Daily Jamie

February 16th

February 17th

What's In A Name?

I spent all morning after the paper came convincing my colleagues that this wasn't me. No, just kidding. They didn't care.

Daily Jamie

February 14th

February 15th
Nothing to see here.

Love The Ones You're With

Valentine's Day still isn't a big deal here, but we thought it might be nice to spend yesterday evening with some folks we love. To that end, we met up with The Swede's folks and Ingvor and Roland at our favorite local restaurant and had a lovely candlelit dinner. Mama and Pappa Swede had come with a Valentine in the form of box of candies and a teddy bear for Jamie, both of which went over very well. We even continued the love fest back at their place with heart-shaped chocolates and balloons and a little FaceTime action with cousin Julia. A happy Valentine's Day indeed.

Daily Jamie

Sammie

Things have been pretty slow around here, as evidenced by my recent lack of posting and this picture of my lunch. I am scraping the bottom of the blog barrel here in the name of regularity and the result is quantity over quality. But anyway. The Swede and I have been watching Breaking Bad… finally. I have no valid excuse to offer for the delay but we have now gotten the memo and the memo says that it's nothing short of magnificent. I have never seen such well-developed characters and that's coming from a Mad Men lover. But I digress. In one scene, the main character, Walter White, is making himself a sandwich to take to work for lunch and The Swede commented how weird Americans are that we can just eat a sandwich and call it lunch. A sandwich is breakfast or a snack here. And danged if I didn't suddenly love the idea of eating sandwiches for lunch. So I bought a loaf of bread and some avocados and lunchmeat and even found French's mustard, threw a pickle on the side, and called it the best lunch I've had in a while. Because, Swedish citizenship aside, I am still a weird American. 

Daily Jamie

Daily Jamie

Hustlin' Likes

 

So, Elin has, I think, five different Instagram accounts, one of which is called makeup_tiiips and has, as of today, five hundred and sixty-six followers. That's a heck of a lot of tweens who like makeup, or at least the makeup tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiips of other Instagram-lovin' tweens. She shares the account with a friend and several weeks ago they decided to ask their audience to apply for three open roles as administrators with posting rights. Sarianne basically forced me to apply and I imagine the competition was fierce so I was secretly thrilled that they selected me and pretended that Sarianne didn't also force them. I've posted three makeup tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiips, the latest of which was this Essie Fiji and L'Oreal Gold Leaf nail polish combo, and I am a total psycho about it, checking in on how many likes I've gotten several times a day. My name is Mara and I am a tween. 

Daily Jamie

Test Dummy

If Ikea ever needs anyone to test their products, Jamie got in three-and-a-half hours of practice this afternoon, so he's ready to go. 

Daily Jamie

Taste Sensations

Sarianne and Elin came up to Stockholm today, the former for some sort of conference for famous bloggers and the latter to go shopping with yours truly. And, you know, to hang with her uncle and cousin. Since The Swede was sick at home and Jamie was in a great mood so we took advantage of our freedom and indulged ourselves with a couple of treats I'm quite sure wouldn't have been appreciated by my husband. First, a frozen yogurt bar where we could pick as many flavors and toppings as we wanted. Jamie inhaled his and insisted I buy him another and because I'm an awesome mom/pushover, I did. Then, after some intense makeup shopping in Sephora, we were thirsty so I suggested we try bubble tea. I've had it before and loved it but this version was not great and I felt pretty bad for Elin, trying to be polite and choking it down. She had a great attitude, though, and admitted that at least it was a new experience. And something for the blog, of course.

Daily Jamie

February 5th

February 6th

Daily Jamie

To Do

 

It happens every time I'm home for an extended period of time, in this case last week when Jamie was sick: I just gotta do something about that caulk. Or the arrangement of my bedroom furniture. Or the chipping paint on the trim. Or getting Jamie's room set up with a big boy bed. The seeds of home improvement projects, big and small, have a way of sprouting when I have time on my hands to really eyeball the terrible job I did last time I caulked the bathroom, for example. So yesterday, after a hard day of helping the customer win at the office, I scraped out the old caulk and prepped the bathroom for today's job of laying down the new stuff. It was not glamorous, but because I researched the task heavily this time it went a lot smoother and I did not hate every second of it. You know, the way I usually do when I'm doing anything un-glamorous. I have a short list of other things I'd like to do before Selah and Andy's visit it May and thanks to Jamie's cold, plenty of motivation to tackle them. 

Daily Jamie

Daily Jamie

Daily Jamie

January 31st

February 1st

Shaking It For Schlager

Jamie wisely planned a late nap so that he would be bright eyed and bushy tailed for the beginning of this year's Melodifestivalen song contest at eight o'clock tonight. And it's a good thing he made sure he was well-rested as he needed all kinds of energy for all of the dancing he did throughout.