My Christmas gift for you...

With this beautiful Christmas hymn called "Mitt hjerte alltid vanker" (written by Hans Adolph Brorson, a Danish priest who lived from 1694 to 1764) I wish you all wonderful days together with those you love. This hymn is one of my favourites, it's so beautiful! It is a young Norwegian woman, Ingebjørg Bratland, who is singing - like an angel!

Preparing for Christmas

I really love this time of the year! It's a time to do things that you have done every year ever since you were a child. I love traditions! And I love to make new traditions for my family. This year we have made a kind of sausages that is a tradition from my husband's family. It was the first time we have tryed to make them, and it turned out well! It was rather fun too (even though I'm a vegetarian at heart...)! And it is such a satisfaction to make food for the winter and fill up the freezer. You feel so prepared and secure! My children and I have also made traditional Christmas cookies, as we do each year.
Now the Christmas greetings are sent, the Christmas presents are baught (unfortunately I haven't a single homemade present, we have been ill for several weeks, so there has not been enough time to make any) and the house will hopefully be clean and sparkling very soon ;) But is this the most important things about Christmas? I try to not let them be! But oh my! I must admit, they take too much time and space from all that Christmas is really about: The little child in the manger, born for us. Dear Lord, help us all to focus most of all on the birth of Christ and not on the things the commercial world want us to believe is necessary for having a wonderful Christmas.

Happy Birthday, Jane!

On this day in 1775 one of my favourite authors was born. Life would have been much poorer without Jane Austen's wonderful books!

About feminism...

"Feminism is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers, but slaves when they help their husbands."

G.K. Chesterton

Happiness...

"The secret of happiness lies in taking a genuin interest in all the details of daily life and in elevating them to art."

William Morris

Welcome!

"How welcoming is the sight of a warm home and the prospect of tea!"

Tasha Tudor

Thoreau's cabin redux: tiny homes and happiness

Moslid i Vinje - Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu [ Part two ]

Moslid i Vinje - Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu [ Part One ]

Why have so much stuff..?

"He who would travel happily, must travel light."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Do we need luxury?

"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

Henry David Thoreau

Less is more

How many things are there which I do not want.

Socrates

A small house...

A holliday-house for rent somewhere in Sweden.

Isn't this the most beautiful house? I have always wanted to live in a small house because I think they are the prettiest and because I want to simplify all I can. But I know it wouldn't be easy to live in such a small house when you are a family, so I just keep on dreaming of a house like this while I try to simplify the best I can in our rather big house...

We're free!

"We're living in a free country, aren't we? Aren't you allowed to walk any way you like?" Astrid Lindgren

An admirable profession

"I enjoy doing housework, ironing, washing, cooking, dishwashing. Whenever I get one of those questionaires and they ask what is your profession, I always put down housewife. It's an admiral profession, why apologize for it. You aren't stupid because you're a housewife. When you're stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare."

Tasha Tudor

Oh, the pleasures of reading!

"The person, be it a gentleman or a lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

Jane Austen