Introducing Katharsis

After about a year of back-and-forth argumentation wether or not it would be a wise decicion to get a cat, we saw an add from the local shelter, and just went with it.
In some ways it is my way of living through a quarter-life crisis, and just doing what I want for a change.

The poor thing was full of felted hairballs and ticks, but settled straight in on the sofa.
After a quiet night, she is now drinking, eating and has used her litter box. So far so good!

We settled for the name Katharsis, because it has all the things in it. It starts with the sound cat, it is not too much of an clichè, and it is a lovely term that greatly explains my drive to watch soppy Nicholas Sparks-movies.

The hope is that this lovely little hairball will provide company for when we're home alone, and that in return we give her a sweet life in this too-large house.

From sauna to bedroom

For as long as we've lived here, we've had this one room downstairs that has had the wonderful name "the torture room". At this point, we're not really sure who came up with it (myth has it that it could be the brother-in-law, but who knows, really?) I at least thought the room had more of a sauna-feel to it than guest bedroom.

Since we're expecting a few guests this summer, and since it will look nicer to give the room a purpose, we decided to make it into a bedroom. It will be nicer for guests that are not couples to not share double beds, and it will be easier to sell it if there are some furniture in it if it comes to that.

The only things we actually bought for this project are the mattresses, all the rest is scraps and pieces that we have saved from around the house, so that considered, I think we have lifted the room considerably.

So here are a few pictures of the bedroom make-over.

Before:

Yep, all plain wood panel. Sauna-feeling rated 8/10. 

As we are working: 

Hanging the dreadful curtains back up. (At least until we know what we want to replace with)

And result: 

As you can see, there are still a few things to be wanted before this is a really great bedroom, but we have a much nicer light to put in, and with some colours on blankets, rugs and pictures on the wall, this room now has quite some potential.

Dugnad at Ådnanes

Today there was Dugnad at Ådnanes. A dugnad in Norways means all neighbours come together and do something to improve the neighbourhood. In this case it meant there was a team of people improving a hiking-trail, a few were building a deck with the sea for public use, and we were tasked with providing some furniture for a playground in the forest.

We started by making a simple coffee-table from a slice of a large pine-tree and some hardwood legs. Meanwhile Gudmundur took the chainsaw to some logs and produced to benches to complement two he made earlier.

We loaded all the parts we made on the ATV and lugged it through mud and high water to where the playground is. This playground is made by some local people using rope and wood, and I am certain 6-year-old me would have loved it.

The final set-up. Four benches and a table set up to face the playground, the beginning of which you can see on the right.

Baptism of "tantegull"

This spring my sister had a little baby girl born all too early, so we've spent quite some time with the little precious thing.
We were given the honours of being godparents for the kid last weekend, and I thought it was so nice, I'll share some photos here.

The child is gonna be officially called Noelia Kristin, but we'll keep calling her cuddle-names for at least a few more years.

Daniel is having some serious Godfather-talk with the little padawan. 

Cutting the pretty cake

Hole in the roof

The main worry of this spring has been a leaky roof, and all the hassle with fixing it up.

Though at no point in this whole proceedure it has felt good or that it's gonna be ok, it has all turned out rather fine all thanks to a great insurance company, support from family and friends, and the choice to see this as a good lesson, and chance to redecorate the bedroom in which the leak occured. 

So we had water coming in from under a window in the top floor, and that soaked up a wall, a floor/ceiling, and came through in the middle floor in the living room, missing our control center with a few centimeters. (Or pc-corner if you must)

The insurance company went in fast, and that was a major relief, and the previous owner helped out documenting older damage. All in all, it has turned out for the better, but the stress such a stupid thing can put on us is huge. 

Therefore I'm happy to finaly share some before and after-pictures here, on our tiny blog.

Spring time - clean up time

Today was one of the first real days of spring, and we got our buts out to take advantage of the light and the windstill.
We are trying to clean up in the garden a bit before the plants wake all up, and become thick and green. This is the perfect time to heavily trim bushes, cut roses and fruit-trees and simply look at what is really there.

Daniel made a beautiful box to plant strawberries in, and I cleared up more in the wild flowerbeds with the garage. All in all a nice evening, puting this estate one step closer to a presentable summer look :)

Last weekend Matthias helped trim the fruit trees, and now we're hoping for a lovely harvest :)

I went wild cuting and making space in the flower beds

And Daniel made a box to plant strawberries in out of scrap-wood from work

After all the cutting away, these little ones came out in the light. 

The roses needed some support. Zip-tie to the rescue. 

And here is the old and the new one side by side. Hopefully they'll both be filled with strawberry plants soon! 

Dinosaur cookies

I got myself a pretty speculaas cookie shape for my birthday this year, and yesterday I felt adventurous enough to try it.
It went absolutely wrong, so I ended up using other, yet also awesome, cookie cutters.

The shape is very pretty, but the dough I had was just way too soft, and impossible to get back out!  

So I present to you the solution! 

I must admit, I failed all on the shape, texture and taste, but we do have a cookie-jar full of spicy tea cookies that also have an awesome shape. 

Shortbread with speculaas spices:
240g flour
160g butter or margarine
100g sugar
1 egg
2 tbs speculaas spicemix

Mix everything with a mixer for a few minuttes. At first it looks way too dry, and all of a sudden it combines to a dough. Magical!

Make a cool shape. Speculaas-shape not recommended.

Bake at 180 degree C for about 8 min.

Say cheese!

Or rather, say kwark! Maren has been experimenting with milkfermenting, to see if we can have fun making yoghurt, kwark, skyr and other dairyproducts. We started with finding out where to get raw milk that did not have any of the fat taken out yet. It did not take long to find 20L of that.

We froze half of it to use later, and are experimenting with the rest. One liter was made into an acidic culturemilk to use as a starter for kwark. Since the mix-ratio of this starter with milk is 1:100, we`ll be freezing loads of aliquots for future use. Some hours afer mixing the culturemilk into the milk we`ll be making kwark from, we added 1 drop of liquid rennet per liter and left this at roomtemperature overnight. 

The next day it had thickened, just like all our sources had promised it would. We put the "curds" into a cheesecloth and let it drip for a few hours before we put it in a jar. Our testrun with 3 liters of milk yielded 1 Kg of mild and rich kwark. We`ll enjoy dessert tonight.

Winterweather

After the lovely madness that is christmas, we have now started a new year with some good winter weather. Frost, snow, ice and beauty. I love it. Before the snow came we got some iceskating done on very nice ice close to home.

I am no stranger to iceskating at al, but I am not at all used to hockeyskates. A fun adventure.

The next day the snow had come, and we couldn`t iceskate. Time for a walk and a snowman. Even though it was a few degrees warmer this day, the wind made it feel a lot colder than before. A good day for our heatsuits and scarfs.

I fell down the hill while rolling the snowball that was to be the head.

Going to find some arms.

Since that weekend some more snow came down, so I`ll share some pictures of around the house for my mom, who would like to see them.