I’ve been following them around online. The Startup Kids. I think it’s a brilliant idea, to go out and seek motivation through the camera lense. These two young women (probably my age, so I really should say girls) went around Europe and the US, interviewing startup founders and entrepreneurs on how they managed to start their company and make it grow.
I started my own company in 2010 but we are mainly service based so we don’t have a product to market really, but the process has been very educational and interesting, sometimes stressful but always fun. Before I started I took a course in business administration which was very helpful but has since then left me wondering how on earth some companies are able to survive, month after month, year after year.
I haven’t seen the movie myself as it hasn’t been screened in my town (don’t know if it ever will) but it will come online sometime early next year. You should really watch out for this one.
On our way home on Jan 1st from celebrating new years eve with the family, we were talking in the car of what exciting things we should do this year. And we decided to get married!
Come on, we’ve been engaged for seven years, since the christening of our firstborn, and started dating in 1997. That’s like 15 years ago..!
So it didn’t only seem logical but also fun and exciting.
We decided on May 12th. 2012. We wanted a spring wedding and it was a saturday so it seemed perfect.
And it was.
We had a little over 100 guests, a caterer who served lamb and chicken, we made sushi and our moms made the most delicious chocolate cakes ever.
We made the decorations ourselves, I got the vases at Ikea, cut the birch off a tree in our garden and sowed wheatgrass (which takes only approx. 10 days to grow that much). It was full of life.
I bought some lightbrown fabric and made 30cm wide table runners which served as excellent background for the table decorations. It’s also necessary to remember that there needs to be room for all the glasses, wine and water bottles.
The printables were designed at blek – the napkin was printed at Reykjavik letterpress and the menu and the invitation was printed at our local printshop.
We hung printouts of us from various sources onto a chord and hid the nails with pompoms.
I usually go to quite length to make the christmas for my boys that I want them to remember basically because I’m so fond of my own christmas childhood memories.
The christmas traditions in Iceland are quite strong, like they probably are in most other countries. But I think that being on an isolated island for so long (it was only post-WWI that Iceland in general got connected to the world) has made traditions that sound really weird. Like our 13 Santa Clauses or the icelandic Yule Lads, each one of them with their own name and characteristics. They come one by one on the nights before christmas, the first one on the 12th of december. The kids place one of their shoe in the window and in the morning they find a special treat, if they’ve behaved good. There are rumours that naughty children only found a potatoe in their shoe in the morning, not a piece of chocolate or some small toy, but i’ve never experienced that myself 🙂
They used to be naughty themselves, their characteristics are connected to thievery and teasing and even voyeurism but today they are mostly silly and funny lads who now have a more international appearance, they show up in christmas parties in the red uniform with white beard and black boots.
After christmas they go home, one by one each day untill Jan. 6th when we claim that christmas is officially over this season.
My son Emil with a friendly Yule Lad in Dimmuborgir Iceland. It’s one of the rare places that they can be seen in their traditional uniform, which consists mostly of woolen mittens, sweaters, pants and leather shoes. Dimmuborgir is a unique place with amazing rock formation, great to hike through during summer but very scary on cold winter nights.
