Outside lights

Yes, we have been busy with outside lights again. One lamp on the corner of the house, which had not been working at all in the time we have lived here, came down from its mounting the other day.

Between removing the old light and fitting the new one I had a little adventure with unprotected wires that were apparently not operated by the switch I thought they were operated by. Some disco-moves later it was clear I had to first find out which switch did operate these wires.

Decided to protect the wires while I figured out which switch they belonged to.

After all the safety-measures were taken and the power was most definitely off, I could get started mounting the new light. Of course the new light could not be mounted on the old fixtures directly, so I had to improvise an adapter with a bit of wood. This wood I then varnished so it could survive the weatherconditions here for more than a month or two.

And finally, the new light could be wired up, mounted and tested. It is working, and it is very nice to have it illuminate the driveway when we come and go here.

Grøtfest!

Yesterday some neighbours organized a cosy little event: "Grøtfest", or in english "porridge party". The idea of this seemingly annual event is that all the neighbours within the Ådnanes community are invited to come have rice porridge in a pre-christmas setting. Many people showed up, and though the barn we were in was cold, the atmosphere was really nice. While I do not know any of the neighbours really well, there does seem to be a collection of sincere and nice people gathered in this corner of the world. People gathered, enjoyed their servings of rice porridge with butter, sugar and cinnamon, and sat together chatting for a good while. "Julenissen" showed up for a brief moment with a gift for the children that were present: A package with a mandarin and "kakemenn", which is apparently a classic combo. I did not take any good pictures because it was quite dark. I really enjoyed this event, frozen toes and all.

Christmasbeer

Yesterday we put the finishing touches on our first ever christmasbeer. We made a slightly dark beer that we spiced with pepper, clove and some cinnamon. We hope it is subtle and good, otherwise we have 14 liters of nicely labled abominable beer on the shelves in the pantry...

Chalk

We made a chalkboard on one of the doors in our kitchen so that we could make the kitchen more fun. I enjoy corny lettering excercises like this quite a bit, I have to admit. This man seems to be becoming a real pinterest-woman....

Cast Iron!

I have an inexpliccable love and fascination for old tools and cookware. Among the items I drool over on the internet are axes, knives, wooden bowls and indeed: cast iron cookware. Now I have been wanting a skillet for quite a while, and was very excited when I found a crusty and rusty poor old griswold skillet in a local recycling-store. It was grossly covered with layers of burnt oil and unspeakable things, but I wanted to restore it to its former glory. After a few days of soaking in a strong lye-solution, and some hours of scrubbing with steel wool, I had the pan back to bare steel and I could see all the marks on it. A griswold #9 710e pattern skillet, produced roughly 80 years ago. I seasoned it with some layers of rapeseed oil that formed a lovely black glossy nonstick protective layer on it, and have cooked a few loads of bacon and eggs in it since. A wonderful pan that can last three more lifetimes! We will cook a lot of glorious foor in this baby.

The seasoning on the cookingsurface came out of the oven a bit blotchy, but glassy smooth and nicely nonstick. After a few rounds of cooking breakfast in it, the inside is more uniformly black.

A visitor in the fall.

While it has been quiet on the blog it has not been quiet at Ådnanes. We have had a visitor last week! My sister Joelle has been our guest for a week, and we have had fun. While the week started with some days of torrential rains, it became beautiful weather later and we could even take a canoetrip. I won`t try to summarize the week, but here are some pictures of fun things that happened:

Elisabeth organized a little tasting of 4 different types of "christmas-soda" (Julebrus) that stored start selling here around christmas. Now we know which of these we think is best, and what will be in the house this christmas.

We had to gather some wood for our ongoing Travelling Gnome Project. We carved 50 gnomes this week, while listening to our favourite old recordings of the dutch "Bert en Ernie" that never stop being entertaining, no matter how old we get. 

We spent a night decorating advent-decorations. A serious task.

On a morning where the rain seemed to have given up for the day we took a small hike to a local mountain that goes by the name of "grimsfjellet". We took our signature selfie, and set out on a beautiful and wet walk.

documenting what time we reached the top.

On one day the weather was so calm and beautiful we took out the canoe. We paddled around the local fjord with all its stunning little islands for a good two hours. It was cold in the air, but the sun was bright and warm. Wonderful conditions for an adventure.

Home sweet Home

A frosty morning walk where we found fresh mink-tracks on a bridge.

Joelle trying out woodturning for the first time. Fun with some craft from time to time :)

What the newest Dondorp does when the other Dondorps are in the Netherlands

Since I had a work course in Oslo this week, Daniel decided to spend some time in the Netherlands. This way he could come back and be on a new three months tourist visa, and he got to spend some time with family and loved ones over there. He made loads of plans, and I made a very detailed shopping list for him.
On my side I started the week with two days in Oslo learning about some computer software, and got to buy some authentic baklava from a turkish bakery. (Which was super-good!)
Matthias had leave from the army, and was home with our parents, and Sunna and Anders came up for the weekend to show off the (hardly there) baby belly and hang with Matthias.
All in all it sucks to be away from Daniel, but of all the weekends, this one was fine. Oh, and I also managed to get started on more penicillin for a root infection in a tooth. Nothing makes me more grateful for living in a country that has dentists than some really bad ache.

Us three siblings went on a shoppingtrip to Stord on Saturday.

This is Matthias' new speaker, that kept the car loud all the way there and back again. 

Shoe shopping is hard work. 

A lunch-stop at McDonald's on the way. They give great little books as gifts with the Happy Meal now. 

Today is Sunday, Matthias is already back in Nothern Norway, Sunna and Anders are on their way back to Stavanger, and I went on a little walk to search for things I can make christmas decorations with. I was originally looking for pinecones, but this year was not good for that.
I did however find wooden fungus that I dry and use for fire starters and some more chanterelles.

The November colours are showing 

These mushroom-fungi things are really dense and when dry perfect for starting fires with. 

Unfortunately, they can be hard to cut down. Today I managed to get my knife closed over my finger. Not great. 

None of the pine cones I could find was more open than these. So that wasn't exactly what I was looking for.  

But I did strike gold at my chanterelle spot. Last of the season, I think. 

They can be hard to see in the fallen leaves. 

This is the plum tree we picked from in August. It's hard to belive that this tree can give so much fruit in the summer!

This is the goodies I returned home with. Not bad for a short walk nearby. 

Tomorrow I'll drive straight from work to pick up my sweetie. That will be a good day.

Winter is coming.

The days are drawing shorter, and more and more frequently we have frost in the nights here. Fall is flying by and winter is coming. Maren and I are preparing ourselves in our own little way. Yesterday, for example, we jumped on a great offer on woolen baselayers. Today, we put the cardis on her winterwheels. Bring it on, winter!

The lightpost-problem

It has started to be really quite dark around here now. Even after changing the clock, Maren drives to work in the darkness. Therefore it would be nice if our outside-lights worked. They used to work fine, untill a few weeks ago when switching them on caused the earth-switch to blow and left the whole house without power. Not ideal, so our solution untill now has been to simply not use the lightpost. Today I hoped I could perhaps fix the thing.

To be honest, I had never inspected this post up close ever since we moved in. It is apparent that the poor thing hasn`t had much love since it was planted, which I guess was in the '80s when the house was built. The light-fixtures themselves are in bad shape and could be taking in water. This is a nightmare to have to fix, so I hoped it would be something simpler, like a corroded connector block or something. Checkin this would involve opening the top of the post.

Unscrewing the two screws and having a quick peek would be simple, I thought. It was not. Both screws were rusted and stripped, and no screwdriver would take them out. I tried all the tricks, including grinding a new slot for a large flathead. After one screw head broke off from the torsion, I gave in and drilled out the screws. 

I am a bit afraid of this thing. The cheap cutting-discs I have explode way too often. Good to have eye-protection.

Succes! It took way longer than it should have to confirm that the inside of the post is fine and that I should not have bothered opening it up in the first place.... Unfortunately this might mean the post is not very fixable. If it needs replacing, I guess it can wait till next winter while we get by guessing where to back up the car in the morning.