Two Thousand and Fourteen

Happy New Year my dears. Was it sparkly and amazing? 

I spent it here:

Doing this:

And playing with this little cutie:

… who taught me the Swedish word for "snowflakes" and pulled me up on all of my bad pronunciation. The worlds teeniest teacher. 

I'm now safely back in Umeå, where the snow is hiding and it's raining every day. Soon it will be time to move here for real and I'll be posting from my new, real-life Nordic Cabin ♥

St. Lucia

Today is St. Lucia day in Sweden. You can see a short video of the celebrations below:

Girls in white gowns carry candles sing beautiful songs and walk slowly down the isle of the church, a procession headed by a girl wearing a crown of candles. I saw my first St. Lucia celebration in my first year of university, when my department put on a mini version in London. Now it makes me feel ever-so christmassy, and with just 12 days to go, it marks the perfect start to a christmas count-down. 

The day is in celebration of Saint Lucy, or Santa Lucia. Saint days are not very common in Scandinavia and I think that might be why this one is so special. St Lucia day has links to pagan beliefs and as you can imagine, in the cold mid-winter of the Nordic region, a celebration of lights would have been very important. 

What do you think? Is this an important day where you are? We don't celebrate anything in England on this day, but I really like watching the Swedish celebrations. You can find a lot more videos by searching 'st. lucia sweden' on youtube. Some of the singers are really stunning! 

NaNoWriMo Update

Oh hi, let me just crawl out of my NaNo cave for a bit and let you know I'm still alive. 

I literally cannot fathom how you people do this. I know that some of you are hardcore-every-single-year NaNo writers and I am very impressed now that I'm experiencing all of this for myself. 

How is your writing going? Are you meeting your deadlines? 

I'm behind on the word count, but I think I've got it under control. I was wondering today how you guys like to structure your writing. This doesn't necessarily only apply to NaNoWriMo, but any kind of writing really. I assumed I would write in order, from start to finish. It seemed so logical, given the time restraint and the daily word targets. I even had Björn use his newly acquired programming skills to program a little calendar for me with the daily word count, so that I could write it all in one document and not have to do the maths. How naive I was! 

Instead I've been writing in a kind of strange, illogical manner. You see, the story I'm writing has been in my mind for the longest time. I dream about it and I think about it and I imagine my characters and I work out all the little details when I'm in yoga class or wandering about outside. So I've been finding pictures that resemble the story in my head and writing mini stories based on those, that I plan to eventually knit together into a more coherent narrative. It's very much like the writing prompts I used to post here. (Would you like to see more of those, by the way? I have lots of images stored up and ready to have the crap written out of ;) 

How do you guys like to write? Are you strict with yourself when it comes to order and coherence, or do you just let it all flow out of your mind as it materialises? 

Good luck to you, we're nearly halfway there! 

I'll eat you up, I love you so

I'm sure you all know by now about my guilty pleasure of Where the Wild Things Are and everything to do with it, so I was very excited when I stumbled across these amazing book covers based on beloved children's books:

C L I C K M E !

We often say "don't judge a book by it's cover", but be honest with me, how many of you truly adhere to that advice when it comes to the literal reading of a book? Certainly not me, I'm so in love with the illustrated covers of books, especially those of children's books. I'm quite sure you'll agree, then, that these are very special prints. 

They'd make very sweet pictures for a nursery wall, children's bedroom, particularly when hung above your child's bookcase. I remember once looking after a little girl named Sophie who had a bookcase that towered above her bed. On it was every single children's book you could possibly even dream of. I used to spend hours pouring over them with her sitting in my lap, helping her learn to read. One of my happiest memories is of her reading me Green Eggs and Ham (a personal favourite of ours) after I'd been away from her for a little while, leaving her to learn to read fluently and with the most beautiful expression. 

Which of these prints do you like best? Can you spot the Swedish book amongst the titles? 

Another Give Away!

This week, a facebook page I've been collaborating on has been hosting a give away, featuring one of my necklaces. The give away ends tomorrow evening, so there is still time to enter if you'd like the chance to win a pretty handmade necklace! 

I will be giving away a Nordic themed necklace on this blog very soon, so watch out for that! 

Here's the link for my current give away. As always, you may enter on behalf of a friend if you'd like to gift the necklace to someone. I'll be emailing the winner tomorrow, so we can discuss any arrangements, special messages etc :)

And we're back!

I am so happy right now! It was so lovely to open up my blog just now and see the lovely comments from the bloggers I have missed! 

I have lots and lots to tell you but for now I will tell you this:

I am doing NaNoWriMo this November and I'm petrified! My username is 'little nordic cabin' so come and say hello if you're taking part too! 

Can't wait to come back to you all with lots of cosy Nordic stories ★

If you see this in your list...

...please tell me! 

I might have fixed it! Please just leave a comment, letting me know I'm appearing again!