Adventures of a Classic Housewife

Fun with a Box

2011-03-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

Mary has been having a lot of fun lately with one of the boxes we shipped to ourselves from the states. I'm tempted to call it her first "play pen" but we don't leave her in it unattended and she doesn't really spend that much time in it.

She loves to practice standing up and the sides of the box make great handles to hold on to and are pretty much the perfect height for her.

They also provide a handy teething toy.

She seems to be feeling her teeth more these days but there's no sign of one popping through yet.

She also loves smaller boxes - see above.

Woodley developed this play area which consists of Mary's favorite box surrounded by 3 chairs and the sliding door out to the porch. Inside the box is a pillow to cushion her if she falls. From here she can play with toys that we set up for her on the chairs or she can look outside. Best of all, the chairs keep her from tipping the box over.

And sometimes I can even manage to get some reading done while I sit next to her. She likes to help me out with the books.

I never would have guessed that we would end up using one of the cardboard boxes even more than some of the things we shipped in it!

What a happy girl in a box!

~ElizabethRose~

Snow Scenes

2011-02-28T13:06:00.000-08:00

This past weekend it snowed a lot and Woodley captured some lovely photos of the snowy scenes around our house. Today it warmed up though - maybe as high as 45 degrees F and a lot of the beautiful snow melted. Since I'm not sure how much longer the snow will stick around for, I thought I'd better post these photos right away while we are still living in snowy Oslo. : )

Above is the view of the soccer stadium from our front corner window. Mary and I sit on the floor by this window for awhile every day and watch the T-bane trains go by.

Above you can see the snow piling up on the picnic table outside on our porch. The birthday banner is still up from my birthday earlier this month. We thought about taking it down, but it makes the living room so much more festive. Mary is enjoying her box.

Here is a house that we look down on from our living room windows.

Yay falling snowflakes!

And below is a view out of my kitchen windows. I love looking at that house. It is so classic and timeless with its white picket fence and blue trim!

Up next is my favorite photo of the snow. So pillowy and soft looking! I think I want to print this one out and put it up on my wall!

And last of all, here are some photos taken on our way home from a fun dinner and games night with Stephan and Liv. I have to admit, when I dreamed about being a mother, I never imagined pushing my baby through the streets of Oslo around midnight, dodging drunk pedestrians (really, just one very drunk pedestrian) in the middle of a heavy snowfall.

Thankfully we made it home safely and Mary was a little angel. (I do hope that one very unsteady man was able to find a taxi or something to take him home - or at least made it across the road. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind to venture out into the crosswalk when we went by, but he didn't seem to be able to make up his mind to actually try it.)

Mary seemed so happy to have finally arrived back at her own comfy bed. She didn't cry a bit as I changed her diaper and put her back to sleep. Instead, she couldn't stop smiling as she settled down to go back to sleep. She seemed to say, "I'm so happy to finally be home. I love you mommy." I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful flexible girl!

Ahhh beautiful snow! I think I'm going to miss it when it all melts, but I'll enjoy not having to bundle Mary up so much to go out and about.

~ElizabethRose~

Woodley's New Favorite Dessert

2011-02-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

Based on the ingredients below, do you have any ideas guesses as to what I might be making?

Chocolate chip cookies! (Or, rather, chocolate piece cookies.) It was interesting going to the grocery store for the first time and trying to make sure I got the right ingredients despite my bad/non-existent Norwegian. It may be fairly obvious, but moving from top to bottom, left to right we have eggs, butter, salt, flour, sugar, brown sugar, chocolate, vanilla, and baking powder. I was trying to find baking soda but it turns out that it isn't actually sold in boxes in most grocery stores here. A new American friend showed me a little packet of what appears to be baking soda. But I didn't have it yet when I took this photo. Very interesting. I wonder what they use to keep their refrigerators smelling fresh. Arm&Hammer has an untapped market. Also, there were no chocolate chips to be had. A bar of chocolate was the closest thing I could find.

Let's take a closer look at that block of butter. What's that I see? Could it be an emoticon? Looks like one to me.

I never thought I'd see a winking smiley on a butter container.

Chocolate chip cookies are one of Woodley's favorite desserts/snacks so I knew I had to find a way to make them here in Oslo and it was the first real baking experimentation I did. I made my first batch last month but haven't gotten a chance to blog about it until now.

I don't have a specific chocolate chip cookie recipe that I use, instead I keep trying new versions always hoping to find the best recipe ever. I think I prefer a cookie that is less crisp and more cakey but gooey is ok. I'm still searching for the perfect one. This time I tried out "My Big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies" by Tyler Florence which I discovered using my Food Network iPad app. Only, I had to use baking powder instead of baking soda (I used a bit less than the called for amount) and I made smaller cookies than the recipe recommended - just 12 cookies for a whole recipe didn't seem like quite enough.

They turned out pretty well but weren't the best cookies I had ever had. The first batch flattened out quite a bit and were crisper than I wanted so I added a bit more flour. Later I discovered that I really do need to measure out the butter by weighing it since dividing the 0.5 kg block of butter into 4 pieces and using them as I would a block of butter in the states means that I consistently add a little bit too much butter. Hence, the need for more flour. But, I do have a handy scale and I have worked out that a Tablespoon of butter should be 0.5 once so it is pretty easy to get the right amount now. I think my recipes are turning out better since I made that change.

Above you can see the cookies on the "cookie sheet" which is actually an oven rack. When we first got here one of my "must find" items that didn't appear to have come with our furnished rental house was a cookie sheet. We searched at Ikea, the local grocery store, and then another cooking store but there were no cookie sheets to be had. I mentioned this to our friend Stephan and he told me that over here people use their oven racks as baking sheets. Amazing! I had never thought to try that, although I did wonder why the oven racks were solid sheets of metal. So I guess that's why they don't sell cookie sheets here. It felt quite odd to pull out an oven rack, grease it, and plop cookie dough down onto it but the oven racks worked surprisingly well as baking sheets. I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised by that since that's what they were designed to do. And it is nice not having to store separate baking sheets.

For Valentine's Day I thought about baking Woodley a heart shaped cake but since I didn't have a cake pan I decided to fall back on something I already knew worked - the chocolate chip cookies. To make them a bit more special I decided to turn them into ice cream sandwiches, something I had never tried before. I looked up some directions online and was surprised by how easy it was. I simply put a piece of cling wrap in a bowl, put a cookie on top, added some soft ice cream, topped it off with one more cookie which I smooshed down a bit, and then pulled up the cling wrap to cover the ice cream sandwich. I smoothed it down around the sides and did a bit of sculpting to give it a smoother look before tossing it into the freezer. A few hours later we had a gorgeous dessert which reminded us of the Moowiches we always get at The Northwest Washington Fair.

Woodley was in heaven and has declared that this is his new favorite dessert and that I must always have homemade moowiches in the freezer from now on. I haven't quite managed that, but I am looking forward to making some more - maybe some tiny ones would be good. The only problem now is the price of Häagen-Dazs here in Norway. I had bought some as a special treat for Valentine's Day without realizing how expensive it was. After I got home and investigated the receipt I was shocked to find out it costs, gulp, about $12 usd for one pint! So, no more Häagen-Dazs for us. We'll have to test out the local variety of ice cream.

~ElizabethRose~

Learning to Eat is a Messy Business

2011-02-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

One of my new least favorite chores is cleaning up Mary's splat mat after she is done "eating" a meal. At this point she's still mostly just playing with the food and enjoying learning about the different flavors and textures. Since not much is making it into her a lot of her meal ends up on the floor. I love the mat, but I don't much enjoy wiping it clean after every meal. I do feel like a good old-fashioned housewife as I bend on hands and knees scrubbing at the floor though. :)

Sometimes I'm tempted not to offer her any food at a particular meal because I'm not looking forward to the clean up but she enjoys it so much and is so sad if she doesn't get to sit up with us. And I'm really not hard to convince when she pulls out that adorable lower lip. I can't seem to find a good example of the exact face I'm thinking of, but this one is fairly close:

Dinner Tonight:
Reindeer Burgers - (Mary's first taste of a burger, I'm now wondering what she will think at Christmas time a few years from now after she learns to love eating reindeer here in Norway. It's a fairly common meat here and I believe it is farmed in northern Norway. Sadly, the burgers also had some beef and pork mixed in so Woodley wouldn't eat them)
Leftover Chicken - for Woodley
Broccoli with olive oil and white wine vinegar
Bread with butter and jam
Leftover Rice
Green Salad with slices of Brown Norwegian Cheese on the side

I need to re-charge the iPad so I can go back to browsing my favorite cooking websites when Mary wakes up in the night. I've found that's the best way to find new recipes to try and helps make the 5 to 7 nightly wakings much more endurable. Thankfully she has started sleeping for some 2 - 3 hour stretches. I'm really hoping they increase!

~ElizabethRose~

Biggest. Twix. Ever.

2011-02-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

Woodley returned from the electronics shop the other day with the biggest package of Twix I had ever seen! Unfortunately, it's not one gigantic Twix, instead there are 10 individually wrapped pairs, so 20 bars altogether. I'm guessing these will last less than a week. Woodley really loves his Twix and I think these ones have less sugar than the American version so I'm enjoying them too - I don't like super sweet things these days. Yum!

Dinner Tonight:
Rotisserie Chicken (cheating a bit, but super easy)
Mashed Yams
Steamed Broccoli with olive oil and lemon juice
Basmati Rice
Green Salad
Mixed Berry Pie (Yum!)

~ElizabethRose~

(Woodley showed me how to find the tilde!)

Summer Cars?

2011-02-20T12:56:00.000-08:00

On our outing today we noticed several cars that we assumed must be used mainly in the summer months. Or at least they haven't been used for a few weeks now and the owners have some serious digging to do.

And the worst by far...

I wonder if they will just wait for the snow to melt or if they will try to dig out their cars before April or May. Personally, I think that if I had a car I'd definitely want to use it in the cold snowy weather when I don't enjoy walking around outside as much.

Hmmmm. I'm using our new Norwegian keyboard which allows me to make special Norwegian letters, but it's hard to find some of the normal American keys. Perhaps my new signature will be:

±ElizabethRose±

(but I'm not sure I like how that looks)

Saturday Moment

2011-02-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

Since I'd like to blog more regularly but don't have much spare time, I thought I would at least try to post a photo of a favorite moment from each day and list what I cooked for dinner/plan to cook for dinner. That is, if I don't have time to do a longer entry on a specific topic.

So here goes, my favorite moment of today was watching Mary learn how to eat berry pie filling with her crepes for brunch. Let's just say she headed off to the bath directly after brunch and Woodley couldn't bare to look at her for much of the meal.

In other news, we went on a family shopping expedition today hoping to find a bike pump to fill up the air in Mary's stroller tires - no luck there. Apparently the tires require the type of pump that is used to fill up car tires. What we did find was the following:

Looks a lot like an iPhone! But instead, it is kitchen magnets. They don't really go with my vintage blue/green kitchen theme but I've been longing to put some photos up on our refrigerator and these were handy and amusing.

On the menu for dinner tonight:
Chicken Enchiladas - we'll see how those turn out. They are in the oven now but had to be made with "taco sauce" aka salsa instead of enchilada sauce, strange reconstituted corn that was soaked in water and wrapped in plastic, Italian canned tomatoes with basil, cheddar cheese, flour tortillas and taco seasoning since that's all Woodley could find for me at the store. Poor guy, he searched forever to find just what I had asked for. Interestingly, a company called TexMex appears to have taken over the Mexican food product market here. This doesn't inspire much confidence in the quality of the Mexican food I'll try to make... we'll see.
Refried Beans
Basmati Rice - the only kind I had in the kitchen
Green Salad
Sliced Tomatoes

Wishing you a wonderful Saturday!

~ElizabethRose~

Tran

2011-02-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my precious baby girl turned 6 months old! Yes, 6 months... Where did all of those days and nights go? It seems like it was only yesterday I held her for the first time and marveled at the fact that, after dreaming about it all my life, I was finally a mommy. And now it seems to be going by so quickly!

She's just so grown up now! And so adorable!

So today we went to our local Health Station to meet with the friendly Health Sister (nurse) to find out about Mary's vaccines and to check her weight and height. She is now 16 lbs. 13 oz. and 26.75 inches tall!

It turns out it will be harder than we expected to continue on with our planned schedule of vaccines because they use different versions over here. I think we will need to try to order the continuation of the series she has already started.

In addition to talking about vaccines and Mary's general developmental milestones (she's sitting like a pro now!) The Health Sister gave me a bottle of Tran, or cod liver oil as it is know in English.

(According to Google Translate the message on the bottle says, "To help you stay healthy" and "Is important for optimal development.")

All Norwegian mommies give their babies a spoonful every evening so the Health Station provides bottles for free if you need them. My mother fed me cod liver oil as a child and I'm pretty healthy today so it seems like a good idea to me. Plus, with the lack of sunlight here I'm sure Mary could use some extra Vitamin D. I took a spoonful today to try it out and memories of my childhood came flooding back... not necessarily the most positive ones though. It did taste fishier than I remembered.

Unfortunately Mary fell asleep tonight before I remembered to give her her first spoonful of Tran. She seems to enjoy eating fish so hopefully this will be viewed as a tasty addition to her daily ration. We'll try it tomorrow.

I love this image on the front of the bottle. It appears the child is asking the fish to please give it some delicious liver oil! Yum!

I'll have to report back about Mary's response to her first taste!

~ElizabethRose~

The Cutest Shoes Ever!

2011-02-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

Following my previous post, I wanted to share photos of my new favorite shoes! They are my super special birthday shoes that Woodley bought for me at my most favorite clothing store in Oslo.

The shop is called Noa Noa and is a Danish brand that isn't available in the states. I discovered Noa Noa after a day of wandering around the Karls Johans Gate shopping district in downtown Oslo back in December of 2009. Woodley was busy checking out the PhD program so I had the day to myself and I was on a mission to find the perfect brown dress to wear as the maid of honor at my best friend Nicola's wedding which was to take place right after we got home. I spent several days scouring all of the shops I could walk to from our hotel in Oslo searching for brown dresses. I found 2 total and neither of them were very nice. Apparently, brown wasn't in style in Oslo that winter (I ended up ordering several brown dresses online and eventually settled on one from J. Crew that worked very well - the others all got returned).

But, what I did discover after my days of shopping was Noa Noa! As soon as I walked in the door I knew I had found my new favorite clothing store - a sweet, whimsical mix of fun colors with a vintage flair.

After so much disappointment in the brown dress department I felt I really ought to pick out a couple of things I loved to take home with me - to make me feel better about not finding a brown dress of course. : ) It turned out to be pretty easy to find things I loved there and I came away with several more skirts than I should have - but I figured, who knew when I would be back to Norway!

Three weeks later, back in California, I found out I was pregnant... So, I only got to wear my lovely new skirts for a few months before I got too big to wear them. And now I wonder if my tummy will ever be small enough to squeeze back into them. (Silly baggy post-baby skin!) But I guess that means I'll have an excuse to buy some more lovely Noa Noa skirts since we are back in Oslo with easy access to them!

But back to the shoes! They are such a lovely color. I think this mint green is currently my favorite color. It is the theme shade of my kitchen back in Bellingham - well, this green as well as a clear sky blue and a light grass green. I didn't expect to find such cute, old-fashioned looking shoes in it though!

In truth, they aren't a very practical pair of shoes for me - although they are super comfortable. It will be several months before I can think of retiring my winter snow boots and I don't want to wear them to much around the house because I'm usually carrying Mary and going up and down the stairs with her scares me enough as it is, without adding in 2 inch heels. Sigh... At least I can look at them and try them on for a few minutes every few days around the kitchen.

Wait... But what's that you ask? Why do they look scuffed already if you haven't even been able to wear them out of the house? Actually, they come that way. I was shocked when the helpful lady at the store told me that the shoes come pre-scuffed and that the pair I was trying on weren't just dirty because they were the sample that everyone had tried on.

Apparently some designer thought it would be a great idea to pre-scuff them so that they look truly vintage. Hmmmm... I think I'd rather do my own scuffing. I mean, shoes get beat up enough as it is - at least mine do. I almost didn't buy them because of the scuffs, but the color won me over. I wasn't sure if I'd ever find such cute vintagey shoes in this shade again. It did remind Woodley and me of an article we read a few years ago about the rage for worn out jeans. Apparently some company sold very expensive jeans that were previously used by "real cowboys" from somewhere in the southwest. They were reported to be very trendy. I never thought pre-worn out jeans were a good idea and I'm not a fan of the new pre-scuffed shoes look - designers, please take note! : ) But you can't deny, they are super super cute!

~ElizabethRose~

The Cutest Cupcake Liners Ever!

2011-02-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week Mary and I went on a fun shopping trip in downtown Oslo. It was our first time traveling there by ourselves (without Woodley's guidance) so I was a little bit nervous but we were able to find our way there and back without any trouble. Did I mention I love, love, love the T-bane system? (Oslo's subway) Riding it reminds me of my first two years of college when I lived in Boston and rode the T quite often. Although back then it cost just $1 for a fare token and here it costs $4.40 per ticket (based on the type of tickets we have been buying). But then, everything is much more expensive here...

Anyhow, on our outing Mary and I visited a fun housewares shop that was full of all sorts of fun useful items for the home. I found some pink and purple dish towels and dishcloths (Woodley wasn't there to insist that I get blue or green so I went for the girliest colors, I'm still not entirely sure what came over me, but I have to admit, I love them!) I also found what I believe are the most adorable cupcake/muffin liners ever! Actually, I think I'll have to use them for some very special cupcakes, I think they might be wasted on simple muffins. What do you think?

I loved them as soon as I saw them and I knew they would be coming home with me, despite the fact that I don't yet have a muffin tin here in Oslo. (Back at home I believe I have at least 6 muffin tins in 4 different sizes, but the topic of my overabundance of kitchen gadgets back at home is something for another day...)

I have my special cupcake liners sitting on my kitchen counter and they make me smile every time I look at them. I'm now dreaming about what would be an appropriate occasion to break them open and use them. Perhaps Mary's 1st birthday. Maybe I'll have to go back and buy another set because I enjoy looking at them so much that I'm not sure I could bear to use them up!

I guess I do have these photos now though. : )

~ElizabethRose~

Birthday Tulips

2011-02-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

My birthday was last Thursday, February 10th and I turned 28. Hmmm I suppose it's time to update my blog bio. Mary and I had a nice quiet day at home while Woodley was off at the office. Remembering back to a delicious birthday dinner my mother made me years and years ago, I decided to make a special dinner of chicken stew with biscuits. I didn't get around to taking any photos of the food but it turned out really well and I'll definitely be making that recipe again. Dinner was extra special because Woodley brought home a big beautiful chocolate cake!

Woodley's advisor Stephan and his wife and daughter (Liv and Tordis) joined us for the birthday dinner and brought along a beautiful bunch of pale purple tulips that they gave me as a birthday present. I love, love, love tulips and this was a particularly beautiful bunch. They are the perfect spring flower but I'm not able to grow very many of them back at home due to the malicious deer who consider tulips a delicacy. Thankfully I don't have to worry about the deer here.

Ahhh lovely tulips! Perhaps Spring will come someday. However, for now our yard looks like this:

~ElizabethRose~

More Photos of Our House

2011-02-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

Finally, here are some more pictures from around our house! This is our house from the outside. Mary is sitting in her stroller by the front steps (although it is hard to see her). We don't actually use the garage. The windows in the front left corner look into the kitchen. Although it looks like it is only one story from this view, the house is built onto the side of a hill and is actually three stories.

This is our entry way - looking back towards the door. There is a handy closet to hang our winter gear and a chair to sit in and take off our shoes. Mary's car seat is by the window but it doesn't get too much use these days since we don't have a car.

When you walk in the front hallway you come to the railing for the stairs and off to the left you can look into the dining area. (Sorry the photo is so blurry, I took it while holding Mary and it was hard to keep my arm still.) If you walk towards the dining room, the kitchen will be off to your left and the living room to the right.

Here's the kitchen, along with my favorite little helper!

And the living room. The black thing on the right side of the photo is a fireplace. It has wood but we haven't actually gotten around to trying it out yet. The window on the left is actually part of a big sliding door that goes out onto a porch/deck overlooking the back yard.

Here's a (sadly blurry) photo of the deck. I think it will be really fun to play on the slide and swingset with Mary when the weather gets better!

We've been able to see some very lovely sunsets from the porch and it is so nice to have the evening sun. Sunsets these days have been around 4pm so we appreciate getting as much light as we can.

Here you can see a little bit of our view looking out towards the soccer stadium. We walk in that direction to go to the larger of our two local grocery stores.

And last but not least, here is another shot of our beautiful piano! Woodley plays it some each day and it is so nice to be able to have family music times.

Sadly we'll only be able to rent this house until the end of June when the owners return from their sabbatical year abroad. We really love this neighborhood though so hopefully we'll be able to find another rental close by.

I hope you've enjoyed this quick tour around our house. I'll have to take some photos of the downstiars area soon so that I can take you down there as well. And now, I'd better do some cleaning before Mary wakes up from her nap!

~ElizabethRose~

OMO? Oh no!

2011-02-11T01:49:00.000-08:00

When we first arrived at our new house I was a little wary about using the new appliances because I wasn't sure exactly how they worked and I didn't want to hurt them. However, after a few days I finally decided that it really was time for me to try out the dishwasher. I looked under the kitchen sink (next to the dishwasher) and located two packages of soap tablets. I wasn't sure which one to use so I waited another day before I finally got up the courage to try one. I looked at both of the packages but couldn't decide which was best. One had a picture of a shiny glass but I thought that it looked more like a rinsing agent (our dishwasher has two little compartments for soap) so I figured that that one probably wasn't necessary.

The other package (OMO) had packets containing two soap tablets each, one of which was opened and partially used. I figured that was probably the best type one to try. I pulled out the other tablet and tried to stick it into the soap compartment in our dishwasher. It didn't quite fit so I crumbled it up a bit and managed to close the little door over it. I closed up the dishwasher and started it running.

But then I looked back at the box of soap and it hit me... Maybe that wasn't actually dishwashing detergent? Why didn't the soap tablet fit into the compartment? Why does it say "color" on the front of the box? After thinking about it a bit, I took the box over to Woodley and had him translate the Norwegian using Google Translate (I didn't quite have the heart to do it myself). All too soon it became clear that I was washing our dishes with laundry detergent! Oh no!!

Woodley then spent the next half hour looking up all of the horrible things that can happen if you use laundry detergent in your dishwasher - it can void your dishwasher's warranty, you can end up with soap suds all over the house, it can break the seals on the dishwasher, it can release volatile chemicals into the air... Since the dishwasher still had over an hour to go we sat around tensly and watched for signs of bubbles.

Thankfuly, none appeared and the worst thing that seemed to happen was that it seemed strange to smell something like laundry detergent coming out of the dishwasher. The dishes appeared clean but I washed them again using a tablet from the other box that Woodley determined was in fact dishwashing detergent.

It has been a couple of weeks now and the dishwasher is still going strong. (Yay!) The smell has now disappeared as well. I still wonder how I could have been so silly as to not realize that the OMO box was laundry detergent. I guess I'll just have to blame the jetlag, general lack of sleep, and the fact that I had never seen laundry detergent in tablet form. Oh yes, and the fact that the box was found under the kitchen sink instead of downstairs in the laundry room! I mean, really, who stores laundry detergent in the kitchen and not the laundry room? I returned the box to the laundry room but I can't bring myself to use it. The smell of OMO makes me feel a little sick now.

I'm just so glad that the dishwasher is ok!

~ElizabethRose~

What's that on my sandwich?

2011-02-03T02:51:00.000-08:00

The other day, while I was out shopping with Mary, I picked up a delicious looking chicken sandwich one of our local bakeries. When I bit into it, noticed and then tasted something different that I didn't recognize. When I opened it up I discovered...

A slice of star fruit! Very interesting. I had never thought of putting star fruit on a sandwich before. I've eaten them a few times in fruit salads but aside from that I wasn't aware of other applications for them. I think it worked pretty well on the sandwich. The crisp texture and slight acidity are reminiscent of a pickle although not as sharp. If I can find one in the grocery stores here maybe I'll have to slip a slice into Woodley's lunch sandwich someday and see what he thinks of it!

~ElizabethRose~

Åpent Bakeri

2011-02-03T02:42:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping to take some pictures of our new neighborhood to post soon but so far it has been hard to carry the camera when we have gone out with Mary. Until I get around to that, I thought I would post some photos from one of our local hangouts, Åpent Bakeri. We are lucky to have one of these delicious bakeries just a few minutes walk from our house.

The first three photos here are actually from a different Åpent Bakeri which is located closer to downtown Oslo. We took them when we were visiting Norway in December of '09 but they do a nice job of showing off the delicious pastries and beverages.

Mmmmmm varm sjokolade! (hot chocolate)

Here's a photo of our local Åpent Bakeri. We order at the close end of the counter and pick up drinks down at the far end. There is a great assortment of pastries, bread, hot drinks, and fresh orange juice. There is also a little room at the back with a wood stove and some tables to eat at. It is very cozy and is often quite busy.

At the end of the counter there is always a big bowl of butter packets along with another bowl of strawberry or raspberry jam. When you get a roll you can grab a plate and dish yourself up some tasty butter and jam to spread on it.

Delicious! Below you can see a bit of our local square. This photo was also taken in December of '09 so there isn't any snow on the ground. Right now there is definitely snow everywhere though.

And to finish off, here's a current photo. I like to walk with Mary over to the bakery to pick up a fresh loaf of bread every few days. Thankfully most everyone in Norway speaks perfect English so it is very easy to go shopping. :)

~ElizabethRose~

The Laundry Room

2011-01-28T01:22:00.000-08:00

As we continue the tour around our new house, let me welcome you to our small laundry room which is downstairs. Although it is quite tiny, it is able to fit a washer, dryer, sink, floor drain and a storage area.

As a housewife with a small baby, the kitchen, laundry room, and bathrooms are probably the most important areas of the house to me. We are using cloth diapers on Mary so I was excited and a bit nervous to try out our new laundry machine.

As you can see, I did mange to get the laundry machine to work and I think I have sort of figured out the programs. I was unable to find a manual for it, although I did look online in addition to the cabinets around the house.

One thing that surprised me about cloth diapering was how passionate cloth diaper users are about various cleaning methods. If you look online, there are many different suggestions about the best detergent to use, the right temperature, the preferred cycle, which machines work well, how to add more water to make sure your diapers get fully rinsed... it goes on and on.

My method at home was to do a cold water wash with detergent to get the stains out and then to do a hot water wash with non-chlorine bleach to sanitize. After that I would run them through one more time with vinegar as a fabric softener (all I really needed was a rinse and spin cycle but I couldn't figure out how to get my washer to do that). Here I've opted out of the vinegar rinse cycle and instead stick with my original two. So far Mary hasn't had any rashes and the diapers look very clean when they come out. Yay!

Ok, that was probably way more than you wanted to know about washing diapers! Moving on to the dryer...

I was able to find a manual for the dryer in one of the kitchen cabinets and, as I flipped through it, I was surprised to note how charming our dryer is.

She appears to have quite a sweet disposition along with some fairly dreamy eyes. Unfortunately, she doesn't actually work very well. My guess is that she is a bit past her prime. Although I was able to get her to turn on and run some cycles, the diapers come out just about as damp as when they went in. Even after 2 hours of drying time.

And I had such high hopes for her!

So now I have resorted to air drying the cloth diapers as well as the rest of our clothes. Thank goodness there are lots of drying racks!

One other interesting thing about the laundry room is that there is a big drain on the floor (similar to one you might find in a restaurant kitchen in the states). This allows the water to drain out to the sewer in case there is ever a bad leak. Norwegians are very concerned about flooding and these big floor drains can also be found in the bathroom. It seems like a very good idea to me! I'll post pictures of the bathroom one a little later.

And now I'd better go hang up some laundry while Mary is asleep!

~ElizabethRose~

Bouquets in My Kitchen

2011-01-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

The other day when we went to the local grocery store Woodley surprised me with a lovely bouquet of roses on our way out! He said he was proud of me for doing such a good job transitioning over to life in Oslo. They are so lovely and have been brightening up our dining room table for several days already.

On a separate trip to the smaller grocery in our neighborhood I picked up some lettuce for our sandwiches and salads. I was surprised to find that the lettuce came with it's own little pot of soil and was actually still alive! It is so cute and reminds me of a bouquet as well. After watering it and placing it in the windowsill it feels almost like we have a little garden.

I noticed that some of the side leaves had already started to wilt so I'm guessing this type of lettuce really needs to stay in the soil as long as possible to stay fresh and crisp. How smart for them to sell it that way! It reminded me of eating fresh lettuce from my friend Tory's garden last summer. Sadly it's not a very big head of lettuce so I think it's life on my windowsill will only last for a few days. It is so nice to be able to pluck leaves off of it though.

My New Kitchen

2011-01-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

As we are starting to get settled into our new house I thought I would post pictures of it. So far I've only managed to capture decent photos of the kitchen. It has a very nice layout and so far I've really enjoyed cooking in it. (I've now made 3 dinners!) Moving from left to right we have a refrigerator, dishwasher, sink, range, and microwave. I love the hardwood floors but we added the green mat for Mary to play on (on loan from Woodley's advisor). It is very nice and cushy and works perfectly since she is now mastering the fine art of balancing while sitting up.

I especially like the refrigerator. It is very tall and narrow with lots of short shelves. I think it would be possible to store quite a bit of food in it, although I don't think I'd be able to reach anything on the back of the top shelves.

The freezer also has a great design. I love that it is on the bottom and that it has four drawers which makes it really easy to organize the frozen food.

One of the things our pre-furnished kitchen is missing though is dish towels. We've looked for them at two different grocery stores and so far haven't been able to find any, although we have purchased several things that we thought might work. As you can see below, we have quite a collection of "klut" or cloths. The one on the bottom was the first one we purchased. It turns out it is not very absorbent and is actually supposed to be used for cleaning the floor. We also have "universalklut" (multipurpose cloths), "parkettklut" (wooden cloths), and "fonsterduk" (which I can't find a translation for). Most of them appear to be designed to clean wooden floors (a good thing to have since we have a lot of wooden floors) and none of them are at all absorbent or good for use as dish towels.

I think we'll now give up on trying to find kitchen towels at the grocery stores and we'll try Ikea next weekend. Mary really enjoyed playing with the cloths so at least they were good for something.

Today I put Mary in the little jacket/cardigan that I sewed for her while I was pregnant. It fits her perfectly and she looks so adorable in it! It was the only girl item I managed to finish sewing so I'm glad I got around to putting her in it before she outgrew it.

It might be even better if I get around to adding a button to fasten it in the front.

And to finish up, a picture of one of our new favorite evening activities - skyping with friends and family back home!

And now I'm heading to bed for what I hope will be a more peaceful night than last night was. Yesterday Mary slept pretty well from 6 pm to midnight (only waking up every 2 hours) and then woke up every 30 to 60 minutes from midnight through 5:45 am when we finally gave up trying to get her back to sleep. Where oh where did the days go when she slept straight for 6 hours at a stretch?! Is it teething? The new location? The time change? We are dedicatedly reading our "No Cry Sleep Solution" book and dreaming of longer stretches of sleep. Perhaps tonight will be the night! (I can always hope...)

~ElizabethRose~

Baby Mary

2011-01-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

It's evening again here in Oslo and, after a long day out and about in the city, both Mary and Woodley have crashed early (7pm). We did manage to make it to church and enjoyed the English service very much. After that we spent the rest of the afternoon visiting with Woodley's advisor and his family. It was a wonderful snowy day and I just wish I had brought my camera along with me.

Since I don't have any photos from today to share, I thought I would post a few of my favorite photos of Mary. Below is a brief recap of our past five months with her.

Here I am around the middle of August, just 2 days before Mary was born. She arrived 10 days early so when this photo was taken I had no idea that my pregnancy would be over so soon. I thought I had weeks and weeks left to go. Judging from how large I was, it's probably a good thing she made an early appearance.

The day before Mary was born was the first day of the Northwest Washington Fair. All through my pregnancy I planned to go to the fair and I'm so glad we fit it in before Mary arrived. Here I am less than 24 hours before she was born at the demolition derby! It was hot, hot, hot and I was pretty uncomfortable. I actually started timing contractions during the derby but since they were light I don't consider my labor to have really started until around 10:30 that evening. Looking back at the photos now, it's hard to believe how big I was!

Hooray! After 11 hours of labor Mary was born at our home in Washington. It all went just perfectly and although labor was super painful, I couldn't have had a more wonderful birth experience. I was so thrilled when I found out she was a girl! Here's one of our first family shots.

Mary Elizabeth was born at 9:26 am on August 17th, 2010. She was 19.5 inches long and weighed 7 pounds exactly.

About a month old

1.5 Months

2 Months

During her second month she really started smiling and we got some adorable photos!

Turning 3 months old

Mary's First Thanksgiving

Enjoying the sunshine in California over Christmas (4 months)

Waving to her fans. :)

Wondering at the fish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on New Years Eve

Sporting her fuzzy hat that the Norwegian mama commented on a few days ago. It's so perfect for the weather here!

Tired girl

Expert thumb sucker

Back at home in Washington and almost 5 months old. She loves standing up these days!

She is such a delight and she seems to get cuter each day. Being a parent really is a wonderfully fun job despite all the hard work. :)

~ElizabethRose~

Go' Morgen

2011-01-22T08:04:00.000-08:00

It's now our third full day in Oslo and I can't say we've made much progress towards adjusting to the time change. We've decided on a new bedtime routine for Mary and we put it into place each evening - bath, p.j.s, goodnight songs, nursing, sleep - but she's still awake much of the night and it is oh so tempting to sleep in with her in the morning (when her body is finally really ready to sleep). Yesterday we managed to get up by 11:30 but today she and I slept in until 2:30pm. Mary has been waking up every 1 to 2 hours during the night for the past several weeks and since she has been sleeping for longer stretches (2 to 3 hours) in the mornings since we have arrived, I just can't pass up the opportunity to get a bit more sleep.

We do keep trying to get up earlier though. Each morning around 7am we gather at our new dining room table to eat our breakfast of Go' Morgen together. Go' Morgen is a delicious yogurt and muesli combo available in Norway. It comes with it's own tiny plastic spoon and a hearty mix of muesli.

After peeling off the plastic cover and assembling the spoon you bend the container along the perforated line to dump the muesli into the yogurt. Delicious! This morning I had the melon and passionfruit flavor which was quite good.

I contemplated waiting until daylight to get photos of the Go' Morgen with better lighting but I figured that that would be much less authentic. These days the sun rises around 9 am (I have yet to be awake at that hour) and sets at 4 pm. So our 7 am Go' Morgen fests always take place with artificial lighting.

Tomorrow will be our first Sunday in Oslo and we are excited to visit The American Lutheran Church of Oslo. To get there we will need to walk a bit and then take the T-Banen (Oslo's metro service) and then walk some more. Thankfully the service starts at 11 am so we won't have to wake up too early. God has been so good to us on our travels and everything has gone much more smoothly than we anticipated. It will be exciting to experience a church service in a new country with believers from around the world.

Hello from Oslo!

2011-01-20T07:42:00.000-08:00

Hello! I guess I haven't posted for quite awhile and quite a bit has happened to our family since my last posting. The biggest events are that we had our baby last August. A girl! We named her Mary Elizabeth and she is now 5 months old. And the other is that we moved to Norway yesterday. My husband will be a student at the university in Oslo and Mary and I will be staying home and learning about Norwegian culture (and hopefully how to knit really well).

Above is a picture of the northern lights that we saw from the airplane on our way to Oslo. It was my first time seeing the northern lights despite having gone to Alaska to visit my grandparents for Christmas many times. Thankfully our trip to Norway went very well and Mary did a great job. We flew from Seattle to Iceland (7 hour flight) and Iceland to Norway (2.5 hour flight).

Unfortunately I'm having a bit of trouble posting photos so I'll have to look into that. As soon as I get it figured out I'll post a photo of Mary.

We didn't do much besides sleep today but since it was our first full day in Oslo we didn't want to push ourselves too much. When we finally got up around 2pm, we bundled up and walked down to the local grocery store where we picked up some essentials. I was excited to see a good selection of vegetables in the small produce department (including shallots and leeks). When we came out of the shop a Norwegian mother with a small baby stopped us a told us how much she liked Mary's winter hat and asked where we got it. We had to tell her it was from Gap in the U.S. I was pretty excited that Mary's winter fashions were approved of.

I'm happy to be back and hope to post a bit more frequently than once every 6 months. :)

~ElizabethRose~

Knitting for the Sweaglet

2010-07-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

When I found out we were expecting, I decided it was high time I improved my knitting skills. There's just nothing like knitting for a baby and I figured baby clothes would go much faster than the blanket I had been working on for the past few months.

I browsed a bit on Amazon and purchased a few baby knitting books with cute designs. One of my favorite, which I am working out of now is pictured above, "Vintage Baby Knits." It covers a variety of patterns from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Below is the one I am currently working on.

It is taking me longer than I expected, but that could be because I hardly ever pick it up. However, I'm just about finished with the main part of the body and I'm ready to start shaping the arm holes. I think the arms and hood will go faster because they are much smaller than the part I have been working on so far. With just under 2 months until the Sweaglet's due date, I'm not sure I'll finish it in time. At least it's not a newborn pattern (I think it should fit a 3 to 6 month old), so I'll be able to continue working on it after the baby comes (if I have any spare time!). I'm glad I've already finished a little hat and a very cute pair of booties.

Here's what I've accomplished so far. The color is actually a pale green although it looks rather gray here. I think I might need to sign up for another lesson from the local knitting store so that I can figure out how to do the rest of it. :)

~ElizabethRose~

Hello! Hello!

2010-03-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

I'm back! And hopefully this time I'll be able to keep up with some daily posting. :) My goodness, we have experienced a lot of changes in our family since I last posted. First off, we're expecting a little bundle of joy to join us late this summer. We found out right around New Years and have been adjusting to the news ever since. A couple of weeks ago the baby was around the size of a navel orange which prompted this photo:

At the end of February we packed up all of our belongings, said goodbye to our house in Los Gatos, and moved up to our lovely Bellingham house. It was a long drive in a very large U-Haul.

When we arrived, our ornamental plum trees were blooming. Woodley took this lovely picture of one of the blossoms.

I was also thrilled to discover that many of the daffodils I had planted last fall were up and blooming. My favorites so far are the adorable Snipe tulips. They have been putting on a great display for a few weeks now and are still going strong.

In addition to watching the garden and my ever expanding waistline, we've been trying to get a lot of work done around the house. Woodley installed an amazing pot rack recently:

He also found us a new portable dishwasher so that I wouldn't have to spend so much time at the kitchen sink. Trying to figure out how to fit it into the kitchen prompted us to completely rearrange everything and, ultimately, to banish the bulky refrigerator to the entryway. There's a nice spot for it there and it isn't too out of the way. The updated kitchen is so much roomier and there is a lot more counter space. Yay!

Our other big project has been fixing up our bedroom. My mother sewed us a beautiful quilt for a wedding present that we want to use on our bed. It is navy blue and portrays the night sky and the milky way as it appeared on the night of our wedding. She designed it all herself and it is amazing! Sadly I don't have a picture of it yet because she is still finishing up the embroidery work (adding more stars!).

I was at a bit of a loss for awhile as to what color scheme would go best with a navy bedspread. I've always had lighter colored duvet covers in the past. We had also been planning to paint the room some shade of green and I wasn't sure how well that would work with the navy. However, after thinking about it a bit we settled on a color scheme of navy, kelly green, and white. I've seen several room designs online in those colors and they always look very sophisticated. The color combination reminds me of summer days by the ocean. Our first task was to pick out the perfect shade of green for the walls:

We tried out quite a few and we finally settled on the shade that is on the far left in the photo below. It was a mixture that Woodley made from several of the other paint colors we had tried out.

Since I'm not allowed to help with the painting, I've been working on organizing the house and sewing baby clothes. The organizing is a bit overwhelming, but the baby clothes are so much fun!

I've also been trying to clean the house since much of it desperately needs it. I'm not sure if it was a nesting instinct that made me do it, but I spent a couple of hours today washing all of the walls in our small bathroom. They appeared to be growing a bit of fuzzy mildew and I just couldn't stand it anymore. Now they are shiny clean! Yay! I also mopped all of the hard floors in the house. They were so dirty! I am so glad that job is done for a couple of weeks!

My clean but still pink bathroom.

~ElizabethRose~

Catching Up - Venice Day 1: November 27, 2009

2010-01-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

Venice!

We arrived in Venice the night of the 27th and were quite hungry after our long train ride. However, our first order of business was to find our hotel and drop off our luggage. Thankfully, our hotel was especially easy to find since it was located directly across the grand canal from the train station and there was a bridge very nearby.

After our experience with the first hotel in Rome, we were a bit nervous about our Venice hotel which Woodley had also found online. However, we were pleasantly surprised in every way possible! The room was lovely, the staff was very helpful, the breakfast was decent and it didn't smell a bit! Here are some photos of our room:

The view from the door.

The desk.

The bed.

The restroom.

After admiring the room and unpacking a bit, we headed out to find dinner and to see Venice by dark. We ended up eating at a restaurant recommended by the hotel. It wasn't our favorite place, due to the loud music, but the seafood risotto was very good and we were thankful to finally be fed.

After dinner, we continued our walk towards St. Marco's Square which Woodley was eager to locate and show me. The signs around Venice were sometimes quite odd (check out the signs on the left and right):

Before we left Venice we even saw t-shirts for sale with two signs on top of each other giving directions to the same place but directing you in opposite ways so I suppose the locals find it amusing as well.

One of my favorite things about waking around Venice was the beautiful shop windows which often had been simply stuffed full of glittering merchandise. It was often quite impressive how much could be fit into one shop window.

After many twists and turns through all sorts of narrow windy streets and alleys we finally made it to St. Marco's Square. Since it was late, there wasn't too much going on and it felt quite peaceful.

On the way back to our hotel we went by a little restaurant which opened out onto one of the canals and looked very romantic.

After my first walk around Venice I decided that I liked it quite a bit and I was excited to discover more in the days to come! I especially enjoyed the absence of motor vehicles and exhaust!

~ElizabethRose~

Catching Up - Tuscany Day 4: November 27, 2009

2010-01-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

Our last morning in Tuscany dawned damp and foggy. It was hard to believe that the evening before we could see for miles along the crests of the hills below us. Now it was hard even to see the first row of trees below the house. The view out of our bedroom window was still gorgeous though!

After we packed up our suitcases, I ran around the house one last time to capture a few more photos. The rustic house looked even more cozy against the foggy backdrop.

All too soon it was time to pack into the car and head to the train station in Arezzo. We said a sad goodbye to the house and the beautiful scenery and hopped in the car.

The ride down the dirt road into town was just as bumpy as usual but we held on tight and were quite thankful that this would be our last big shake for the trip.

Woodley's parents had to be at a meeting in Rome in the afternoon so they dropped us off at the train station about an hour and a half before our train was to leave. We found our tickets, took a glance around the station, and found an empty bench on which to wait. The bench was located in the main station but was next to an open door so it was quite cold. We were a little hungry but since we didn't see any restaurants, we made do with cookies from the magazine salesman.

When our train's platform was finally announced, I decided it was time to find the ladies room before heading out to the platform to board our train. On my way, I was shocked to see a door to what looked like a cafe with a variety of food options and plenty of tables around the corner and just a few feet from the station door we had been sitting near. Sadly it was now too late to enjoy the warm building and food options and we were frustrated that we hadn't done more investigating before we settled ourselves down on our bench. We were even sadder about our missed opportunity when we realized that there was no dining car on our train. In the future, we're going to be sure to do a full investigation before settling down in train stations.

Despite that small trouble, we made it onto the train without difficulties and about 4 hours later we arrived in Venice!

~ElizabethRose~

Home Again - To California!

2010-01-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

First of all, Happy New Year! I can't believe it's already 2010! It looks like I didn't get around to posting much in December. Shortly after my last post I was kept very busy helping out with Nicola and Matt's wedding. After that we flew to Oklahoma City, OK to have Christmas with my mother's side of the family where there was no internet access - at least at our house. Finally, we flew back to San Jose, CA but then left again to spend New Years Eve with some of Woodley's family members down in Big Sur.

Wow! It was a lot of traveling! But now we are home again and I can't wait to start catching up on the news. I was amused to see the title of my last post since Woodley and I now consider ourselves to be back home again, but home in California this time.

Since we've been on the road so much I haven't been posting any recipes for quite awhile but I have had this one saved away since November and am excited to post it now. It is a Pear and Dried-Cherry Crisp with Nutmeg-Walnut Streusel from Epicurious.com that is delicious and a bit unexpected. The interesting thing about it is that flavor comes entirely from the pears, dried cherries, nuts, vanilla, nutmeg, and orange. There is no cinnamon or nutmeg here which gives it a completely different but absolutely delicious flavor which stands out from other crisps and cobblers I've had in the past. As it baked, it filled the house with the most amazing scents. I thought the combination would make the perfect home scent for the fall if you could bottle it up and sell it.

Since it features pears and dried cherries so heavily it's a bit dense and I think it works best when served over vanilla ice cream. The recipe yields 12 servings and fills an entire 9x13 inch pan. Although we absolutely loved it, there was no way the two of us could finish it all before we needed to toss it. If you have a smaller family and want to try it out, I would highly recommend halving or quartering the recipe.

Alright, enough babbling, here it is:

Pear and Dried-Cherry Crisp with Nutmeg-Walnut Streusel

From Epicurious.com

Serves 12

For the Streusel:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces, room temperature

1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts {I didn't have any walnuts so I used pecans instead - it turned out perfectly and since I like pecans so much better than walnuts, I'm glad I made the change and would repeat it}

For the Filling:

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/4 cup orange juice

2 teaspoons finely grated orange peel

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups dried tart cherries (9 ounces)

4 1/2 pounds ripe Bosc pears, peeled, cored, cut into 1-inch cubes (about 8 cups)

Lightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Making the Streusel:

1. Whisk the flour, sugar, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl.

2. Add the butter and rub in with fingertips until the mixture begins to clump together.

3. Mix in the walnuts {or pecans} Note: The streusel can be made a day ahead. When it is ready, cover and chill it until it is time to finish the crisp.

Preparing the Filling and Assembling the Crisp:

1. Place the first six ingredients: sugar, butter, orange juice, orange peel, vanilla, and salt in a medium skillet. Stir over medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil.

2. Add the cherries, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer until the cherries soften and the liquid is slightly reduced, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Generously butter a 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish.

4. Toss the pears and dried cherry mixture in a large bowl.

5. Spread the pear-cherry mixture into the prepared baking dish.

6. Sprinkle the streusel mixture over the pear-cherry mixture.

7. Bake until bubbling and golden, about 1 hour; cool. Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream or ice cream.

Mmmmmm yummm!

~ElizabethRose~

Home Again!

2009-12-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday, after a long day of flying, we made it safely home to The States. At the present we're up in Bellingham getting ready for Nicola and Matt's wedding which is next Saturday! I'll have to continue working on the posts about our trip - Venice and Oslo were amazing! But in between the catching up, I'll try to post some of our current happenings.

The photo above is our fireplace and mantle decked out for the Christmas season with the heart garland I found in Oslo, a couple of poinsettias, and new candles. In the center of the mantle sits our new Julenisse, the Norwegian version of Santa Claus, and his wife. For more info on Julenisse, check out this article by L-Jay over at MyLittleNorway.com.

We have been especially grateful for our fireplace today. When we woke up this morning, our room seemed especially cold and before long we realized that our furnace wasn't working at all. The temperature has been in the 20's to low 30's lately and our house has terrible insulation so we really prefer to have our furnace in working order! We have an old oil furnace (which we plan to replace during the remodel we are currently dreaming of...), so the first thing Woodley did was to check our oil level. The tank gauge reported 1/4 of a tank left so Woodley figured that probably wasn't the problem. He then called up the repair man to have him look at the furnace. He arrived late in the afternoon and sadly wasn't able to fix the problem - he suggested we order more oil and see if that made a difference. So our new oil will arrive tomorrow and until then we are making excellent use of our fireplace. We are very very thankful for our wonderful neighbors who have given us extra firewood and space heaters!

To get out of the house a bit today, we drove out into the county and found a U-Cut tree farm (Alpine Meadows) where we cut down 2 lovely little trees (one for our house and one for my mom)! The farm is located in the foothills at the base of Mt. Baker.

Many of the trees were covered with snow!

Woodley cut down the trees we picked out in no time! (For which I was especially grateful since I had lost all feeling in my toes due to the cold.)

Back at home I began thinking about decorating the tree. Unfortunately I didn't ship our Christmas decorations up to Washington so we only have 2 ornaments that we picked up on our trip. I really didn't want to spend a lot of money on new ornaments since we already have a bunch which we have collected from our travels. Instead, I decided to make some simple decorations such as gingerbread ornaments, strings of cranberries, and paper snowflakes.

This afternoon I started baking the gingerbread ornaments and strung a big garland of cranberries while I sat by the fire.

I can't remember if I've made a cranberry garland before but it was a fun and surprisingly easy project. I just happened to have a bag of cranberries in my refrigerator and some embroidery thread and a needle in my closet. In about an hour and a half I strung the whole bag of berries and I have now draped them around the tree. They only reach about halfway down so I'm hoping to get 2 more bags to string tomorrow and I think that will cover the rest of the tree.

It is so nice to be home for a bit doing Christmasy things!

~ElizabethRose~

Missing Home (written Tuesday, Nov. 24th in Tuscany)

2009-12-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite decorations - picked up at the flea market.

During the past week or so I have really started to miss being at home. At first I thought this was a bit odd, because we have been enjoying a lovely trip to Europe and have been gone less than a week and a half. But the more I have thought about it, the more I realized that it really has been a very long time since we felt fully settled in one place.

My lovely nested bowls - a gift from my wonderful husband!

In fact, I just looked through our calendar for the past year and realized that, in the past 6 months (starting in late May), we have spent only 54 consecutive days at home in Bellingham (July - late August) and 32 consecutive days at home in Los Gatos (mid October to Mid November). Since we won't be fully finished with this current trip until early January, that means that we will have been traveling almost non-stop for roughly 4 months in the latter half of this year. No wonder I'm beginning to miss home - or feel like we really don't have a specific home!

Old glass jars - my favorite way to store flour and sugar.

Add to that the fact that I have no idea where we will end up living for the next few years... Bay Area, Oslo, Bellingham... and the feeling of being lost in the world becomes even more compounded. I'm sure someday I'll look back on this chaotic time with longing, but right now I just can't wait to settle down and get into a real year round routine in one place. I want to spend the winter putting up Christmas decorations, celebrating Advent, and planning next year's garden... In the Spring, I want to watch the crocus and daffodils I planted the previous fall come up, dye eggs and celebrate Easter at our local church, and start planting seedlings indoors.... In the Summer I want to visit local farms and pick berries and vegetables to can and pickle, harvest, water, weed, and admire my garden, and have lots of picnics and game nights with friends and family... And when Fall comes around again, I want to plant more bulbs, carve pumpkins, host a halloween party, dig up my dahlias and start thinking up the perfect Christmas presents for the coming holiday season. And throughout it all, I want to keep a clean and well organized house, plan healthy and refreshing meals made from scratch, learn to knit socks and sweaters, quilt beautiful blankets, sew new dresses, skirts, and aprons, bake bread, keep up with my Bible study, learn the art of tatting, host game nights, keep a cheery home for my husband, get my nails manicured from time to time, and add some kittens to our family. Maybe someday it will become a reality.

Doilies and green glassware!

Until then, I'll do my best to enjoy every moment of our travels so that I can look back on the many happy memories when I'm bent over the sink washing what I'm sure will feel like a never ending round of dirty dishes that I know will be waiting for me in that dream home. Tomorrow: a day in the Tuscan countryside. I hear there will be boar hunters out in the fields around the house! It promises to be an exciting day.

Baking the weekly batch of bread.

~ElizabethRose~

Tuscany: Day 3 (Thursday November 26, 2009 - Thanksgiving!)

2009-12-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

Chimney 1

Amazingly, we didn't actually take any pictures on the day of Thanksgiving! But then, it really wasn't a traditional American Thanksgiving at all. So, instead of photos of our meal, I thought I'd post some pictures of the interesting chimneys of Campiano. Apparently, in this area of Tunscany there is a local custom wherein the architect (or perhaps it is the brick mason) gets to design the chimneys of a house that is being built or remodeled. They are encouraged to be creative, and the chimneys don't actually have to match each other. Campiano is a good example of this tradition. There are 5 chimneys (although I only captured photos of 4 of them - not even very good photos actually) and each chimney is different.

Chimneys 2 and 3

Chimneys 2 and 3 again

Chimney 4

Chimney 4 again

Since the oven at the house was out of working order, we decided to go out for Thanksgiving dinner. Thankfully, turkey is a meat that is not too difficult to find in Tuscany and, after a brief chat with someone at the restaurant earlier in the day, he agreed to be sure to have some turkey on hand for dinner.

The dinner itself was a very quiet and peaceful affair compared with most Thanksgivings I've experienced. There were just four of us around the dinner table and we didn't have to do even a tiny bit of cooking. They gave us the option of a lemon or a white wine sauce with the turkey and we went with the white wine. The turkey came in slices and was grilled instead of roasted. It tasted very good but not very much like real Thanksgiving turkey.

I did miss cooking the customary Thanksgiving desserts (always 1 chocolate cheesecake and at least 5 pies - in fact, I think this is the first time since 1993 that I haven't baked a chocolate cheesecake!) So I think I might need to make up for that with lots of Christmas baking. Really though, with all this traveling, 2009 is turning out to be the most unusual holiday season!

Next year I hope to be settled somewhere and plan to roast a large bird, make classic stuffing, stew cranberries, and bake batches of pies! I can't wait! (Maybe we'll have to have a make up Thanksgiving next Spring!)

~ElizabethRose~

Tuscany: Day 2 (Wednesday, November 25, 2009)

2009-12-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

Our second day in Tuscany dawned crisp and clear. We again spent most of the day outside around the house battling brambles on the terraces. We weren't able to walk as far away from the house as we had the day before because of the hunters in the fields nearby. Apparently it was hunting season and the hunters are very active, in fact, we woke up to the sound of shots being fired!

I particularly enjoyed learning about the local plants and wildflowers - something Woodley's mother is quite passionate about. I thought these berries (below) looked very festive and she explained that they are used for making sloe gin. The bush is called blackthorn in English and the berries are called sloes. Apparently sloe gin is traditionally made in autumn in Ireland and Britain. I've never yet had an opportunity to taste it but as I gazed at the big blue berries, I thought that if I was ever in Tuscany again in the fall, I might just be tempted to try making some.

The fall colors were quite lovely even though Woodley's mother assured us that they were not nearly as bright and colorful as they had been just a few weeks before.

Here's a view of the house from the side yard. It was a very interesting and cozy place to stay. Interestingly, it has many little steps up and down and some larger stairways. I don't think I could have drawn a floor plan of it even after studying the problem quite a bit. At the end of our visit we took a tour through the house and counted all the different areas that are separated by steps and discovered that there were 12! I definitely wouldn't want to try navigating it in the dark!

Below, the road leading down to the olive orchard. Sometimes a tractor would rattle by as the farmer busily delivered manure to dump around the base of his olive trees.

A lovely view from the terrace!

Just like the Bay Area, the hills were covered with magnificent oak trees.

In the late afternoon, Woodley and I got tired of working on the yard and retreated to a spot on the steps that wind around the house. From our perches we had an excellent view down through the trees to the hills beyond. While we sat there I started us on the next book in the Chronicles of Narnia - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

It was such a wonderfully relaxing way to finish up the last bit of daylight! As we sat and read we also had a perfect view of the Tuscan sunset!

~ElizabethRose~

Tuscany: Day 1 (November 24, 2009)

2009-12-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

After a week in big cities Woodley and I were both so relieved to retreat to the Tuscan countryside with Woodley's parents. Although we had originally thought we would take day trips to various cities, we liked being in the country so much that we spent most of our time at home and only ventured out for dinner or a quick trip to town.

Campiano, the house where we stayed is located way out in the hills near Arezzo. In fact, to get to it we had to travel for 15 minutes on very bumpy dirt/rock roads. It reminded us of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. :) The area around Campiano is covered with terraced hills and olive orchards. The house itself is placed near the top of a large hills so that you have a lovely view of the surrounding hills from most rooms in the house.

On our first morning we went on a long walk with Woodley's mother and discovered lots of beautiful bushes and plants.

Here's a photo of an olive tree covered terrace. Just a few weeks before our visit was the olive harvest and the local farmers were all busy processing their olives during our visit.

One of our big projects for the week was helping Woodley's mother liberate the terraces around the house which had been taken over by blackberry bushes, roses, and vines. This large beautiful rock was also one of our projects - we did a pretty good job of clearing it off on our first afternoon.

Just before going in for the night, Woodley took this picture of me next to the pile of brambles I had cut off of the wall that afternoon. We joked that we were being agro-tourists. :)

Yay! I just love being out in the country!

~ElizabethRose~

Herculaneum (November 23, 2009)

2009-12-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

On the morning of the 23rd we woke up to a slightly cloudy day in Herculaneum. Although less popular than Pompeii, Herculaneum is famous among archeologists for its fabulously preserved Roman town which, like Pompeii, was destroyed during the 79AD eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius. When the mountain erupted, Pompeii, which is located to the south east of the volcano, was covered with a thick layer of ash and volcanic debris. Herculaneum, which is located closer to the volcano and directly to the west was, instead, covered with very little ash but a very thick layer of protoclastic flow (lava). Because the lava slowly filled in the houses and buildings of the city, they were left in a much better state than those of Pompeii. In the case of Pompeii, ash and volcanic debris which fell on the city caused most roofs to collapse and was much more destructive.

In the photo below, you can see a statue of Herculaneum's main benefactor who would have passed away before the destruction of his city. Below the platform with his statue lie the boat houses which used to reside along the coast of the town. During most of the past century it was believed that most of Herculaneum's inhabitants were able to escape because very few remains were found in the city. However, when these boathouses began to be excavated in 1982 around 250 skeletal remains where found huddled together in the boathouses. It is thought that the inhabitants of the town fled to the shore for safety here or until they could escape by boat. Many of them carried precious belongings like jewelry and also their house keys - a sign that they had time to prepare to leave and that they expected to someday return to their homes. Archeologists believe that they would have been killed instantly by the heat as the 750 degree F wave of protoplasmic ash, gas, and lava flowed over the town at 100 mph.

After having heard about Herculaneum for many years, I was very excited to visit it in person. The main level of the city is now well above the height of the excavation because the lava flow buried the ancient city in 60 to 80 of volcanic debris. When you go to visit Herculaneum you therefore have to walk down a bit to enter the city at what used to be sea level. We went down by way of a tunnel through the lava. When we came out, we were standing on what used to be the edge of the sea. Looking to the right, we could see the boat houses that were along the shore and the building that housed the public baths. The wall to the right of the buildings is the wall of lava that was dug out during the excavations.

As we began our tour, we first passed by the ancient benefactor of Herculaneum (sadly I can't remember his name).

He seemed very noble.

The first building we went into was the Suburban Baths. Currently it is closed to the public because it has become unstable and is being repaired by conservation workers. Hopefully it will soon be safe again for all visitors. Thankfully, we were able to tour it because Woodley's parents had made some special arrangements ahead of time. Below is the view that would have greeted the Romans when they came to have their bath. The bust and bowl in the center was once a functional fountain.

On the floor, to the side of the fountain, our guides pointed out the lead nuts and bolts that held the pipes for the fountain in place. Although I had always heard about the Roman water system and their use of lead pipes, it was amazing to see the actual lead structures themselves. Somehow I hadn't envisioned them being quite that advanced.

Near the statue, but looking back towards the entrance to the baths.

There were several rooms in the Suburban Baths, a room with a cool pool for bathing, a hot pool for bathing, and a very large pool that would have been a comfortable temperature for swimming about. The pools were heated using a wood burning furnace with pipes to direct the heat to the various pools and rooms. It was very impressive! Sadly it was also very dark so I don't have any other good photos of those rooms.

At a nearby villa the red paint on the walls was still visible and it was easy to see that the Romans loved using bright colors to decorate their houses. The mosaic marble floor was also very impressive.

In front of doors leading into several rooms of a fancy villa there were marble "door mats" that were quite lovely:

One of the amazing things about Herculaneum is that many pieces of organic matter were preserved when the first protoplasmic flow came through. The intense heat carbonized the surface of organic materials and removed water from them. They were then covered with lava and thus sealed off from the air for centuries. Because of that, items that you would normally expect to be ruined over time - like wood, rope, grain, and even bread - were preserved (although in a blacked state).

Below is a view into a Roman wine shop. The black beams are actual pieces of wood that have been preserved from the Roman days - with some support from newer materials. On the floor and on the walls you can see the barrels that would have held the wine. On the door outside was a sign showing the prices of the 3 different types of wine sold in this shop.

Looking to the left side of the wine shop you can see more wooden doors and up above, in the corner, you can just make out the corner piece of what would have been the shop keeper's bed. Amazing!

In another villa was this amazing mosaic. If you look closely, you can see that it was surrounded by sea shells which were pressed into the mortar. The walls on the sides of the mosaic were painted bright red and orange hues and covered with designs of plant life. I think they were a bit more adventurous when it came to interior design than I would be. :)

On the side of one of the city streets, we were able to see the actual Roman pipes which would have brought fresh water to each of the houses. Amazing! I never would have imagined such normal looking pipes!

Speaking of water, it seems that one of the biggest problems with preserving Herculaneum is dealing with water that makes its way down into the site. Current conservation work is attempting to collect and pump out rainwater that falls onto the site. They have discovered that the best way to collect the water is to use the original Roman sewer system which contains pipes of up to 4 feet in diameter. They are now running modern pipes through these old pipes to direct the water down to the ancient shoreline where it will be collected and pumped away from the city.

Another interesting thing about Herculaneum is that, unfortunately, many of the statues, mosaics, and other artistic or valuable pieces of the city were removed by the Bourbons in the early 18th century. Because Herculaneum was covered in thick rock-like lava, robbers, and later the Bourbons, developed a system of tunneling through the lava to remove valuable pieces of art. The developed a system of tunneling around the perimeter of buildings which was where many of the mosaics and statues could be found. Sadly this means that many of the city's beautiful works of art were removed before archeologists began their excavations. However, due to the thick nature of the lava, the tunnels were only dug in certain areas and there is still much to be discovered.

More beautiful frescos:

Outside again and above the excavation, Mount Vesuvius looms over it all. Thankfully there is now a weather station half way up the mountain where geologists keep a careful watch out for any volcanic activity.

Below you can see the excavation in the foreground and the modern day city of Herculaneum in the distance. There are many more ancient buildings buried under the city but sadly they will not be excavated any time soon because it would require tearing down buildings that are in use.

Our last stop at Herculaneum was to the boat museum where you can see an ancient boat which was recovered on the shores of the ancient city. Along with the boat, there are also fish hooks, fishing nets, and rope on display.

By the time we left, I felt like I had really learned quite a bit about the ancient city. Although it is smaller than Pompeii, I would definitely recommend it if you are interested in archeology or Roman history!

We said goodbye and hopped into the car for the 4 hour drive up to Tuscany!

~ElizabethRose~

Rome: Day 4/The Amalfi Coast (November 22, 2009)

2009-12-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

On our last morning in Rome we decided to finally visit the Pantheon. Since we could see it from our hotel window I guess we always felt that we would be able to drop by any time. On the way out of the hotel I was finally able to capture some photos of the glass chandeliers which had been amusing us all week. They just look so much like octopus! I'm guessing they feature Murano glass and they are quite nice, but they do look like something from the sea. :)

After a quick stroll across the piazza we soon found ourselves stepping inside the Pantheon. Even though we had visited it before, it was still awe inspiring. Although it was once a pagan temple, it is now being using as a church and it definitely gives you a reverent feeling. It is one big room that would be quite echoy except that everyone talks in whispers out of respect for the church. The ceiling is beautiful and in the very center is an open hole to let in light. Of course, it can also let in rain and it is quite fun to be inside during a downpour. If you look closely you will see drain holes in the marble slab flooring directly below the hole.

The walls are very elaborately decorated and are covered with all sorts of beautiful marble. Below is a picture of the main entryway.

We were very lucky that we visited when we did. Since it was Sunday morning, the Pantheon was set up for a church service and as we left we noticed that they were closing off the entranceway so that the churchgoers wouldn't be disturbed during the service. Below, a small organ was set up near the front of the chapel and we assumed that it would be used during the service. It was quite a nice looking old organ.

When we left the Pantheon we waited a bit in the piazza until Woodley's mother joined us. Near us stood this nice looking horse who was patiently waiting. There are several of these horse drawn carriages around Rome but we have never tried one.

After meeting up with Woodley's parents we hopped into their car and set out to navigate our way out of Rome. Since the Roman streets don't follow any particular grid this can be a bit of a challenge. Fortunately Woodley did an excellent job of map-reading and we were soon on the A1 highway heading south!

Rome has a very nice highway system called the autostrada on which you can travel quickly throughout the country. However, you must pay to use the highway system and the amount you pay is relative to how far you have traveled on the highway. When you get on the autostrada you pick up a ticket which you must carefully keep safe somewhere until you are ready to exit. When you exit, you present it to the ticket agent and they let you know how much you need to pay. Apparently, if you are so unfortunate as to loose your ticket, they assume that you have traveled the farthest possible distance on the autostrada system (say all the way north and then all the way south again) and charge you accordingly.

Each time you get off the highway you must pay the toll which means that on most trips, you want to stay on the autostrada for as long as possible. Since you normally would not want to get off the highway to visit local towns for food or restroom breaks, the Italians have provided a network of Autogrill, the equivalent of rest areas along the autostrada. At the Autogrills you can find basic food items, maps, gas, and restrooms. Unfortunately, the quality of food is not very high and there are not many options. But still, they are fairly evenly spaced and it is quite nice to know that there is an easy solution if you do need to make a stop.

We took the A1 Autostrada all the way south to Naples and then headed over to the Amalfi Coast Drive. Sadly it was quite hazy and the hours of daylight were rapidly dwindling as we started the drive but we enjoyed the view as much as we could until it got dark.

One of the things that amazed us was the use of the steep hillsides for farming. The coast is somewhat similar to the Big Sur Coastline in California but while the land around Big Sur has been only sparsely developed (as most of it has been reserved for state parks), every possible space on the steep Amalfi Coastline has been used to provide food or housing. The very steep cliffs have been transformed into a series of narrow terraces on which grapes and citrus trees are grown. During our visit the groves of citrus were apparent mostly because they had been covered with black fabric to prevent birds from accessing the fruit. In the photo below you can see the black coverings in the bottom left corner.

Like the Big Sur Coast road, the Amalfi Coast road is very narrow and curvy. At times it takes you high above the water so that you can get an excellent view down the coast and at times you drop down into a town right at the level of the ocean.

It is amazing how the houses appear to be built right into the edge of the cliff and some seem about to fall off.

When we reached the city of Amafi we decided to stop for a snack and a look around. After a bit of maneuvering we found a parking spot down by the water. There was a lovely boardwalk going out into the ocean with charming lamp posts! It looked like the perfect spot for a romantic stroll.

We headed away from the ocean and strolled into the city via one of the many narrow streets. Soon the street opened out into a square facing the local cathedral. It was beautifully decorated with differently colored stones and mosaics. The visitors to the local sidewalk cafe appeared to quite enjoy staring up at it.

A little further along the street we found a cute little bakery where we stopped for a drink and a snack.

They had the most delicious lemon cake. The part I liked best was the tart lemony glaze covering the cake. Woodley's parents bought one cake which we spit into 4 pieces - one for each of us. We liked those pieces so well that we ended up buying another cake to take home with us!

Another feature of the bakery (and indeed it seemed a popular item around the town) was very very large bars of nougat candy. In the photo below you can compare the size of the nougat to the size of the pastries. I would guess that the nougat was at least 6 by 6 by 12 inches.

After our refueling stop we continued on the coast road. Before long the sun had set and we headed away from the coast to the city of Herculaneum where we were planning to spend the night. We made it safely to the hotel where we had a delicious dinner before falling fast fast asleep.

~ElizabethRose~

Rome: Day 3 (Visiting the Zoo!)

2009-12-04T04:56:00.000-08:00

On our third day in Rome, I was suffering from a bit of a cold so we decided to take it a bit easier and head over for a relaxing stroll in the second largest park in Rome, the Villa Borghese Gardens. According to Wikipedia it is 148 acres. They are filled with walking paths, beautiful trees, and delightful gardens. We found a nice bench and sat down to read our book, Prince Caspian, of the Chronicles of Narnia.

As Woodley read to me I enjoyed watching the pigeons search for food in the fall leaves scattered over the street. From time to time a gust of wind would come up and send more leaves falling down upon us. It was such a delightful afternoon!

All too soon we finished Prince Caspian and decided to set out and head over to the Rome Zoo which is on one edge of the gardens. We had visited it last time we were in Rome and were excited to see the animals again.

After buying tickets, we started strolling and quickly discovered some adorable monkeys who were putting on quite a show for us.

There really seemed to be no shortage of monkeys at the Rome zoo. A little while later we came upon a great big circular area that was home to a huge gathering of monkeys. There were so many, all doing different tasks and activities, that we could have easily stayed there and watched them all day. Around the outside of the circle was a wide border of mulch where the monkeys sat grooming each other and looking for grubs.

And in the center was a raised area that they could climb up to which had a variety of ropes, swings, perches, and toys for them to play with. As we watched, I noticed two mothers carrying small babies on their backs! Eventually I began to wonder just how many of them there were. I did a quick count of the ones I could see from my vantage point and ended up at 60. Because there were so many on the other side that I couldn't see, I'm guessing there were at least 80 monkeys in that area. I've never seen anything like that at a zoo before!

The animals weren't the only thing to see at the zoo. There was also a lovely display of fall color that seemed to pop up everywhere we looked.

Close to some of the most beautiful trees was the home of 3 adorable seals. Their tank was strewn with fallen leaves and they seemed to really enjoy swimming through them. They put on quite a show for us and were so much fun to watch!

Next up was the big tiger! I have to admit, he seemed a bit near. (especially as I kept thinking of the San Francisco zoo incident)

I love these little flowers! They were found on bushes all over the zoo. I looked up the name but sadly have now forgotten it.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying the fall sunshine. As we turned another corner, we came upon the elephants receiving their lunch. The way they use their trunks is really impressive!

Close to the elephants lives the two hump camel.

And a strange bird with very bright colors!

Our last stop at the zoo was to visit the ring-tailed lemurs. They have always been one of my favorite animals. I love their stripy tails and playful personalities. I just wish you could have one as a pet... :)

Upon leaving the zoo we strolled back through the Borghese Gardens. I just love these fun trees! They always remind me of something out of a Dr. Seuss book!

It was such a lovely afternoon for a stroll. The sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees was delightful and it was fun to be out with all of the Romans who were clearly enjoying the park just as much as we were.

As we were approaching the edge of the park, we were surprised to see an area closed off for a bike track. There was a ramp set up that formed a start gate and then there were a series of ramps and hills in place for the bikers to ride over. They appeared to be practicing for a race that would happen later in the day. We sat down on a nearby wall and enjoyed seeing how high they could jump! That was a very exciting way to end our visit to the park!

One last glimpse of the beautiful fall leaves:

As we exited the park, we came out to a terrace from which there was an excellent view of the entire city. As you would expect in such a beautiful place, a painter had set up a canvas to capture the scene. It made a very romantic picture.

The lovely scene that was being painted:

On the way home, we once more passed by the Spanish Steps. This time they were quite crowded - so much so that it was actually quite hard to get through.

The neighboring streets appeared to be completely taken over by pedestrians although a few cars were valiantly fighting their way through.

And on the corner, in the midst of it all, a roast chestnut vendor. We saw many stalls of this nature throughout Rome and it was quite fun to imagine eating roasted chestnuts for the holiday season. Sadly, we never got around to trying them before we left. Maybe next time...

~ElizabethRose~

Rome: Day 2

2009-12-03T01:42:00.000-08:00

We began our second day in Rome with a stroll down to Trevi Fountain. The fountain is so lovely but we always hurry by it because of the crowds of tourists and the pushy "rose men" who try to "give" away roses to any women they happen to see. Of course, if you accept a rose from them, they then ask for payment. It becomes quite annoying because they often pressure you quite strongly to take the rose and won't take no for an answer. Our way of dealing with them is to not look directly at them as we are walking by and then to say "no" very clearly as we keep moving. I think Rome would be a much nicer city if you didn't have to worry about being harassed like that all over town.

For breakfast, we stopped and picked up hot sandwiches from a sidewalk cafe and munched them as we walked along.

I thoroughly enjoyed looking in all the shop windows we passed by, especially this one which was full of delicious looking cheeses.

Before long, we found ourselves at the Spanish Steps. They were surprisingly empty - I suppose because it was a week day. We climbed up to the top of them and on one of the level areas noticed one of the rose men heading our way. We started our usual tactic of looking away and heading in a slightly different direction but when he got about halfway to us he turned away, hunched over, and started moving away at a rapid pace. We were pleasantly surprised but wondered what was wrong with him. When we got to the top of the steps, we saw the reason for his odd behavior - a pair of policemen on duty were heading up the steps on patrol. We watched him as he continued to jog in the opposite direction while trying to hide his bunch of roses. I was glad to know that the Roman police don't condone the harassment of their tourists.

We really didn't have any specific aim to our walking, although Woodley is very familiar with the layout of the city and was able to guide me around easily. We just took our time and enjoyed strolling and viewing the sites.

On one small side street I noticed this interesting purple plant in a window box:

A little further along the same street, I noticed these interesting shutters. I had never seen any that folded out before!

Our last tourist stop for the day was Trajan's Forum. We picked up an audio guide and enjoyed running around the building - which apparently used to be a big market. Perhaps because of the time of year and perhaps because there are so many other exciting ruins to see in Rome, the forum was practically deserted. Since we had the place almost to ourselves, we ran around poking our heads into the different stalls, trying out various staircases, and all sorts of fun imagining what it must have once been like to go shopping there.

By the time we finished exploring the market area I was feeling quite tired - I had started developing a cold and we decided to head back to the hotel so I could rest a bit.

In the evening we made our way over to Rome's Opera House where we saw Tchaikovksy's Swan Lake Ballet. It was a beautiful production and the opera house was stunning. We had picked up tickets earlier in the day but we had no idea where in the theater we would be sitting. When we arrived, the ushers pointed us up the stairs and another usher guided us to a door in a long hallway that wrapped around the theater. When we opened the door, we stepped into a tiny room covered with red tapestry. There were coat hooks on one wall and a mirror on the other wall. Immediately in front of us was another doorway which led out into a box. There were already another couple in the box. We were a bit confused and checked with them to make sure we were in the right place - we didn't want to disturb them if it was supposed to be a private box. They explained to us that there were 6 seats in each box and that we were in fact in the right place. Since they had already taken the 2 chairs at the front edge of the box, we selected the 2 chairs at the back which were more like tall bar stools. Due to their height, they allowed us a fairly decent view of the stage.

It was so fun to look out and see the rows of boxes around the beautiful opera house! The ballet was also beautiful. The costumes were beautifully constructed and many were quite sparkly. The dancing was also amazing - the male lead in particular did some very high jumps. :) Overall we enjoyed Swan Lake more than Sleeping Beauty, but we think that was probably because the choreography of Swan Lake was so much better. Now, if we end up seeing The Nutcracker in Seattle this holiday season we will have seen all 3 of Tchaikovsky's ballets in less than 2 months! What a treat!

~ElizabethRose~

Rome: Day 1

2009-12-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

On the morning of our first full day in Rome, we woke up with the sunrise and looked out of our new window to see the back wall of the Pantheon across the piazza. It was such a nice peaceful sight to wake up to.

After breakfast at the hotel, we set out on our first walk around the city. Before we had walked far, I spotted something that I remembered seeing the last time we were in Rome (4 years before) - a large building being restored that was covered with scaffolding and a photo of the building prior to its restoration, along with a large ad:

I suppose this is their way of helping tourists feel like they aren't missing out on any important sights while still making sure they are able to restore important historical places. I've never seen it anywhere else though. Have you?

A few blocks later we came to the Campo Di Fiori, one of Rome's most famous outdoor markets. True to the name, there were lots of lovely flowers for sale. I eyed them wistfully but we strolled on since it really wouldn't make sense to buy flowers when we would only be in town a few days.

Moving through the narrow streets, we passed by a trendy clothing shop, glancing in, I noticed that the shop featured 2 chandeliers that matched the one our good friends Julie and Greg added to their dining room last year. I guess that proves that both Julie and Greg and the owners of this shop have good taste:

Our first real stop of the day was at the Largo di Torre Argentina, a square in Rome that is being excavated because it features the remains of four republican Roman temples and Pompey's Theater. However, those were not what we wanted to see. We went to see the cats!

Since Rome has a large population of homeless cats, a place was needed for them to live. Thus was born the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary. It is a no-kill refuge for homeless cats and it means that the ruins are home to quite a collection of adorable felines. From the outer edges we stood looking over the ruins and in the course of about 10 minutes saw at least 15 different cats doing all sorts of cat like activities. If you are a cat lover this is definitely the best spot in Rome. :)

We finally pulled ourselves away from the cats and continued on our walk around the city. Before too long I spotted this lovely example of fall color:

Soon after that we came to some ruins that we recognized from our previous trip to Rome. We had visited this site to hear a concert held outdoors in the ruins. It was interesting to be back during the daytime because we could see the building from a different perspective. Woodley noticed what I would have missed, the resourceful Romans had built modern day housing on top of an ancient Roman theater. In the picture below, the bottom two layers of columns are ruins and the top two layers are apartments. That must be a fun place to live.

I love the many different surprises and bits of history that are all throughout Rome, just waiting to be discovered. As we were strolling along a busy street we happened upon this beautifully carved bit of marble resting in the brambles on the side of the road. I guess there is just too much history and bits of carved marble to put them all on display in museums.

Eventually we made our way up one of Rome's many hills until we came out looking down over the Roman Forum.

Since we didn't have anything else on our schedules, we bought a ticket and headed down into the forum. It was fun to walk down the ancient streets and think about the illustrious Roman Empire. Unfortunately we didn't have a very good map or a guide book so we weren't quite sure what we were looking at. :)

Below, an ancient temple was converted into a church at some point in history. In the front you see the columns of the temple and in the back the church building which uses them as a grand front entrance.

Another nice view from inside the forum.

When we emerged from the forum we were both quite tired, hot, and hungry. Fortunately there was a nice sidewalk cafe nearby where we stopped for some lunch. It was pretty empty when we first got there but soon it began to fill up with all sorts of people wearing name tags that identified them as being from a variety of different countries - Saudi Arabia, Ireland, and others. We wondered what was going on but noticed that there was a big poster for a Food Conference on the skyscraper across the street. Later we learned that the World Food Summit was taking place in Rome during our visit so we think we must have stumbled upon their lunch spot.

I had an excellent Tuna Salad. Another amusing thing that happened while we were eating was that another tourist sat down at the table next to ours and ordered a beer. I guess he asked for a large size because very soon the waiter returned with a HUGE mug of beer. It must have been as big as two forties. Woodley and I looked at each other in amazement. The tourist seemed quite pleased with himself and set right in on it. But, by the time we left, he had only made a small dent in the huge volume of liquid.

After lunch we decided to make our way back to the hotel via one of Woodley's favorite landmarks, a big fountain on top of one of the tallest hills (I have no idea what it was called). Along the way we passed over the Tiber and admired the fall colors.

We walked through some very cute neighborhoods on the way and I enjoyed seeing the laundry hung out to dry.

We eventually found the hill we were looking for and headed up to the top via a beautiful parklike trail.

At last we made it to the fountain! We spent a few minutes relaxing and admiring the view of the city before heading back down in the direction of the Pantheon.

I love the way the warm tones of the Roman buildings stand out against the beautiful blue sky!

The arcade at the top of this building was particularly beautiful!

On our way home we made one more, very important, stop: Giolitti's Gelateria This is one of Woodley's 2 favorite gelaterias in Rome and it's easy to see why. They have a huge variety of gelato flavors as well as a collection of delicious pastries.

As is the method at most Italian gelaterias, you pay at a small counter near the door before selecting your gelato flavors. Then you give your receipt to the man behind the counter and tell him your selections.

Interestingly, many gelaterias in Rome give you the option of having non-sweetened whipped cream on the top of your ice cream cone. I tried it once but decided I like my gelato plain. It was a bit odd how parts of the whipped cream froze onto the gelato over time.

As you can see below, some of the berry flavors are quite intense! The blackberry gelato really is almost black!

We emerged victorious! My cone (on the left) features chocolate and champagne gelato and Woodley's has apple and strawberry. They were all delicious!

From Giolittis it was a quick walk back to the Pantheon and Piazza Minerva in front of our hotel. This elephant, located in the middle of the piazza, greeted us each time we came or went.

Our hotel from the outside.

The elegant lobby!

After resting a bit we made one more outing - to a little wine bar and restaurant for dinner. In the case next to our table sat a huge wheel of parmesan (which Woodley is eyeing intently), it was probably 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter! The pizza was a similar size - well maybe a bit smaller. It was a delicious way to end our first full day in Rome!

~ElizabethRose~

Rome: The Arrival

2009-12-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

After 3 lovely days in London it was time to fly to Rome! Our flight was uneventful and after retrieving our bags we caught a taxi which took us into the heart of Rome and dropped us off at the hotel we had found online: Hotel Trevi. The location was perfect! It was just steps away from Trevi Fountain (hence the name of the hotel) and just a couple of blocks from one of Woodley's favorite gelaterias.

When we stepped inside we were greeted, none to warmly, by an elderly gentleman behind the counter. After telling him our names a few times, he said that we were not on his list. When we insisted that we had booked a reservation he handed us the list and we were able to find our names. We were slightly disheartened by this difficulty but collected our room key and wedged ourselves into the tiny elevator to head up to our room.

When we opened the door to our room we realized that it was a bit smaller and less fancy than our room in London:

It was simply, but nicely decorated but was very small. In fact, there wasn't even enough floor space to lay down our suitcases to open them up. We ended up stashing one in the closet and the other on the desk. We also soon began to notice small signs of wear such as a stain on the bedspread and loose pieces of trim around the walls.

The size and the wear and tear weren't really that bad though. Unfortunately we then decided to explore the bathroom. (The door to which you can see in the photo below.) It was a nice small bathroom with a shower at one end, a sink, and toilet. Sadly, it also had a very strong sewer odor. We thought to ourselves that it really wasn't that bad and decided to just keep the door closed. A short while later we ventured out onto the streets to find some dinner.

When we returned, we noticed that the sewage smell had gotten a lot worse. In fact, when we tried to use the restroom to brush our teeth and get ready for bed the smell was so overpowering that we ended up running in and out of the bathroom holding our noses. Eventually we decided that it was just too gross. We asked the receptionist if he had a different room and he showed Woodley another, similarly smelly spot. Woodley, however, knew of some other hotels in the area and as we both knew we couldn't handle the smelly room much longer, he ventured out to see if he could find us a less odorous accommodation. I was very tired so I stayed at the hotel and rested.

He returned a bit later and reported that he had successfully booked us a room at the Hotel Minerva, near the Pantheon. I have to admit that I was quite relieved to pack up our bags and leave the hotel. I felt a bit bad about the extra expense, but since I had been feeling a bit nauseous due to the odor, I wasn't too upset about it.

After about a 10 minute walk we made it to the Minerva and Woodley showed me up to our new room. It had lots more room and, most importantly, it didn't smell in the least bit like a sewer. In fact, it smelled rather nice.

We immediately settled in and made ourselves comfortable. :) I was happy to know that not all hotels in Rome are smelly!

Yay Rome!

~ElizabethRose~

Housewives in History (and On the Road)

2009-12-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

For the last few days I've been thinking about what a "housewife's" tasks should be while traveling. I assume I am like most women who choose the domestic life these days, in that I love being at home cooking, sewing, gardening, and tidying up the house. But when the time for travel comes I am happy to part with these day to day tasks to see a bit of the world - for a time. :) Our current trip was designed around our need to visit Norway and the University of Oslo before making a decision about wether or not to move there and we also wanted to visit Woodley's parents who were in Italy.

Woodley grew up visiting Europe fairly frequently as a child and has many favorite places he likes to visit from time to time. Since he knows so much more about traveling on this side of the Atlantic, he arranged our schedule and all of our travel plans. I was quite surprised and pleased to learn that we would be stopping in so many places on our trip in addition to our visit to Norway and Tuscany. This really is the perfect time to do a trip like this since we don't yet have small children and Woodley is between jobs/school. But, since he planned the trip and knows these cities so well, it feels more as if it is his trip and I am just along for the ride.

So far we have been having a very nice time. However, I am starting to miss home and my normal housewife duties. While we've been on the road I have been trying to keep our hotel rooms fairly tidy, keep track of our dirty laundry, do laundry whenever we get a convenient opportunity, and try to make sure that we get fairly regular meals (even though I'm not the one cooking them).

Since I haven't had much chance for true housewife work lately, before we left I ordered a couple of books about housewives of the past and I brought two of them with me for some inspirational reading. The first one I started in on is called "The Canadian Housewife, An Affectionate History," by Rosemary Neering (2005). It provides an excellent description of the duties and day to day lives of housewives throughout Canadian history and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. Another book I ordered, that I imagine will be fairly similar, is called "Just a Housewife" (1987) but is about housewives in America. Unfortunately it didn't arrive before we left California so I haven't had a chance to look through it yet.

"The Canadian Housewife, an Affectionate History" is divided up into 8 chapters whose titles I'll list here since I think they are rather amusing:

1: Salt Pork and Homespun: Housewives in Arcadia and New France (covering roughly the 1600's)

2: Candles, Complaints, and a Stiff Upper Lip: Housewives in the Backwoods (covering the mid 1600's to early 1800's)

3: The True Destiny of Women: The Victorian Housewife (covering the 1850's through 1900)

4: Dust and Its Dangers: Into the New Century (covering the 1890's through 1918)

5: Sod Huts and Catalogue Clothes: Settling the Prairies (pioneer life in the 1900s through 1920s)

6: Science, The New Woman, and Making Do: Housewives in the 20's and 30's

7: Ration Books and Knitting Socks: Housewives on the Home Front (covering the time of the world wars)

8: Miracle Fabrics and Marshmallow Salads: Housewives in the '50's

Each chapter has a general introduction to life as a housewife during the specific space and time covered in the chapter and then further investigates further 7 aspects of these women's lives: "The Cook," "The Housekeeper," "The Seamstress," "The Laundress," "The Nurse," "The Mother," "The Wife." Along with the general information are a collection of quotes from women of the various times as well as pictures of home life.

So far I have read 6 chapters and I find it inspirational, informative, and entertaining. Since there are not many housewives these days, it can sometimes feel like a lonely profession. As I read the stories and day to day challenges of housewives of the past, it feels as if there is a whole host of sisters who share the little ups and downs of this sort of a life.

I will leave you with a few of my favorite quotes that I have discovered so far:

On menu planing and cooking:

From Chapter 3 The Victorian Housewife, a quote by Kathleen Blake Coleman, "Woman's Kingdom," the Toronto Mail, October 17, 1891

"It is difficult, isn't it, to get up something different and yet dainty and not too expensive for breakfast, dinner, and luncheon every day? This everlasting cookery becomes very burdensome to the housekeeper after awhile, and in fact I have known more than one little woman to sit down and have a good cry over the difficulty of providing something 'nice and different' every day."

On pleasing our husbands:

From Chapter 2, Housewives in the Backwoods, a quote by Lucy Peel from Love Strong as Death a Canadian Journal written between 1833 and 1836

"My Harp (her husband) is not neglected, for I assure you I am not like some women satisfied with gaining the affections of the man I marry, but I wish to retain them as long as I can, forever if possible, and I am convinced that did the generality of wives think the same and act to that effect, there would be fewer neglected ones."

On keeping a tidy and well cleaned house:

From Chapter 3, The Victorian Housewife, a poem published in the Toronto Globe in 1889

"A Good Housewife

I can tell her

By her cellar,

Cleanly shelves and whitened wall;

I can guess her

by her dresser,

By the back staircase and hall,

And with pleasure

Take her measure

By the way she keeps her brooms.

And by peeping

At the "keeping"

Of her back and unseen rooms;

By her kitchen's air of neatness,

By its general completeness

Where in cleanliness and sweetness

The rose of order blooms."

~ElizabethRose~

London: Day 3

2009-11-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

Our second morning in London dawned brisk and cloudy and, unlike the previous day, we were awake to greet it! Poor Woodley didn't get much sleep that night because had slept most of the day and night before but he appeared to be ready for action as soon as I woke up around 5:30am local time.

Breakfast at the Edgerton House is served on the ground floor starting at 6am and we fully enjoyed the delicious spread. As we munched, I decided that my new favorite breakfast is a rustic slice of bread with a hunk of cheese and ham. Yum! Woodley stayed clear of the ham and instead enjoyed yogurt with granola and fresh berries.

After breakfast we set off to stroll over to Buckingham Palace which was located just a little over a mile from our hotel. After a few false starts (normal looking streets that turned out to be dead ends) we were on our way!

As we walked I admired all of the beautiful red brick buildings with their white trim and festive greenery. We especially liked these angelic corbels.

Before long, we found ourselves walking along the perimeter of the royal gardens. Sadly, there was no chance of getting a peep inside. The walls were very high and were covered in a vast assortment of spiny metal. I guess they don't take kindly to trespassers on the royal property.

Some seriously big spikes!

As we approached the palace we joined up with a tour of school children. We admired their uniforms and listened in as their teacher lectured them about the palace and the queen. We learned that the flag flying on the top of the palace meant that the queen was in! In the photo below the children are waving at the palace and some of the guards on top were waving back - although it is hard to see.

We began to notice that many of the roads around the palace were blocked off and that there were quite a lot of policemen about. Normally we would have assumed that this was for the changing of the guard, which neither of us had seen before, but since it was an even numbered day, that traditional ceremony wasn't supposed to be happening.

As more and more people began gathering around the palace we finally decided to ask a policeman. He informed us that it was the first day of the new session of parliament and that in about an hour and a half the queen would be coming by on her way down to the parliament building where she would give her annual address to the members of parliament. I guess we picked a good day to visit the palace!

At that point, we were quite torn about whether or not we should try to stay and see the queen. It was getting close to 10am, the time when the Natural History Museum would be opening and since we had to leave for the airport at noon, we didn't have much time. We ended up staying around long enough to see a bunch of soldiers and a marching band, but left before the main procession began.

Buckingham Palace

As you can see, the road was blocked off and barriers were up to keep the crowds back.

On our way to the tube we passed by some beautiful fall scenery,

And a lovely fountain,

And more soldiers on horseback!

After a quick ride on the tube and a short walk we arrived outside the Natural History Museum. The building was quite impressive, as was the admission price: free! It was so nice to just be able to wander in and admire the collections!

Once you step inside the doors you are immediately greeted by an enormous dinosaur staring you right in the eye. The architecture of the entry hall is also quite impressive.

And in the center of the staircase, overlooking it all, Charles Darwin.

A view back towards the front entry from the stairway. It is quite a lovely building!

Since we only had an hour, we knew we would have to pick and choose what to see and move fast. Accordingly we first sped to the hall of minerals. Below, Woodley is standing in the main aisle that leads down the hall towards the vault. On either side are display cases featuring all sorts of minerals from all over the world. I wished we had had more time to browse through them! It is quite an impressive collection!

One of my favorites was this interesting looking mass of Prehnite. The placard informed us that it is "pale green tubular epimorphs after laumontite," from Maharashtra, India.

Of course, we had to visit the vault to see the collection of rare and interesting minerals. A couple of my favorites were: The Latrobe Nugget, pictured below. It is a 717 gram piece of gold discovered in Victoria Australia in 1853. In addition to its size, it is interesting because it is actually crystallized and is formed entirely of gold cubes, "some of which are more than one centimeter across."

And The Aurora Collection, an amazing collection of 296 naturally colored diamonds. It was quite something to see all the different colors that diamonds can come in.

I had heard of yellow and pink diamonds before but I had no idea they could come in all these colors:

The display changed from normal lighting to ultraviolet light and, as you can see, some of the diamonds glow quite brightly while others aren't lit up at all.

After finishing up in the vault, we decided to quickly run through the dinosaur exhibit before heading back to the hotel. As you enter you are greeted by a large dinosaur skeleton and are directed up a staircase to a walkway that runs above the entire length of the exhibit.

From the walkway you can look down on the exhibits below and get an excellent first glance at the dinosaurs from above. This exhibit is quite popular with the school children and there were several classes enjoying it with us. It was fun to see how the children reacted to the big (somewhat scary) dinosaurs.

At the back end of the overhead walkway we were directed around a corner and down a ramp to view the T-Rex. He was quite lifelike and it was actually a little scary standing in front of him as he growled and lunged at us. Some of the small ones were definitely scared by that part of the exhibit. But things got less scary quite quickly and soon we discovered a big nest of dinosaur eggs with some cute little dinosaurs just hatching!

After working our way through several more crowds of school children in the maze of the dinosaur exhibit we rushed through the mammals on our way to grab a sandwich and head back to the hotel. The blue whale was the biggest and best of all. It was amazing how large he was compared to the land mammals that we normally think of as being really big.

All too soon it was time to head back to our hotel to quickly pack up and take off for the airport!

Goodbye Edgerton House and London!

~ElizabethRose~

London: Day 2

2009-11-17T15:28:00.000-08:00

Well, there isn't too much to report about our second day in Norway because we slept through most of it.

After getting to bed around 12:30am London time, I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. So, I worked on a post about Nicola's quilt until 7:30am when I decided to try sleeping a bit more. I didn't mange to get to sleep again until around 9:30 and when I tried to get up at 10:15 I had a headache and stomachache. Woodley decided to let me sleep in a bit more and the next thing we knew it was 4pm! Woodley opened the heavy blinds and we realized we were just in time to watch the last rays of sun fade from the sky. Oops! At least we got caught up a bit on our sleep although I fear we are doing a lousy job of adjusting to the time change.

We lazily got dressed and decided to take a stroll down the street to see what we could find. Just a few blocks away glittered Harrods and it was quite visible, even from a distance:

We wondered about the green lights but as we got closer we realized what it was all about. Currently Harrods is completely decked out to the theme of The Wizard of Oz (in honor of the 70th anniversary of the film which occurred this year). The theme can be seen throughout the store and all the decorations are way over the top! Woodley didn't care for it but I thought it was tons of fun. The theme also works well with the green holiday decorations that they have added for the Christmas season.

Outside the store, window displays combine strange visions of the Land of Oz with very very expensive clothing.

I didn't take many photos inside because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to or not, but the store was quite something to see! It was like a huge maze and around ever turn was a room that seemed more beautiful than the last. My favorites were the hall of crystal, the Egyptian escalator, the Christmas area, and the yellow brick road of the shoe area that featured versions Dorothy's red slippers by all the biggest name shoe designers (most of them had 4 inch heels and were covered in red crystals). They even had a room specifically devoted to Dorothy's slippers! The clerks are all dressed up as dorothy and the walls are lined with shoe boxes, each containing the perfect pair of red slippers! (That was the one thing I saw that tempted me the most.)

The Wizard of Oz theme seemed to pop up everywhere. In the cooking department there was a tin man completely made out of pots, pans, and other metal cooking tools. On one of the other escalators we saw this display:

One of the funniest things to me was that, in several places throughout the store, Kansas was portrayed and described as a mythical and magical place. Thinking back to my own experiences of Kansas, I just had to laugh. My memories really didn't seem to match up with the grandeur of Harrods!

Our trip to Harrods turned out to be very valuable because I was able to pick up some moisturizer that matched the kind I use at home but which I had forgotten to pack. Also, we found a universal camera card reader which was also something we forgot. Thanks to the card reader, I can now get photos off the camera! Yay!

On our way back to the hotel we stopped for dinner at a little Italian place. I hadn't realized how hungry we were and it felt so good to eat some real food. Full and cheered up, we strolled back to the hotel. On the way we passed this cute street:

The holiday lights remind me of a scene out of a christmas book we had growing up. I just love them!

Finally we made it back to our lovely little Edgerton House which is also decked out for the season:

Thus ends day 2 in Norway. Hopefully we can sleep tonight, wake up early tomorrow, and see a bit more of the city before we fly to Rome at 2pm!

~ElizabethRose~

London: Day 1

2009-11-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned before, we arrived in London yesterday just a little before noon. I wasn't able to sleep much on the plane but since it was only a 9 hour flight I didn't feel too bad. We took a car to our hotel, the lovely and very charming Edgerton House. We had stayed here during our honeymoon and as we stepped into the lobby it almost felt as if we had gone back in time and were still honeymooning.

They didn't have our room quite ready for us yet (it was just around noon which is their check out time so that wasn't surprising). They said it would be ready in about a half hour so we decided to take a stroll down Knightsbridge, the closest big street just around the corner from the Edgerton House. As we walked, I was amazed by all of the holiday decorations festooning the charming brick buildings. It is so festive and I have now been convinced that the Christmas season is the best time to visit London. (It may have helped that there hasn't been a drop of rain since we arrived.)

When we got back to the hotel our room was ready and it was quite something to see! The hallway outside our room:

As you turn your old fashioned key in the lock, you open the door to reveal a tiny little entryway leading to a second door.

Behind that door is the rest of the room:

The strong blue striped fabric wall coverings give the room the feeling of a carnival which is heightened by the one large painting on the wall:

Continuing around the room:

And we must not forget the blue chandelier:

Or the blue patterned carpet (sorry the photo is a little blurry):

After marveling at our amazing surroundings, I took a nap until it was time to get dressed for dinner and the ballet. We followed the recommendation of our driver from the Airport and had dinner at a lovely French restaurant on a little dead end alleyway called La Petit Maison.

Since it was around 6pm, just after they had opened, we were only the second group seated. The large well lit room was filled with tables but it still managed to feel very open and spacious. Each table was adorned with two ripe tomatoes and a lemon. Our waitress welcomed us and told us about the restaurant's tradition of family style dining. You select a variety of dishes from the menu and they all come in large servings that can be shared around the table. After perusing the many options, we selected a dinner menu of:

Buratta with Fresh Camone Tomato Relish

Gnocchi with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic and Parmesan

Turbot with Artichokes, Chorizo, White Wine and Olive Oil

Green Beans

Vanilla Creme Brulee

At the end of the meal we decided that the first and last courses had been the best. The buratta was simply divine! It was by far the best caprese-like salad I have ever had, mostly due to the fantastic cheese the just seemed to melt away in delicious creaminess. The green beans were also fantastic! I joked with Woodley that I now have new heights to aspire to in green bean cooking!

Although all the dishes were family style we were still a bit surprised when the creme brulee arrived. It was a large dish with plenty of delicious custard to fill 3 or 4 hungry diners. For some reason we both had expected something much smaller. However, we dug in with gusto and were not disappointed! As we finished up our meal we sighed contentedly and then glanced nervously at our watches. It was 7:10 and the ballet started at 7:30.

We hurried outside and waited anxiously for the cab that we had asked the hostess to call for us. Although they assured us that it would arrive in less than 5 minutes, it didn't show up until 7:17. We hopped in and our cab driver sped us through all sorts of cute narrow alleys as he tried to avoid traffic and get us to the ballet on time. Although I was worried that we would miss the opening of the show I tried to relax and enjoy the glittery panorama of festive shop windows and holiday lights that flashed by outside the window of the cab.

After what seemed like ages, we arrived at The Royal Opera House and rushed inside. The head usher showed us where to retrieve our tickets at will call and told us to return and see her once we had picked them up. Although we had indeed missed the opening, she told us she thought she could find a place for us to see the rest of the first act. As we had been really looking forward to the show and the tickets were quite expensive, we were both a bit upset. We rushed off to get the tickets and when we returned she looked at our tickets and then consulted her map of the house. Anxiously we waited and watched as she gave directions to one of the other ushers standing near by. The friendly new usher asked us to follow her and we began winding through the hallways of Covent Garden. We went up flights of stairs, through narrow hallways and eventually arrived at a tiny corridor that appeared to be made entirely of wood and which was completely dark. She motioned for us to be quiet and we followed her down the dark hallway. After trying several doors, she managed to find the one she was looking for and motioned for us to enter.

As we stepped through the narrow wooden doorway we were surprised and thrilled to see that we had been guided to a private box on the grand tier very close to the right side of the stage. Although we couldn't see the full width of the stage, we could see almost everything and the dancers seemed almost close enough to touch. After watching old movies, I had always dreamed of sitting in a private box, but I never dreamed that I ever would! And in Covent Garden no less! Soon however, we were lost in the music of Tchaikovsky and the glitter of the costumes!

At the first intermission we moved around and located our actual seats which were also on the grand tier but were opposite the center of the stage. We had a better view of the entire stage but were not farther away and no longer in a private box. As I glanced back at our first Act seats, Woodley pointed out to me what must be the Royal Box, it was right next to the box we had been in!

The rest of the ballet was lovely but, by the end, we were very happy to get back to the hotel and fall into our blue bed!

~ElizabethRose~

Cutting and Piecing Nicola and Matt's Quilt

2009-11-17T13:58:00.000-08:00

Once I had washed, dried, and ironed my set of 80 fat quarters I was almost ready to start cutting it up. First however, the pattern asked me to divide the fabric up into two categories, one group of fabrics with large prints and another group of fabrics with small prints. The large print fat quarters were then cut up into larger pieces and the small prints were cut into smaller pieces. It took me a full day to cut up all of the fabric but it was pretty enjoyable because I used the time to catch up on the last season of The Office. :) Soon I had several big piles of fabric. In the picture below several of the big ones are layered on top of each other.

Next up, I needed to assemble the pieces into small blocks that I would then arrange and sew together into the two big quilts. The pattern allowed for quite a bit of flexibility and it was quite fun to lay out the fabrics and put different patterns together.

Once I had sewed several sets together I laid them out in the family room to see how the fabrics looked together.

After several more days of sewing I finally finished all of the blocks and was ready to lay out the final design of the quilt and sew it together. When I started this task I didn't realize how challenging it would be. I grabbed my pattern and began laying out blocks that I thought looked good together. In the end I had two quilts that looked like this:

Quilt A:

Quilt B:

When I finished laying out all the pieces and gazed at the two quilts, I wasn't quite pleased. They seemed so busy, more like a crazy quilt than one that was made using a pattern. I shared the photos with my mother to get her opinion and together we decided to try making a bit of a change. I picked up the pieces and started over, this time trying to make a blue quilt and a green quilt by reorganizing the pieces. After about an hours work I ended up with:

Quilt A (green):

Quilt B (blue):

I agreed with my mother that these new arrangements were a bit better. I decided to sleep on it and when I woke up the next morning I realized that I still wasn't quite satisfied. Although I was running out of time, I decided to pick up the pieces once more, re-organize them, and lay them out once more. This time I decided to make a light and a dark quilt. The end result:

Quilt A (light):

Quilt B (dark):

Light and Dark Quilts:

I still wasn't entirely sure about the busy pattern of the quilt but I liked this last arrangement best so I sent pictures of the two quilts to Nicola and asked her to pick the one she liked best. She chose the dark quilt an I spent another couple of days sewing the blocks into rows and then sewing the rows together to make the final front of the quilt.

As I continued sewing and ironing the backside became quite a patchwork of seams and colors.

Needless to say, I was quite excited when I finally finished (as you can see, the finished quilt will be quite large)!

I was also very tired:

The day before we left California for our big trip, I sewed up the fabric for the back of the quilt and when we were in Bellingham I dropped off the front and back with Betsy of Nautilus Longarm Quilting. Since the quilt is so big I decided that it would be pretty challenging to do the quilting myself in time for Nicola and Matt's wedding. Having the quilt professionally finished seemed like a great option and it is so exciting to think that it will be all finished up next time I see it! I hope Nicola and Matt like how it turns out!

~ElizabethRose~

We're in London!

2009-11-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like we decided to take a little trip!

After thinking about the Norway grad school option for a few weeks, we felt that we couldn't make a decision until we had visited Norway again to learn more about the program and life in Oslo. About a week and a half ago we finalized our plans and here we are starting our European trip in London!

The past couple of weeks went by like a whirlwind as I tried to finish piecing Nicola and Matt's quilt, clean the house so it would be tidy when we get back from the trip, pack, and get ready for Nicola's first bridal shower which was this past Sunday.

The trip over to London was uneventful apart from a rough landing due to the breezes around London. Last night we had an excellent dinner out and then went to The Sleeping Beauty ballet at Covent Garden. It was so lovely!

Unfortunately we then slept through most of the day Monday but hopefully we'll get to do something fun this evening.

~ElizabethRose~

Nicola's Quilt - Selecting the Fabric

2009-11-17T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like I once again haven't been great about keeping up with my postings on a regular schedule. Perhaps one day I'll be able to manage that but until then I'll keep trying.

When we heard that Nicola and Matt were engaged I began thinking about what I wanted to give them for a wedding present. By the time we returned to California in early October I had decided to make them a quilt and I decided that I wanted to give it to Nicola at her second bridal shower on December 12th. This was quite an ambitious decision because I still have yet to finish the two quilts I started this past January! (one of them is Sammy's Quilt which I have blogged about before)

I decided on a queen sized version of the Fat Quarter Frolic pattern by Larisa Key for Nicola and Matt's quilt which is one I had seen displayed at our local quilt shop and have admired for quite awhile. It was reported to be quick and easy to piece and since I had never before followed a pattern when making a quilt and was short on time, I figured that was just what I needed. The quilt is a bit crazy and doesn't have an overall design. Instead, it is much more about using fun interesting fabrics.

The piecing required 40 fat quarters so I set out to collected a bunch in colors that went along with Nicola and Matt's wedding color scheme of turquoise blue and brown. I started out at our local quilt shop in downtown Los Gatos: Natural Expressions. I gathered up 40 fat quarters in one afternoon, brought them home and laid them out on the floor of the living room.

Once I saw them all together I decided that I didn't like the way some of them looked with the group so I decided to head back out to the quilting stores to see what else I could find. Using Google Maps I located about 4 quilting stores in the South Bay and decided to visit them all in one afternoon. Here's a brief review of the ones I discovered with our local Natural Expressions listed first:

Natural Expressions

(photos are from Natural Expressions' web site)

Natural Expressions is located in downtown Los Gatos on Santa Cruz Ave. and is my favorite quilting store in the Bay Area. The store is large, airy, and well lit and has an impressive selection of fabric. They have one of the largest collections of Amy Butler prints that I've seen in the Bay Area and every time I visit their shop I come out with tons of new ideas for quilting and sewing projects. The staff is always friendly and very helpful. In addition to selling fabrics and quilting supplies they also have a large beading section which is very fun to browse. They are happy to cut fat quarters and have a variety of classes each month. I love love love visiting this shop and highly recommend it!!

Natural Expressions
18 N. Santa Cruz Ave. Los Gatos, CA 95030
Sunday and Saturday: 11am to 5pm
Monday: 11am to 4pm
Tuesday: 11am to 6pm
Wednesday: 10am to 8pm
Thursday: 10am to 6pm
Friday: 10am to 6pm

Prairie Queen Quilt

(photos are from the Prairie Queen Quilt website)

Prairie Queen Quilt was such a nice store! They are located on Camden Ave. in San Jose. They had an amazing collection of lovely flowered prints that made me want to start sewing pillows and several sets of fabric that had me dreaming of new quilts I could make. :) The ladies who worked there were very helpful and the store had an open layout and a very good fabric selection. They quilting classes and quilting services - the samples in the store looked beautiful! Unfortunately they don't cut fat quarters but they were very upfront about that policy so I didn't really mind since I know its not very convenient for them. Overall, I really liked this shop and I'll definitely be heading back there soon to check out more of their fabrics and quilting resources!

Prairie Queen Quilt Shop
14922 Camden Ave. San Jose, CA 95124
Monday and Tuesday: 10am to 6pm
Wednesday: 10am to 8pm
Thursday and Friday: 10am to 6pm
Saturday: 10am to 5pm
Sunday: closed most Sundays but open one Sunday per month, see their website for dates.

Golden State Sewing Center

(photos are from the Golden State Sewing Center website)

The Golden State Sewing Center is located on Winchester Blvd. in Campbell, CA. It turned out to be quite a bit smaller than I had expected as it is a small section of a strip mall. However, they do seem to make excellent use of their small space and they have some fun fabrics that I didn't see anywhere else. They also sell sewing machines, have classes and do long arm quilting right in the store. They have fat quarters available in most of their fabrics and they are very happy to cut more fat quarters if you can't find one in the fabric you want. The shop keepers were very friendly and helpful! Since this shop doesn't have quite as big a selection as some of the others and since it's a bit further from my house, I think I will probably just visit it every now and then when I'm looking for some extra special fabric.

Golden State Sewing Center
2435 South Winchester Blvd. Campbell, CA 95008
Monday through Friday: 10am to 6pm
Saturday: 10am to 5pm
Sunday: 12pm to 4pm

The Granary

(photo is from The Granary website)

The Granary is my new second favorite quilting store in the Bay Area (right behind our local Natural Expressions)! It is located a bit further north on S. Mary Ave. in Sunnyvale, CA. From the moment I walked into the store and spotted their huge collection of 1940s reproduction fabric I felt right at home. The store isn't too big but is packed full of the most beautiful fabric! To make things easier for us they have almost every fabric readily available in fat quarters and half yard cuts that are conveniently rolled or folded up in baskets next to the different sections of fabric. If you can't find a fat quarter that you're looking for they are more than happy to cut one for you. I found a ton of fabric here that I simply adored and that I hadn't seen at any of the other stores - the reproduction fabric was my favorite though. I have so many quilts in mind now! The ladies where very friendly and helpful and as I shopped I noticed there was an area at the back where they hold classes. Although there wasn't a class going on while I was there, there were several ladies gathered together who were visiting and sharing quilting ideas. It felt like this was the type of environment where you could get lots of encouragement and help on projects and maybe even make a few friends. They have a wide selection of classes and I think I'll try to take some early next year. This is a shop that I know I'll go back to again and again.

The Granary
1326 S. Mary Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Monday - Saturday 10am to 6pm
Thursday 10am to 8pm
Last Sunday of the Month: 10am to 4pm

Eddie's Quilting Bee

(photo from Eddie's Quilting Bee website)

Eddie's Quilting Bee is probably one of the largest and most well known quilting shops in the Bay Area, or at least I found out about it before I discovered any other Bay Area quilting shops. Despite the fact that they have a large store with some really fun fabric, tons of classes, and a variety of quilting notions and sewing machines for sale, I can't say I like shopping here. The store is haunted by Eddie, the owner, who is a bit creepy and only seems to be friendly to customers when he's trying to sell you a really expensive machine. (Since I bought 2 machines here I know that he can put on the charm when trying to sell you something.) Although this store does seem to have a big following, every time I've visited, the sales staff hasn't really seemed interested in being helpful and I always feel uncomfortable - more like an intruder in their sacred quilting shop.

However, I was ready to try again as I continued my search for the perfect fabric for Nicola and Matt's quilt. I entered the store and began collecting fabric. I asked if I could set it somewhere while I continued shopping and the store clerk grudgingly said I could put it on the counter. As I piled more and more fabric up she eyed it warily as if dreading the moment when I would ask her to waste her valuable time cutting it for me. When I had finally collected all my fabric I asked her if they cut fat quarters. She replied that it depended on how busy they were and suggested that I look through a huge wall of tupperware containers that were stuffed with an odd assortment of pre-cut fat quarters. Together she and I spent a long time looking through the stash but we didn't find any of the fabric I had selected. Eventually she sighed, glanced around as if looking vainly for more customers to help so that she could get out of cutting my fabric and, since no one else was in site, said that she guessed she would cut my fat quarters. She started in and things were going along pretty well until another couple of shoppers came over and were waiting to be helped. I would have been happy to wait while she helped them and almost spoke up and asked to help them first but at that point I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and just wanted to get out of there. So they waited and she kept cutting. Eventually, Eddie came over and stood there fore a few minutes watching her and not offering to help the other customers. Eventually he seemed to give up on the hope that she would help them and turned and offered his assistance. However, he kept glancing over reproachfully as she cut my fat quarters. Finally, he seemed to get complete fed up and asked harshly, "How many fat quarters are you cutting her?" I didn't know how to answer and the sales clerk was silent so I gestured at the fabric that was left to cut - I hadn't counted it so I didn't have a definite answer. "Well," he continued, "We have a limit of 5 fat quarters cut per customer." I was taken aback and told the sales clerk just to cut half yards of the rest even though I didn't really want that much fabric and I knew it would be a lot more expensive. At that point I just wanted to get out of there. I was especially upset because there were several fabrics that I liked a lot and would have really liked to have an extra fat quarter of. However, because they weren't clear about their policy up front (or perhaps Eddie just made it up to get his sales clerk free of me), I didn't get to pick out the ones that I wanted to get fat quarters of vs. half yards and some of my favorites were already cut up as fat quarters. When she finally finished cutting my fabric I checked out and beat a hasty retreat back to Los Gatos.

As I drove away I was still a bit upset but I comforted myself with the fact that since I had now discovered so many nice quilting stores in the Bay Area, I never need to go back to Eddies again!

When I got home I spent the evening washing, drying, and ironing my newest fabrics! Then I laid them all out again and realized that I had just over 80 fat quarters, twice as many as I needed (silly me for not keeping track as I went). However, I was excited because I decided to make 2 quilts and keep one of them at our house!

All I had left to do was cut and piece the quilt!