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Elisabet Ylfa, 2 years and 10 months old.

She sat down next to me on the sofa today after I picked her up from school. She started asking me about a difficult memory from three weeks ago, a memory of an event I was hoping she had not really taken in when it happened. As she talked about it she became emotional and pointed out how her world was changing. People are leaving and those who are left behind are sad and angry. She is a little bit too observant for her own good. I had my camera in my hand so I snatched a photo of her in mid conversation.

2/52

She has been so engrossed in imagination play this week. It is hard to make contact with her because I never know by what name she will answer each moment. Her favorite role has been "mom" to all of her stuffed animals and dolls. Which I find kind of fascinating and curious, since she tends to mirror my speech and actions.

1/52

If there is one thing this week has taught me, it is that I should be thankful for this little girl. Her joy, her kindness, her expression of her love towards the people around her and how mature she already is amazes me. I've hugged her longer and kissed her more this week than usually. It has been a heavy start to a year, but I hope it will become a good one.

Two years.

It's been two years now since I started this blog. Well.. one could kind of laugh at that statement since I have not really been present on the blog at all for most of that time, but somehow I really like the thought of blogging and think it might be the perfect thing for me if I could find my pace. Writing down my thoughts and experiences has been a part of me since I was very little. I filled endless books and papers with random stories and comments on everything when I was a teenager and the urge to do that has never left me. Somehow I could not get used to writing here. Even though two years aren't much it still hits me how much everything has changed since I published my first post. Back then I was kind of lost. I didn't really know who I was or what I wanted. For 8 months now I've been analyzing myself in a way that I have not done before and I feel like I am finding my ground. The process is not over by half and I know I will get to know myself better each day, but for now I feel like I've done a hell of a job during this time discovering who I am and what I want to do with it. It might be that in not knowing who I really was I was focusing to much on what I might want others to see me as. It made me anxious and afraid. At times I dreaded writing a post on here because I feared I might come out as a silly little girl who wants to follow a trend. Possibly that is who I am.. A silly little girl. But now I want to be truer to myself. Maybe it won't get me followers, but at least I'll enjoy it.

These days.

Lately I've been absent. Not only from this blog, but also the country (traveling around the UK) and in some ways from my normal self. I am doing a lot of self analysis, and feel good about it, and not so good sometimes. I know that it is helping and I can sense a change coming that will be good but is just not quite here. I just have to be patient.

I stumbled upon a new blog, that I am now reading from beginning.. And decided to borrow a nice post idea:

Making : kittens.

Cooking : 3 minute noodles, due to lack of inspiration and people to eat with me.
Drinking : white wine atm.
Reading: Blogs. 
Wanting: to move out already,
Looking: Forward to winter.
Playing: a lame game, can someone suggest a good click-and-point game to me?
Wasting: time on FB, how horrifying?
Sewing: a doll for Ylfa... very slowly.
Wishing: dor courage to go to that Yoga class.
Enjoying: slow mornings with my girl.
Waiting: for moving day.
Liking: the heavy rain.
Wondering: all the time.
Loving: my sister's coffee breaks, spent at my kitchen table. 
Hoping: all will be good.
Marvelling: at how intelligent my little one is. 
Needing: more time with M.
Smelling: the wildflowers Ylfa brought me from her walk with her dad.
Wearing: homeclothes, most of the time.
Following: advices.
Noticing: changes in communications.
Knowing: I need more focus.
Thinking: way to much.
Bookmarking: future Master programs?
Opening: my blogger account for the first time in a while.
Giggling: all the time Ylfa talks. She is too funny.
Feeling: everything will be good.

Is anyone still here?

Heim | Living Room Corner.

I'm sitting in my couch, alone, listening to the rain and I don't feel like studying at all. So I am sharing a corner of my living room instead. I am really loving making this little space our own. We add things and change something every week, and it is all coming together very nicely. The downside of being an art student is the papers, canvases and general mess all over the apartment (as seen behind the chair). We try to hide it away as we can but as I am using a lot of the stuff on a daily basis, and some things are to big to put under the sofa, we can't really keep the place extremely tidy. But the mess and artsy stuff might just be a part of what makes this place really ours.

Change of Plans.. Again.

The past couple of months have been interesting. I've been busy and completely uninspired, therefor I've been quiet. I finished last semester with pretty nice grades. Marinó came home shortly before Christmas and we spent the holidays with my family. We celebrated the New year in my family's cabin in the countryside and took a pretty big decision in the first days of 2014. We will not be moving to Copenhagen. At least for now we will live in Reykjavik. On the 4th of January we moved into a small apartment in downtown Reykjavik, and have slowly been making it our home. We are content, and I am filled with a sense of security that I have not felt in a long time.

In other news.. We did take a trip to Denmark. My sister Telma came with us over a weekend, and then Marinó joined us for a week, before we headed home together. It was extremely nice and extremely cold. We took a trip to the ZOO, walked Strøget again and again, took a tour around Christiansborg Palace and rode our bikes all around the city. The highlight of the trip was visiting my old daycare, and meeting up with my childhood friend for a cup of coffee. We had not spoken since we were seven, so it was fun to catch up!

Now the vacation is over and it's back to school!

Snowstorm.

My bedroom window.

Tonight I am taking a moment, staying up for a little longer, listening to the snowstorm raging outside my window. 

It is slowly starting to feel like Christmas is just around the corner. 

Scribbles or not?

I've been thinking quite a lot these past weeks, about what I want this blog to be. I know I want to blog more often, and am planning on posting at least one blog per week. The best thing for that would be to start planning a little ahead. I enjoy taking my time putting together blog posts and love seeing that people read what I put on here. Which is something I did not have high hopes about happening at the start of this. The main thing that I've been contemplating about my blog, is whether I should put more of my own work on here. What do you think? Do you like seeing my scribbles?

What I will be focusing more on are Things. Since Christmas is just around the corner, there will be a few wishlists on here soon! And you may also expect some more home inspirations.

Sickdays.

This has been a week of isolation for me and Ylfa. Last weekend we enjoyed some quality family time in our cabin in the country. It was wonderful to get out of the everyday environment and breathe fresh air and meet up with my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. We had a lot of fun playing boardgames and hanging out in the hot tub. The second night however, Ylfa was extremely restless, kept waking up, and she felt warm to the touch. When we got home the next day I found out she had a fever, so we stayed home Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday night we took her to the doctor and found out she had a virus infection. Then we stayed home for two more days. Staying home with a grumpy baby, that would rather be in daycare, playing with her friends can test your patience! By yesterday evening we both had a bad case of cabin fever. To add a little extra fun to this, our internet has been down for a week! But I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Her mood was a hundred times better today than the day before and the fever has gone down. Luckily she is feeling better and I am hoping that she will be able to go to daycare tomorrow. That way I MIGHT be able to finish up my school work before my deadline on Sunday.
I really owe Winnie the Pooh big time, for the hour of study I got each day.

Happy Halloween people!

The Waldorf Child.

During my second semester at The Academy of Arts University I took a class in writing. My first big assignment was to write my autobiography with a focus on my artistic growth. Since it is quite personal, and my first attempt on "real" writing I wasn't sure if I wanted to share it on the blog yet. So it has been sitting untouched on my computer since I turned it in for school. Today I read it for the first time since March and knew that I wanted to share it here. There are a few kinks here and there, but overall I am happy with it.

----

I have absolutely no idea when I started drawing. I don’t remember not drawing so I suppose my hands have not been idle since I knew how to use them. When I was two years old my mother decided to put me in a Waldorf kindergarten. That decision, I believe, affected my entire life. It might have been there that I started my continuous scribbling. At least it was there that I became hooked on the exciting feeling of pulling something out of my mind and placing it on a paper. One of the main focus in Waldorf education is to nurture imagination and foster creativity. They managed to do that in my case. I blossomed in the beautiful environment, surrounded by silk, wooden toys and expressionless dolls. Every pebble or stick could become anything my heart desired and most everything I thought of ended up on my paper. When I was five my mother and I, with my moms new boyfriend and my little brother in her belly, moved to Denmark. There I continued my Waldorf education. I had the most wonderful teacher. Her name was Kirsten and she had beautiful gray hair that she always had in a braid that reached all the way down her back. She was the kindest person I have ever known and probably will ever know. She told us stories about mischievous nisser, graceful elves and of brave knights saving a beautiful princess from the terrifying dragon. Every christmas, just before we went on our holiday break, we would climb the creaking stairs in the back of the old apartment building that housed the kindergarten. We would climb all the way to the top to the dark and hidden attic that was filled with dust and hay and leave a bowl of rice pudding with lots of butter, cinnamon and cream for the nisse, so he would not be hungry while we were away. There was no doubt in my mind that the old little nisse - that I cared so much for - existed. A fairytale kingdom started to form in my head and I became certain that magic was not dead in our world. I would only have to draw to assure me of that. Anything could happen, as long as I could put it down on paper.

A few years later my family moved back to Iceland where I started school. From age seven until I was eleven I attended the Waldorf school in Iceland. There the interest and fascination for myths and mythology only got stronger. We studied the greek and nordic mythology and created our own books about everything we studied, so In school I was constantly required to draw. During these years my interest in character design started to grow. When I was eight I created my first fully developed character and he has stayed with me ever since. We were three girls in a secret society that had their headquarters in the closet underneath the stairs that went up to the second floor. There we created our own language, made secrets and told stories, but most of the time we drew odd little characters and silly comics. My first comic was made there and the main character was a little curly chicken called Krulli. I made a few comics about him and all of my classmates got a stapled book about him for their birthday. I filled books with my characters, drawing every possession they “owned” around them and giving each of them a long backstory in my head.

I vividly remember the moment I decided that when I would grow up I wanted to draw for a living. I was ten years old, waiting for my cello lesson to begin when I noticed a girl sitting on the floor in the hallway. She was older than me and she was drawing. I was a very shy kid, especially when it came to older kids. It took all my courage, but I sneaked up beside her and watched her draw the prettiest drawing of a kitten I had ever seen. I was determined to become as good as this girl to draw. That day it became my mission to get better. However I was certain that to become that good I would need a pink mechanical pencil like the girl used. It was a necessity.
I changed schools, went to a regular school and aced arts. I even got an award for outstanding performance in arts at my graduation. During my teenage years I went through a rough patch because I was dealing with my relationship with my father. All my life he had been distant but now I was getting old enough to realize how differently he treated me and my sister. I had always been left out. He had his perfect little family, a wife, a daughter and a son and I was the bastard that hurt his purse every month. I filled journals and empty papers with my feelings about him. I wrote out my thoughts and I drew like my life depended on it. In some way I think it did. In the rage and teenage angst I found a way to throw all of the hatred out. If I had been left in my self-pity with no way to get it out, I am not sure where I would have ended up. Instead of shrivelling up I dealt with my anger by sitting in my candlelit bedroom, with pen and paper in hand, listening to loud music and drawing images that were flooded with blood, tears and rage. Again I was living in my own world. Instead of nisser, elves and dragons, I had Jack the Pumpkin king, Johnny the Homicidal maniac and American McGees Alice.
In the end I grew up. I shook off my thoughts about my father and decided that I could only move forward. I started studying Multimedia design and met my husband. The fact that he was a US citizen helped me take the decision to move to San Francisco to pursue my dream and learn Illustration. We ended up working in San Francisco for some time before we started school. It was a hard year and we hit a lot of financial and emotional bumps along the road and ended up moving back to Iceland for the summer before we started school in the fall. During the fun Icelandic summer a little accident happened and when we finally went back to SF, refreshed and in a better mental state, to start school I had a little girl growing in my belly. It was a hiccup in my education, but I managed to finish my first semester at the Academy with really good grades.
Ylfa was born in March and put my education on hold for a year. I loved it. I was a stay at home mom with no responsibilities except for taking care of this little human being. I got a lot of opportunities to work on my drawing however, so it was not a completely quiet time in my artistic endeavours. When my sister-in-law got engaged I drew a caricature of her and her husband to be and gave them as an engagement present. They were extremely happy with the present. Later, she was blogging for an online magazine about her wedding preparations and posted about the image I drew of them. The post gets regular attention, so I got a requests for all over for drawing wedding invites. It was a step in the right decision to make my thirteen year old dream of drawing for a living, come true.
My daughter is now one years old. On Tuesday I am taking her to her first toddler class in the Waldorf school in San Francisco. It will be the beginning of her growth as a human and possibly even as an artist. I can’t help but feel like the cycle is repeating itself. Hopefully it will take me down a path of nostalgia and remind me of the world I created. Maybe nisser, elves and dragons will make a comeback in my drawings.

Long Distance Downer.

For the last two years, me and Marinó have spent a little over 6 months apart, on and off. At the moment, he is in San Francisco tying up some loose ends and trying to earn a little money before the big move to Denmark. It can be challenging and depressing living apart like that, but due to complicated varying circumstances we have had to be away from each other once in a while.
There are moments when I can feel that it does make the heart grow fonder and it strengthens our bond, but this time around - the fourth time apart - has been more difficult. I've been wallowing in self-pity and asking him to come home sooner. I think the main reason this is so difficult is because he hasn't been able to be on the internet as much, to stay in touch by Skype. Ylfa has also been sick and since I am taking care of her by myself, my school work has suffered. He has yet to buy his return ticket, at least he will be here before Christmas.

Well, I really didn't want to make this a whiny post. The main reason I am posting about my husband is not my depression, but that a couple a days ago we had been together as a couple for five years! Five years is half a decade. That is a long time in my mind, but the years flew by. Time really does fly when you're having fun. We've had so much fun, and hopefully will soon continue having fun (come home). During this time we got married, took a roadtrip across the United States, settled in San Francisco, had a cat (miss you Loki), had a baby, travelled, laughed and loved. I love this man with all my heart and can't wait to spend the next five years with him and another five and another five and another five....

I miss you Marinó.

Ps. When I woke up this morning, everything was covered in snow.

I'm wearing a dress from Samuji on the photo. 

Goodbye summer.

This summer was a wonderful and a little tough one. The time we were able to spend together was incredible, but I also had to be away a lot. I took two very difficult courses online and spent the better part of the summer at the National Library of Iceland with my mom, studying. The time I got off we planned carefully. There were some trips to the summer cabin, lots of café hangouts and a few (very few) sunny days enjoyed. I also managed to take part in a 10 km run. That is something I never would have imagined I could finish.. But I did it and I am pretty proud of myself!

Having the chance to be with family was the best part. Ylfa fell in love with her grandparents and to her nobody is cooler than her uncles. It has been so precious to see her bond with everybody and grow over the summer. She is talking non-stop and two weeks ago she started going to daycare. The same day Ylfa started going there Marinó had to leave us. He went back to SF to pack all of our things and finish up some business. We miss him terribly. He will be back in a couple of months and we will spend Christmas together here in Iceland, before heading out to Copenhagen in the new year.

Here are some highlights from the summer:

Meeting baby Sky and spending time with family.

We actually managed to spend some time together

Hanging out with friends + Cocktails

WORK

The Icelandic countryside

Bathtime + Cuddles

Summer ended with goodbyes and new hellos

Yesterday we had some people over for coffee and cake. It would maybe not be mentionable, except for the fact that the living room was so dark that I lit some candles. In that moment it hit me... The summer has left us, and the dark winter is creeping in. Summer time is always fun, but for some reason winter has always been my favorite season. I felt a little tingle of joy while lighting the candles, and I can't wait for the dark days, with candles and warm blankets, to be upon us.

Los Angeles.

A few weeks ago we rented a car and drove south to enjoy a long and sunny weekend in Los Angeles. We really wanted to spend a little quality time just the three of us and we had never really been somewhere on a holiday just us. The drive down went much better than we expected and we did not have to stop as often as we thought we might do. Ylfa was a joy most of the way and we parked the car by our hotel seven hours later. The days were spent strolling around Venice, Rodeo drive, the Botanical gardens by the Huntington Library and the farmers market in Beverly Hills. We ate good food and had a blast playing Sequence every evening at the hotelroom after the baby fell asleep. The weather was wonderful the whole time and I actually managed to get a little tan. (That never happens to me). Poor Ylfa was teething at the end of the trip, but over all she had a great time, specially at the petting zoo they had at the farmers Market. She made friends with a pig, bunnies, goats and a goose but definitely was not on good terms with the hens. The drive back home on Sunday was a little bit more difficult because of Ylfa's first molar trying to burst out, but after she fell asleep half way through to San Francisco, the drive went smoothly. I can't wait to have more family trips in the future. 

It was so sunny at the Huntington Library botanical gardens.

Tired, going to grab a coffee and Handsome Coffee Roasters.

The petting Zoo at the Beverly Hills farmers market was the highlight of the trip.

Me and a handsome man.

Breakfast at 3 Square Café.

Loving the view.

Copenhagen!

I've been away for a while. Not that I wanted to, life has just been getting in the way. This past month has been a lot. We have done a lot, worked on final projects for school, people have moved out and in and out again of our extra bedroom and we have made some pretty big decisions for our near future. 

We are moving to Copenhagen!

It was a rather spontaneous decision and we are not yet fully aware of what we are diving into. But I am extremely positive about the change and I think it will be a big adventure. For me this is a little bit like going home, since I lived there for two years growing up. I have so many fond memories about Copenhagen and I can't wait to go back and make a lot of new ones. The main reason for the move is because Marinó recently had a change of heart about what he wanted to do in life. He took a sculpture class this semester, where he worked a lot with building furnitures and fell in love with it. So we started to look for a furniture design program and stumbled upon a good one in Denmark. There are also so many other things that will improve by moving there. I will not even begin talking about the healthcare system here in America! We will be much closer to family, in a beautiful city and we will actually have seasons (hooray for a cold, hopefully snowy christmas).. just to name a few good things. 

Even though we are so happy to make the move, we are still a little down over the whole thing. We will miss this city so so much. San Francisco has been a wonderful place to call home for the past two and a half years and we have made so many good friends during this period in our lives. It will always be the place we lived just the two of us for the first time.. It will also be the city we lived in when we added another person to our family. Even though Ylfa was not born here in the states, this is where she grew in my belly and she has lived here for the majority of her live. We will without a doubt come back one day, at least for a visit. 

But for now we will enjoy the last three weeks before we leave for an Icelandic summer. On the to do list we have a Golden Gate walk with Ylfa, a trip to the ZOO and a cable car ride.. plus finishing finals.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Happiness journal.

A happy moment with a piggy.

I bought a new journal on my birthday. Since then it has been sitting around my living room calling for me. It is such a pretty little book that I did not want to use it for just anything, so I waited to see if something fun or interesting would come to me. And then suddenly, three days ago it came to me! I got this idea to write a happiness journal. There is a lot of stress and negative energy filling my life at the moment, so it is definitely good for me to write down something that evoked a happy feeling in my gut over the day. The plan is to write in it every day. I think that by doing this I might be a little more aware of it when these tiny moment of happiness occur. We all have them all the time but sometimes they drift away from our memory because they are so simple. For my first day I wrote down Ylfa falling on her but outside of our house because she was running so fast towards me after she noticed me coming from the bus station. I also wrote that I had Skyped my brother that is currently an exchange student in Brazil. We don't Skype enough and I always really enjoy it.
I am excited to fill every page and to read the book later in life.

23.

Today I turned twenty-three. 

When I was younger - thanks to an Icelandic movie - I though that was the age to start to feel old and depressed, because life was almost over. Fortunately I am not depressed and I really don't feel that old. I think I have accomplished quite a lot compared to my age so I really can't complain. I feel happy in my own skin, I have a wonderful family and I can feel that I still have a lot ahead. 

For fun I wanted to make a fact list about, so here are 23 facts about yours truly;

1. I was never a princess girl when I was a kid.. Instead my favorite cartoon character was always a weird support character. Timon from Lion King was and always will be my all time favorite.

2. I never step on a line on my way to and from the laundry.

3. I didn't start drinking coffee until 2010... Way after everyone I know.

4. My favorite animal is an elephant. My first tattoo was a tiny elephant on my right calve.

5. I have five siblings. Four brothers and one sister.

6. When I was seven I tricked my grandparents into giving me chocolate pudding for breakfast, every day for a month.

7. Me and Marinó got married in the old Nordic religion. The one with Odin, Thor and Loki.

8. I have had two pets called Stígur (Strider)... and two called Hneta (Nut). Yes I am very original with pet names.

9. I looooove white chocolate.

10. I have been called three different names in the three different countries I have lived in; Auður in Iceland, Adi in Denmark and Audrey in USA.

11. My husband was a Hollywood movie star when he was five years old. 

12. I have read all of the Harry Potter books over 10 times.. and have now started to also obsess over A song of Ice and Fire. 

13. I believe in ghosts, nisser and hidden people.

14. It has been my dream to work for Disney or Pixar since I was eight years old. I am still working on that. 

15. Until last year, the only thing I knew (barely) how to cook was pasta. Now I love cooking new things.

16. I can speak like Donald Duck.

17. I inherited the weird talent from my mother to learn lyrics to songs in no time.. and the talent of not knowing how to sing.

18. I collect children's books. 

19. I am a Waldorf child.

20. My grandfather is my most favorite person in the world (after Ylfa of course). 

21. I love watching people play video games. Marinó really likes that quality in me.

22. I am terribly afraid of the dark. I blame my uncle Gunnar for that!

23. I have never been as content and happy in life as I am right now.

Aquarium of the Bay.

Marinó's parents came for a short visit last weekend. They were traveling to a few places in the US and decided to have a layover in San Francisco so they could spend Saturday with us. We wanted to do something special and preferably something we had not done before in the city, so we ended up in the Aquarium of the Bay. We had never been there but often thought about it and Ylfa has been so excited about animals recently. It's not a very big aquarium, but we liked it. The best thing about it is the glass tunnels that go through a big tank filled with all kinds of fish. There were a few monsters that were freakishly big. Ylfa was thrilled and we had a good time.
It is always fun to get a visit from family. Since we live so far from Iceland it is not easy for people to come for a visit. We really enjoy it when someone manages to cross almost half the globe to spend some time with us.

Mother daughter thoughts.

Me and my mamma by Dolores Park in 2011.

These past days, Ylfa has begun showing a lot of affection and love towards me. She has been in such a kissing and hugging mode that I sometimes can't keep up with all of her kisses. It has been wonderful to see her starting to have such strong emotions. She has not quite gotten the hang of who is mamma and who is daddy but she is getting close. At least she knows that if she's feeling bad she wants "mamamamamama". It gives me a giddy feeling to feel how much she loves me. This has gotten me thinking about how our relationship will be in the future. Will we be friends through her teen years? Will we be close? Will we be like me and my mom?
My relationship with my mom has not always been wonderful. I have to admit that I was a horrible teenager. I did everything to show resistance to my parents. But deep down I had this huge respect for them and was so proud to be their daughter. It was just really hard for me to show it to them. Slowly as I grew older me and my mum started building our relationship again and I admitted to my follies. We are now very close. I speak to her as often as I can, almost every day and she is always the first I seek advice from. When I became pregnant I moved back in to my parents house so I could have my baby in Iceland. When I was alone and sick with a one week old baby she was there to help me. When I moved back to the states after having Ylfa in Iceland she came with me to help me adjust to living in a different country with a baby. I am so grateful for my mom.

Ylfa super excited over her Lotso teddy last christmas.

I hope one day to be this close with my daughter.. crossing my fingers that she will be a nicer teenager than I was! 

Grumpkin.

Ylfa has been in the most horrible mood today and yesterday! She has been whining and wanting to be in our arms but still not wanting to be close to us at the same time. I really don't know what is bothering her. I hope it's just her teeth. When she's in a mood like that I call her a Grumpkin! (If you read A Song of Ice and Fire you might know the word). She is sleeping now so I hope she will be in a better mood when she wakes up. I wan't to take a stroll in the rain with my Grumpkin. It's the first time it rains since I got my Hunter boots!