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!

Hej hej!
Being busy made me forget to take photos because never before has my iPhone album been so empty (Empty might be an exaggeration. There's still 1060 photos in there...)
But! There have been some moments worth documenting so let's take a look, shall we?

As my birthday gift my mother and I went on a fleamarket spree and I got this beautiful teapot. I have at least nine teapots already but since I broke one a week earlier I thought it was OK for me to get a new one...

Oh, and this is dinner for me. Popcorn and tea. There's nothing better.

One day I rearranged my side of our work room. It solved a lot of problems so I'm very happy with the result.

David and I went to Österlen and it was cold as heck in the house!

I made a fruit plate that looked and tasted amazing.

We ate roasted tomato soup and garlic bread while it was storming outside.

One day I woke up to this gorgeous light. It had been rainy and stormy the entire week so this was such a nice change!

It was quite cold that one day. This winter has been SO weird. It's like spring outside and two days ago I saw a Magnolia tree ready to burst out in flowers. I started yelling at the buds "STAY STILL IT'S STILL WINTER YOU FOOLS!"

We found a spooky tree and an INCREDIBLE view.

We also found an over cuddly kitten.

The day we went back to Gothenburg it was foggy.

Midnight picnic on the floor with tea and shortbread working on a flowery GIF.

The week before Christmas I attended the Christmas fair in the mall Nordstan. Here you can see me hiding from customers. No, not really. I was putting things like bags and ribbons and boxes under the table since that was my storage room of sorts.

All the jewelry displayed and ready!

On december 22 it was my last day at the christmas fair and it was David's and my 7 year anniversary. We went for a meal at a nice restaurant and on our way home we kissed in the elevator.

The rest of the night it was packing and fixing mayhem in our work room. The day after we drove to our families and left it all like this to deal with after the holidays. It was reeeally nice to leave it there but not so great to come home to. It's all gone now though.

Alfred and Astor the cat getting to know eachother.

I was working the entire night on New years eve so David and I celebrated a day early. It actually felt like New Years for real. We toasted on our balcony at midnight and watched Fireworks on my phone.

I started the year with being sick in some kind of cold. After staying inside recovering for a few days it was nice to get outside for a walk. We went to the cemetery where it was rainy and sombre and spooky. Just the way I like it.

See you soon again!

Tjingeling!
/Lotta