IN 2013 I

_______Spent the first month of the year in New York_______

 

_________Went Ice skating in Central Park_______

________Said goodbye to NYC and our friends there_______

________Ate a lot of delicious food while visiting my sister and Frode in Trondheim______

_______Loved spending time in their apartment_______

______..as well as the view from their window_______

_______Appreciated the Norwegian winter, partly because I hardly had any________

________Photographed CRUBA by Mira Becker AW 13 lookbook in Berlin______

__________Spent almost all of February in Andalucia_________

_______..where I fell in love with orange trees_______

______..and sherry wines, especially the ones from Fernando de Castilla______

________Ate delicious homemade tapas on our balcony in Seville__________

_______Spent time with some of my favorite people while home in Bergen_______

______Tasted sfogliatelle for the first time (really good)_______

______Spent two weeks at Lipari, one of them in this house______

 

_______Watched my husband have his morning coffee on the porch______

_________Went on beautiful hikes around Lipari_______

____________Ate a lot of delicious local food_________

_______Picked my own lemons_______

__________Was charmed by this blue little truck_________

_________Met these two while out on a walk_______

_________Had the ocean, Etna and Vulcano as my rooftop view for one week_______




____________Watched the sun set from the same rooftop_________

________Got to see how the beach cities of Sicily can look like when it's way out of season______

_____Ate a delicious 15 course 'straight out of the ocean' seafood meal at Sakalleo ..where 7 of the dishes were raw ________

_______Visited Occhipinti________

 _______ ..as well as COS______

_________Was stunned by this amazing temple in Agrigento__________

 _______Experienced Danish spring on our drive from Våler to Berlin_______

_______Spent  most of May in Berlin ...loving the green, the canal and the sunsets______

_________Lived in Lars' cool Berlin studio_______

___________...and Lina's beautiful apartment ________

_________Got to hang out with old friends and meet new ones_________

__________ Just made it to Berlin to see the cherry trees blossom_________

________Had my photos used in the exciting app magazine The innovation Effect ______

________Photographed the Ninetimesthree box_______

 

________Watched sunsets through my side view window_______

________Visited the Venice biennial_______

_________Made a short stop at Cascina Collina, our favorite vacation spot these last years_________

_________Loved this cherry tree_______

________Spent almost all of July in my parents house at Bønes______

________Realized the cruel reality of Bergen summer_______

________Had one really great Bergen summer night________

_______Spent beautiful summer days at our family cabin______

________.. where I ate shrimps and drank white wine_____

_______...walked to Ilogen to have a swim ..in all kinds of weather_____

________..ate self caught fish________

________..drank rhubarb cocktails on a 30 year old sun bed__________

________and made this flower crown ..loved it, but it gave me allergies_________

_________Photographed this amazing couple's Oslo wedding_______

_______Missed living in Oslo, like really really ..for the first time since I moved________

_________Met this cute little guy______

 

_______Moved back to Bergen, and into an apartment that I  love________

______Ate the best homemade burger .. ever________

__________Experienced  the beginning of fall in Trondheim_________

__________Celebrated our two year wedding anniversary________

 

_________Explored my new neighborhood________

__________Wished that I had more lunches at Kranen_________

_____Photographed the outdoor area around DNB Nor Solheimsviken by Svein Basson AS_______

________Enjoyed lazy Sundays_______

________Had a nice weekend at our cabin in the mountains________

________..where I also took this picture of Erlend hitting a branch of snow with a snowball_________

_________Photographed Ninetimesthree's annual scarf__________

_________Ate a lot of delicious home cooked meals made by my fantastic husband_______

 

 

_______ Treasured every ray of sun Bergen gave me________

_________Found a perfect Christmas tree_______

_______Ended the year with a five course home cooked meal, champagne, good friends and fireworks______

I go for better late than never this year. I have always LOVED making these posts and this year was no exception.. it was just slightly delayed due to a lot of different things, I guess also called normal EVERY DAY LIFE, something that I kind of have not had since I started this blog. E and I moved back to BERGEN the last week of August, or I came back that week, E was still in OSLO ..but then within that first week we found an amazing apartment ..and then we suddenly needed money ..fast. When I came to Bergen that week I had kind of IMAGINED a month or two of looking for apartments and a job to pay the rent, staying part time at my parents house, part time at our cabin. But then boom we had an apartment and suddenly I also had a job working in a clothing store. And like that, I suddenly had moved to Bergen and gotten myself a completely NEW LIFE, a very different one than the one I have had for these last couple of years. It has its ups and downs. I think I'm still getting used to it.. but as I do get more used to it I will try to find a way to make this life fit into this blog.. or the other way around..

It's strange for me to look at this post, realizing all the different things that have happened this last year, but that is also why I do it. Time travels so fast and it's truly amazing to have pictures to remind you of all the beautiful things that have happened. Hope you enjoy it too!

MY BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST

My BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST this year was an attempt to recreate last year's birthday brunch at BALTHAZAR in NEW YORK; EGGS NORWEGIAN and MIMOSA. Even though the great people I had the brunch with last year could not be there ..and well, our living room does not have the same atmosphere as Balthazar.. E made a phenomenal effort to make the food just as great. Homemade english muffin, hollandaise, poached eggs and smoked salmon ..with panfried potatoes and onions ..,accompanied by mimosas with freshly squeezed orange juice. Yes, I was very full afterwards, and very happy! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS GOD JUL

I have spent almost all of this Christmas in BED ..with a really bad COLD. BUT before this happened I managed to get our apartment ready for Christmas ...and enjoy it for a couple of days too:) It felt really nice to unwrap the Christmas decorations we used in Berlin ..and put them up in our new home. We also continued the tradition from previous years of making GINGER BREAD cookies and a ginger bread house ..while  drinking CHAMPAGNE. This year we also hosted a Christmas party the day the SUN TURNED ...and are hoping to make that a new Bergen Christmas tradition. This cold on the other hand ..I hope will be a one year thing. Hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you all a happy New Year!

A LOVE AFFAIR

I'm having a love affair with these flowers. As stated before; I love flowers. As I CHILD one of my dreams was to be a flower decorator. I didn't pick flowers like most kids do, I ARRANGED them. I picked them deliberately in different lengths and placed them together carefully. Not long ago E and I saw something on television where some kids had made statements/wishes about what every child should be able to do/have the right to do ..in a PERFECT world. After we saw it E looked at me and said; I bet when you were a child, you would have WRITTEN; 'Every child should have the right/opportunity to pick as many FLOWERS as they like'. I think he was onto something.. As a child I spent a beautiful month (I remember it more like half a year) in COPENHAGEN with my mom, dad and little sister. My dad was working there and my mom took me and my sister out of kindergarden for a month to come stay with him. I have a lot of beautiful MEMORIES from that stay, among them are the TULIPS. Flowers were ..and are still, much cheaper in Copenhagen than in Norway. My mother, also a big FAN of flowers, took advantage of this and bought a lot of flowers during our stay there ...and I remember those flowers so well ..I remember picking them up at the store, carrying them home and I remember how they looked placed in big VASES around the apartment. I also remember how E said when we had been together for only a short while that he had noticed that I got this particular expression on my face when I was carrying home fresh flowers. I can imagine it's a very happy, almost PROUD kind of expression. One of the things I really loved about BERLIN was it's affordable flowers. Of course I loved everything that was affordable there ..the food, the rent, the wine, the beer, the eating out... But still, maybe especially the flowers, because buying freshly cut flower feels like such a LUXURY. Ok, maybe I miss the eating and drinking out even more ..but anyway. Moving back to Norway I have had to cut down on a lot of my BERLIN HABITS, the pleasure is therefore even bigger when I do ... for instance ...buy flowers. .and then I of course like to SPLURGE.

When I bought these flowers I had a conversation with the florist about different countries flower habits/culture. Like for instance in Berlin they always liked to make bouquets, they always want to put a lot of green in them ...and combine a lot of different flowers. I can still enjoy a batch of roses, but my years in Berlin ...probably combined with my EARLY SPRUNG LOVE for arranging flowers have made me really love arranged bouquets .. so one of my favorite things is to spend a lot of time when I am in a flower shop ..talking to the florist coming up with fun combinations. Like with this one. That I love.

PERFECT WINTER SATURDAY

Yesterday the citizens of BERGEN got to experience this year's first real DAY of WINTER ..and it felt amazing. After days and weeks with rain and wind the WEATHER GODS finally offered us a BREAK. And I'm sure glad they did. I realized earlier this week that the dark, rainy weather was starting to get to me. My solution was to invite Christmas into our home ..as well as spending a lot of money on candles. It definitely worked.. still, no matter how cosy you make your home during winter, nothing beats glittering white snow and sunbeams. Thank you for yesterday!

WINTER WONDERLAND

Just shipped these two beauties off to VÅLER. E's mom asked me a while back if I could make some pillows for her local Christmas bazaar ...with Christmas motives ... and taken her location the choice naturally fell on some PICTURES that I took this February at ALBY, not far from VÅLER. Looking at these pictures I can't believe it's been under a year since I took them.. feels like forever. Anyway, I really enjoyed having the pillows in my living room for a couple of days before I sent them off ..so I hope their new owner will like them too:)

WHEN THIS IS YOUR OFFICE

A couple of weeks ago I spent two mornings in SOLHEIMSVIKEN shooting the area around DNB NOR's new facilities. I was there shooting pictures for SVEIN BOASSON AS, the company in charge of the outdoor area in between and around these new buildings. The air was CRIST and CLEAR, the shadows blue and the sun was warm ..in other words; a great day at the office. This picture doesn't really show anything of what I was there to photograph (which I will show you later), but I thought this view deserved a picture. The bridge you see in the picture is PUDDEFJORDSBROEN, a bridge I have crossed thousands of times by bus or car ..traveling from where I grew up to the city center. Spending these mornings in this area made me realize that it's not only the city that has changed, it is also the way I view things. It's quite amazing coming back and realizing that these last years of traveling and photographing has completely changed the way I see the world. Or maybe not completely. As a photographer I have always worked with my interest for ...and ability to spot, visual beauty ..BUT it's like these last few years have strengthened this part of me, this sense, so that I now literally see Bergen in a totally new way. I guess it works the same way with all our SENSES, they are strengthened as we stimulate them and use them more.

HOMEMADE SCONES, JAM AND CLOTTED CREAM

COFFEE AND CAKE AT ALISA'S