missjekyllslife
live.create.enjoy
Dreamcatcher
I’m always lurking around in the fabric section of my favorite secondhand store “Erikshjälpen”. There you always find those cute little crochet tablecloth which are (at least in my imagination) handcrafted by nice old ladies.
For their actual purpose, they are a bit too oldschool for our home, but I really wanted to figure something out where I can use it in some way. Strolling through our shed in the summerhouse, I found a few meters of thick metal thread. Really thick one. Probably aroud 1.5 to 2 cm. The way it was stored, inspired me. It was rolled up hanging on the wall.
Why not make my very own dreamcatcher??
I bought a round crochet tablecloth that looks like a flower for 35sek. All I needed for this was that, the metal thread, hemp string in the same color as the table piece and some old white fabric.
I made a big ring out of the metal, approximately 15-20cm bigger than the tablecloth. Then I cut the white fabric in stripes and wrapped it around it to cover the metal.
Next step was cutting the hempstring into 30-40cm long pieces. Those are used to fix the tablecloth in the middle of the ring. I started on one side and then continued on the opposite side to make sure it ends up centered. When I was satisfied, I tightened it well.
Done with that, I felt it was too plain. So I used some acrylic paint to color in certain areas, blending the color smoothly.
It hangs now in our bedroom. Around the ring, I wrapped a fairy light, which gives a beautiful soothing light. Lets see if it also keeps away some bad dreams.
Sometimes I feel too much…
It’s good to feel things right?! But what if you feel everything? And with everything I mean the good and the bad and all the things in between and even the things that might not even be there…
I consider myself a Highly Sensitive Person.
There’s a page that explains it quite well and at the end of the page, you also find a link to a test.
https://sporteluxe.com/navigate-life-highly-sensitive-person-hsp-2/
But back to the feelings…
Let me give you some examples. Let’s start with me around other human beings. I am easily influenced by other peoples mood. When someone is stressed or frustrated, I’m frustrated too. Like badly. Not that I just feel sorry for that person for feeling like that. I FEEL it. It’s a terrible pressure on my chest.
Same thing with seeing people sad. Not only people I know or people in real life. When there’s a sad scene in a movie. I cry. I cry my eyes out. Sometimes my boyfriend seems even worried about how sad I am then. I can snap out of it quite fast sometimes. So that’s good. 🙂
Quite extreme is it with animals. Seeing animals being harmed, causes incredible pain inside me. My tummy feels like someone digs in there with a shovel. It goes pretty far actually. Let me give you some examples of that as well…
You know those fly traps that hang from ceilings? Those straps with glue on, where the flys get trapped and then buzz on it in panic, trying to get free again, until they die?! Can’t bare those. I would like to release each one of them if it would be possible without ripping off their wings or legs.
Or when I work in our garden and accidentally cut a worm in half…Feeling so sorry about it. Like physically.
When I’m going somewhere by car and I pass an animal lying on the side of the road after being hit by a car, I can not continue my way without trying to stop and seeing if there’s really nothing I can do to help. If I don’t check, I’m haunted by thoughts like: “What if it’s still alive?” “What if it could survive if only someone would bring it to a vet?” “What if it’s still alive and in terrible pain?” “What if it’s super scared because it’s still alive and all these cars drive by or over it so freaking fast?” “Did it die right away or was it scared and in pain for long?”
Many thoughts for a quite common situation if you’re going to places by car almost every day…
Or another good example that takes place in our summerhouse. It is an almost 200 years old house. Right by the forest. We have a problem with mice. We don’t leave food out, have everything in metal boxes. Shut holes that we know mice use as an entrance. Tried oh so many tricks that the internet was suggesting. And then they started to get cocky in the living room. And made noise at night in the kitchen so it disturbed our sleep. Everything has boundaries, so my boyfriend decided to put up traps. Those that kill…I hate them. From the bottom of my heart. So I told him I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t want to see it. So he dealt with it this past week. Until yesterday, when I went to the living room and the mouse in the trap was not dead. It was suffering because the damn trap is just simply not as “efficient” and “humane” as it promises on the packaging. When he told me about it, I felt this really deep sadness. Because of the distress and the pain we caused this mouse. I can literally see some of you rolling your eyes right now. “It’s just a mouse” “They don’t think as we do” “If you don’t kill them, they take over your house” “They bring diseases”
Yes, I know…But I can’t help it. So we went and bought Live traps. Good ones. Ones where they have some space once they are trapped and that doesn’t trap them with a super loud noise that scares them to death anyway. Those were my requirements. Believe me, my boyfriend often just stands there, smiling at me because of how quirky I am in so many ways.
But he also knows by now, that it’s me who is lying awake in the middle of the night, haunted by all those feelings and thoughts that are so much worse when it’s dark.
But feeling so much is not only bad and exhausting. I also love deeply. Family, Friends, Pets. with all my heart and it gives me a good feeling.
Being highly sensitive also brings with it that I’m so creative and interested in art. And it gives me a lot of happiness.
For example the happiness I feel when I release the mice that we caught in our nice live traps. Here you can see one of those cute but destructive little creatures disappear in the forest.
If you don’t like mice, skip the video. 🙂
If you also feel overwhelmed sometimes, know that you’re not alone. Let people around you know whats going on inside you. They can’t figure that out, without us explaining it to them.
We are awesome, no matter how quirky we are 🙂
Social Life in times of Covid-19
I’m living in Sweden. Many of you probably know, that Sweden doesn’t nearly take as strict measures against Covid as other countries. My partner and I most likely already got infected and were forced to stay home for almost three weeks. We felt very sick, but were fortunate enough to only had to battle quite mild symptoms apart from the fever.
Why we can’t say for sure? Well, we don’t get tested here. 🙂 But on the other hand…what does it really help to know for sure until someone knows for sure that you’re immune after recovery.
But we take the pandemic very serious. I’m in daily contact with my family in Germany. Germany just now starts to release some of the restrictions. To me it feels almost Surreal to listen to how life feels in a partial lockdown. We never got there here. The government suggests different measures and trusts on peoples common sense.
Living in a city like Lund that is filled with students, I sometimes have my doubts, just looking at all the cafes and restaurants. They are packed with guests.
But the moment I start thinking about the different ways how governments handle this pandemic, I have to say that I am incredibly indicisive which one feels right to me. By now I feel like it won’t be possible to avoid that a majority of people has to get infected first, before the virus will slow down.
And I’m all up for trying to help our small businesses to survive this. We feel like we take part in that by ordering take away quite frequently.
But still, I don’t want to be the reason why people get sick. So I try to keep my social distance. Working in a quite big school, it is quite challenging during work hours. But in private I don’t struggle too much.
I’m an introvert. I like to be by myself. I enjoy meeting friends, but it is draining for me.
But even I feel like I need some socializing outside of work. I miss hanging out with friends. So, we started to meet up outside. Have some fun while keeping distance. The other week, we went to play Frisbee Golf with friends here in Lund. It was my first time and lets say…I’m not talented. 🙂 But that was not the point. It was so much fun and we still managed to keep distance.
Playing Frisbee Golf, we also talked about midsummer coming up soon. Last year we celebrated in our summerhouse garden. with the same friends we were playing frisbee now plus my best friend from Germany and her husband. It was magical. I had the best time.
We would like to do the same thing again. We feel like we will be able to keep our distance. Not being in a public space, not putting others people in risk. Our garden is surrounded by forest, nothing else. And still…I can’t help but feel slightly guilty about not being responsible enough to just skip this one midsummer party. But seriously, humans are social beings. It can’t be healthy to live so isolated.
Let’s also take care of our mental health. ❤
What are your thoughts on all that? How are you feeling? How are you coping?
A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch but on its own wings. – Unknown
I while ago, I built a nice aviary for our two budgies “Wingardium” and “Leviosa”.
But they prefer to sit on their playground that hangs from the ceiling. We don’t see why we should lock them in their aviary unless we are away for a longer period of time and have someone else looking after them. So the doors of their “wardrobe” are always open.
They have to go in there for food and water and they like to sit in there for their special UV-Lamp.
Month ago, we made a new small playground that we mounted on the wall to motivate them to fly around a bit more. Most time of the day, they just sit in one spot. It took them WEEKS for them to find the courage to approach the new playground. They are very insecure.
One weekend, sitting in our summerhouse garden, Martin had the idea to take one of the small birch trees home and mount it on top of the birds aviary. Just to give them a slightly more natural living space.
We expected them to be scared of it for a long time considering that it’s a huge new object.
But they proved us wrong. Already the very next day, they started to approach it. They were a bit clumsy though, trying to land on the thin branches on the outside. They looked slightly surprised when the branches bent down. those two still have to work on their confidence. 🙂
It might seem a bit silly, but we were so happy, seeing them act like normal birds. Sitting. Exploring. Climbing. Nibbeling.
They are so much more active since we put it up there.
“I was brought up to reuse things.” – Annabelle Selldorf
That awesome little house of ours got pretty much sold as it was. Meaning with all its flaws and little treaures.
We own this house for Three years now and step by stp, we make it ours.
But while doing that it is important to us to maintain the history of it.
Except of the bed, we didnt buy any new furniture but instead, used what was left behind or bought second hand. No matter which of those options, we still try to personalize the items.
I love to paint old funiture and turning them into something different and more me.
That White stool was living in the house long before we bought it.
Who knows who was sitting on it, what was stored on it. But it for sure carried some of the houses history.
At Lidl i bought a set of acrylic hobby paint. Matt pastell tones. Those came to use here.
But first I sanded off the old paint to have a good base for the new paint.
After I wiped off the dust, I taped off half of the legs. I decided to paint the top part blue and the legs in a light yellow.
It took about three layers to reach a full coverage. Then I let it dry for the rest of the day.
Looking at it the next day, I found it still a Little boring. So I used one of my stencils to add a little mandala. That finished it off just fine. 🙂
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. ~ Boyd K. Packer
When we bought this little summerhouse, there was this old picnictable standing in the garden. My first impulse was: ” We can throw that one out right away:” But what can I say…it grew on me. And then we kept on using it, as it fits quite some people on it and the money we have, we rather spend on other thing than garden furniture.
It got moved around from corner to corner and now for midsummer, it was the main stage of our celebrations. We sat here and ate, drank and had good conversations. So I decided to be realistic. We keep on using it as long as it lasts. So I went to buy some paint and upcycled it, made it all ours.
First I cleaned it off with a special solution to clear it from fungus, mold and everything else that made it look grey and sad.
Then I went over it with a polisher to smoothen out all the edges and surfaces. After that, it already looked so much better!
I bought a yellow oil paint for outdoor use. The painting itself was very uncomplicated. The only hing to consider is, that it takes quite a bit to dry through. between the first and the second layer of paint, I had to let it dry over 12 hours.
After putting on two layers of paint and leting them dry properly. I used a template for mandalas and light blue chalk paint to decorate it.
I’m very satisfied with the result and I’m happy that we kept the table.
As a rule of thumb, I would say the smaller the pond, the more belligerent the fish. ~ Craig Brown
A few weeks ago, I made this post about the mini-pond I set up in our little wild garden. Promising an update.
So here it is!
The pond is thriving! The swimming water plants didnt make it, but the ones under water, the gras and the mint are growing like crazy. The grass around also revived after the digging. It turned out just perfect.
Not only the plants seem to be happy. Also some snails enjoying their lives in there. And then we dicovered a highlight!
A water salamander moved in…
That makes me so happy! Here some pictures:
Let’s get cozy
The bedroom is still in progress, but Tuesday we finally bought proper mattresses. It only took us about a year 😊
Today I fixed one of the walls. I hung one of the mirrors there that we found in the house. After finding a gorgeous light blue chalk paint in the store on sale, it was finally time to make it pretty.
Done with that, I remembered that months ago I thrifted I little shelf for 50kr (5€), knowing that I’ll find the perfect use for it one day. And here it is.
One step closer to the perfect cozy paradise.
Selfie Station
My youngest sister got married. I was allowed to fix some decorations, since she’s not crazy into that, while I LOVE it!
Both, my sister and her fiance are gamers. They love spending their spare time on their computers.
And we always were into consoles when we were kids. So a gameboy as a photobooth seemed to be the right choice.
I had to figure out how to make it big enough, while still being able to transport it to Germany in our small car.
So I decided to make it in two parts , connected with hinges.
First step was to research the original measurements. Then transfer these numbers to the piece of wood I had.
It turned out to be around 154cm high and 96 cm wide.
First I used a jigsaw to do the outlines and to cut out the screen. For the screen, I had to drill big holes in each corner to manage to get the round edges.
In the next step I started drawing on the details, like the NINTENDO Logo and the buttons. First with a regular pencil. Then I traced the outlines with a black marker. That way, it was still shining through after painting the light grey base.
And then I simply painted everything else with fine brushes and acrylic paint.
After the buttons were dried, I addad some light and shade to make it look a bit less flat.
When I was satisfied with the result, I fastened the hinges to connect the two halves.
On the day of the wedding, my other sisters’ husband fastened it on a system for photo backgrounds.
It was a big hit on the wedding. Especially in the later hours, when most women were dancing and men tried to get away from it. 🙂
Other people
Her artist name is LP (Laura Pergolizzi). And her voice hits a nerve.
I saw her performing in one of those viral Facebook videos. So, I’m not a trendsetter here. 🙂
But I have the biggest girl crush since then. It was hard for me to decide which song my current favourite is…
But I’d say it’s “Other People”.
Listen to it, sing along with it and dance like nobody is watching.
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