At home with Maud Marie

Maud Marie Tjorteland Conibear graciously invited Hallo magazino into her luxurious new apartment in Oslo. We were only too delighted to see what this hip girl about town has to say about important issues such as what pop-up books at the moment, why the lid wont stay on her dolls house tea set, and where that pesky small yellow one had gone from her stacking cup set! Hallo is always there to be first with the important news of the day...

Maud at the entrance to her gracious home, with ample storage, a small plastic kitchen with real burner effect stove (with sound - how cool!) and a two place (very sturdy) dining area.

Maud (2 and a bit) puts her baby to sleep whilst she talks to our reporter...

..but insists that the interview is conducted on her terms... including the presence of her advisor, best friend and confident Lola.

The reporter grabs a snap for her own personal album

Suddenly a disagreement appears to break out between Maud and Lola...

...scenes turn a little ugly and embarrassing...

... but then we realise that Maud and Lola were simply showing off part of their new act (entitled Circus Tricks with Lola Standing on my Shoulders and Doing Somersaults Off Them) premiering Off-Broadway soon!

What an enchanting day we had being entertained by Oslos premier young rising star Maud Marie! Lets hope the ugly incidents of earlier this year will be forgotten and Maud and her new young sister Henny can live in peace with their fame in the blogging world.

Next... The Last Day :(

The morning after...

After having to say goodnight to the little darlings what seems so early the previous evening surely the best thing in the morning is getting to see them again! Especially when they are this cute!

(Whoops bit close Henny sorry !)

Henny none too impressed with Uncle Tim's comforting skills at first...

...then realised that she was just in need of a little snoozette... these moments are precious!

Next... Click here to see the exclusive interview with Maud Marie

Saturday Saturday

A lovely way to start the day.. scrambled eggs and bacon (yum thanks Silje - and gluten free toast) and then some great quality time with the kiddies :)

The gluten free elephant in the room....

Yummo. Again Silje spoiled us and me especially by making a huge and delicious gluten free cake topped with berries and filled with special "piano" cream... Maud's anticipation was palpable ... "cummon people cut the cake! cut the cake!"

Next... The Morning After

Fantastic Friday

What a wonderful start to the weekend :)

Grandma gets some one-on-one with Henny in a cute pinafore number

Maud was usually at hand to cast her big sister eye over all these newpeople handling her new little sister

Go to Saturday Saturday

Back at the pad

Henny can keep up her efforts of looking cute for ... well.. all day really :)

go to Fantastic Friday

Grandma's arrival

Friday morning, before Grandma's plane landed, Maud decided to bunk off nursery for the day to hang around with her cool Uncle Tim and Mamma and Pappa. Giant sticky buns tend to help make the morning more fun too

Henny was happy (as usual) just to be wrapped up warm in her chariot

Heading down to the station Matt and Silje took me over to see the newly opened Opera House. It is a spectacular building inside and out with a white marble facade that seems to slide gracefully into the fjord! This means you can simply walk up the roof to the summit to get some spectacular views of Oslo. The skyline when we were there was quite impressive but unfortunately brought rain with it.

Then just a quick hop over to the Central Station to collect Grandma off the airport express train.

go to 3. Back at the Pad

Oslo Time

Hello everyone and welcome to another picture rich installment of S&N. It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was over in Oslo last helping Matt, Silje and Maud make the journey from their old apartment into their new swanky pad.

Maud showed me around the library bookcase... mainly taking in the highlights of several of her favourite Dr Seuss books

Pappa, Maud and Henny have some sit down time on the sofa...

But then Henny manages to score the whole seat to herself for some quiet time without all the grownups.

Just outside, the apartment building even has its own playground (woohoo!) and Maud clearly doesn't mind whiling away any spare time there if it's a nice sunny day, as it was on the Friday morning.

... go to 2. Grandma's arrival

Catch up!

Hello peeps. More blogging to try and clear the backlog before more pics of impending travel to Oslo to see my brand sparkly new niece Henny!

Congratulations also to Anthony and Anna who brought Jack into the world on 12th October at 8:30pm. 5lbs 14 oz (2.66kg for those of you playing in new money) and everyone was fit and healthy and going great guns.

Unfortunately no pictures yet but as a placeholder I will put up the pic that we took when we were last together over summer round at Ant and Anna's place in Worsley. I think I only found out then too so it seems to have all come round very soon!

Retro Blogging Alert!

Scroll down to see todays post in date order or use these handy links to get straight to them!

1. Sarah's Birthday Cake Blog

2. May Away Days

3. Summer on the beach

4. Visitors in Southampton

Bye bye old friend

Well this weekend saw the final curtain for a piece of furniture that has been around in Mum's house for almost 30 years... our trusty sofa bed that has accommodated so many visitors over its many years of reliable service (apart from Sarah, who famously decided one time to fold away the bed and sleep on the floor!). The decision was made that there was no longer room in the house to keep it and it had to go... OK... but where?! I refused to accept Mum's suggestion of taking a sledgehammer to it and chucking it on the tip and instead decided to give it as noble a send of as possible...

.... so I ripped it's guts out

and shoved it down the stairs! (OMG that thing was awkward and took about an hour for me to work out how to get it down the stairs on my own without gouging great chunks out of the wall)

Down in the garage I reassembled, and prepared for storage whilst we decided what to do... I opted for Ebay first, then if no interest... Freecycle was going to be it. Luckily some eager beaver snapped it up within 24 hours of the advert being on so the garage should be one sofa lighter by the end of the week! They agreed to pay the full asking price of £25 whole English pounds too! Amazing!

So now we cleared some space it was time to fill it back up again whilst having a good clean and clear out at the same time! Bye bye stashes of cleaning products and plastic bags - Hello nice new roomier room! Watch this space for final make over pics... or perhaps we will just keep you in suspenders until the next time you visit!

Retrospective Summer '08

Hello all ... well as you can see I am trying to clamber back onto the blogging milk-float that was S&N (not to compare to the juggernaut that is I&I) ... as previously suggested by fellow bloggers I was advised to ditch all previous entries stored in my blogging brain and just start from ... now! But I can't let you miss out on all that good stuff so will attempt to fill in the blank from May (yes May!) as we go on from now. As the dates get more distant I will make sure that any blogs that are not obvious are linked to at the top so you won't miss them! Enjoy below :)