Wedding Gallery

*snicker* Heard at home:

Daddy: Is daddy best?
Amalie: Noooooo!
Daddy: Is mommy best?
Amalie: NO!
Amalie: AMALIE best!

Full of herself that little one eh? :p
She got us good, we just cracked at her statement haha :D She's also been starting to show some real pixie-moves... like...she knows she's doing something she's not allowed to but she just keeps grinning and eyeing us like she wanna tell us "yeah dare me!" and thinks (knows??) she can get away just by her charms!

Ohwell - my mom's coming today and staying for a few days. It's Adrians birthday tomorrow you see, and she loves being around when it's his bday. It's a grandma thing :p

Anyways. Figured I'd show some peeks on this coming sundays Pencil-Lines sketch - I don't think it looks good scanned/photographed and I am a bit annoyed by that - but the closeups kinda helps showing how nice it actually is kinda. And drop by Scrappedugnad - today was Catrines turn to post and she did some fabby canvases! (yeah - Nowegian only, sorry!)

Remember this? When Sarah Silverman surprised her host-show-bf with this clip:
(not suitable for work or kids I guess...depends..)



Well - he got back at her with this - hahahaha (fast forward to the 2min mark if you wanna skip the blabla):



Pappa: Er pappa best?
Amalie: Neeeeiiii
Pappa: Er mamma best?
Amalie: Neeeeeii
AMalie: AMALIE best!

*fnis*

Yesterdays Pencil-Lines had the FABBY Åsa Bergstrand guesting......loooove her style...it's so professional-looking and unique :) She's a true artist methinks :) This is my niece and my collection of YUMMY Rouge de Garance die-cut-flowers. Ahhhh ♥♥♥ I normally don't fancy premade die-cuts but these are just to DIE for :) I know..I should have had some kind of journaling on the page but I didn't quite know where to put the journaling at.....hmm I kinda like the page to be nice and pretty and white too :)



More Bad Girl peeks...



Quick speedlinkage:

• I'm such a nerd - I actually find this quite interesting. An easier way to get the metadata (exif) from your photos sorted and analyzed for Lightroom. I tried to convert my processes to Lightroom in january but quickly uh, forgot about it... will try to make another effort soon :p
• And because I still lust for that D300. *sigh* A quick review on the ISO-range of the camera.
• I've been storing quite a number of presets for Lightroom now. I think they're a bit like actions. Just need to get around to actually use Lightroom eh? Hm. Maybe they can be used in ACR too? I mean, you can make your own presets there too *boggle* Anyways. Here's some links. OneSoftware, LightroomKillerTips (he posts them every monday I think) and Inside Lightroom.
• Check out Funky Finds Jewellery Give-Away. :)
• Hm ok that was just four links :)

Have a nice week :)

Corinne Delis guested us at Scrappedugnad on friday - challenged us to do a layout with journaling from the heart. Loved her challenge. Mine's about how stupid I find this parenthoodthingie....I mean - from the moment you know you've concieved someone there's nothing but worries, worries and even more worries and it never seem to end!!! ;p

AND YAY!!! Me soooo happy!!!! My BG kit arrived yesterday and from the moment I went to fetch it and open it I've felt a mojo I haven't felt in ...WEEKS! You know I've complained about my layouts lying around on the table for 3-5 days before I finally get around to wrap them up...well, I finished two layouts and almost a whole minibook just yesterday!! Wrapped up the minibook today and am on my way into my third layout with this kit!!! I have to confess though.....when Wendy (the owner of Bad Girls) told us what we'd expect from this kit...I went...uh-oh. Yes. I had my doubts. Really. But hot damn!!! I'll NEVER EVER EVER doubt her again!!! I've had SO MUCH FUN with this kit.... I would honestly never buy most of the papers in this kit on my own so I was so pleasantly surprised when I saw it irl and how easy things got together.... yay!! And the embellishments she puts together....they just totally rock... as usual this is such a jam packed kit with LOTS of stuff! (okok, that's todays commercial - but really..I AM that stoked!!)...and look what was inside the box too......*swooon* the BG Apron!!!!! The one with LUSHIOUS (is that a word? well, it is now! :p) blingbling spelling out "Bad Girls".....so so so totally freakin cute!11!! Ofc I had to take a photo of myself in it and Amalie thinks we're gonna bake when I wear it on (ok I havent unworn it since I got it yesterday :p) so I've baked brownies and bread now so she can be satisfied :p Oh, and she demands wearing her own apron too...here she is after we made the brownies....yes..I let the kids eat the leftovers of the dough.... yes.. it might take some time before I remember to wash her.... yes.... sometimes she likes to put on the skiing-glasses and walk around telling us she looks funny..

Ps...that apron is available for you too - all you have to do is to join the monthly challenge at Bad Girls using the current kit or add-ons or project-kit :)

Ohwell! Peeks on the BG kit?
I'll post more peeks later - but here's two for now :)



And here's Amalie again :)
I lucked out with this one - was taking photos of a layout in front of the windows and she came up to me asking if I wanted to take her photos...basking in the grey light coming through the windows :)

Ps! Minneriket is going through a number of upgrades....good stuff inc ladies... but it also means that the site will be unavailable & stuff at times...but should be done sometime tonight or tomorrow... drop by the blog for updates during the downtime :)

Ps2! Check this out - Pink Paislee has launced their Live Pink site - complete with lots of nifty features...

Gah! It's been ages since I updated here (well, only five days tbh but being me it's ages!). Sorry!
I'll just go straight to the point I guess.

Yes I have scrapped. No, not as much as I'd like. For some reason layouts keep staying on the table for 3-4 days still before being wrapped up. The exception to this was the Scrappedugnad-layout which I did at a crop. This layout was my contribution to Minnepolet at Minneriket. I hate to whine in public (well, at least when it's about serious stuff..otherwise I do like to be like, coy and complain in a..uh.. girly way tho but that really doesn't count ;p) but hm, I guess I'm allowed to vent every now and then and this time it made its way to a layout. Oh. And the challenge was about to have 500+ words in the journaling and no pictures.
When it rains like this..
And your boots turn like this..
Then it's quite nice to make yourself a hot cup of cocoa topped with cream eh? :p
(Ps. Like my new piccie-template? Made it all by myself haha. Will try to remember to use this one from now on..for piccies at least..)

I got reciepes from a Christmas-cookie-swap I recently joined. YAY!
Sooo yummy - can't wait to make these sweeties! Actually, I think I'll make the brownie one this weekend :p The swaps at Minneriket are in 6x9" and I like to make my own covers/albums when I get these. Unfortunately my own stuff got lost in the mail (1+ mo now ugh), but they were kind enough to let me get the others stuff still :)

Love this detail - a Karen Foster metal-embellishment I bought like, two and half years ago :P Bout time it got to be of some use eh?


I'm not quite sure what a keyhole and a key (both from 7gypsies) do on a cover for a reciepebook but hey...it sorta looks cute :P Secret reciepes that needs to be locked up? :p

Hmhm. Whats new? I have a headache these days - it's quite random - but it's like, always there (have been for close to two weeks by now) - sometimes it's quite silent and kind, sometimes it's banging away on my teeth or jaw or forehead or wherever it choses to bang away at. Always random and I just cannot figure out the exact location/source for it. Bleh.

I'm also doing my daily hospital-visits for the second week in a row. Nrgh. Hope I don't have to do another week - I know I have at least one more appointment next week where they're gonna decide wheter to continue this or wheter they're satisfied or whatever :(

Ohwell - have a nice weekend y'all :)

Sunday - and time for random bits from here and there.

• Monicas minichallenge on Scrappedugnad inspired me to make this - it's not really a card, and it's for my dad, not a friend (tho - dad's also a friend so uh? :p) but I did follow the directions otherwise. Letsee.......two ribbons...well, the burlap is cut into ribbon so that counts along with this lovely brown ribbon from Prima no? :p Stamp - love this angel from Prima! Distressed - inked the edges of the stamp.. bling...Heidi Swapp bling on the stamp..and metal - used a stapler to tie the stamp-motif to the ribbons :p

• Needed some small gift-tokens so I made a few simple bookmarks this weekend. (veeeery simple ones)
  

• I love the sweet stories of Corey Amaro...and I loved reading all about her Matchmaker-skills...so sweet! :) Make sure you read this and the next few posts :)

• Through a friends works I've found some interesting links to stuff about kids and play and how they view the world and stuff...found this passage interesting - a bit of a "duh, ofc" moment.. (yes I slept thru the Juul-hype so maybe this is like, wellknown to political correct & responsible parents - i.e. everyone else but me - sorry duh :p)

• Intriguing points being ....pointed out here about digital portrait retouching...hmm...tbh I'm really on the fence here....but there's a good point re HDR's...where you retain the details from both the shadow and highlights, something that's often not possible to do if you only rely on the camera only kinda but which well, is a part of what you see at least...hm.

• I found a (to me) new blog that I've fallen in love with - Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. Love her writing-skills and sense of humor. And she's a good photographer too - AND she cooks! Yay!

• Like 26500 people voted for which Neil Gaiman book they wanted available on the net for free. American Gods won with 28% of the votes. American Gods was the very first novel I read of Neil Gaiman - I think I needed a book to read on some trip and I recognized Neil Gaimans name from the Sandman graphic-novels and besides, I thought the title looked cool. I love that book. His imagination is simply amazing and I was hooked from page one. It is however a BIG book - like 800 or more pages... I'm not sure how I'd like to read a book on the screen but guess I'll have to try cause I borrowed my copy to a friend and I'm feeling like rereading it again :p

• Speaking about rereading books, I wanted to reread "Mrs Dalloway" the other day (such a beautiful book!) but could only find the Norwegian copy of the book here. Bummer. I think I borrowed the English version to dad. Bah. So I started on "A room of ones own" instead. Got to chapter two last night. Hm. It's a bit different than I thought it would be considering that this is an essay, but I'm curious to see where it's leading me.

• I made this can some weeks ago. Someone in the kiddos class was having a bdayparty and I was too lazy to look for a random car in the toystore :p And hey, I got to play with the grungeboard - painted it red and sprayed glimmer mist on it. Cool. Dunno what the kid thought about it but the parents seemed impressed enough inquiring about how I did this when I dropped by the end of the party to fetch the kiddo. Hey I love glimmer mist. It's fun!

• I have to say this sundays Pencil-Lines was quite anticipated..for me anyways... you see, we were sponsored by Scrapmuse, and not with any kits, but with kits from 2004. o.O I know! This was certainly an interesting experience to say the least...I knew stuff (and trends hehe) were a bit different back then but I didn't really expect it to be that different! I tried to stick to the kit only but just *had* to sneak in this Daisy D paper (the green striped one) to give this layout a lil color-balance - but everything else is from the kit. Check out what the other girls did - they sure did wonders (way far better than me haha). Our guestDT this week is Sarah Youde from UK - I really like her works and she did a really cool layout /sketch for this one (which I turned and modified somewhat :) )
  

At Amalies kindergarten they support Forut, which is a campagin supporting developement in certain countries in Asia and Africa...and there's a program which involves kids in kindergarten learning how life is in Sri Lanka and stuff by learning about a girl called Vasana. Or something like that. Anyways. Today they had a little celebration and asked for the children to come to the kindergarten dressed in saris or summer-clothes. Well, lucky me I had an autentic sari from Sri Lanka - yay! You see, dad used to travel a lot in Asia when I was little (still kinda do so once in a while) and has been to Sri Lanka several times....bringing home gifts and stuff and yeah I got this sari from him then. So my dear mom went up to the attic searching for this sari, found it, went to a Sri Lankian store (well she claims they were from Sri Lanka too cause she checked in the store..) to buy the jewelleries and sent them over in time for Amalies party in the kindergarten :) Yay - isn't she cute?? :D Thanks a lot mom for looking for the stuff for her!!

(I know, blurry. She's too impatient to sit still :p And uh, I don't really know how to do a sari. This worked on her - I guess that's not really how they dress though :p)

Have a nice weekend :)

Ps. Check out Scrappedugnad - a sweet quick lil challenge from Monica :) Think I will try it myself sometime soon :)
Ps2. Is it called sari in English too? Hmm.

edit: Intriguing. Learning to Lie. I learned a lot of new stuff here - not sure how to handle it though :p And lookie, too cool - portable furniture!

Hearts and flowers

Hearts and flowers on Valentine’s day.
heart shaped candy, help me say:

Aww will you look at that! Amalie's hands down fave doll/plush-toy (whatever you call this..teddy?? it's a bunny...! And yes it's dirty well-worn!) - the bunny - has got a new best friend :) She got the carebear for Christmas (from her cousins...I think..*blush*) - and she didn't care (haha) for him until she got to see the DVD that followed with the bear - then she started liking him. Kids eh. It was a cute surprise walking into the bathroom finding these two sitting nicely together methinks - had to snap a photo :)

I reworked my header this morning. Figured the empty chair kinda was a little boring...but was too lazy to make an entirely new header - so I just slapped this photo on the old one along with a new quote.

I've been a bit into Marit Larsen (former M2M) lately...check it out below..."Only a fool"...it's very cute...this is an audio-only version as I don't think she's made a video yet :) And if you check out "This time Tomorrow" - doesn't sound a little bit like Tori Amos?? I also found another old song I totally totally love - the duet between Nathalie Nordnes and Sondre Lerche - Good times - unfortunately it's not out on youtube afaik (I think they did this duet at some live television thing some years ago at least)...do look for that song if you're able to tho and lemme know where to get it, I love it! Used to play it over and over and over again in the car on the way to the summerplace :) (hey did you know that Sondre Lerche and Regina Spektor have done a duet together too?? Cool! :D)

Yay! Pencil-Lines once again - this time with a lovely lady from Japan - Miyuki Yamaguchi :D
Check out her lovely sketch and the other ladies interpretations here :) I am not sure if the scan comes through well - and I love seeing other peoples closeups so I figured it's been a while since I've offered closeups of my own (apart from the BG layouts) so why not - here's two closeups..yummy ribbons, grungeboard and even transparencies.. cracklepaint and glimmer mist (once again - wish glimmer mist would come thru in piccies & scans! grr!) Look at the cute angel-stamp - yummy Prima :D The piccies are from the 70-ties (my grandparents) & the big family one is from -84 - we used to have a cottage in the mountains - a real old one w/o any electricity nor water..outdoor toilet....and we had to park our cars like 20-25min down the hill (ok, I can't really recall the exact time it took us to walk up - probably it's more like 20 min straight but with us kids and heavy baggage it might have been closer to 30-35min actually....and as a kid you don't really have a sense of time apart from that it took forever to finally get to the cottage! :p).....fetch kids and food and all our stuff and carry'em all up to the cottage...uphills...usually dad had to do this trip twice or even thrice...usually we went there in the summers but we did enjoy some winter/spring in there aswell... I miss the cottage, it was sold when we were like 11-12. Oh and hey look! I'm using Basic Grey!! I adore their papers but rarely manage to actually use them..yay me! :p

Wanna guest-DT Pencil-Lines btw? Check out the info on how to here!







Wrapping up with some piccies from saturday - the neighbourhood-kid is such a cutiepie who's best bud with Adrian and goes to the same kindergarten as Amalie. He's very cute - cares for Amalie - asked several times to hold her hand (and Amalie refused to every time - no! no! no!), watched out for her and helped her up wherever needed. And ofcourse - he loves messing with her with Adrian - they keep running away from her and she goes "me too me too" and they just keep running from her :p Oh and the last shot - she asked me to take a piccie so I did :p I think she must be a mind-reader cause I was holding her hands while she was walking on these things and thinking to myself that hm I gotta take a picture of her against the orange background, that looks so great... but I didn't want to let go of her hand to take the piccie and 20 seconds later she stopped and told me she wanted to have her piccie taken (we had passed the orange background by then but ohwell you know me - I'm always happy to oblige :p)

Tihi..guttungen spiller WoW: Hahah mamma kom og se, hjerter!! (WoW har valentines her om dagen)
Meg: Hehe....vet du hva det er for?
Adrian: Ja - Valentines..
Meg: Mhmm...vet du hva det er for noe?
Adrian: Ja det er for de som blir forelsket og sånn..
Meg: Jaaa...er du forelsket?
Adrian: Mmm..nei..ikke helt enda..
Meg: Tror du at du kommer til å bli forelsket i noen?
Adrian: Hmm..nei...eller...jeg vet ikke..

*fnis*

My sweet sweet darling niece turns four today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEETHEART!! Wish we could be with you today!


I also promised some more photos from friday: here's Eli in all her glory at Fretex....;) (Edited to note: no, she did not buy that green centerpiece/tablecloth :p) And because I promised her to post a photo of myself aswell if I posted hers, here's one she took of me ..:P

And because I found this at Neil Gaimans blog and think it looks so totally cool...:p Death and Sandman :P I love Neil Gaiman, who's celebrating his 7th blogday today (or maybe it was yesterday) - nevertheless - if you'd like a chance to read one of his books for free head on over here and vote. The winning book will be downloadable for free for a whole month. Neat! My fave is American Gods, but I kinda voted Anansi Boys cause yes I have still not read it duh! :( I'll make sure I'll mention which book won cause really - if you haven't read Neil Gaiman before, here's your chance! :)

Ps. The jewelleries (see below - last post) were a BIG hit with both grandmas. Now you know what to get your grandma for their birthday/Christmas ;p

I had a jolly good time (hah..it sounds so fun to say that. Jolly good!) yesterday with Eli, driving around (women & driving ;) ) treasurehunting at Fretex. Didn't find as much as we'd like to but still came home with a few goodies :) It's fascinating to see (and ruin :p) a damn good craftmanship eh. It was a nice trip and I had fun - thanks Eli! :) I will post some more photos once I get the go from her ;) The photo above was taken by Eli btw :)

I also dropped by the hospital, recieved some less amusing news (Oh yes - looks like another infection incoming :( ) and have to return to the hosp on monday again. Good news is that the so-called expert that my doc has been relying on since the infections started (a swede nonetheless) will be visiting the hospital on monday and I'm gonna meet up with him. I assume it's good anyways. I'm sick and tired of postponing & delaying stuff and really hope this won't affect the last wrapup-stuff I still have left with the hospital! Ohwell.

Today we're gonna head down to watch another basketgame then drop by mother in law to eat dinner & cake and like, celebrate her birthday. Check out this lovely gift I got her (and my mom) from Etsy!! It's a twosided pendant with drawings from both Adrian and Amalie on it. I'm not quite sure wheter my mom has recieved hers yet - she should get it by today or on monday - crossing fingers she won't read this blog before then (she's the one buggin' me about writing in Norwegian too so she can actually read what I'm sayin :p). Anyways. Analiese, the woman who made these necklaces for me, is the sweetest gal and offers such a cool gift for grandparents and stuff.

Alright. Over to scrappy things.
Made this layout for Scrappedugnad - Martha Bonneau has this cool challenge about using multiple fonts and cutting out patterns. Now, strictly speaking I didn't cut out any patterns on this layout - instead I opted to use my Tinkering Ink alpha-diecut-sheet - placed the alphas on this paper to make a fun background for this layout. The ABC-circle is homemade too. Don't forget to check out the RAK aswell - where you can win a complete kit! Yay!

And!! Want to be a guestdesigner for Pencil-Lines and have your own sketch featured?? Check out this cool new contest!! This will be fun! :D


Ok, tenkte jeg skulle skrive noen ord på norsk her og men ser nå jeg ikke får tid -- må løpe for å rekke basketkampen til gubben! :D

My website is even closer to being completed. Yay! Hopefully it will be live soon. I have spent many hours the last few weeks working on the images, content and layout. I am thrilled to have a beautiful site that I can update periodically with new images.

My old site I designed and programmed myself in 2005. My background is in graphic design. In 2005 I knew enough about html to be dangerous. So I went to the library and got a book on Adobe Go Live... a program I never worked in before. It took me a whole week to design and program the site. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough to program it to be easily updated. So, to say the least the old site has not been touched since it's original launch. What's worse is that many of my "galleries" were programmed in Quicktime. Which I later found out does not work on the typical PC.

My new site is flash. It has tons of photos, a calendar, about, and contact page. In the works are a password protected "client" section. This section will be a place to see highlights from your wedding day, in addition to your online ordering site.

Another future section will be called "spotlight". This section will showcase one of my couples and their wedding day. The section will also include the vendors that helped make the day so amazingly beautiful. I hope to change this section four times per year. Let me know if you would like to be one of my "spotlight brides"!

Keep watching for the site to go live. Hopefully all of the bugs will get worked out quickly... if you have trouble with the form you can always email me at info@ardentphoto.com

When I did the article for "Vi Scrapper" I kinda made a lot of layouts and well, not all of them made it. I'm not complaining mind you, they did fit in seven layouts from the various kits into the article - just thought I'd show the ones which didn't make it - one from Bad Girls and two from Scrapping-Kits - both from their december-kits. First one shows my daughter, the two latter shows myself.

Got more mail from Etsy today - YAY! So so so so gorgeous. Can't show as they're gifts which I'm about to resend now, but ey, here's the link to that ladys store - she makes the most fabulous & delicate necklaces...I'm sure I'll be ordering from her again and then I'll definately grab one for myself too!

Cheerios!

Her er LO'ene som ikke kom med i det siste nummeret av Vi Scrapper - ikke at jeg klager - lagde jo tross alt hele 10 LO'er og 7 kom altså med ;) Får være grenser på hvor mange LO'er jeg skal ha med i et nummer og sånn i tillegg til trynet mitt haha ;p

Anyways - den første laget med Bad Girls desemberkit og de to andre med Scrapping-Kits ene desemberkit. :)