Mama-bear duty

Lately, I've taken over Mama-bear duty as she's gone on a little trip to the mountains. I have learnt the hard way that presents from the kitty-cats are not joyous and include such horrors as rats heads and birds feet. I hate to think where the rest of the poor animals are... please please not my bed...

My week has been filled with sweet treats and tiny delights when it should have been filled with books, but I'm feeling nice and relaxed from the little break. 

On Wednesday the postman brought me a lovely surprise - I'd forgotten that my Graze account had switched back to weekly deliveries. So after I made some tea, I opened the little box to see what those wonderful people at Graze had sent me this time.

Before I got to the blueberry box, I opened a box called 'Cookies and Cream'. It had sunflower seeds in it, as well as little chocolate pieces and some kind of mini cookie pieces. I like sunflower seeds but not when I'm under the impression that I'm about to get something sweet, creamy, chocolatey, crunchy, chewy and milky. That is not the time, nor the place for sunflower seeds. Get out of my cookies and cream, sunflower seeds. Nobody invited you. You don't even get a photo. 

So, the next box was a much happier surprise! 'Scrumptious Blueberry Swirl' had the most delicious yogurt coated blueberries, swirled in amongst dried blackcurrants and raspberry-infused cranberries. I love dried fruit infused with other fruit. This box was a perfect mix of sweet, tart and creamy. Yum yum yum.

Next up was 'Korai Chutney'. I love indian spices, but they always make my tummy hurt, so I was a little nervous. I have a habit of gobbling these little boxes up all at once, which sort of defeats the purpose of them being healthy, so it was a strange experience to have the Korai Chutney after the Blueberry Swirl. It was delicious though, even though it left my mouth a little warm and tingly!

Finally I opened the 'Super Carrot Cake' box. I've had one of these 'Afternoon Tea' boxes before. They are ever so nice! They come with a bag of Kenyan tea and a little piece of cake. The cake is so soft and sweet and actually, the sunflower seeds can sit there happily because they really added something extra to the flavour. The tea was also lovely, I added milk last time, so I tried it black this time. It was delightful. I saved this box for a mid-morning treat on Thursday and I was reading Out of Africa while I drank my tea. It was simply perfect.

Other simple treats included tea and toast, tea and biscuits, milk and homemade marble cake and homemade speckled fudge. Honestly, how I'm not breaking the chairs I sit on, I will never know. 

I've also had fun experimenting with pretty glitter nail varnishes...

Here I used Barry M's Gold Foil Nail Effects polish and topped it with a couple of coats of Revlon's Sequins (also gold), before using Barry M's Aqua Glitter polish to get pretty little mermaid toes!

What has your week been filled with? 

Mama-bear kisses ♡

PS, as a special treat, you can get a free Graze box by entering this code: X3PW3R4D or by clicking on the 'free Graze box' button at the side. If you decide to sign up, you will get your first and fifth box for free! Also, for my American friends, it seems like they have Graze on your side of the world now too! If I try to get to the website, it just redirects me to the UK site but they have a Facebook page. Maybe they're still setting up, but keep an eye out for it and before you know it, you could be getting weekly snacks delivered to your home too! Yippee!

the little nordic cabin

x

A funeral for a worm

Yesterday was a tragic day. My little brother Jack and our cute little helper, Katie stumbled upon a worm, breathing its very last breaths, abandoned by the side of our driveway. The worm had no friends. She was dying all alone, frying slightly in the evening sun. 

Rushing into my bedroom, the worm tenderly wrapped up in a bit of tissue paper, Katie presented the tragedy to me, asking if I could save the poor thing. There was a dramatic wail of sorrow as I announced the worms time of death. 

A brief, but touching funeral was held. The inscription on the memorial rock above reads, ''I'm sorry you died Kelly''. 

Feel free to hold a minute of silence at your leisure.

inspire nordic

☆

Bee friends

A long time ago I found this website, which was having a campaign to save the bees. They were sending out little packs of seeds in the post, so that everybody could help out by planting bee-friendly flowers. 

As some of you may already know, we've been home-schooling my little brother ever since we moved house in May because his new school was full and he's not able to start until September. One sunny day, we decided to go outside and do some bee-friendly gardening. I had already sent off for the seeds (during the campaign you could get them for free, a really nice initiative!) so we went out with our spades and our soil and planted them in a little pot. 

It's taken a couple of months, but they've finally grown. And the nicest part was that the seeds come in mixed packs, which means you don't know what it is that you're planting. So I arrived home from Sweden yesterday evening and was very pleasantly this morning to see that we had managed to grow two of my favourite flowers: cornflowers and poppies :)

What do you think? I like these kinds of campaigns, it seems like such a sweet and gentle way to educate the little ones about our environment and to inspire them to help protect it. 

If you'd like to help too, I believe the petition is still open to be signed. Just click on the link above to learn more :)

inspire nordic

☆

The Versatile Blogger Award

So I read on ash-matic's blog that when you receive two pieces of news, one has to be good and one has to be bad and that you must categorize them accordingly. I received two pieces of news this evening, but they were not very difficult to categorize. 

The bad news was that my cute little 6 year old brother, Jack, fell during his skiing holiday yesterday and broke his wrist in two places. However, that turned out to be quite good news for him, since when I called my sister she told me he was quite delirious from the excitement of having a plaster cast! So I guess that news is half and half! 

The lovely news was that I won another award! A great big, shiny thank you to the wonderful armchair squid for nominating me! Please go and visit him right now! (I sneakily took a different 'badge' for the award, he has another, go have a look!)

Here are some instructions:
1. Nominate 15 others for the award and inform them with a comment on each of their blogs.

2. Create a post for the Versatile Blogger Award.

3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.

4. In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.

5. In the same post, include this set of rules.

7 Random Things About Me:

1. I blush really easily. This is quite a large concern of mine right now, since I know that I'm going to have two horribly pink, rosy cheeks as I give my presentation on Monday and as we speak I am silently contemplating how much make-up/paint/paper bags it would take to sufficiently cover my silly cheeks.

2. I love animals but most animals hate me because the moment I see anything furry, I have to pick it up and snuggle it. Our fluffy little kitty, Olga, hides from me whenever I'm home because I frequently bother her and tell her that I will make a scarf out of her someday...

3. I might have mentioned this before, but I am absolutely terrified of wolves. To ease my fear when I arrived here in Norway, I decided to research them a little, since someone once told me that what frightens you is the unknown, so I figured that if I made the unknown known, I wouldn't be frightened any longer. How very wrong I was! I read all about how wolves howl in order to summon the rest of the pack to them and bravely played a couple of sound files. Proud with my efforts, I relaxed into my chair, only to hear a bird loudly chirp outside moments later. I jumped right out of my skin, screamed/squealed/cried and ran for the door. This was it! I'd summoned the wolves with my sound files! It was horrific, to say the very least.

4. I sneeze whenever I go out in the sunshine. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of super power that I just haven't figured out yet.

5. I have invented my own card game. It's called ''Going Out with Nikki" and is a combination of Rummy, Old Maid, Snap, Cheat & other favourites. Rules include having to tell a joke when the joker is played and having to politely apologise to your fellow players if you call 'cheat' and nobody cheated.

6. Speaking of card games, I am really good at Snap. Like really good. It's some kind of not-so-hidden, actually-I-make-it-very-well-known-to-everyone-I-meet talent that I have. I lose at every other game known to mankind so I am very proud of this fact.

7. I never imagined that this blog could possibly get more than 20 followers, let alone more than 50, nor that I would be given two awards and in the process get to ''meet'' so many kind and interesting people! Thank you all so much!

My lucky nominees:

Lisa has a lovely blog, which I linked to earlier today (see below)

How could I not nominate Jeremy, when he has such an interesting blog and when he made a post especially for me yesterday!

Go and look at the beautiful videos Mark posted yesterday!

My good friend Laura turned 22 on Tuesday, so this can be my gift to her :) 

Sabrina always writes such interesting things :)

Amber has a dinosaur cursor. Enough said. 

I love the way Dana writes 100 word posts each day.

Anita has such a pretty blog. Go and have a look at all of the beautiful pictures she posted today! 

I have just discovered Dahye's blog but she definitely deserves an award for it!

Please go and congratulate Amy, it was her blogiversary yesterday!

Jenn's blog makes me smile :) 

Melee has a great music blog. 

I'm new to Shawnee's blog but she posts some lovely photos!

Bel just signed up for the A - Z challenge, so go and give her some support!

And last but not least, my dear friend Debra really deserves to win all kinds of awards for her lovely blog!


inspire nordic