when all the people leave?

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Norwegian-style waffles are softer than the Belgian ones. There are about as many different recipes as there are households, I’d think. They’re usually heart-shaped, but I couldn’t resist using my sister’s Mickey Mouse waffle-iron.

These ones came about when I was cleaning up my diet by doing  low-GI for a while after Christmas, but still wanted a treat to serve guests. I’ve used the basic recipe from Norwegian site Det Søte Liv, but tried to adapt a bit to the fact that I was avoiding regular white sugar. [click to continue…]

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If you do any sort of genealogy on royal families in Europe today – the odds are fairly high that four names will show up over and over. In their time, and in history, they’ve received the title of “the grandmother of Europe2, “grandfather of Europe”, “Mother-in-law of Europe”… well, you get the gist.

The four names are:

The King of Denmark: Christian IX of Denmark, and his wife Louise
The Queen of the United Kingdom: Victoria, and her husband Albert.

Although Victoria and Christian IX were married to Albert and Louise, respectively, in speech, it usually tends to revert to the monarchs as the most important, so that’s what I’ve used in the section I discuss below.

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Time off from the news

by Anne on May 1, 2012

Sometimes, the perfect day is as simple as being out in the sunshine, organizing part of the mess in your parents’ backyard… and not checking the news.

Because, when you do check the news, it’s inevitably bad. You’re reminded that there is a world out there, where things aren’t just sunshine and tulips in bloom.

Today, it was the news that 26 year old Norwegian swimmer, Alexander Dale Oen, had passed away in Flagstaff, Arizona.

I don’t follow swimming to any large degree. It is not a huge sport in Norway, but his success made the sport more visible in the media. But, I love the Olympic games and I had looked forward to following his quest for gold in London this summer.

This kind of news makes me sad for the unfilled possibilities that won’t be. It makes me sad for his family and friends who lost a loved one much too soon.

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Picture of the Month: May

May 1, 2012

Sometimes, a field filled with flowers and sunshine is all it takes to make me happy.

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Books I read in April

April 30, 2012

April was Easter break, and a lot of books read. Some newly published books, and some books that have been backlisted. I’ve ordered myself a trip to Paris this summer, and Eloisa James’ Paris in Love was quite instrumental in making me look forward to that with its little tidbits about living in Paris. It’s [...]

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Video: Back to the 90s

April 29, 2012

Fresh Prince of Bel Air remix:

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Video: Lost in Motion

April 22, 2012

Sometimes, I think I need this quiet music video to block too many thoughts from coming together at once. Let’s ignore the fact that I had to look one extra time to see if he really was wearing clothes.

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100 things challenge

April 19, 2012

{Take the 100 Things challenge!} It seems like a good way to get partly back into royal blogging. My topic shall be 100 Random Royal Bits and Pieces.  

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Chocolate-talking

April 13, 2012

The problem with recommending the new chocolate sauce and mousse-filled dark chocolate bar to everyone… Is that I keep giving myself cravings. Help?

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Good Friday

April 6, 2012

In Norwegian, this is called Langfredag – directly translated to English – Long Friday. As a kid, I always thought the name was chosen well. It did rather seem to drag on, unlike the rest of the Easter break which went remarkably quick.

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Pacing oneself

April 4, 2012

Anyone else take a look at their reading list, and allotted time on holiday… and think: “I’ve got to pace myself so I don’t run out of books to read?” Just me? There would be no downside to running out of the books I’m planning to read. I might actually *gasp* get some other things [...]

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Picture of the month: April

April 1, 2012

When I see a pond, I always look for waterlilies. My grandfather, who died before I was born, once said something about them, according to my mother – but I’ve forgotten what it was.

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Books I read in March

March 31, 2012

You know you have high expectations for your own reading when you do a count of your reading so far on March 6, and think… only 6 books? Granted, it’s picked up since then.

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Want: Cactus Flower

March 28, 2012

After watching Ingrid Bergman dance in this clip – I went ahead and bought Cactus Flower at Amazon. It’s very much how I used to feel like I looked while I was dancing, back in middle school.

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Darth Vader and bagpipes

March 25, 2012

Following up from last week’s video:

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Cheese and bacon lasagna

March 24, 2012

This is an incredibly easy lasagna. As it is bacon, and parmesan cheese, it is also packed with flavor. The recipe comes from a leaflet I got with BBC Good Food back in September. They do have the most yummy-looking recipes, and the times I’ve tried them out – I’ve always been happy with the [...]

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Video: Floppy Imperial March

March 18, 2012

Because this is a fun little music video.

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Book review: Wishful drinking

March 16, 2012

When it comes to Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, I think how you approach the book matters. It’s sort-of a biography, sort-of comedy, sort-of… well, who knows, and it is the written version of one of her stand-up shows. The latter explains why it jumps around a lot, which makes it kind of hard to keep [...]

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Logic puzzle generator

March 14, 2012

I came across this a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been having fun with it ever since. It’s a logic puzzle generator, where you have to figure out who lives where, who drinks what… etc. Essentially, you set your own difficulty in how many variables you want to logically try to reason out. The [...]

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Rewatching: How I met your mother season 1

March 12, 2012

After Bones – which, while being captivating television, tends to bring me into thoughts of mortality and death and gore and all those fun things – I wanted to watch some of the lighter things in my collection. Ahoy with the How I Met Your Mother DVDs

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Video: Big Bang Theory Theme Song

March 11, 2012
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Happy 15th birthday….

March 10, 2012

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s been 15 years since the first episode, Welcome to the Hellmouth, first aired – and we were introduced to the cast of characters in Sunnydale. Snotty Cordelia Chase, nerdy Willow Rosenberg, zany Xander Harris, tweedy Rupert Giles, angsty Angel… and the new girl in town, Buffy Summers. Maybe it is [...]

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Roundabouts

March 5, 2012

You know there might be too much money lying around in road-funding (despite the crappy quality of Norwegian roads), when there is nine roundabouts on the road from my home to where I work. It’s only about 2.8 kilometers.

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March 2012 picture of the month

March 1, 2012

Sometimes, a shadow can make the light more interesting. Other times, it’s just there.

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Books I read in February

February 29, 2012

I have started a couple of heavier books, but the biography on Queen Anne and (yet another) biography on Queen Elizabeth will probably end up being finished in March and be on March’s list instead. I’m also getting back to reading while biking, or in the walking-breaks between running in the Couch25K programme, so I [...]

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