THIS FRIDAY'S FOOD AND WINE SHOPPING

MY SLIDESHOW

Last night's SLIDELUCK was great. I showed up early to help organize and work the door when people arrived, but I was able to enjoy the rest of the evening. A lot of people showed up, great food from TACOS BERLIN, drinks, friends, a well curated slideshow and a little bit of dancing. For those of you who missed the show last night, these are the pictures that I participated with. The theme for the event was BORDERS and I chose to do a show that dealt with borders in a very simple way; borders between colors, space and time. After I met E I have been traveling so much more than I did before and it is strange and fun to realize that all these pictures come from the last year of my life. The borders of my life are very different now than they were two years ago. The show always needs to be accompanied by a song and my music selection was the TALKING HEADS song (NOTHING BUT)FLOWERS. At these shows there is often a lot of kind of serious and sometimes heavy documentary photography so I wanted mine to work as a kind of contrast to that. I have never been very good at making serious, heavy stuff anyway;) Will post some pictures from the event later!

SLIDELUCK BERLIN IV

Tonight is the the forth SLIDELUCK POTSHOW in BERLIN.  'SLIDELUCK POTSHOW was founded in Seattle, Washington, USA and is a non-profit organization dedicated to building and strengthening community through food and art. SLPS operates multimedia slideshows combined with potluck dinners in about forty cities around the world. But since Berliners and potlucks don’t always mix, we've opted for a SLIDELUCK.' This year's Berlin show will feature work by:

Adelaide Ivánova * Alex Leme * Andrea Diefenbach * Anna Kostreva * Anne Wölk * Barbara Wagner * Britney Anne Majure * Casey Kelbaugh * Cezary Zacharewicz / 2081 * Elsa Thorp * Emilxa Xurylowicz / brksfck * Hayley Austin * Jan von Holleben * Jane Stockdale * Javier Sirvent * Jen Osborne * Jessica Polar * John Francis Peters * Kari Kjøsnes * Katrin Björk * Kirsten Luce * Kominek Gallery * Lindsay Amelie Isola * Magnus Bjerk * Malte Jäger * Mila Teshaieva * Mirjam Siefert * Ostkreuz * Rafal Milach * Sirio Magnabosco * Susan May Tell

Tonights event will be held at HBC  on KARL-LIEBKNECHT-STRASSE, there is a MEXICAN THEME; the food is catered by our friends TACOS BERLIN and there will be discounted MARGARITAS, tequila and Mezcal available from the .HBC Bar ...and BROOKLYN LAGER will be in town! ..and there will be live entertainment next to the slideshow. And this is one of the pictures I will be showing today:) If anyone decides they want to stop by for some food, fun, drinks and slideshow I will see you there, from 7 and on!

SUSHI, KIMCHI AND MISO SOUP FROM CUBE SUSHI

When you move to a new neighborhood it's always important to find new regular spots, for me that's a place for good grocery shopping, a place with nice flowers, thai takeout, great pizza ..and this week it was time to find SUSHI. We located what I believe will be our new regular SUSHI takeout place. It's called CUBE SUSHI and is located on  Zossener Straße in Kreuzberg, not far from the MARKTHALLE on Bergmann Straße. They have good and reasonable sushi and seams like nice people, so far that makes them my new go to sushi place. Looking at these pictures makes me very hungry so think I will have to go and prepare lunch! Have a nice day wherever you are, in Berlin it's all foggy and cold so think I will have to prepare something warm:)

HOME AFTER A FOUR HOUR LONG DELICIOUS DINNER AT REINSTOFF

2 MONTH ANNIVERSARY ♥

Celebrating our 2 MONTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY with a bottle of LARMANDIER-BERNIER CHAMPAGNE (some of you might remember us visiting them in CHAMPAGNE, FRANCE this spring) on the balcony (wearing really warm cloths, cold autumn has kicked in) and following it up with a dinner at REINSTOFF ..that we long have been wanting to visit ..and that just a week ago got two MICHELIN STARS.

CRAZY DELICIOUS BREAKFAST IN BED

This Saturday I woke up with a strange URGE. The night before we had been out in KREUZBERG with some friends eating some wonderful PFLAMMKUCHEN on Diffenbachstraße before going off to a smokey bar by the kanal. The pflammkuchen was very good, and SALTY with onions and bacon mixed with cream cheese and a very crispy crust. So the next morning I woke up and the first thing I thought about was something SOFT and SUGARY: I told Erlend that I wanted a BERLINER. And since he is such a wonderful husband he went out and got us a pair of Berliners with pflaumenmuß filling from the bakery HAFERSTICH on our street. It was delicious.

THE MAKING OF MY WEDDING DRESS IV

So these are the pictures from the day that I picked up my wedding dress. It was the first time I saw the veil completely finished together with the dress ..and I was super HAPPY about the result. On top of that it was just really fun to be there in the store with all my BERLIN GIRLFRIENDS (in their matching black power girl outfits) ...and a very nice couple shopping that got very fascinated by the the scandinavian 'Midsummer Night's Dream' like bride, trying on the dress and drinking SPARKLING ROSÉ on the house (THANK YOU!) After I put on the dress and the veil we decided to try on the flower crown my friends had bought me for the evening's BACHELORETTE PARTY. There was something kind of magical that happened when I put it on ..the flower crown made me feel like a FAIRY TALE princess who spends all day playing in the forest and has a MAGICAL DEER with FLOWER ANTLERS as her best friend ..or one the ANGELS in the scraps (glansbildene) I had as a child. At this point I had not decided about flowers and I started thinking maybe this was meant to be.. because if I wore a flower crown I didn't need to buy a bouquet  ...thinking about this today it was almost like the crown put a spell on me and the people around me. It's weird how an object like this flower crown can change an outfit ...and the whole atmosphere. Looking back at it today it's obvious to me that the magic of the flower crown was meant for that moment and not the wedding day, it would have been totally wrong for my wedding and the kind of look that I was going for, but as I said, right there and then, it was like it put a SPELL ON ME.

Photo: Lindsay Isola and Britney Anne Majure

HAVE A NICE WEEKEND:)

GREY BERLIN, STAYING IN

PUMPKIN FOR DINNER

THE MAKING OF MY WEDDING DRESS III

So these are some of the pictures from my FINAL DRESS FITTING at CRUBA by Mira Becker (there was one in between this one and the first one, but I don't have pictures from that fitting because LINDSAY went off to ROME for a month and therefor could not join me). At this point the dress was basically ready.. It was very exiting.. and a bit nerve wrecking seeing it almost all done because I had basically never seen the dress before ..and the wedding was almost only two weeks away. After the first meet we decided to do quite a bit of changes compares to the first dress I tried on. It was very fun to be able to discuss with MIRA how the dress could and then should look like. Compared to the dress I first tried on my dress ended up WIDER and with a BELT (Mira already had designed a dress in a slight different design with a belt on it) in CHAMPAGNE instead of light grey/blue, more OPEN IN THE BACK and with the glossy side of the SILK turned outwards instead of the matte. They also doubled the fabric to get a more HEAVY and DRAPEY feel. So yes ..even though I felt that the dress would turn out great I was a bit nervous, but I was very happy when I saw it and took it on!

So for this last fitting we just had to decide about the length of the dress ..and if I wanted a VEIL. I really had not made up my mind when I entered the store that day, had it not been for the fact that Mira had already ordered the fabric I'm afraid that there never would have been a veil (THANK YOU Mira for your clairvoyance!). This by the way was not the only time she helped me during the wedding planning; every time I was there she would ask me; have you thought abut this or that ..and often I hadn't. She both introduced us to a GREAT CAKE PLACE in the WEST called WIENER CONDITOREI CAFE AM ROSENECK (some of you might remember that we first tasted some cakes from local bakers) that we ended up using ( the cake place is a story of it's own..it's situated in the middle of one of the embassy areas in the western part of BERLIN, where you are surrounded by people talking all different languages, where there are fancy young women in burkas and women in their 60's looking like BOMBSHELLS from LA; wearing all white and pink with their crazy blond hair) ..Mira also introduced us to a FLOWER GUY(the guy who do their flowers, and they are always beautiful, but I never managed to decide on what I wanted till the day before the wedding so I didn't use him, and now I have forgotten his name, but I bought my flowers in our hood from a CRAZY lady in PURPLE who didn't cut off the thorns so my hands hurt all our wedding day.. anyway, that is again a whole different story, so let's return to THE DRESS ...AND THE VEIL!!

So there I was, in the store, in the dress with Mira and one of her co workers CUTTING the HEMLINE ..and then SHAPING, SCULPTURING and CUTTING the veil ..on my HEAD ( the cutting was by the way done with a beautiful pair of GOLDEN SCISSORS that Lindsay just fell in love with). They custom made the veil so that it would work perfectly with the back of my dress. When they showed me what they wanted to do there was no doubt in my mind. Up till that point I had been going back and forth between thinking that I really just liked the dress the way it was and that a veil would be too much ....BUT also thinking that it would be ONE BIG MISTAKE letting the one opportunity I ever (hopefully) would get to wear a veil pass me by ..taking that I am a big fan of ACCESSORIES ...and a little bit of DRAMA. But yes, when they showed me how the veil would turn out I knew it would be just PERFECT, and today I am so happy I ended up wearing a veil, with out a doubt it brings a little extra something! So after the cutting and the shaping we decided that I would come back for the dress and the veil on the Saturday almost a week before the wedding. This was also the day of my BERLIN BACHELORETTE PARTY so it turned out to be quite a fun pick up. Pictures from that later in the week!



All photos by LINDSAY ISOLA

AT CRUBA BY MIRA BECKER, THE MAKING OF MY WEDDING DRESS II

Photo: Lindsay Islola

THE MAKING OF MY WEDDING DRESS

As I might have mentioned before I wanted to make a post about the MAKING of my WEDDING DRESS. I wanted to do this for two reasons; the first one is because my beautiful friend LINDSAY photographed the whole process and the pictures turned out really nice. The second reason is because I think the CRUBA crew, with the designer MIRA BECKER in the front did a wonderful job. Not only did they make a beautiful dress, they also made me feel very welcome and at home during the whole process. Deciding to get married in a country you don't know as well as your home country is both exciting and challenging. The process made me learn new things about BERLIN, meet new people and see new places ..and I think especially when you decide to do your wedding outside your comfort zone it means a lot when you meet nice people who do a really good job; and so I did, so I was LUCKY!

Soo ..I decided to start looking for my wedding dress when my MOM and my SISTER were here in BELIN this summer. I knew I didn't want anything too fancy since we were getting married at the Embassy, I also knew I wanted something ELEGANT and CLASSIC and maybe a bit  'LA CONFIDENTIAL like' ( I  love the combination of sexy and elegant that you find in the style of the women in the FILM NOIR genre).  I had already made a sketch only days after Erlend proposed to me. I had never really thought about how my dress would look like if I were to get married, but as soon as I had the wedding information at hand; I was getting married to ERLEND, in BERLIN, at the EMBASSY, I knew what kind of dress I wanted. I remember going into our bedroom taking up a piece of paper and a pen and making a SKETCH. When I was a teenager I wanted to become a FASHION DESIGNER so I drew a lot of clothes. I don't draw clothes like I used to anymore, so when I do ..I do it in almost the exact way I did 10-15 years ago. So the sketch I made was of a slim faceless version of me with ..off course; very long legs ..in a white long dress with an open back and a casual waist line.



In the beginning, when we were visiting different stores and trying on different dresses I had this sketch in the back of my head, but then I tried on sooo many different beautiful dresses and I kind of forgot all about it.. until we visited the store CRUBA in MITTE. I had noticed this store before and I was mainly entering to look for a dress for the PARTY we were planning for two days after the wedding. I didn't really find what I was looking for ..but then one of MIRA's assistants told she had a dress in the back that was meant for special occasions. She went and got it and I tried the dress on, it was a LIGHT GREY/BLUEISH LONG SILK DRESS, simple in the front with a beautiful back. Actually the dress was made so that it could be WORN BOTH WAYS, but I have always been a SUCKER for dresses with beautiful backs so I automatically took it on so that THE BACK became the most spectacular side of the dress. The dress was not in my size and I was not sure about the color, but the assistant told me that there was enough time to make a new dress for my wedding date if I wished. Leaving the store I came to think of my sketch and how many similarities it had to the dress I had tried on in the store. I still had not made up my mind if this was THE DRESS, but I had made an appointment to come back and meet the designer MIRA and discuss the dress and possible changes to the design later that month. I will post pictures from that appointment tomorrow (So yes, there will not be one post, there will be many..  )

I ♥ OUR BEDROOM