June 29, 2009

Honest scrap award

Once Upon an Equine (love that name!) has kindly presented me with Honest Scrap award.
I love that name too!

Thanks for the award, Once Upon!

Once Upon an Equine has a very nice blog where she describes her life with her two equine partners, Misty and Marley. As Marley is a Norwegian Fjord horse I find it extra entertaining to follow a countryman abroad. But what I love most is her wonderful sense of humour. I always leave her blog in a good mood. She also has lovely pictures in her blog.
Go look for yourself on Once Upon an Equine.


When you receive The Honest Scrap award you must stick to some rules:
Recognize your award presenter and link back to their blog in your post.
List 10 honest things about yourself that others might not now.
Present this award to 10 admirable bloggers and link to their blogs.
Leave a comment on your recipients' blogs to let them know to visit your post to retrieve their award.

Here are 10 honest scraps about me:

1. I am addicted to my mp3-player.
Yes, I listen to music too, but mainly to audio books.
I sleep very light, and had earlier problems to get back to sleep when I woke up, but not anymore. I just plug a book in the ear and voilá! Sound asleep within 5 mins.
No, the sleeping books cannot be too exciting...best is one that you have read before, so if you lose a bit here and there you know what happens anyway.
Apart from that, you have always a book handy even if you are in situations where you normally couldn't read. Driving, cooking.
And it weighs less than books too.
I also enjoy the extra colour you get to the story when it is read by someone that does a good job. It is like a portable bed time story by a professional.

2. I don't mind insects. In fact, I try to save them by carrying them out of the house when they have lost their way. I draw the line with flies and mosquitoes though.

3. When our daughter was younger she used to twirl my hair between her fingers to get to sleep. In the end I had very little hair left on one side. Lucky there was a lot to start with.

4. I love to read. Always have. I was definitely one of those that pretended to be sound asleep at bedtime when I heard one of my parent’s footsteps, but turned on the bed lamp once they had checked. My favourite books are like good friends, I read them over and over again.

5. When I was a child and woke at night, I was convinced that there were wolves under my bed. I had to stand up in the bed and take a giant leap out of it (so the wolves couldn't lock their jaws around my ankles) and RUN over to my parent's bed. Funny, they never had any wolves under theirs.

6. I am very fond of a traditional Swedish dish that is called "Janssons frestelse" (Jansson's temptation). It is a potato gratin with onions, anchovies and cream. Sounds funny, but tastes very good. Especially with a cold beer. And I won't say no to schnapps together with it either.

7. If I get bad weather when we have our summer vacation, I get depressed and stressed. We have a short summer, and if I feel that the few days that I am free will only be rainy and grey, I start to hyperventilate. Entering the dark and cold period without a summer is hard. The salvation lies in cheap flights and kind family and friends that can take care of our cats. South of Europe is sunny, TG.

8. When my parents told me to clean up my room as a child, I always got VERY tired and sleepy. Now I am 46 and I still get very tired when I am to clean the house. I believe I have an allergy. I keep my horse tack clean and tidy though.

9. I love apple juice. Not the sweet, slightly artificial ones you get on cartons, but the slightly sour juice that is pressed and bottled. When I was a child and visited my grandparents, I always got my grandfather's apple juice (the local gardeners shared a small juice press and bottled in the autumn) and my grandmother's cinnamon buns. I love cinnamon buns too.

10. I am Swedish, but have been living in Norway near half my life. Even if the countries have much in common, there are some differences. Problem is that I am now losing touch with what is happening in Sweden. When I am home with my parents the TV screen is full of new faces. So I guess I am a little in between. Swegian.


And now I have the pleasure to pass on this award to 10 other bloggers.
You have to excuse me; two of the blogs are Scandinavian and thus a bit difficult to read for people outside Scandinavia - but on the other hand it might be a good idea to spread the award outside the English hemisphere?
I would like to make a request to the Scandinavian bloggers though - if it doesn't feel too awkward, would you mind writing your post about the award in English, please?


1. My first on the list is Helen in UK at New Beginnings. I am a bit ambivalent in awarding something with "scrap" in it to Helen as she has nothing of the kind in her blog. She lost her lifelong partner a while ago and makes a very honest and brave attempt to write about how to go on in life. In addition to learning to live with the loss, she has to take care of a farm by herself now and deal with everything including learning how to drive. And in the mid of this she has a lovely sense of humour! Please take this as an encouragement, Helen - I hope you do!

2. RuckusButt at Food, life She likes food in addition to horses and dogs, and hands out some nice recepies too which I appreciate as I love good food. Thanks RB! She also rides a Norwegian Fjord sometimes, so that was how I found her. Her blog is a nice mixture of everything.

4. And then Irene in Sweden at Disco Dancer, which is the name of Irene's beautiful horse, a 5 yo SWB. Her blog is in Swedish, and she writes mostly about her horse life. She has made a blog series about her horse life as a child/teenager that I have enjoyed much. Even if we don't know each other apart from our blogs, her pictures bring back memories to me from the same age.

5. Anne i Hannover. Anne is a good friend of mine who has moved down to Hannover, Germany to study to be a vet. She is a dressage nerd too, so a positive bonus is the central location to major shows. If she gets time to leave the books that is. Her blog is in Norwegian.

6. Sage beasties. She writes not only about her horses but about her cats too, and being a cat owner I enjoy her stories. Nice pictures too.

7. ~C at Go, Diego Go. ~C has an endurance horse called Diego, and her blog is about training him. I believe she has been really unlucky this last half year with accidents. Keep hanging in there, ~C!

8. wilsonc at Canterbalance. She fulfilled a dream and bought her horse as an adult, and has a very nice blog where she shares her horse life.

9. Stephanie at the Aspiring Equestrian. She has an OTTB, and she likes dressage, just like me.

10. Now I know that some of my favourite blogs have received this award earlier. So on the last post, I just want to say that I enjoy your blogs and give the award once again to you anyway.
To share :-)
You don't have to pass it on once again!
Grey Horse Matters
Nuzzling Muzzles
A year with horses and
Highland Hooves.

I believe the award is a good way to get to know other readable blogs, so thanks to Once Upon once again, and also thanks to the original inventor of the award!

(Stillearning, I will post something over the weekend. It has been lovely weather here so I try to stay away from the PC to enjoy the summer days that we get…)

13 comments:

Once Upon an Equine said...

I enjoyed reading your 10. I like listening to books on mp3 too. I particularly enjoyed listening to "The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency" books because the reader had such a lovely, authentic accent.

I save spiders and take them outside.

I hope you have nothing but perfect weather during your summer holiday.

I've been tired for weeks and I haven't done any housework in weeks. I must have the same allergy.

Swegian...I like that.

Wonderful that you are passing the award to Scandinavian friends.

Must tell you, about the bunad, they are expensive and hard to come by here, so I'm opting for another costume this year's parade. But will keep trying to get something to represent Marley's heritage for next year. I wrote to a Norwegian heritage group for help and had lots of nice responses. One lady, whose father came to the U.S. from Norway and her husband is Norwegian, called me and as we were talking, we discovered we live in the same neighborhood! What a coincidence. She's coming over Saturday to meet Marley.

Thanks for your nice comments.

Grey Horse Matters said...

Thanks so much for passing the award on to me. I will get to it after this weekend. It was great to find out so much about you, and I do hope you have nice weather for your summertime fun. I can see how you would get depressed with the rain, we're having record rain here, very unusual, and have been drowned for the month of June, hoping for a better July.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the award, and congratulations on yours! It is very interesting to read about others - I particularly like the wolves under the bed!

RuckusButt said...

Thanks so much, that's very kind of you! I am also glad to see you will still blog during the summer, at least when it’s rainy - I was afraid you wouldn't at all until fall! A few of the other blogs are new to me and I look forward to checking them out.

I enjoyed your honest scraps. I think I will have to try MP3 books; is there a site where you download them? I absolutely relate to #4 and still stay up way to late reading a good book once in a while, especially when my husband is out of town. I have always been okay with bugs outside (except mosquitoes and flies that bite) but in the last year I have tried to be friendlier to those I find indoors. I credit the web site What’s that Bug? for helping me use education to overcome fear.

When the weather gets cold again I am going to make Janssons frestelse!

RuckusButt said...

Oh, and I forgot one thing - I just discovered Helen's blog after seeing a comment from her on your blog. HoC, I hope you don't mind if I try to leave her a note here.

Helen - I've been reading your blog but cannot leave comments (why just me? I don't know, it's happened before!). I just wanted to let you know I am reading, laughing and crying along.

Anonymous said...

HOC, enjoy your summer break! My question can wait until a rainy day...or winter...sometime when you're feeling analytical. Summers are for outdoor fun!! (And I'm taking a summer break soon myself.)

thanks.

Helen said...

Thank you very much, Horse of Course, and for your lovely comments! They brought tears to my eyes.

I love audio books too but know nothing about MP3 players! Perhaps I should investigate further. My favourite audio book is 'The Bridges of Maddison County', for the reader's voice and the great love of beautiful words shown by the author.

RuckusButt, that is so kind of you, thank you so much!!! I can't wait to have a read of your blog too, and all the others that Horse of Course mentions. I love her poetic style and use of words so I'm sure I'm going to love these blogs too.

Friendship and kindness are what keeps my life meaningful now, and I've been shown so much here - thank you!!!!

HorseOfCourse said...

Thanks for your comments all!

Once Upon - The No 1 Ladies D.A. is one of my favourites. I have all the books, and I just love them! Marvellous mixture of humour and life philosophy. My daughter loves them too. Haven't got them as audiobokks though - thanks for the tip, I will try and get hold of it. Who's reading in your copy, do you know?
Re. the bunads. The originals are expensive here too. I thought you might be able to get something along the same theme but at an acceptable price by using a long skirt and a shirt and vest or something. Or if you are one of those envious people that can sew? How nice with the Norwegian heritage group, and a new friend!

RuckusButt - I buy my audiobooks on audible.com. I got an offer together with my player, and decided to try it out. I pay a fee each month, and get 2 credits which normally equals two books. The only disadvantage is that it is not an mp3-files, it is an audible formate so you have to check that your player takes it. An advantage though is that the book is always starting again where you stopped, even if you play something different in the meantime. Audible is much cheaper than mp3-books in Scandinavia, and I prefer to listen to English when that is the original language. Listen to Dicken's characters in Swedish/Norwegian is not quite the same...
I will throw in a recepie on Jansson if you are interested?

stillearning and Helen - thanks! I agree with you Helen, "The bridges..." is a beautiful story. And why don't you try a mp3-player? A good story might help to lift the spirit sometimes.

RuckusButt said...

Thank you for the info, I really appreciate it. It's good to have a starting place when learning about something new!

I would love the recipe for Jansson when you get a chance. A rainy day perhaps ;)

Anne i Hannover said...

Hi! I'll list my ten honest scraps as soon as I have time - unfortunately I've got three upcoming tests this week. I'll write the post in English (I keep writing Englisch, I think it'll be good for me to revisit my English before the German takes over completely;)

Once Upon an Equine said...

HOC, Lisette Lecat is the narrator of the ones I've listened to, "Tears of the Giraffe", "Morality for Beautiful Girls", "The Kalahari Typing School for Men", and "The Full Cupboard of Life." I also liked listening to Bernadette Dunne reading "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Irene said...

Thank you very much, Horse of Course, and for your nice comments! Your stories are fantastic, and I love to read them. And your nice pictures!
Have a wonderful sommer!
Next comment will be in Swedish, I´m sorry...

Stephanie - Siouxzeegirl Designs said...

Thank You so very much for the Award!
Now that I am back from holiday I will pick it up this week and do a post about it!

I enjoy your blog very much :)