beautiful little things

beautiful little things from out there :: light feathers, soft stones, sea shell mysteries :: have a gorgeous weekend, my friends

celebrating four

thank you for all the happy birthday wishes the other day. we had a wonderful day, just the family and will be continuing the celebration over the weekend with family and friends. or maybe next weekend, as we are expecting heavy rain and thunderstorms this weekend, and we really want to have the party in the garden.

four years. amazing. everybody says it the fun age. so i am looking forward to a double-up happy hour (or year, who's counting?) in this house.

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i decorated our living room with garlands made out of their old paintings. not all, of course, but i have a bunch of paintings, very colorful. honestly, with the speed they produce paintings i must admit i don't feel a need to save them all. at all. especially since they usually seem indifferent to the finished product - it's the process that matters to them, the having fun. so, i cut them up and folded triangles, attached them to green cotton yarn, and voila! pretty and colorful garlands filled our living room. they are still there - we still have some celebration to do - but i am not sure if i will take them down just yet anyway. i really like them. and this is anyway our fun year, right?

corner view - water

:: before we are born we float in water. or actually, by the time we are born the water mainly consists of fetal urine, but it all begins as the amniotic sac fills with water only two weeks after fertilization.

(nothing calms me more than the sound of waves. or to watch the endless movement ofwater, looking toward the horizon. except maybe the sound of my babies breathing in their sleep at night. i love that i live so close to the sea, always have, that it's not more than a short drive away. it makes me feel at home.)

:: when a baby is born water makes up about 80% of the body weight, but as an adult, this has changed to something like 70%. when we feel thirsty it means we lost 1% of this water.

(most summer mornings i crave water so badly. the heat in central-coastal israel is overwhelming, with humidity reaching as much as 80-90% some days. it makes me feel like the skin of my body is covered in sweat, while my inside is dried out like a desert.)

:: 70-75% of the surface of the earth is covered in water, and the total amount of water on earth is something like 326 million cubic miles of water (which is too big a number for me to understand). the demand for clean water, whether it's caused by population growth, environment abuse and/or poor water management, plays a great part in hundreds of ongoing conflicts all over the world, including the conflict here in the middle east.

(every summer we see government sponsored campaigns in israel. we're urged to not use too much water, to understand the grave concern that is the sinking shores of the galilee sea, israel's main fresh water supply. but besides the fact that gardens turn yellow, you don't feel the problem much as a private individual. which is not the case for the palestinians. the water supply to the west bank and gaza is controlled by israel and the amount of water supplied to the palestinians vs israeli citizens is disproportionate: the average water consumption per palestinian is way below the average consumption per israeli. )

:: earth is a closed eco system, which means that it rarely loses or gains any extra matter. the water on earth today is the same water that existed on earth millions of years ago. the same that made up the oceans from where the first living cells were created, those cells that make up humans and all other living creatures on earth.

(they promised rain this week in israel. i like the rain, the smell of the rain, the sound of raindrops on the roof. i hope we will get more rain this winter. we need it. like so many other places on earth. i wish we would stop messing with earth's eco system.)

for more water, visit dana, who is hosting jane's corner view.

right before my eyes

cress. it grows extremely fast. it's almost like you can see it growing right before your eyes, but you can't. it's there all the time, but then in glimpse you realize it looks different, it has changed right there and then while you looked away for what only seemed like a second, but maybe it was and hour, a day, a month. you're not sure when it happened, but you see it now.

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my boys are turning four tomorrow. and i am getting awfully sentimental. even the cress in the kitchen makes me thoughtful and suddenly i find myself comparing the boys to cress. is that silly? maybe just weird... :)

anyway, we used cress a lot when i was a kid. i loved to grow it in different shapes. recently i discovered it again, mainly because i wanted to show it to the boys. but i really love the taste. and it is perfect in an egg salad.

cousins

they adore their two cousins in denmark. they love to play with them more than anything, and when we visit denmark they are together most of the time. i wish these beautiful and sweet girls could come and celebrate their birthday with us this week. they will be four...wow!

my brother is planning to visit in the spring. it's been a while he and his family were here last, and they never visited us in the new house. still a long time to go, but i am looking forward. it will be so much fun.

sunday is my monday, so my week already began. a week of birthday celebration and the week of a good friend's wedding.

wishing you a happy sunday.

cozy morning blanket

the heat wave has ended. finally! we're still in shorts and flip flops, but even if the days are still warm, the evenings and mornings are getting chillier. so i made us a morning snuggle blanket.

most mornings begin on the couch in the dining room. and we've been trying to snuggle under this tiny crochet blanket, but it's not really working.

the blanket is made from squares that are pretty random put together from scraps. the blue base, the plaided bias binding and the striped background are all made from old sheets. there's no padding inside, i just left the background sheet double and that's good enough. alas, cheapest blanket ever, but it looks and feels really cozy and comfy. a few degrees less and i can make pumpkin soup. and then a few more and i can pull out a woolen sweater and socks. not sure when exactly that will happen, but we'll get there.

wishing you a happy and cozy weekend.

corner view - dream

i dream of time. sometimes it's about more time, sometimes i want to fast forward. or stop it, just for a moment. make time to notice if the dreams came true, think of new, follow my dreams.

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if you have time, move on to dana, who is hosting jane's corner view this week

a beautiful day

thank you so much for your sweet and thoughtful comments to yesterday's post. i am feeling much better today. it really isn't that bad, N and J, our twins, just don't follow the ordinary road, but their situation is not ordinary (is anyone's really?), and so this is our road. and like any other road, it has bumps too.

i have new energy now. sometimes it helps just to talk about it. i got some advise, but most important - and like many of you mentioned - the thing is to love and support children as they are, where they are, right now.

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we're still in a heatwave, but since yesterday the air smells like rain. no sign of clouds on the blue sky though. not even pretty clouds like on that photo above. from denmark, clouds over oeresound, the water between sweden and denmark. what a beautiful day.

good times. and some figuring out

i was going through photos from denmark. so, here we go again. these are from a great playground not far from my parents house. it's a nature playground, with wood, water and sand. and some more. the kids were wet and dirty when we got back home. and i'm a true believer, that dirty kids had the most fun.

i started the week feeling a bit sad and frustrated. my twins are having some problems socially as they don't communicate as well as other children their age. they are not behaving bad or violently, they 'just' have a hard time getting involved in the playing, making friends, the social life. we knew it would be like this as they have all the odds against them: premature. twins. boys. three languages spoken in the house. the thing that frustrates me is, that i cannot help them as much as i would like to. my hebrew is not that good and i don't feel natural speaking it. there are other factors in play here, but i will not go into detail. at least not today. i am still trying to find the positive approach and the clear view that will make this just another bump on the road. still not there, though. i feel like i am failing a bit here. and it sucks when you feel you fail as a parent. but i will work it out. just need a moment to get myself together.

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on a more positive note: did you notice the bigger images? i finally figured it out after getting help from the good julochka. thank you :)
i settled on the x-large version after trying out even bigger. maybe i'll let them grow further over time.

fall in the light

it's mid-october. i see fall around the northern hemisphere, but here we are in a heat wave. 30+ degrees celcius during the day, but no humidity to keep the heat after sunset, so we cool off at night.

the light is different, though. the sun is lower on the sky and takes its time as it moves toward the ocean. long shadows and pastel tones mixed in the golden glow of the setting sun.

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sometimes if we're going home and we pass by the sea at sunset, i will drive to the shore and let them watch the magical moment when the water burns. if you ask them where the sun is at night they will tell you it goes to sleep in the ocean. i wonder when they will know that the sun never sleeps. and if they will like that story better.

nature (detail)

look at these! they suddenly moved here with their mother and took over the front porch (the kittens. not the chairs). in the morning i watch them from my kitchen window curled up together, still sleeping, on one of the pillow seats. so sweet. they won't let me get close, which is fine, they can have the chairs. i'm a bit worried to make the mother anxious about human stalkers, so i keep the kids away from them too. last time a wild cat had kittens out there she ended up eating two out of three. no kidding. gruesome story, but apparently not unusual in a cat's world: i googled it after i had seen it (yes, i saw it!). i was afraid i had a crazy cat on the lose in my garden and next thing you know, it would try and eat one of the kids. my kids, that is.
story is, a sick or week kitten attracts predators and wastes its mother's milk. and if it's anyway going to die it would be a waste if the mother doesn't use the extra food providing for her other kittens. nature shows no mercy, eh?

i'm sorry if i now left you with terrible images going through your head, but i wanted to share the fact that when i look at these two sweethearts, i can't help but fear for their future. and i make sure to leave food out for their mother. wouldn't want her to go hungry. she is, by the way, a furious thing. she's fighting off the neighbor's huge male cat when he gets too close to her or her kittens. seems nature doesn't have any fear either.

corner view - love

a while back i caught a cab in tel aviv. the driver, a big man with toned glasses and pale skin, asked me where i was from. he thought i might be german, and he told me that he was born in germany in 1945.

his parents had settled shortly in munich. his mother was pregnant with him and not fit for traveling far after they had spent the last years of the war in auschwitz.

it brought tears to my eyes. i felt silly, but suddenly, this big guy, driving me around tel aviv in his cab, seemed like a living miracle. a proof that love will find a place to grow, even then and there.

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shortly after he was born, the little family continued to israel. his father wanted to go to the states, but his mother, who had only one brother left after the war, wanted to follow him to israel.

i asked him if his parents had been happy with their choice. i couldn't see his eyes as he smiled and said, "you know, life was hard here, back then...". and i smiled back, not sure if he noticed the glimpse of sorrow in mine. as much as i love this place, and the man that brought me here, i know. it still is.

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need some more lovin'? jane of spain daily will show you where to find it.

what i brought home

as i mentioned, i brought home some things from denmark. as i always do. but i didn't show you these two items with little family stories attached.

the face of the man was my mother's. she bought it as a young girl on a market. she cannot remember why she chose him and decided to buy him, but it was hanging in her room. i look at him and find it to be such a peculiar face to have hanging in a child's room. but he's been around here or there all my life and i kind of like him. in all his weird being.

the black and white silhouette print belonged to my grandmother. she was born in 1923, and received it as a little girl. she had an older brother, and at night, when she was lying in her bed, she would look at this and pretend that it was herself with her mother and brother. funny enough, having seen photos of my great grandmother, there's something that reminds me of her in the silhouette of the woman. i wonder if the person that got this for my grandmother had the same thought.

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this week i will begin my new work. i have decided to no longer freelance and have accepted a part time job. it's a start-up company and i have been working with them as a freelancer. now things are moving along. we're getting offices and a few more employees are being hired. like me. i am very excited, as i like the guys, i like the product, and i am looking forward to steady hours. and of course, this will be an opportunity to go tel aviv 2-3 times a week. meaning, a reason to put on something else than cut-off jeans and flip flops, a reason to go and feel the energy of the city. just a little bit. before i flee right back to the quiet and calm.

about broken beauty and lazy weekends

this pretty, perfectly smooth, white stone fell to the floor. it broke into four pieces. and now it fascinates me the way only the broken beauty can.

like in 'anthem' by leonard cohen: there's a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. even though it's not really the same. or maybe it is.

i still didn't find the right moment to write about the leonard cohen concert here in tel aviv on sep 24. for some reason i have hesitated. maybe laziness? but i really should, because it was an amazing experience - for a lot of reasons. every little detail came into place and made it just right.

but for now i'm just going to continue in weekend mode:

can you sense the laziness? i'm planning on continuing like this tomorrow.

wishing you a perfect (lazy) weekend (with a tiny crack, of course).

corner view - souvenir

of course there are the thousands of thousands of religious artifacts you can get in israel. chanukiot, hamsa hands,, kippot, kiddush glasses, and all the other jewish religious items, as well as jewelry with religious symbols (star of david and the hai).

and if you go to jerusalem there is jesus on the cross. everywhere. on cups and candles, plates and t-shirts, posters, postcards, table cloths, bags, paintings, necklaces and basically everywhere you can squeeze in a cross and a guy. and obviously there are quite a few virgin mary statues too.

but i don't know anyone who buys those things. when friends and family visit they often bring home all star sneakers, crocs (hello mom and dad!) and havianas flip flops. for some yet-to-be-figured-out reason, these international shoe brands are 1/2 to 1/3 the price here in israel compared to denmark. but that wouldn't really qualify for a souvenir, that's more like making a good deal.

but they also bring back dead sea products. to themselves and to friends and family. everything from mud and bath salt to facial creams and hand soap.

the shores and surface of the dead sea is 422 meters below sea level, which makes it the lowest dry land spot on earth. this little turquoise pearl i's squeezed in between jordan on one side and israel and the west bank on the other side. going there requires a 3 hour road trip from tel aviv through the desert. and the last part of that trip is downhill, down and down, while you look for the signs telling when you are at the minus 100 meters spot, minus 200 hundred meters and so forth. at some point you will see the turquoise, shining surface that is the dead sea. right there, deep down, among all the brown and yellow shades of the desert and the red mountains of jordan in the back. it's spectacular.

once down you can go in. it's the funniest feeling. seriously, most people start to laugh, me included, cause you really float like a balloon due to the high level of salt, something like 9 times normal salt water. the water feels soft and thick, but god help you if you shaved your legs that morning or scratched a mosquito bite a bit too much the night before: the salt will kill you! and i don't even want to tell you how it feels to get it in the eye.

the famous dead sea mud full of healing and soothing minerals can be found in some areas and holes along the coast. people dig down into the dirt with their bare hands and rub it all over their bodies. or you can go to a spa area, where they will have facilities and the mud ready to use in pots.

the combination of the mineral content of the water, the low level of pollens in the desert air, the low amount of ultraviolet component from the sun's radiation, and the higher atmospheric pressure has made the dead sea a unique place for health treatments of many illnesses and conditions. besides psoriasis patients having great effects from the salt water and the minerals in it, they can also stay in the sun for longer hours because of the sun's bad UV rays are weaker at this under-the-sea level.

once you leave the water the skin feels smooth, almost like you are covered in oil. but as soon as it begins to dry you will feel the itching and burning as salt is drying on your skin. alas, run for the shower!

the dead sea products are available all over israel and i assume you can get it abroad as well, but since this the origin is here, i think it qualifies as a local souvenir.

oh, i hope i didn't scare you! it's just us, my mom and aunt, and me (cause if i had put up their photo only, they would have killed me. with mine in there as well they might just never speak to me again). be prepared if you consider going to the dead sea: you have to be able to enjoy and take yourself serious while walking around covered in mud from top till toe. hey, it's good for you!

for more souvenirs from all over the world, check out jane's corner view, this week chosen by epe.

nesting. and collecting

this little bird nest fell from our date palm tree the other day. luckily it was no longer in use. it always amazes me how ingeniously simple and yet complex bird nests are. it looked so empty, so i filled it. i guess i am still bringing beauty home .

so come on and dance with me

i cannot figure out whether i like this video by girls. the song itself, hellhole ratrace, is so so good. i'm completely hooked (yes, i know, it's not exactly new, but new to me ). i am right now working myself through some of their other tracks. but this video... sweet, tragic, cool, sad were words that all crossed my mind as i watched and listened. and i'm still not sure. maybe all at once. but i like it.

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bonus info: girls is a duo consisting of christopher owens and chet ’jr’ white. they met as christoffer owens was living the streets after he fled the californian cult children of god at the age of 16 (known because they supposedly encouraged sex between children and adults). at some point he met white, a music producer, and girls came to be. this little piece of bonus info is not just to feed my inner sensationalist, but it just makes this peculiar mix of young tragedy and innocent happiness, that are mixed up so strangely here, even stronger. i would love to hear what you think...

ida's eye

ida is an amazing photographer. her photos have this dreamy flair to them, like old, faded memories, with a touch of mystery. first i admired her eye for the little things, light and colors in her regular blog posts, but then she introduced yashica thursday. and i have been hooked ever since. i love how she sees things. so i was thrilled when she recently announced that she had opened a shop. and so, i ordered a few. i even told myself it had a greater purpose. that it would be a perfect way to encourage myself to write good old handwritten cards to friends and family (which is one of my goals for the new year. the jewish new year, that is, which begins so perfectly as fall sets in).

last week i received my little package from ida. it was one if these hectic days, so i only sneak peaked into it, and then put it aside until i would have that special moment where i could fully enjoy the ever important moment of unwrapping. and when that moment arrived i had all the time in the world to admire the yellow ribbon, the gray wrapping paper, the little camera print. and of course, the postcards.

i had ordered three of my favorites, withered chamomile, pretty in pink and walking girl. but more than that, there were two extra postcards. not listed in the shop. very exclusive :)

the postcards are still here with me. not one has left the building so far. i am not sure my theory of a gentle, beautiful push towards handwritten cards to family and friends, is working, because i cannot really part from them. not yet at least. i even decided to take one for me already. i needed something really pretty to be the first thing to be put on my new boards.


so these feet of a running girl, that have been a favorite for such a long time, are now running on my wall.