My family usually have the tradition to celebrate New Years with Jonas' family. We celebrate every other year at their place, every other at our place. Well, this year Jonas decided to break tradition and celebrate with his friends instead. And was kind enough to invite me as well! :)

So I celebrated with him and his friends. I had met some of them once before when we celebrated Midsummer together. We had a really tasty dinner of double marinated beef tenderloin, and oven-baked vegetables. And for dessert two sorts of chocolate cake (white and dark chocolate) together with whipped cream mixed with raspberries.

After dinner we played "in other words", it's a pretty funny word game where you're to describe a word/place/name with other words, and your partner have to guess from your explanation - plus there's a time limit.

We also walked quite far to watch the fireworks from a little bridge with a good view of town. And it was snowing heavily, and pretty cold. It was probably around -15°C or colder. But we toasted there (with plastic mugs, haha), and I tried to take photos. But my fingers didn't like that much so I only took a few quick ones. It was also pretty bad sight due to the snow, so I doubt I would have gotten very good photos of the fireworks anyways. But it was fun to watch! :D

And after that we actually walked all the way into town and to one of the guys' parents apartment. Where we stayed for a while trying to get some kind of sense of feeling back into our extremities. We talked for a couple of hours before everyone headed home or to somewhere they could sleep for a while. I walked home with Hanna and Fredrik because they were going in the same direction. But I was home around 03:00, so not too bad actually. I had originally planned to steal Jonas' spare bed, haha.

( CLICK FOR PHOTOES! )


Happy New Year everyone!

OK, so Christmas was ridiculously awesome this (last) year. One of the best I have ever had. So satisfied. And afterwards me and Molly were pretty busy so I had no time to update LJ until now.

The day was spent in great company of friends and family. One of my grandmothers had been staying with us for a while since she lives quite far away from here. And my other grandmother who lives in town and my two uncles came over for the Christmas lunch/dinner-buffé-thing. We ate, ate, ate wonderful tasty food. I couldn't move afterwards I was so full! And I got some pretty awesome gifts. Among other things a Wii (Black Limited Edition) from my parents, key earrings from Molly, lots of money, and a flattening iron from Åsa. I am really grateful for all of these things, but most of all that the whole day was so nice!

( PHOTOS AND MORE TEXT )



I hope you all had a Merry Yule!

We have been pretty busy up here the last week. Me and enerjak (also check her other blog out) have been baking and making alot of candies, also alot of shopping for Christmas presents and checking out the various stores around town.

We went partying one night too, though the night life wasn't that exciting I must say. (I guess I have been spoiled with exciting clubs abroad.) But we had fun just the two of us. We danced like retards on the dancefloor, not caring what people thought at all (pretty awesome when others started copying our moves), and then we walked all the way home in the snow.

It has been snowing like crazy here. Molly picked the perfect year to visit Sweden for Yuletiems. Usually we get snow just around Christmas or on Christmas Eve. But now we have had alot of snow for a couple of weeks.

So today (well technically yesterday - the 23rd) we went cross country skiing for an hour or so. It was Molly's first time skiing, which was pretty awesome. She was quite fast at getting the hang of it. And we also took some awesome pictures that you can see under the cut below.

We also found time to go training at the gym that I'm a member of. So we worked out for a while and then tried the sauna, and the pool and hot tub. Very relaxing and refreshing!

We also decorated the tree a couple of days ago and have been putting up other decorations all around the house. Including the gingerbread hearts that we baked and decorated, and some oranges decorated with cloves in different patterns on them. So the whole house smells very Christmasy.

( MORE PHOTOS AND INFO )

Yays! So enerjak has been here for almost a week now. We are having sooo much fun, it is totally crazy! We hit it off so well, it's really amazing. :D

We have been pretty busy... drawing and watching movies, anime, tv-series and hanging out being derpy. I picked her up last Thursday evening. She was pretty tired after her flight problems and all that, so it had been a very long day for her.
Saturday we went to a Christmas market just outside of town.

( PHOTOS! )


And in the evening we went bowling with Åsa. It was night bowling and they had the music blasting and disco lights on. We had outfits that reacted to the UV light, so we all looked pretty awesome!

( AWESOME PHOTOS!!!1!11 )


Yeah, we're having a pretty awesome time. We tried to make some shortbread dinosaurs, but Molly had apparantly gotten the wrong recipe from her Dad, so it failed a little. We're going to do much more baking though. And also candies!
She also visited me at school, but it wasn't very interesting there in the beginning of the week (I was super-bored as well).

We did get loooads of snow, so it feels very seasonal right now. We're going to try go skiing one of these days. And we're also working on a collab project that's gonna be legend-... wait for it... and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is DAIRY! :D



Over and out!

Felt really crappy about the fact that I didn't get any holiday cards sent out last year. With the sudden flight ticket mess there and all. I got some really lovely cards from you guys though! ♥ I keep them close to my computer to look at every now and then.

This year I know I'll have the time for it and I thought I'd make it something extra. So please also leave a reference to your favourite OC (if you don't have one just pick something else that you like).

Please leave your:
- Name
- Address
- Character info (profile and ref please)

All comments are screened!

Here's my address if you want to send me a card:
Linnéa Holmström Ljung
Egnahemsvägen 12
90433 Umeå
Sweden

Naoko and I were going to exchange packages - only she is much faster than me and sent me a package that I got just before the weekend! I'm mailing her's on Monday. ^ ^;

Uwaa-! Presents from Japan! * 0 * なおちゃん！ありがとうー！



Lookit all that stuff! In there is a letter from Naoko! :D Alot of origami paper, because I'm working on Senbazuru (千羽鶴　- a thousand cranes). I'll post some more about that project later. A cheesecake recipe for a really delicious cheesecake Naoko made for Robin's birthday. Bathing bomb (I think ?) daifuku. Meltykiss (chocolate candy), and alot of Haichū - my favourite Japanese candy.




あははー！ハイチュウ大好きー　♥

Yea, so school is going quite well. Last week we had quite an awesome workshop with artist Nic Langendoen. We got to mix our own colours from pigments and binding substances, made our own brushes, crayons and did alot of painting. I especially liked making my own brushes, and will probably do alot more of it! :)

This week we are sculpting (again). We are modelling our classmates' heads this time, and we will also learn sculpture casting. Also quite fun, but you get really tired from sculpting a whole day.

Saturday I went to a (belated) Birthday party for my friend Love Ersare. It was such a nice evening, I really hope Love thought so too. :) They had made this little stage in the living room that was open to performances of different kinds. Mona played some of her new songs in English, there were some more musical appearances, clown performance, performance art, and as finale a dark story told by Love.

I have some fun news. I will be getting a visit from enerjak over Christmas! How awesome isn't that!? Ahahaha, I'm so psyched about it. Trying to plan some fun stuff for us to do here. We will also probably do some sort of art/comic collab I think. We'll see... ;) This will be the first time I meet someone from PE too - which is also where we met on the internets. But yeah, December 10th is when I'll pick her up from the airport here. :D

We got the first snow of the season on Friday! I took some quick photos from one of the second-floor windows facing the street before I left for school. Beautiful, isn't it? I hope we get alot of (or at least a little) snow for Christmas.





I have been missing Japan extra much lately. At least once a week I dream I am there and/or that I speak Japanese. I really miss my life there, it's like a hole I can't fill. I hope I can go back sometime soon - if only to visit for a couple of weeks (maybe next year?).
Also considering starting my own company related to this... I'm not saying more until I am completely sure though.

And I am still working with my weight/health, the way I look at myself, and things like that. It is going quite well. I can see the progress, both mentally and physically. I have days when everything feels like shit too of course, and I just hate myself and the way I look. But mostly now, I feel ok with myself. :)

I wanted to post this earlier but our modem (the physical box) died, so we didn't have internet nor TV connection for a few days.

Anyhooow, last weekend I helped Åsa arrange a Halloween party that turned out awesome. We were really stressed before because we didn't quite have enough time for preparations and making our costumes. I sewed mine by myself, without any pattern, and helped Åsa remake the skirt-part of her dress. Though it proved really difficult and I didn't quite have time to finish either of our costumes so it looked a bit wonky. Last minute panic attacks. But everything turned out OK in the end of course! We looked really hot both of us and got some nice comments on our costumes! :) We are thinking about making this Halloween party an annual thing...

We had the party in her parents' summer cottage by the sea. It's about 30 minutes by car from town. We had nine guests turn up (though we had planned to be about 15), and everyone stayed the night (there are lots of beds and couches there).

Among the activities was an outdoor trivia, word game, costume contest, pizza baking and just plain fun! It seems as if everyone enjoyed themselves, but for next year we will plan some more activities I think. :D I left my camera on a table for people to borrow, so I had loads of amusing photos to look at afterwards.

( CLICK FOR MORE INFO AND PHOTOS (HEAVY LOADING)! )





I also made this cover for the invitation cards:

Sorry for updating so little lately!

What has happened? Well, we have had a photography course for two weeks at school. We learnt the basics of photography, and got two assignments. The first one we got the first day or so - we were to take a "selfportrait" of ourselves... only we had to use another person, and pose them so that it reflected ourselves.
The second assignment was bigger and we worked with it for about a week. We got a very loose theme - we could basically do whatever we wanted for the assignment. Åsa agreed to be my model, and she was wonderful. Sooo patient with me haha, and she agreed to be barefeet in the forest... in the evening, in only +3°C! I'm really happy with the pictures too. I have been practising photo manipulation lately, and tried some out on this project.

( CLICK FOR PHOTOS! )

This course led me to realize how much of the things that I want from a camera, that this one lacks. I can't adjust exposure time, aperture, or focus. It doesn't do macro shots very well, and doesn't save in raw format. Do want a new (better) camera! :(




I also took another photo recently. Of myself (OMG)! Sporting my new shirt from J!NX! I hope they will accept this photo onto the site soon.


Now, I don't know if you notice it. But I have lost about 5½ kg (12 lbs) since the beginning of August. I'm happy with myself. :) Only 8 kg (17 lbs) left to go until I reach my goal!

My BFF Åsa invited me with her to a party with some of her friends from work on Saturday evening.

Before we headed over there I came by her house for a couple of hours for drinks and we helped each other style our hair and put on make-up. Åsa did my hair and it became gorgeous. She has some serious skills with straightening irons. She used it to give me curls! :O And I have trouble getting curls with just about any method. I helped her with some fierce smokey eyes in return. And we had some Martini and Southern Comfort drinks after that! :D

Then we took the bus to the other side of town. And we managed to get the "Reggae Busdriver"! SCORE! He's the most renowned busdriver in town.

The party itself was great too. We weren't that many but we had a great time! It was nice finally being able to put a face to the people she talks about all the time. We had some crackers and cheese, played Rockband (it was my first time), and a card game called Grass. Pretty obvious what it's all about, ey?





Well, it was a great evening!