Two displays of pretty knickknacks all dusted and reorganized.
One of treasures from South Africa; seed pods, porcupine hair and spikes from a bush, and also a dried lemon that I got from my grandfather when I was kid. I had so much trouble understanding how that hard, dried up thing could ever have been a lemon. The seeds inside rattle like a maracas.
And one of the old ashtray with the naked mermaid in the middle surrounded by all my favourite little odd trinkets, brooches and whatnot.

Two of my work spaces at home.
One showing my desk, where I'm sitting right this moment, with my new beautiful chalkboard wall decal bought from the etsy shop Brown Shades. I'm a little bit confused with the whole Sunday to Saturday week design and really didn't know that this was a thing before a year ago maybe. Why on EARTH would you want your week to start on a sunday? It just feels so WRONG. Even though I'm working weekends and week nights and usually have no idea whatsoever what day of the week it is this still makes me all mad. Knowing what day of the week it is was the whole plan with buying one of these things in the first place! I hope I get used to it, because I really love it otherwise. Click for better photo of the decal.
And one photo of my other, more relaxed work space: the sofa! Where I sat the other day working on a huge Tangled Triangle necklace while drinking tea and eating fruit salad.

Two of me photographed by David.
One from our day at Antikhallarna.
and one from yesterday when the sun was shining all over the place and I decided it was spring (at least for the day) so I ignored the strong winds and dressed in my vintage velvet jacket for the first time this year. Today it's back to the gloomy miserable raining again though.

Well, that was all from me today. I have plans of tea, sofa and jewelry making the rest of this evening.
Hope your week started in the best way (if you count your week starting on Monday because if you're one of those weird ass people counting it from Sunday I really don't understand you).

I have fallen in love with the self timer app TimerCam. It's nothing fancy, no extra gadgets and unnecessary stuff, just a camera with a timer. But it's so fun!
I like taking photos of my every day life and the environment I'm surrounded by, and sometimes a photo of a room misses a person in it and I am always there with me, you know, so why not use myself as a prop?
This also fuels the theatre thirsting side of my personality, because taking a photo with me acting as "Person" sort of gives life to a little scene.
These are a few of my self portraits from the last couple of weeks. Some of them you've seen in earlier posts but I decided they could tag along for this one too.

Well hello there, can I help you with anything? My skills include "How to turn your work space into a complete mess" and "How to stare into you computer for hours while drinking tea". Oh, and "How to take self portraits to make it look like you are a super busy business person".

And here you can see what it looks like when I, for the 54th time that day, had to release the carpet from the evil office chair wheels. I really need to do something about that. Some other time.

Trying different angles, and all that.

At the first production meeting of the year with Teater Esther! Hugging my friend Hanna super hard because it was ages since I saw her last time.

Being embarrassed.
This is a take on the photo from my previous post.
I usually take at least three different photos to make sure I get what I wanted.

Being very tired and trying to turn that into a cool look...

Looking at cute/or funny animal GIFs with my husband. This is something we do often when I come home late from work and we're too tired to watch something with a plot.
Cute animal GIFs are the cure for everything.

Finding that the kitchen cabinet is a good spot to place the phone for some photos.
Here I wanted a picture showing my necklace pendant, but that didn't work too good so I'm still in search of a place for that.

At work one evening waiting for David to come pick me up.

I'm seriously in love with the light in this photo! I like that you can't see a thing through the window, it's just so bright and warm and crisp!
Oh, and a friend of mine pointed out that it looks like I'm standing lurking with a baseball bat in my hand, ready to hit someone on the outside.
It totally does!

At my work (at a group home) we have 24 hour shifts a few times a month.
It's a quite surreal feeling to prepare for bed in the middle of the night in a place where you work and where the bathroom looks a little bit like a hospital with desinfectants and papper rolls all over the place. It feels sort of like I'm in another persons home all alone, hiding from something.

One evening I took this and I just got this feeling like it was taken by some arty farty photograper who takes photos of herself in bad lighting, with a bored posture, gloomy eyes standing in a well thought out, ordinary surrounding with items that scream "I'm a normal person, just like everybody else". (Whoa! Maybe that IS me?)
So I call this one "Bored sailor girl in mint green kitchen with unpaid bills on the table and a loaf of bread on the counter"

And this is from today.
"Bored sailor girl in mint green kitchen waiting for the banana bread to be ready and her friend to arrive".
I feel like a new series have been born. Bored sailor girl is probably going to come back.

So here's a really embarrasing (but also a little bit cool) story straight out of my life.
On saturday I took out my hulahoop from it's place behind the bedroom door and decided it was time I got back too hooping every morning like I used to do a few years ago.

Back then I had started slowly, hooping maybe five minutes straight before I dropped the hulahoop. After months of doing this every morning I was up to 14 minutes without dropping the hoop and I was very proud of myself. It was good workout and I liked to see the progress every day, even though it was only a couple of seconds more each time.
For some reason I stopped doing it for a few years and every time I have tried since then I haven't been able to hoop for more than a couple of minutes and I haven't had any motivation to do it every morning so I just forgot about it, kept the hulahoop behind the bedroom door to collect dust.

Until saturday.
I started to hoop and I just couldn't stop.
I was so fascinated with how long I could keep the hoop spinning and I thought to myself "this is so cool, I'm breaking my own record here!" So I kept going until I was so tired I almost fell to the floor. I let the hoop fall instead and checked the stopwatch.

19 minutes, my friends. NINETEEN!
I was so proud of myself! And a bit amazed, because how was it even possible? Then I realised that I probably have enhanced my endurance through runnning, an activity that I didn't do back then when I was hooping regularly.

Okay, so that's the really cool part. Now comes the embarrasing side of this story.

On sunday I woke up with an extreme muscle soreness. Like never before experienced by my body. I could hardly move. It was HORRIBLE.

But yesterday was even worse.

It hurt to move. It hurt to speak. It definitely hurt to laugh.
It felt like somebody had broken me in two halves and then stuck me back together in a not so orderly fashion, leaving out at least a few of my ribs in the process.
I stayed in the sofa all day yesterday, whining to myself (and to David) about how stupid I was to break my record on the very first day hulahooping again after so many years.
Why didn't I just stop?
Why didn't I take it slow in the beginning?
Well, duh, because I was amazed by my own awesomeness, of course!

For those of you who haven't tried hulahooping you might not realise how hard workout it is for your back and stomach, so I know how ridiculous this sounds. And since I woke up today with a more regular muscle soreness I too am laughing at the silliness of it all.
But I'm also quite proud of myself.

Nineteen minutes! I mean, NINETEEN MINUTES!
Next time I'll stop after ten. I think.

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Two from when we drove to Österlen last week and the roads were dusted with wispy snow flowing in every direction and the trees only had snow on one side of their trunks.

Two extra luxurious breakfasts. One at Café Kagan where we always go when we're visiting Simrishamn, and one consisting of the delicious cardemom buns I made for David on his birthday the 21st.

Two self portraits taken with self timer (using the TimerApp).
One in the staircase at my work waiting for David to come pick me up after an evening shift, and one in my work room on the day when we came back to Gothenburg after our Österlen visit.

Today we found out the finalists in the Bloody Cuts film challenge and sadly our Lights out is not one of them. Our favourite one "Cut" was though so Congrats to the people behind that one, and to the other five too of course! It was very fun to be a part of this and hopefully we are still in the running for the other categories they plan to give prizes in.

I have been working all weekend and have a couple of days off now so I feel like it's friday today. Hope your weekend was everything you wanted it to be and if not: here's to a fantastic new week!