A Visit to Ledøje Church

My eighty five year old Mother-in-law grew up in Ledøje, Denmark. Yesterday we took a short road trip with her to her childhood village. The church there is special in that it's the only two level church in Denmark including a second altar upstairs. I had heard this before and imagined the church to be quite big. In reality the church which was built in the 1200's is itty bitty small, but BIG on charm. I was really inspired by the chalk paintings inside the church, so I took loads of photos while the choir was practicing their Christmas carols. Beautiful.

Archiving your children's art

I have a six year old son who LOVES to draw. He is at school right now and my husband is scanning a gigantic pile of his latest work. We have to weed through some of it today before the piles get out of hand and before he gets home. Here are some ideas on what you can do with your children's art projects.


1. Scan the drawings, pick a couple favorites to keep, send the rest to family living far away. We are keeping these this week. I'll send some of the others to my parents in the States the others may end in the circular file. The scanned drawings can also be used as a screensaver. We have Apple TV, and like to listen to music while looking at our own homemade screensavers when friends come by.

surfing scene

I love these reindeer, might become a Christmas card

music

2. Frame it. Below is my son's first figure drawing and it happened to be of Wall-E.

3. Keep chosen artwork in a portfolio book. I like to use these spiral bound, plastic pocket, filing books from Ordning & Reda in Sweden. 
Here is their online shop Ordning & Reda

4. Have your child give drawings as gifts. 

November 11th

November 11th means a lot of different things to me. November 11th is my birthday. November 11th is Veteran's Day. November 11th is Saint Martin's Day.


I wasn't aware of St. Martin's Day celebrations until I moved to Europe. In Denmark the celebration is held the night before and is called Mortensaften, meaning Morten's Eve. (Morten is Danish for Martin.) It is custom to feast on goose or duck. For me it's the European Thanksgiving, but a much older tradition than the American Thanksgiving. 


St Martin of Tours started out as a Roman soldier. He was baptized when he was grown up and became a monk. He was a very good and kind man, and eventually became the Bishop of Tours. As well as being kind, he was quiet and simple. He didn't want to become Bishop, but he didn't have much choice. There are many legends about his life. The most famous is when he cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold. Another legend is about his trying to hide so as not to become Bishop. The story is that he hid in a stall in a barn, hoping to escape the people who were hunting for him. They had come to take him to be appointed Bishop. A flock of geese made a lot of noise and gave away his hiding place. The goose is the animal symbol of St Martin and a favorite food on Saint Martin's Day. Source http://funsocialstudies.learninghaven.com/articles/stmartins.htm


We don't celebrate Mortensaften exactly like every other Danish family. I put my own American twist on the holiday, but every year we do feast on duck breast. My favorite recipe for is from an old, and much loved cookbook I have from the 1980's called The New Basics Cookbook. The recipe is called Ariane Daguin's Magret a la d' Artagnan. Delicious. The recipe calls for an extra cup of wine for the cook to drink, love that detail.

This cookbook is still in print and you can buy it on Amazon.com

Happy Birthday to me

It's my birthday, so I am taking today off.

Painting workshop at Louisiana with inspiration from Anselm Kiefer's landscapes

This is the outcome of my landscape, or maybe it should be called a harborscape. It's painted in sand and chalk with paint to hold it together like glue. After studying Kiefer's landscapes in the exhibition we went back to the workshop to finish out "masterpiece" in 1 1/2 hours, which can be really hard sometimes! I kept it simple tonight. As usual I started with one idea and it transformed in a whole other idea. My inspiration came from this afternoon I was down at the harbor today helping my husband wrap up the boat for winter. Looking out at the boats still left in the water made me feel so melancholy. Another season over, the boats sit still in the water, waiting, lifeless. Well it was that or the weather it was extremely grey today. In Denmark it's called "grey in grey". 

Love for our open fireplace

When my husband and I were house hunting there was one feature the new home just had to have. A fireplace. After years of apartment living a fireplace to me meant home. We have lived in our house for seven years now and we still love our fireplace and the ritual of making a fire.

More inspiration from Anselm Kiefer - Louisiana Workshop

Filled with inspiration from Anselm Kiefer's paintings we went back to the workshop and began "painting". We used the materials and techniques as Kiefer does. We started with paint and added ashes, chalk, straw, and sunflower seeds to our canvas'. We skipped the lead (Kiefer uses a lot of lead) as it's poisonous to humans. I felt very free and expressive with these techniques and quickly dropped the palette knife and finished the painting just using my hands.  At first glance his paintings made me feel depressed and I only thought about how heavy they were. After a closer look and learning more about him and his art his paintings are not just heavy, but light as well and not only symbolize death, but also rebirth. Kiefer is known to use poetry, written words, number classification and constellations in his work. Looking forward to the workshop tomorrow night. We will be inspired by Kiefer's landscape paintings.