13 Hours of Christmas

So, as I was crazy enough to sign up for a 12 hour challenge on Daggerbay, here goes! Here's 12 hour of Christmas with our jolly, loud and exuberant family :)

8:24 
I wake up with my usual sleeping buddies, meaning Mr and this little lady, who continues to watch over my morning routines hehe. It's the morning of Christmas eve, which is when Swedes celebrate Christmas, and the family will come over in the afternoon - meaning, lots to prepare!

9:22
Rather than showing you a bunch of shots of me cleaning our house, I though I'd share this little Christmas favorite of mine - this knitted Santa my grandmother made me back when I was a child. She was a wonderful lady, who always knitted us beautiful things. I still get tear in my eyes thinking of how much love she pored into it all. I remember how she apologized for running out of the red yarn half way up the red coat of this wonderful creation. That was my Grannie haha,  I've always loved it... How I miss her!

10:06
Mr is the boss in the kitchen, he's so much better at it than I am and I'm very happy to let him run the show. He's a wonderful cook! I have to watch my weight with him around. It's way to easy to eat too much when everything he makes is so delicious. Here he is preparing one of the upcoming Christmas dinner dishes, and enjoying a Swedish Christmas drink - glögg (a sort of mulled wine, that we drink with almond flakes and rasens).

11:42
I've long since given up on trying to convince the rest of the family to restrict the Christmas prezzies to the children alone. Most Swedish families don't buy Christmas presents for everybody, you see, but do "secret Santa" or some kind of raffle instead, and some even do Christmas games where you have to win your presents. Not our family though, nope! We go above an beyond haha! This isn't even all of the presents, it's not even half of them! It's a big hassle to buy one for everybody - and I hate shopping - but I have to admit, nothing beats the atmosphere of antecipation and joy that they bring. The children can hardly keep their fingers away waiting, and we have to keep them from examinering the presents a little too closely.

12:01
Getting snow for Christmas in Sweden is more unusual than you'd think, or well at least it is where I live. I'd say the chance is about 50/50. You see, we live by the second largest lake in Sweden, and it helps keep the area warm in the winter. So, if you go up to the "highland" from where I live, you can go from this, to a whole lot of snow in a short distance. It's kind of nice in the autumn, because it delays the cold and keeps our streets free from ice a bit longer than everywhere else, but it decreases our chansers of a white Christmas, and it delays spring. Sometimes it even freezes over, and that's when you know spring will be unusually late. It's a very cold and deep lake... It's very rarely freezes though. Also, being so deep, it seldom gets warm enough for one to want to go for a swim in it - it takes a lot of time to heat all that water. It's beautiful though, and very clean. As you can tell, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship to it haha.

This is the view from our attic. The lake is in the distance, and, as you can see, we didn't get any snow this Christmas. There was ice-rain though, a lot of good it did us, ha!

13:02
The first guests arrive! My parents, always early and just as happy as you see them here. Sweden is like that. If you're expected to come at a certain time, people will show up right then, and not a moment later. Being more than 10 minutes late is rude, and it's better to show up 10 minutes early. Many of my friends from abroad shake their heads at that haha! But anyway, these are my parents. Swedish mother, American father. They met on a stroke of luck when on a holiday in yet on other country, and now here they are :)

14:10
I don't know how common these are outside of Sweden, but we eat these "prince sausages" every Christmas, along with loads of other traditional food, like meat balls, Jansons frestelse, herring, turkey and much, much more. It's where the word smorgasbord comes from - smörgåsbord. Since our family is kind of large, we do potluck. It would simply not work otherwise, and so each of the guests bring their assigned dishes, and, as hosts, we try to coordinate the best we can. That's where Mr comes in, and I'm very happy to leave all that stuff to him :)

15:58
This is Mr carving the Christmas ham. That's the super star of the Swedish Christmas foods and it's preparation is a science of its own. Mr has been experimenting for years to get it better and better. First you have to pick the right one, be it a pig or wild boar, then it has to be boiled and baked in so or so many degrees for this or that long. Mr has gotten really good at it - even I who don't particularly enjoy ham, like the way he makes it.

16:15
Tada! All the dishes are finally heated and ready! They're so many they don't even fit into the picture, that's not even mentioning the desserts. We actually forgot one of the dishes in the refrigerator this year - my mother's orange and walnut sallad. It's one of my personal favorites, yum! I cannot believe we forgot it.... eeeer well, okay then, yes I guess I can really, there are just so many dishes (and I've got a cold, so my head isn't quite screwed on right), so, it's a wonder it doesn't happen more often really haha. Oh well, it tasted just as good this morning as we ate some of the leftovers. That's a wonderful thing to have every Christmas day - lots of yummy leftovers when you're too lazy to make breakfast. We'll have leftovers for days, even though we sent all our guests home with food too!

17:27
After dinner things calm down a bit, and we all sit down, too tired from eating all the food to do anything sensible. Just like it should be. Food is half the spirit of Christmas in Sweden. At this point, we just sit down and enjoy each other's company, catching up about whatever and talking about nothing in particular. I really enjoy when the whole family gets together like this, both my side and Mr's. All the people I love under one roof, what could possibly be better? If the food makes up one half of Christmas, family makes up the other.

18:02
The Children's wait is over and Santa has finally arrived! It's all a bit weird though, as all the presents have been under the Christmas tree all day, haha, but luckily the children don't think of that. Mr was worried he wouldn't be able to fool them this year - the girl in this picture was a bit suspicious last year and suspected it was him under that white beard. So, he bought a better costume and though up a better cover story to explain why he had to leave all of a sudden. He was so happy when it worked! The magic of Christmas got to endure a year longer, yey!

19:19
It's desert time! After everybody has opened their presents, it's the perfect time for sweeties. In this picture you'll see two of the Swedish classics. First, there's the orange rice, which is not to be mistaken by rice a la Malta... seriously, don't! Or my father in law, who made it, will explain it to you, in full detail haha. That's actually also one of the traditions. Not a Christmas goes by without that particular lecture. He has also made the other sweet in this picture - the controversially named ball... Don't ask, I'll just leave it at that ;)

20:51 (bonus)
Our evening ends with Christmas quizzes. They're not usually about Christmas, or the same questions would pop up every second year or so, but about trivia in general. I'm the worst at that sort of thing! Mr though, won both of them, the brainiac that he is. Just don't tell him I said so ;)

So there you go! 12 hours of Christmas, plus one extra bonus hour. I've never made this challenge before, it was a lot of fun!

Merry Christmas everybody!

/MrsHjort

CCC - November: Cold and Dry

I always find it hard to go out to shoot this time of the year. Sweden is cold, dark and colorless in the winter, and not particularly pretty - unless there's snow. I didn't want snow for November's shot though - I wanted something in between to get a nice transition from autumn to winter. Luckily, my laziness in terms of garden related work finally got me something good. I don't like the garden autumn work (once the harvesting has been done). It'd just so boring putting the garden to sleep, cutting away wilting flowers and trimming the stuff that needs trimming. I much prefer the planting in spring and watching new plants pop up every day. Well anyway, this is my wilting garden; it turned out rather pretty in the end, despite all :)

/MrsHjort

CCC - October: Breezy

This picture was one of those "right in the moment" kind of things. Mr and I was taking an autumn walk and it just hit me, right in the eye! A subject so perfect in itself, it was just the matter of getting the settings right and pressing the trigger. Nothing has been added, or arranged, the maple leaf just sat there, in all it's marvelous autumny colors, as if it was waiting for me to shoot it before it flew off in the wind again. Need I tell you that I simply love this shot? I hope you do too :)

/MrsHjort

CCC - September: Cool

These vines are actually from our garden, and no, they're not in a green house or in any other protected place. They're totally unshielded from the elements, right in the middle of our back yard, growing in a beautiful arch! Who would have thought it possible? Not me anyway... I never knew there were vines this hardy before - I do live in Sweden after all, but these vines are not only surviving, but thriving.

On to subject of photography... Back when I was a beginner I used to search for pretty subjects, groan at stuff that ruined the composition and move on (or shoot anyway and hope for the best). But experience has thought me that nature shots can be every bit as arranged as still life photography. This is one of those pictures. Grapes may be beautiful but it's super hard to find a perfect ones, and finding two perfect bunches of grapes right next to each other is next to impossible, especially when you need an exact angle, or the DoF will ruin one of them. Yes, I could do focus stacking, but I'd rather not! Fixing things the natural way is faster. So, the bunch of grapes on the left are really growing there, but the ones on the right are not. I hung them there after I picked them from an other part of the plant. Also, that little leaf above them both was placed there, in order to hide an ugly twig. And, last, but not least, I tugged at the leaves in the background to create a pleasing set of lines. It took som coaxing, but it turned out nicely. This picture even won my second golden CCC challenge trophy :)

/MrsHjort

CCC - August: Calm Afternoon

I was very happy to win the August competition. It's the first contest of the calendar series that I've won this year. That's always a great feeling, but this was even more special...

You see, I got a new camera for my birthday this year. I turned 30, and my family had all pitched in and bought me a brand new Nikon D7100 together. They're just the best (thank you, thank you, thank you!)! This win, is extra special because this is one of the very first photos I shot using my new toy, it's the first time I tried the HDR function that I had been longing for, and it's the first one taken with my new camera that I entered into a competition. That made the win all the more special to me. It was so great to be able to tell my family about the win when they asked me how I liked my new camera :)

/MrsHjort

CCC - July: Partially Cloudy

I just realized I've been so busy with the DaPP challenge, I've totally forgotten to update my blog on regarding the Calendar Challenge! This is July's picture, taken in my backyard. It was one of those annoying days when the clouds got in the way all of the time, so I had to wait and wait whenever I chose a new subject. I didn't want to shoot when the sun was behind the clouds because it automatically makes the colors look washed out and the contrasts become flat. Sure you can always fake it, but the real thing is always better! After waiting for what seamed like an eternity the sun finally showed at last... for about 2 seconds, and then it hid again. I gritted my teeth at it at the time but took a bunch of shots anyway - because the light still shone through a bit. Funnily, those shots ended up being the best of the bunch. They had just the right amount of light to blow life into the colors, and at the same time, not too much light as to make stuff too "contrasty". So, partially cloudy it was. Yey!

/MrsHjort

Day 30 - Scottish National War Memorial

Tada! I've made it an other 30 days! Wohooo! That makes 61 days of blogging in total (I threw in an extra day between tow sets) phew! I have to say, I'm a bit relieved that it's coming to an end. But then there' no time to rest next month either. You see, next month is BotS month, so that ought to keep me busy haha. My, my! How am I ever going to make that one, already tired from these two months? We'll see I guess... But then, BotS is a different kind of challenge. I wouldn't bet on me though haha

Finally, I want to say that I'm so impressed by my fellow post-ed challenge participant Craig, and his gorgeous bike shots! I cannot believe how many of them he has! And he has been posting several shots a day, so we have had the pleasure of seeing not 30, but 54 of them! Wow! What an achievement! Congrats Craig, on making it so far with me, and thank you so much for tagging along. It's been a wonderful ride! Thank you for the company, all of your thoughtful comments and for sharing all of those beautiful shots :)

/MrsHjort

Day 29 - Castle Hill

This is the Castle of Edinburgh viewed from the rooftop of the National Museum of Scotland. It is a wonderful spot to shoot from, and a great place to rest after walking around looking at various artifacts for hour and hours... and hours! 

As I've mentioned before, Mr loves history. He can walk around happily and look at old things all day without loosing interest. I'm a bit too impatient though, so I like to find a nice place, and sit comfortably with my own thoughts studying what ever elaborate, detailed or interesting looking piece I can find. Usually, I'd go shoot stuff, but even if you're allowed to shoot, and you are at that museum, the lighting is too weak to get decent pictures without a tripod, and who brings a tripod to a museum? I may be a bit crazy, but not that crazy haha. So, sitting around it was...

This rooftop proved to be a welcome oasis though, not only could I sit around, but the sunshine was wonderful, the view was stunning, and the light was photography friendly :)

/MrsHjort

Day 28 - Old Town

As you've seen, if you've been following me this month, I adore Old Town. The old stone buildings are so pretty! I've been shooting the district from various locations, but this is the only shot that I'm completely satisfied with. The others either had construction going on in the background, modernistic buildings clashing with the old architecture or annoying elements that crept into the shots somehow... I don't know how they manage it. It must be magic, because shooting is like "ooooh this sure is pretty" *snap, snap, grin, grin* and then later, when I view the pictures on my computer, I go "dang, how could I miss that big white construction tent on that roof in the background, ungh"! I was happy to have gotten this shot though. Fortunately, this viewpoint from Canton Hill was just right. Actually, you can get loads of lovely shots from there. So, if you're ever in Edinburgh, do yourself a favor and climb that hill.

/MrsHjort

Day 27 - Clock Tower

I love the way the sky turned out in this picture. Who would have thought, looking at the original? I love the way the Nik collection brings it all out. I wish I had discovered it earlier, and sometime I think about going back to re-edit old shots. There's just that usual pesky issue of time... Sometimes I wish there was more hours in a day.

This clock tower has already been in two pictures this month (day 5 & 8), though each of the shots were taken from a different angle, so I hope it's too repetitive. The building is just so pretty, it's hard to resist shooting it. It reminds me a bit of Big Ben for some reason, though I realize that the architectural styles are completely different. But they're both close to bridges and they're both part of a larger building in the same style. This one may not be as big, but they're both beautiful landmarks :)

/MrsHjort

Day 26 - The Palace

Two times in the city, and I still haven had the chance to explore this place. The Palace of Holyroodhouse was just closing as we got to it at the end of the day (spent at the Castle). So, I had to settle for a few shots from outside the gate (luckily the metal bars were far enough apart to allow me to get my camera through it). But hey, there's one more reason to go back to the city.

/MrsHjort

Day 25 - Crooked

I like this shot despite the fact that it breaks one of the basic photographic rules. But then sometimes it is good to break a rule or two, so I chose to leve the crooked lines as they were. It looks more interesting this way... like something out of one of the Harry Potter movies, and I like that thought!

/MrsHjort

Day 24 - Curved Street

This picture shows off a typical Edinburgh street.. or well, at least that's my view on the city :)

As you probably know by know I absolutely love the architecture of these old stone buildings. They're so pretty and I love how there are small secret terrassers outside, below street level, where you can find all manner of lovely mini gardens. It's a smart way of creating privacy in a big city. I also love how many of the streets are slightly curved, like this one. It provides a great motif for photography, don't you think? So many lovely lines and repeating shapes...

/MrsHjort

Day 23 - City Life

I'm a bit late, sorry. I was just so exhausted after work yesterday... Mr and I just crashed on the sofa that evening. Add some good food, a bit of nice wine and a few hours of snooker (Shanghai Masters) and you'll have our evening. It was lovely! Just what we needed.

Anyway... I just found this shot and thought it would be fun to add it to the challenge, on account of the cyclist. I'm really enjoying Craig's series of action shots from the races. I can't believe how many gorgeous shots he has. Check it out his collection if you haven't already :)

/MrsHjort

Day 22 - Shadow and Light

This the inside of St Mary's Cathedral. Such a beautiful place! I was very relieved to have gotten this shot right. Shooting in a contrasty environment such as this is tricky. Either you blow out the highlights, or all the darker shades become way too dark, or you know, your hand shakes a bit and you end up with motion blur. I was absolutely sure I had botched the shots somehow... As it turned out I hadn't! Yey!

Images such as these are a joy to process, such subjects are so pretty that you can do almost anything to them, and they'll still look awesome. Even so, I didn't do much in post-ed, just some simple contrast and color fixes, and two selective treatments to get the white out of those wonderful flowers. The only thing that bugs me a bit is the sunlight falling on the walls to the right, but what can you du eh? This is still one of my favorites though.

Cheers

/MrsHjort

Day 21 - Summer in the City

This lovely view was accompanied by the music of bagpipes. We sat down outside a museum to listen to this young fellow playing the Scottish tunes and enjoy the warm summer day. It was just lovely, the perfect spot to rest if you're a weary traveler with sore feet. It wasn't a bad place to shoot from either, as you can see. Old Town is such a wonderful subject, from all angles. :)

/MrsHjort

Day 20 - Skyline

I experimented my way through the post-ed of this picture, now knowing where I was going... just trying stuff out, layer after layer. If I thought the result was better, I kept it, otherwise, I threw it away. The colors kept bothering me, until I finally thought to go with a less natural color treatment. It turned out to fit the shot much better, yey! Though, this is probably one of those shots that Mr would call "too yellow" or "painterly" haha. But I like it. I hope you do too :)

/MrsHjort

Day 19 - City View

The sun finally peaked out, as you'll see in this picture. My second day in Edinburgh was the opposite of the first. The previous day was as you'd expect; moist, cold and a bit windy, with a bit of rain... But this day... this day was an absolutely wonderful summer day. Quite uncharacteristic for the city according to the locals.

I shot this from the roof of the National Museum of Scotland, that's why there is a tiny bit of foliage in the shot down by the lower edge. Usually I'd clone it away, but in this case, I actually don't mind it that much, I'd even go so far as to say that I wish there was more of it :). It ads a little something to the scene.

The museum itself was a great experience. Mr especially had a ball there, the history lover that he is. He went everywhere to gander at all sorts of olden things. I much preferred the the more science related stuff myself though, the space section in particular was very nice. Check it out if you're in the city. it's definitely worth a visit.

/MrsHjort

Day 18 - Gothic Tower

This building was the Royal Observatory back in the 18-hundreds. Isn't it a marvelous place to gaze at the stars from? It stands on top of Calton Hill, so you must get a wonderful view from there, not only of the stars, but of the city too. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to do a historic time lapse of Edinburgh from there? Just think if someone had taken one picture a day of the city during the last 200 years. We would be able to see the city grow, new buildings being built and the activity of the streets intensify as the number of inhabitants increase throughout the years. That would have been cool! With today's technology (cameras everywhere for surveillance purposes etc.), maybe someone will be able to do that to us in a hundred years or so. A pity I won't be able to stick around long enough to see it.

"I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees."

I know this building is on the top of a hill and not by a body of water, but somehow, it reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe's "the Fall of the House of Usher". It looks a bit like how I imagine that house would look like, a bit askew and crooked, with an ominous sky above it. That story, is one of the few pieces of literature that I actually enjoyed reading during my time at the university :).

/MrsHjort

Day 17 - William Wallace

Here's the second guardian of Edinburgh Castle, I showed you Robert the Bruce back in day 14, and on the other side of the gate you'll find an other prominent historic figure, namely William Wallace. No relation this time. Now I'm no fan of Mel Gibson, but Braveheart was a good movie. I haven't seen it in years though. Maybe I should dust it off again eh?

Mr and I are big movie fans, and often enjoy an evening on our couch in front of one picture or an other (today was Elizabeth and The Hateful Eight). Not any specific genre, just any good movies we can get our hand on. Though we have got our fair share of favorite that we've watched a hundred times, as I'm sure you do too. Some of our absolute favorites are Galaxy Quest, The Fifth Element, Kill Bill, Cactus Flower, Sweeny Todd, Back to the Future and Merlin. What are yours :)

/MrsHjort

Day 16 - Inpendling Boom

This is one of those shots that was just for fun, but ended up being better than I expected. It's shot from one of the cannon apertures of the castle, as we took those usual funny shots where we pretended to shoot the cannons ourselves and stuff. No trip is complete without some silly pictures haha.

The shot is a bit hopeless though, since it seams to slope a bit no matter how you rotate it. Either the horizon is level but the top is no or the other way around, and either way things don't seam quite right. I ended up going with the clouds, but I don't know if that was the right thing to do either. Tricky indeed...

/MrsHjort

Day 15 - The Dome

Sorry this will be a short one. I've been working after work, editing pictures I took of my coworkers for the company's webpage. I couldn't help myself, it was so much fun to do portraits for a change, and especially of wonderful people like them. After I was finished with that, I ended up editing this shot very fast, since I just can't wait to rush down to the kitchen and grab a bite to eat haha, my tummy is rumbling :P

Oh and by the way, if anyone knows the name of the building in the shot, I'm very interested in learning it. I shot it from Edinburgh Castle, but I cannot remember from what direction :)

Cheers
/MrsHjort