Mother in laws birthday, and a bit about marmalade

Today was my mother-in-law’s birthday, and we celebrated it at their cabin by the sea.

I am grateful for that cabin!

This cabin is one of my favorite places in the whole world. It’s right at the end of a beautiful fjord, and gives me peace of mind and a feeling of bliss.

My mother-in-law also has an amazing, unfailing talent for creating cozy hideouts from every nook and cranny. She buys a lot of old stuff at flea markets and auctions. Look at the wall in the left picture for instance. Pieces from an old oven.




She’s also got real green fingers and can make just about anything grow. As a result, everywhere plants can grow at the cabin, they grow. In pots and pans, boxes and boats alike.

I didn’t grow up by the ocean, so I still love spending hours with my nose inches from the surface, looking for crabs, fish, shrimps and seashells. And there’s no better place than their dock.

Both my husband and my brother in ran around pointing out things they found.
The weather was nice and was a really nice day!

I brought my mother-in-law a glass of each of the marmalades as birthdaypresents.

Decorated two wooden tags with stamp and ink, and wrote the name of the marmalades on the backside.

The lemon-lime-grapefruit marmalade is good, but really citrusy. It’s sour and sweet and a little explosion in your mouth, maybe even a bit much.

Next time: more sugar, more boiling.

Also, since I decided to use only the zest, pulp and juice, it took a whole lot of time, and I haven’t definitely decided it was worth it. Peeling 500 grams of limefruits free for all except pulp, is really not a pickninc.

I like both the marmalades myself though,and that counts for something.

It's been a great weekend. Only one normal workweek left, before my long and well deserved holiday kicks inn. Will be awesome!

Do you have any plans?

How to be good: Be grateful!

So this is one of those rare days where I'm just not feeling to good, my body disagrees with me, my head can't seem to focus and i don't have the energy level i would prefer.
But I am one thing, that always gets me through these days with a smile on my face.
I am grateful.

For the last year i have regularly updated my facebook statuses with gratefulness. From big lifechanging things to small everyday pleasures.
Gratefulness is the largest word on my wall, the thing i keep reminding my self to feel.

And it has changed my life. Gratitude is rewarding, it makes you appreciate the small things, just because we all "run out" of large things to be gratefull for really fast.
By reminding yourself to be gratefull for new things every day, your mind opens to the things around you that you previously maybe took for granted.

Here are my gratefulness tips:

1. Make a gratefulness journal
Be it a scrap of paper in your pocket, a blog, your statusupdates, a daily twitter or a designated book, try to write down 3 or more things each day that you are grateful for.
If it seems hard to commit, put a timeframe to it. 30 days, 50 days, half a year, or even a week if that is what you can master.

2. Think big
Look at your life as a whole. Yes you might be grateful for your friends, your family, your boy/girlfriend, your job, your car and so on. But these points will run out after a day or two.
How about the fact that you have a job? The fact that your lungs fill with air. That you can move, smile, talk. That you are allive. That you have a roof over your head. Huge things that we often take for granted, but that are importent to notice and be grateful for.

3. Think small
Look at the everyday things you appreciate. The taste of your favourite tea, your new nailpolish, the way roses smell, the cat that lives down the street, the way your kid smiles and so on and so forth. Little things that makes life better.

4. Contemplate
Start noticing the way you feel when you meet, feel, smell, taste, experience or see new things. Notice your reaction.

5. Spread the word
After I started puting my gratefulness journal in my status update, people have shared the things they are grateful for. Some of them have even written comments that they are grateful they have a friend who reminds them to be grateful.
Telling people you are happy they exist, that you appreciate the way they smile or something they have done is polite (we should all say thank you more often!) but also turns both you and your friend's attention towards being grateful.

These tips have worked very well for me.
I noticed the change best when i had to face a person i find it hard to respect and talk to, a person who makes me feel small and unworthy. I tried to turn my attention towards being grateful and came up with these points:

- I am grateful I am not like him
- I am grateful I have learned so much self control after meeting him
- I am grateful he has made me stronger
- I am grateful even people like him can be loved
- I am grateful I don't have to meet him too often...