Day 366: Finding Happy in 365 Days, Plus One

All good things must come to an end. As I sit here looking around my desk, I notice many things that have made their way into my posts during the past year. Many things that have brought and continue to bring me happiness. In addition I see many new things that I've added to my collection of "Happy." This will probably come as no surprise but these additions are making my desk somewhat of a cluttered mess right now. There are Christmas gifts that I have not yet found a home for, waiting patiently to be shuffled off to their final destination, and then there are my newly glazed ceramic pieces, also sitting here and there but they do not seem as patient. Somehow they seem to be saying, "It's too crowded here, we need space!" I understand their dilemma and my aim is to find new homes for everything today.

But wait... sitting just in front of my keyboard is a pile of unusual and fun items. These too are waiting patiently for their new home. However they are to be the contents of my final Happy Package Giveaway, an assortment of things that I have been collecting over the past few months in preparation for this very moment. They have really become like friends to me, cheering me on when I felt that Happy was on the far reaches of my boarders and helping to reel me back in with their cheery playfulness. Soon they will be on their way to a new home to hopefully spread Happy and continue the work I have started this past year.

Today is actually a bonus day, as my project was to Find Happy in 365 Days. But with leap year, a small oversight on my part, I have been given an additional day to complete what was and is to be a one year project. And I am really grateful for this additional day. Happiness has been all around me today as my husband and I headed out to pick up ingredients for our celebratory, New Year's Eve dinner AND to do one of my favorite things in the world - go out for breakfast! First on our agenda was breakfast, of course. We headed over to KA's Cafe, which is a small cafe in our neighborhood on Swedenborgsgatan. We have passed by it many times. We've even looked at their menu and expressed wanting to try it but never did, until today. We both decided to go with the "Gröt Med Banan, Kanel, och Mjölk" (oatmeal with bananas, cinnamon and milk). I had a cappuccino to accompany mine and my husband had just a regular cup of coffee. Our breakfast came out steaming. They were huge bowls of hot and hearty porridge and we sat in a cozy corner in front of a window with a view of the street outside.

As I neared the bottom of my bowl, I sat casually starring out the window, day dreaming about our dinner menu. Suddenly my eye caught a reflection being cast off of the back of the car in front of me. Miraculously the sun had come out. I had just stuffed the last bite of oatmeal and banana into my mouth. As I was swallowing the last bit we hurried into our jackets and scarves and headed outside to get a dose of vitamin D and continue on our way. The rest of the day was also filled with some of my favorite things: a casual stroll outside in the sunshine, a bit of after Christmas sale shopping, and a visit to not one, but two of the indoor markets in Stockholm in search of fresh and tasty ingredients for our "party for two" this evening, three if you include Pina, which of course we do.

Here's our menu...

"Finding Happy in 365 Days" Celebration Dinner:

Pre-dinner:

Gin & tonics with a twist of lime & chili spiced peanuts

Dinner: 

Champagne

Deconstructed meatball sandwiches & princess korv (vegetarian mini sausages)

Kale salad with mustard vinaigrette

Mini savory turnovers (shiitake and forest mushrooms with garlic and Västerbotten cheese & asparagus with garlic and Västerbotten cheese) topped with a creamy onion-scented bechamel sauce

Dessert:

Chocolate panna cotta with raspberry & red current gelee

Cheese plate with brillat savarin, manchego & something stinky that I can't remember


A few photos from my last blog day...

Breakfast at KA's Cafe.

An odd little fairy, aqua-woman I saw in the snow...

A hard balancing act...

The party has started!

Pina licking her chops after devouring her shrimp "cocktail."

The spread...

Skål! och välkommen till Sverige...

A tasty plate of food.

My brilliant, deconstructed meatball sandwich idea...

Tell me that doesn't look like a bite of Happiness right there...

Mysiga ljus (cozy candles)

And now... for the drawing!

All you have to do to be entered in the drawing is to leave a comment on today's post, here or on Facebook. I would love to hear any feedback that you would like to give me on this blog project and/or feedback on what you hope to read in my future blog. I will tally all comments on January 2, 2013 so you have from now until midnight, January 2nd to comment. Since this is my last post and it is also New Year's Eve I am giving everyone an extra day to both read and comment.

So you are probably wondering what is next for Finding Happy in 365 Days...

Due to the nature of my project, I will not be continuing with the same blog but will begin a brand new one that is currently in the works as I write this. I will be posting a link to my new blog on February 1,  2013 right here. However if you would like for me to send you an email with the link you can write to me at greasyham(at)gmail(dot)com.

It is not confirmed at this time but the working title for my new blog is, "On My Bike with Scissors and a Cast Iron Skillet."

Other titles in the running include:

Greasy Ham with a Side of Happy

Finding Sunshine

Finding My Paper Moon

Amazing Grace's

Coffee, Scissors and a Dose of Happy

I Love That!

Hemma Hos Grace (Swedish - means At Home with Grace)

Fåtöljen (Swedish - means The Arm Chair)


Feel free to vote on your favorite when you comment!

A few final words... THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH for all of your support and shared laughs over the past year. This project has been an amazing journey and if it weren't for all of you I am not sure I would have kept with it. I hope that all of you will continue to look for Happy each and every day of your life. I promise that if you do, miracles will happen.

I wish you all a fantastic 2013! May it be the best year yet and may they only get better from here!

My love to you all!!!

Grace Ann

Day 365: A Nice Day for a Swim

It feels like today's Happy should be something profound or special, being that it is Day 365, but the truth is that today feels like every other day, perhaps wedged in between the happiest day and a fairly happy day. Today feels lagom, or just right, as they say in Swedish. There is an energy in the air of changes to come and yet at the same time I feel a deep satisfaction with the way things are right now. Yesterday I was out and about with a couple of my girlfriends to have a fika (coffee) and do a little window shopping. While we were relaxing and chatting at Skåningen Kaffebar, they invited me to go to the bastu, or sauna, with them today. 

This particular bastu is a private club and memberships, as well as visits, are by invitation only. I was lucky to be an invited guest, as I hesitantly accepted their offer. Why did I hesitate? Well, the bastu is situated on the rocky cliffs of one of the islands around Stockholm and in between sauna sessions one jumps, or rather plunges, into the freezing cold waters of lake Malaren. I mean, it is after all December in Sweden. The temperatures lately have been hovering just over freezing at about 2 Celsius. Normally at this time of year the bastu members cut a hole in the ice that covers the lake and everyone dips into the freezing water surrounded by ice. It was just my luck that today the temperatures were a balmy few degrees above freezing and the lake was ice free. A nice day for a swim, don't you think?

I am not particularly fond of extremely hot temperatures and, well, my relationship to the cold waters surrounding Sweden can generally be summed up in one Swedish word: badkruka. Badkruka, which literally translates to mean swimming pot, but in actuality describes someone who is a chicken when it comes to swimming, is a word that has commonly been used to describe me. I have been known to stand, hesitatingly on the edge of the water, afraid to get in but wanting to desperately. It isn't fun for anyone and especially my husband who loses patience with me rather quickly. And that was during the "warm" summer.

But today I was determined. I mean, what better way to end my year of Finding Happy than with repeated trips between an eighty degree Celsius sauna and two degree Celsius water? After I met my friends to head over to the sauna I said, still not ready to commit, "I don't know if I am going to be able to get in that cold water." They just said, "Ok, but you are going to want to get in. It feels really great." Right. Oh, did I mention that we would also be taking these dips into the freezing water completely nude? The first trip down to the water after spending just under fifteen minutes in the sauna I lived up to my badkruka status. I merely stepped down the ladder enough to get my feet completely submerged. "Holy icicles!" It was COLD! I practically jumped straight out. I shamefully put my crocs back on and said that I would get in the next time. 

Well, it took another attempt of submerging myself nearly up to my hips before I actually took the full plunge on the third trip down to the water. I have to admit that it did feel quite good after roasting in the sauna. And I guess I am willing to also admit that after a dip in the COLD water, returning to the sauna felt amazingly refreshing. I can definitely say that I am no longer a badkruka and I can definitely say that my Happy today was, in fact, found in something profound - a swim in lake Malaren in December!

Technically today would be the final day of my blog project but since 2012 was a leap year, I have one final day tomorrow, Day 366. Come back and visit tomorrow on my final day and don't miss the last Finding Happy in 365 Days Happy Package Giveaway! It is going to be fabulous!

Thanks Katie and Greta for an invigorating morning! 

Day 364: A Sense of Strength

Typing "Day 364" seems so surreal to me. Surreal in the sense that an entire year has nearly passed by. Surreal in the sense that I have so far succeeded in what I set out to do, which was to find and blog about something happy or positive, every day, for one full year. It has been both joyful and tearful, both amazingly incredible and terribly trying, and it has been one of the most valuable things that I have committed to in my life. Just last night I was reflecting over dinner with my husband on how amazing it feels to have succeeded in, not only finding something happy or positive every single day for the past year, but in succeeding to post every single day despite the days I found it the most difficult to stick to it.

Just last night over dinner I was discussing some of the challenges I experienced during the past year. One evening, toward the beginning of my project, I had started writing my post and it was basically complete, I only needed to review and edit it a bit. However I completely forgot about it and went to bed. I had just turned by bedside lamp out when it hit me like flaming arrow in the bum. I jumped out of bed in a panic and ran to the computer, practically screaming as I went that I'd forgotten to complete my post. It was eleven p.m. Thankfully I still had time to complete it and post it before the stroke of midnight. That was a stressful evening but it taught me a valuable lesson too and that was to complete my work before I start to play.

Commitment is a powerful thing. Yes, it may have been challenging at times to blog every single day but I can guarantee that my sticking to my word, no matter what the circumstances and no matter how I was feeling each day, has given me a sense of strength that goes well beyond the strength that any physical training I've done has provided and this inner strength is something that I will be able to carry with me forever. With continued stretching and practice each day, this strength will be my companion for the rest of my life. My commitment to one tiny little year in the grand scheme of my life has shown me that anything is possible if I only set my mind to it.

I will say that it has taken tremendous discipline. And I will say that, though I learned a great deal of discipline from all of my many years of training as a dancer, discipline, if not used, begins to atrophy just like our physical muscles. We must use and train our physical as well as our mental muscles to keep them strong. It takes work and it takes sacrifice but the end result is completely worth the effort, I promise whole-heartedly.

Posing in my tap, cat costume when I was around 9 years old. 

Keep training your "muscles"... the pay off will be worth it in the end!

Day 363: Christmas Morning All Over Again

Before Christmas you may recall that I had completed my ceramics class and that we were allowed to select two pieces to be ready before Christmas. Maybe I didn't share that part. But anyway, I selected my two pieces and then found out that I wouldn't actually get mine back until after Christmas because they were not going to be ready to pick up until the Sunday before Christmas and we would be in Gothenburg by then. So I would have to wait until today to get my two pieces back, with the rest of my pieces being finished later after the beginning of the year.

When you take ceramics classes you eventually get used to waiting a rather long time to get your final product back so I was pretty cool about it all. I asked my husband if he wanted to walk over with me to pick up my pieces and he said yes so after a late breakfast we headed over. I knew from speaking to my teach on the phone yesterday that I, in fact, had more that two pieces to pick up. She said that a few of my other pieces were also ready so I was pretty excited.

As we walked over my husband asked me if I was nervous about my pieces. "No, not really," I said. He asked if I was excited, to which I replied the same. I explained that I had become accustomed to the waiting and that I knew from the experience I've had with ceramics to not hold high expectations. You never know how something is going to turn out until the final glaze firing. Any number of things can go wrong, from puddling glaze, to cracks in the pot, to sliding glaze, which leaves a raw surface where the glaze should have adhered. You think you created the absolute perfect bowl, only to be shattered when it comes back with a big crack after the first firing. You make a set of mugs that all turn out exactly like you wanted them to and then after the glaze firing one of them basically melted onto the kiln and had to be destroyed to pry it loose. You just never know.

So imagine my surprise when we arrived to the studio and I found that nearly every one of my fourteen pieces were ready. And not just that but most of them turned out quite beautifully. It was like Christmas morning all over again. My teacher had even displayed one of my pieces for her current class to view as an example of a certain glazing technique. You could say that I was pretty satisfied as my husband and I packed up my wares to leave. And as we walked out of the studio I held my head a little bit higher.

My favorites... three tiny houses. 

A small shallow bowl and a tiny bowl/cup that is an awkward size but the glaze turned out nicely.

This is the one my teacher displayed. Hard to see it completely but I wiped the glaze off of the lip of the candlestick part, leaving raw clay visible. It gave the piece a nice effect.

Two red candlestick holders. I am particularly pleased with these although the finish of the glaze turned out differently on one of them, in addition to the glaze sliding on one side of the same one. 

P. S. One commenter on yesterday's post asked how I would be celebrating the completion of my one year Finding Happy project. There have been a few ideas circulating but one way that I for sure plan to celebrate is by holding a final Happy Package Giveaway. All comments made on my blog on my final day, Day 366 (December 31st), whether here on my actual blog or through my Facebook feed, will be entered into a random drawing for the final Happy Package Giveaway. Coming to my project completion is pretty exciting on many levels, and as always, I am looking forward to sending the winner a package of happy-inducing gifts and goodies. I have been collecting for and preparing for this prize for a while now and I can say with complete confidence that it will definitely be the best giveaway yet. So don't miss out!

Day 362: Everyday Luxury

"It is a miracle if you can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do, and the holiday season - like all the other seasons - is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them." - Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal

How many times do I actually sit back and count up all of the miracles in my life? Every little tiny miracle? Probably not as often as I should, though I do feel that I fairly regularly express thanks for the many blessings that I have in my life. I have become so accustomed to viewing miracles as those extra extraordinary happenings that occur on occasion, but in actuality miracles happen every day. Perhaps they've just been taken for granted. 

If you think about the miracles mentioned in the quote above from Lemony Snicket's book, The Lump of Coal, it becomes easy to see that, indeed, everyday occurrences, such as eating a meal or snack, watching your favorite shows on TV, and getting to take a hot shower, among hundreds of other things, are miracles. In Sweden these "everyday miracles" are called vardags lyx, or everyday luxury. And we do have a bit of luxury every day, wouldn't you agree? 

A few of the "everyday" luxuries that I took note of today:

• Getting to cuddle with my husband and cat long after the alarm went off
• Taking a nice, long, hot shower
• Drinking a leisurely cup of coffee while getting ready for work
• Taking the subway to work and getting to sit down the whole way there
• Eating pop tarts (that a dear friend sent to me as a Christmas gift) for breakfast  (Thank you D!)
• Meeting my husband for lunch
• My iPhone that I am able to use to look up the weather and directions on as well as check my email, read the news, or call a friend among many other things...

And those are just a few of the things that, when I think about it, really are miracles that occur every day. As I was having lunch with my husband today and telling him about my thoughts on everyday miracles, the idea came up to write a list every day of the small miracles that occur to help keep me focuses on what is truly important and avoid focusing on what I perceive as "missing" from my life. There are so many things and blessings to be thankful for that it seems to be a waste of energy to long for things that I do not have. Even if I don't write a physical list each day, I'd like to take a moment at the end of each day to pause and reflect on the miracles that I experienced that day. Taking the time to be mindful of my life instead of just watching it sail by.

What are your everyday luxuries? Take a moment today to be grateful for them... and to count your miracles.

The miracle of Tomte (Santa)...

Day 361: Blåtåget (The Blue Train)

Today is the day after the day after Christmas. I'm sitting here on a train, headed back to Stockholm. But not just any train, The Blue Train (Blåtåget), which is a train that was originally built back in the 60's. It was recently renovated and restored and current shuttles people from Stockholm and Uppsala to Gothenburg, with stops in a few other Swedish cities. My husband secretly tried to book us first class tickets round trip to Gothenburg but unfortunately they were mostly sold out and he managed to only get regular tickets for the leg of our trip home. He saved it as a surprise for today and I'm really glad that he did. He is really good with secrets and surprises. He doesn't even provide the slightest hint.

I am not so good with surprises however. I get so excited that I nearly burst with the desire to share the tiniest of hints and then sometimes I give the entire thing away in the process. When I was just a kid I "completely ruined" my mom's birthday by telling her every single gift we bought her. My dad and brother were not so impressed but I think my mom thought it was pretty cute and fun. Nowadays I find it is best if I keep my mouth shut tight until the surprise or gift is revealed naturally.

After we arrived at the train station I left my husband with the luggage while I ran around purchasing drinks and a small treat (you have to have at least one) to take on our trip, still unaware of the train surprise. When I finally made my way back to him with my purchases he said very evenly and coolly, "You are going to like this train. It is an old fashioned train from the 60's that has been restored and is now in operation again." He also explained that he especially purchased tickets for this train as opposed to the super fast SJ X2000 that we have normally taken in the past. At first I didn't understand but as we approached the train and he continued to explain that The Blue Train (Blåtåget), was run and operated separately from the other trains and they had limited trips each day, so you have to book tickets well in advance, it finally sunk in.

What a cool train! We were merely in second class seats but we had so much room you would have thought we were in first class. The train had a separate dining car where you could have a sit-down dinner and be waited on and everything. There was also a separate bar car where you could purchase assorted drinks and snacks and there was a full-size piano as well. It felt like we were straight out of an old James Bond film. We will definitely take this train again (and again). How fun and what a super neat surprise to bring our Christmas trip to a close.

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and that you got lots of fun gifts and not so many bags of coal and switches. ;-)

Here are a few photos from The Blue Train...

The bar car.

Sitting in our seats looking straight ahead... the wall was complete with a mirror and framed art... How very cool!

Check out the fold-down table on the back of the chair in front of us... I could barely reach it there was so much space between us and the seats in front of us... nice for our legs to stretch out.

A view of the bar and piano car from outside.

Blå Tåget (The Blue Train).

Dag 360: Crunchy Snow

Merry American Christmas! Since Swedes celebrate on Christmas Eve, what does one do in Sweden on Christmas Day? As little as possible. We lazed around in bed and in our pajamas until around noon, which was really nice. Eventually we took showers and then rested some more because it was so "strenuous." A short while later we had fika with my husband's parents: coffee and a lovely mixture of homemade and store-bought cookies, chocolates, and clementines. Then before the sun made its trajectory toward the horizon, we went out for a long walk.

The temperature outside was much warmer than on Sunday, when we had our blanketing of snow just in time for a white Christmas, and it had already begun to melt in patches here and there. Overnight the patches of snow and slush froze again creating the most wonderful crunchy sound as we walked and crunched through it. It reminded me of the sound of crunching leaves in the later part of autumn, after the leaves have fallen and had time to dry to a nice crisp. The brittle crisp crunch of the leaves under foot makes me giddy like a kid.

Today's crunchy snow had the same effect. At one point I found myself seeking out the crunchy parts and walking off path just to hear the crunch. I don't know what it is about the sensation and sound of crunching leaves or snow under foot but I really love it. I guess it is the same sensation one gets when popping bubble wrap. It just makes you happy. When my cousin lived out of state at one time my aunt would mail him care packages that included some sheets of bubble wrap for him to pop. I can't imagine someone mailing me crunchy leaves, and especially not icy, brittle snow, just to relive the sounds but being outside with only the sounds of crunching leaves or snow around seems to work magic in soothing my soul.

Hope you had a magical Christmas Day filled with thankfulness and joy!

Ps. I hear Dallas, Texas is getting a white Christmas as I write this! Wonderful!