finally resulting in my children accepting each other and getting along in play. This has been a struggle since Ósk learned to crawl and grab on to whatever toy her brother was holding. But now they've grown a little and this is all going much smoother. This weekend I made an effort to try and catch these moments. I got a few. And these photos really put a smile on my face. 

Back to studying I go ! Thank you all for stopping by, I can tell by my statistics that my ratings are on the up. That's better than keeping a blog no one reads, haha. And since this is my 100th post since I started this blog, I'm including a photo of my herbs. My first post was about how I was just starting to grow my own herbs and now, two years later, I've learned a few things and had some success. And I intend to sow a lot more complex herbs and vegetables this spring - more on that later. Cheers to One Hundred!

getting things done

Oddur's sweater is now almost done. Only the hood and finishing work is left and I'll probably be able to do that in the next few days. He tried it on for me tonight and it looked so good I tried to keep him in it for as long as I could. He had to take it off to go for a run, though. But soon I'll get to see him wear it all the time :)

My empty entrance room. 

Luckily, it did not rain that day...

After carpeting and much needed decluttering!

Our entrance room/corridor really needed some decluttering tlc and somehow I've been putting it off for months. On Sunday I finally got to it. I threw away old, ruined shoes, gave old clothes away to charity and put our winter coats in storage. Then I emptied a dresser from the hallway (which had been filled with all kinds of junk I don't even know why we were so keen on keeping!) and organized our outdoor clothes in each and every drawer. Ahhhh, the relief! Less stuff really is more - now it's so much easier to find what we need in this tiny space of ours. Also, we put a rough, ribbed carpet on the floor over the tiles. This type of carpet is intended for hallways in fishing boats to soak up dirt and water. It's perfect for my apartment which needs daily sweeping because of all the sand that gets dragged in - one of the side affects from living in a basement. 

I was so happy with my accomplishment, I felt like getting more things done. I've also been meaning to sow this years seeds for weeks. Today, after work, I did. It took less than an hour - why on earth did I put it off for so long? Hopefully I'll have fresh basil, chives, coriander, parsley and lettuce in my kitchen window in a few weeks. Fresh herbs make all food so delicious.

Thank you all for stopping by :)
Keeping calm and crafting on with Frontier Dreams - you'll also find some recent thoughts on clutter there.