A Tour in the Kitchen of My Cabin

Many have been asking about what it looks like on the inside of our cabin. I had never thought about writing posts about this, but after thinking about this it seems like a very good idea.

Our cabin, both inside and outside is a mixture of old things given to us by our forefathers/grandparents and new things. All of these things are placed on all of the remodeling we have done/are doing. Even though I have never met most of the people we have inherited much of these items from, if it wasn't because of them, my husband and I would never be able to rebuild our cabin and provide something for our children to carry on in the future.

This cabinet we have hangin on our walls is actually a small part of a large cabinet system that my husband's grandmother had in her living room. It was so big it stretched across one entire wall and on some places reached from the ceiling down to the floor. This was the only piece of 'fine' furniture that she had, though by our standards today it is not fine at all. The wood is actually quite thin and we've had to support it on the bottom (an extra plank has been set on the bottom and it has been re-enforced on the inside). But when we extended our kitchen and had no furniture to actually place in our extended kitchen, this fit the bill.

Each of these glass doors can lock, but the keys were lost long before we inherited parts of it. You can see on the right hand side that we need to use small pieces of paper to keep the doors from swinging outward. :)

Above is our washing area. To connect to running water costs an awful lot of money, plus you have to pay the entire cost for someone else to build a sewage system of some type. This will not be happening in our lives. However, we can have the running water come up to our doorstep and simply go out and get it for almost free. So considering we'd rather build ourselves for our children, the choice was pretty easy.

But what I wanted to point out was the red coffee thermos that has been washed and is airing out. It is known as an 'elephant' coffee thermos, as this was the brand of coffee thermoses that was made in the 1950's and 60's. They stopped making them a long time ago and are no longer in existence. My entire Norwegian family say that these are the best coffee thermoses and that you cannot have better tasting coffee if you use anything else. (I for one don't drink Norwegian coffee, so I have no comment on this opinion).

This is the last elephant thermos that is in use in the entire family (and now I'm going out to my mother-in-law's extended family as well). While I can't say that this thermos has actually saved us money, it has certainly kept my husband very happy and cheerful during the 13 summers we have been married and have been working on remodeling our little piece of paradise. I take extra pains to carefully wash the glass on the inside of the thermos (which hold the coffee warm), and it will be a very sad day when this thermos makes it's way to thermos heaven.

Pretty much everything you see here has been reused or inherited from somewhere. The large wooden plank that makes do as our kitchen countertop is actually saved wood that was originally used to make doors before metal doors became more popular due to lasting effects and home saftey issues.


The baskets, knives, sives, bread box, green paper towel holder, crocheted hotmats and carved wooden egg holders (these last two are hanging in the corner against the wall by the fridge) were again inherited from my husbands grandmother who passed away a few years before I moved to Norway.

The coffee maker and toaster are actually ours from when we were first married.... but the toaster has actually been destroyed and thrown out in metal recycling - it stopped popping up toast and clearly became a fire hazzard. We certainly didn't want anyone else to start using it.



This is the last item in our kitchen that has saved us a lot of money.... the stove which again has come from my husbands grandmother. I do believe it's from the early 80's, which doesn't feel that old to me considering I grew up in the 80's and remember it as one of the best times of my life. But I have to admit that perhaps the 80's is not as recent as I remember it to be. :)

In any case, it was another thing that was given to us that we could use even though it wasn't the fastest or the shiniest and because we have done so we've had the oppurtunity to build on other aspects of our lives.

I will continue with more pictures of the things that have been given to us that either helps us or makes our little piece of paradise a bit more special.

A family day of sledding....

Today the entire family was home, it was frightening cold (well okay, not really) and there was lots and lots of snow (that part is true).

We have been horribly unlucky through the Christmas holidays with not enough family time, just us four, no one else, no responsibilities. Today was not going to be like that. We put everything on hold, invited some friends who we really like, took our biggest and fastest rocket sleds and went to find the best hill on the island.

Here it is - a hill on an old farm no longer in use.

Perfect.

Here is my son and his best friend way up on the top of the hill. They had said that they were not going to let anything stop them and come down the hill as fast they could.

Here comes my son, racing down full speed ahead!

And before my camea can allow me to take another picture, he's down at the bottom, hiding behind the sparse vegitation.

Lots of fun was had by all, and we all spent 3 hours getting great exercise climbing up the hill (myself included) and racing down, being blinded by flying snow and praying to the higher power of choice not to break any bones. And in between all of this fun, lots of hot chocolate and chocolate covered healthy granola bars.

A wonderful day.

My Genius Daughter........

So last night, I finally had some time since mid-November to work on my Etsy store. The Christmas gifts have been purchased. The house has been cleaned and only needs a quick 'once-over'. Our list of food to purchase for the two traditions celebrated in this house has been made and will be purchased on Monday.

And many of my soaps, which I thought would not be ready until January are hard and ready to use!

Which means I can take pictures.... something I really like doing. It's a skill I'm still working with, but can see the improvements I've made over the last couple of years.

So I put the kids in front of the tv (usually I'm turning the tv off and telling them find something else to do) and gave them a bowl of chocolate each. 'This will keep them occupied,' I think.

And I've got myself set up and begin to arrange soap, when I hear my daughter behind me, 'Are you taking pictures of things you're going to sell, Mamma?'

'Yes.......' I say. I now realize that this is not going to go as smoothly as I had planned.

'Oh can I please help? Please? Please? PLEASE?!?!?!?!?.......' she eagerly asks. The last 'please' reaches a volume and a pitch not acheieved even when she is desprately after a toy or some gum when we're doing our weekly shopping at the store.

I can tell she desprately wants this.

And I sigh...... this is not going as smoothly as I had planned.

'What do you want to do?' I ask.

'I want to take all the pictures!' she says.

And it's then I realize that I can break someone's heart, or I can go and do some laundry. I never get enough time to do laundry. So I give her the camera and tell her to have fun and leave to find smelly clothes.

'Can I take pictures of two soaps at once?' she asks.

'You can take pictures of as many soaps as you want,' I answer from the other room.

'Can I take pictures of all the soaps together?' she yells to me as I move further into the house.

'You can take any kind of pictures with the soap - just use your imagination!' I yell back to her. I'm upstairs now.

'Okay!' she answers, in her optimistic 5-year-old voice.

And these are some of the pictures she came up with. Some of them were out of focus, but most of them were suprisingly not. I must say, I'm pretty impressed.

She's pretty good! And not just because I'm her mother. She's trying different things, seeing how different shaped soaps fit together, or don't fit together.

And I think that after Christmas is finished, I'm going to find the United Nations regulations and the Norwegian laws regarding Child Labour. She might be of more use to me than being a cute face with intelligent comments.