Regrets

It's a common say that you should never regret anything. I don't work that way. If I would control myself strictly to do only things I would never regret I would never learn anything new. I'm most imperfect. I regret millions of things I've done and the next time I will do them differently.

My dream of a Very Merry Christmas!

In my dreams I'm just about to sit down in that comfy chair. I'll soon have a great dinner and the kids will not brake anything in this overfilled room. It's frosty outside, but really worm inside why I can wear that dress with no cardigan or stockings. You also see that my hair is not at all dry and frizzy. I have a pair of cozy boots with me for later when my feet don't accept those high heels anymore. The present is maybe not for me... Or yes, it is, and even though it doesn't look like it, but there is a new lap top inside loaded with the Adobe suite - and an extremely fortunate future!!!

And most of all I will wish you a very merry christmas full of dreams and future!

Pure White

It's easy to see if something white is soiled. When it's white it is clean. It doesn't say much but that it is free from bacteria, dirt and contagion.

White is also asleep. A still soft and embedded sleep for frozen buds. A long wait for spirit and energy to raise again. White is hiding things for later... when it's getting warmer. A white lie.

White clothes and furniture are for the luxury ones - those who have hired people taking care of the household and the kids. Else they are doctors with demands to display their cleanness. The futuristic bacteria free style was seen on the catwalks this spring, but right now the white trend is reflecting the hard upcoming winter. Snow and Ice are the inspirations. No idea to complain. We can't change the weather - or yes we have - but we can't change it right now. Let's just embrace it. The winter is here to stay.

(Chanel fall 2010)






White is untouched. Nobody's been there. (the street outside my door in nearest stockholm suburb)


gray
orange
green/yellow
blue
pink
purple

Dare to be in focus

I finally got it. The reason why all women adore Marilyn Monroe and why everyone dream of being one of Vargas beautyful pinups. It's been quite contradictive to me as those women actually are kind of abused and most of all artificial characters. No one is longing for being abused and artificial unless they believe it's the only way to get attention - and that was long ago, where it begun.

Today I'd say the reason is beyond that. It's the gut to put yourself in focus that is so appealing. To say that I'm worth looking at, I am your dream. Through being a man's dream you have the power. You can trade. It's kind of sad that it's an amount of make up, lots of bare skin and visible curves, fake haircolors and skyhigh heels that is the best way of becoming a man's dream.

I guess the look derives the history from the old days. Days when the only way for a girl to get any kind of power at all was through converting to a nightlife showgirl. When that kind of girl was the one doing sacrifices to get a little chance to a better life. When the idea was to seduce a prince who would adopt you. Sex traded for a bearable life.

Today I'd say we're not expecting the prince to pick us up. No trading is included in the plan. Today I believe many women have had a tough time fitting in to the perfect templates of women in media. They are too fat, too thin, too short, too something or not something. In the burlesque style it's not the size that matters and the rest you can fix with lots of make up and styling. Everyone can look gorgeous! It's your work on yourself that is daring, challenging, self-confident.

It's kind of liberating and we find self confidence in daring to say 'look at me, I'm your dream' instead of 'I look at you, you're my dream' or 'don't look at me, I'm nobody'. With the make up on you show everyone that you know that you are someone.

Previous attempt on this in Women we love could have been me

The wishlist of a 9 year old girl

A mobile phone as she's always using her friends' to call mom with and as it's good to be able to pay for the subway if needed sometime.

Actually any LEGO products, but especially the Harry Potter and City range. Starwars is not on the wishlist but when she got it for her birthday yesterday she immediately spent an hour putting it together.





She's got lots of Top Model products from before, but this was hightly wanted.

Still crush on cuties.

A real dog! Although she is afraid of them...


I guess I have to note that my kids always have access to any games they want, though last year there were premium memberships on Stardoll and Panfu, but not this year.

Girls amaze with the right incitaments

When working with Stardoll I got amazed by the users almost every day. They did the most surprising things, maybe not what you expect 11-year old girls to do. When getting the right incitaments million of young girls get extremely high tech and business minded.

In the beginning there were no ways to get Stardollars but through paying real money. Only a few percentages can convince their parents that it is worth it and millions of girls stood stone-broke. This made them very creative. There was a flood of valuable and great suggestions on how they could earn Stardollars. Mini games was a model they knew from other communities, but they also suggested starting own stores, sell their old stuff, get ads on the site, write styling and gossip blogs, become an in game profession or just to get some money every day for logging in. (This was long before any Facebook games). Very few girls asked to get presents as it is part of the game to choose your purchases to create your own identity.

As soon as they got the feature to sell their old stuff and more, they became the world's best promotors and marketers. They used all forums available to announce their sales, to present themselves, to get friends, to make themselves interesting. They try out different messages and learn the effects. They soon learned how to use gift cards to offer eachother real money in purchases instead of Stardollars only as intended.

When starting local campaigns offering special items to different markets, the girls showed advanced tech skills. They easily found out how to track and use a proxy servers and vpn's to take advantage of all offers. Bloggers scan all local version and report where to find what. Through this work they get lots of readers on their own blogs, lots of pageviews and money through ads.

When offering Stardollars in reward for playing mini games, there were soon girls connecting systems/bots for cheating. Overall we learned that if there was a chance that anyone would be able to do something unintended, they would. Sometime they found out an extremely tricky pattern of logging in and out and clicking different buttons to get blue hair and so on.

This is only positive! They are devoted and engaged and it's extremely important to see how the right incitament can get any girl interested in technique and business. It only tells me that education in schools have not yet understood this.

Eco product development from WWF

Fantastic product development! “Save as WWF, save a tree” is a plug-in enables documents to be disseminated as pdf files that cannot be printed.

No more needed to be said but read about the entire concept on WWF.

Med olika perspektiv

När jag gick Tegnérgatan fram igår fastnade jag i snön när jag glimtade en underbar helkroppsfigur stående inne på ett galleri. En staty, fast målad, kanske gjord i papier maché, kanske något annat material, och så fin. Hon var nästan naken, med bara en tunn genomskinlig voile över sig och fötterna flöt över i sin nakenhet direkt i de högklackade skorna.

Jag gick in och hittade vackra böcker på en stubbe och mängder med tavlor där konstnärinnan Lotta Hannerz har jobbat med perspektiv och dimensioner på olika sätt. Kreativt, roligt, smart, uppmärksamt, sorligt och vackert.

Proper looking in galoshes

Just bought a pair of galosches for my boyfriend. I think they look really cool on guys on the subway. Not that these gumshoes are great looking but they tell me that this guy is smart and tidy. He's wearing a pair of great shoes that he doesn't want to become destroyed in the slushy wet snow. I'm not fully convinced of the female version though even though Norwegian SWIMS have a beautyful site...

Engaging identity to increase sales

Just found a great example of how to stimulate your sale through engaging the addressee's creativity and building of identity. My 9-year old girl got this book from our bookclub -'Books I've read'. It's encouraging her to summarize and rate the books she's reading. In this age the kids have to start reading most everything as they have not yet learned what they like and not. It is part of their identity to like or not like and through collecting the rates in a book they are getting forward in this process. It's fun both to like and to not like, and there is a big chance that you will want to read more than before. Great thinking from Barnens Bokklubb.

Take care of the smurfs for me today

When I started to play Farmville I got that 'aha' feeling. This is how it should be done. Today I say ok, every game can't be done exactly the same, it's not fun in the long run. But here is a version with those additions making it wonderful. The foundation is the same but as the Smurfs got a known history there are so many stories to build on. The presentsmurf brings me presents ever day, the firesmurf puts things on fire. There are different houses to buy/build for different effects and reasons. This is to me an improved and updated version of Farmville. Plus that the smurfs are lovable and always have been.

Smurf's Villag is for free on iTunes AppStore

More on the Farmville Aha feeling

Additions: Several blogs are reporting on the payment issue - when assigning you add your ITunes account and the kids easily make the money just click away...

Kinect opens up for innovations

Pelle Penttinen tweeted yesterday that he was thinking about buying a Kinect and if it is fun. I was thinking that it's still much like wii but that there sooner or later will probably appear the most fantastic innovative games and ideas that we can't even imagine right now. This is a fun start - an updated version of hand puppet shadows. Check out more on engaget.

November gray on my mind

BCBGMaxAzria Fall 2010

Gray is maybe the color that has the most impact on my mind. A gray snow slushy suburb square is so totally depressing, while a bare birch wood in november encourages me to breath life.





'It's gray' doesn't sound very positive. Gray sounds dull and gloomy, out of spirit, neutral. It's an everyday color making no difference. It doesn't require any attention. And exactly this can be relieving, soothing, meditative. It' lets the mind rest and focus on it's own path without getting interrupted.


It's amazing how different you can experience a gray landscape. To some extention it has to do with the materials. Concrete and steel connote construction, non flexibility and forced order while organic materials as whool, wood and stone signals wisdom of age, memories and hidden secrets. It's also possible to copy these two different versions through combining different shades of gray with eachother or just using one plain shade.

wall art fr Germany

about
purple
pink
blue
grönt och gult

Kenza sets the path

I'm so happy that, somewhat I almost feel pride over bloggers like Kenza show everyone that there are other ways than those already set by men. There are successful business ideas and roads to take and make that only girls believe in. The men with power or competing say it is impossible that there is any big money in not being educated and writing about unimportant stuff as fashion, fun and just being young. Important to who? Obviously it is important to lots of ignored people. 200000 SEK per month (20000 USD) just by ads is not that small money.

Internet has opened up a market where the consumer leads no matter what businessmen decide is great or not. I'm looking forward to a future where women who have gained the same power will be a part of the business analysis and will be part of a more diverse trade.

Kenza has now her name on shoes

Proof on her blog (in swedish)

Barneys Recycles Espresso Foil Bags

Ho ho ho... Barneys New York Recycles Espresso Foil Bags Into Glamorous Gown - creative, branding and trendsetting


via ecouterre

Farmville for kids

Both Stardoll and Girlsgogames have lost quite a bit of traffic the last year. To Facebook??? Many of the users are too young though and there are more parents than I who know that Facebook was made for an older audience and that it is most uncertain whether it's suited for kids. But there is unexpected competition anyway.

My 8 year old girl used to stay a lot on both Stardoll and Girlsgogames. She's not anymore, she plays Farmville. But then you need friends on Facebook? Says who?

She plays it mostly on the iPad somewhere around us where we are at the moment. We can hear her comments and questions and easily help her out when required. And then her dad forwards messages from her neighbour - the son of a colleague at work. He thinks she's not working enough to enlarge her farm. She replies through the dads that he should make his farm look a little nicer. Back and forth it goes. They've been playing for some weeks now. Through their dads accounts without ever seeing Facebook.

The image from Mashable provides great figures on Farmville usage.

Looklet's impact on lifestyle

I love looklet, but here they show that they are not aware of the impact they as a messanger and images as a medium have. It's obvious that they try to be startling with headlines as 'Smooth Criminals' and 'Pamela Des Barres', but I truly hope the fashion concept below doesn't spread around. It's so easy to get used to and accept an image, a style, a concept, a habit just by seeing or hearing it often enough. This is a stylish image, but the lifestyle is maybe not that grate and should not be glorified. It's even a lie that you will be able to stay a chic party queen all through your pregnancy and the following years - says a bitter mother of three :-). And again we'd rather be Joan than Betty.

The problem is that I just helped them spread it around...

Åhlens goes Polyvore

Polyvore har funnits i kanske 3 år. De började lite hemligt, men liksom klippdockor på nätet var renodlad klipp och klistra moodboards inget som fanns sedan tidigare, men som tjejer alltid gör - och visar resultatet för andra. När man är klar vill man att någon ska säga 'Snyggt!'. Alla länkar som skapades till sidan i varje scraps ger också bra sökträffsranking. Trafikkurvan ökade megasnabbt.

Från början undrade man om de hade samarbeten med alla produktleverantörer vars varor dök upp när man skulle sätta ihop en scrapsida. Senare antog man att varumärkena var glada över den trafik och merförsäljning alla länkar från scrapsen erbjöd. Ännu senare förstod man att nu har nog varumärkena börjat betala för att finnas med i utbudet istället.

Slutligen kom någon på det. Någon med ett enormt och varierat utbud. Någon som ändå fotograferar hela utbudet för kataloger och webb. Någon som förstår hur kul det är att sätta ihop sina egna heminredningsmoodboards. Åhlens har precis releasat en Polyvore med det tråkiga namnet Stilverkstan.

Det är ju hisklans tråkigt att man inte kan köpa varorna direkt på nätet, när man ser dem och så finns det ett par funktioner som måste förbättras - lägga framför och bakom t ex, och embedd till blogg, men annars har de gjort ett fint jobb. Jag känner mig lite avundsjuk, hade velat vara med.

A trustable person thinking outside the box

Staying within the frames is not my cup of tea. I really don't want to. Should I? What do I gain from adjusting to the expected. Trust. Reliability. Connection. That's good enough - I should.

Unfortunately it's impossible. I can't. I'm not capable of it. Instead I have to fight twice as much to gain trust. I have to add twice as much effort in what I do to appear reliable. I have to be twice as creative to connect. I have to think outside the box.

Inte samma saker

Jag shoppar aldrig loss. Det har aldrig varit min grej. Men jag älskar att hitta precis det jag letar efter, eller ännu hellre något jag inte letar efter men som är precis det jag vill ha.

Ibland tänker jag att jag ska ta ett varv när jag har tid och köpa något nytt, som en belöning till mig själv, för att göra mig själv glad. Jag blir nästan aldrig glad av det. Jag tittar och tittar och kan inte förmå mig att köpa något bara för köpandets skull. Vad ska jag med sakerna till? Jag måste behöva det jag köper, annars är det helt meningslöst - miljöförstöring utan mening. Därför är det roligt att shoppa loss på Stardoll – ingen miljöförstöring och inte så mycket slöseri med pengar. Billig och miljövänlig shopping. Jag är stolt över att ha varit med och skapat den upplevelsen.

Så finns det den andra sortens shopping – den glädjefyllda, den glädjande. Det ständiga blickandet efter vackra, unika, inspirerande prylar. Sånt som jag är själv om, som andra inte valde för att de inte ser hur det ska bäras, eller för att de kanske inte vågar. Eller fulsnygga vintagekläder. Hantverk. Smycken av små lokala designers. Ofta har någon lagt ner tid och själ i produkten. Det känns. Det inspirerar. Ibland är det billigt, ibland extra dyrt – alltid exklusivt.

Den shoppingen är nästan alltid mer världsvänlig också än den massproducerade. Den är närproducerad av vuxna människor och ofta i återvunna eller miljövänliga material, eller av glada djur. Det unika funkar bra för mig och för jorden. Det är rätt just nu och för framtiden. Därför ser jag fram emot att jobba med och vidareutveckla Signerat.se.

Once upon a time 3D was amazing, today handmade is

The things you put a lot of time on must be important

Girls want to turn the gossip off

If there are changes in how grown up women relate to themselves, the changes with teenage girls are not as evident. Being a teenager meens a lot of friction. Friction about who you are, who to be, how to be seen, how to be heard. Creating a meeting place for that kind of sparkeling, shivering group is not always easy.

The girls cheet on eachother, have not the same limits as we grown ups and yet they require the highest level of freedom. They don't only accept that there are limitations to other people's bad behaviour - they disapproave of allowing and encouranging it, but the same limitations are not accepted when doing nothing wrong.

One thing about communicating catches my interest - they actively look for forums to communicate in, but they demand to turn it off when they do not want to be reachable. They want to refuse to participate in the dialogue when they are not interested. I'm glad to hear that. This seems sound.

Great reading from lovely longtime Stardoll member Lel1996 on her Stadoll Blog.

Radical Homemakers

Through a comment from to wonderful UnderbaraClara on her great talk about the domestic interests of smart modern women, I found this supporting author.

Shannon Hayes has written a post and the book Radical Homemakers about the times, about why educated women keep the core values of home, family and pottery but not to discrimination or victimization.

Long before we could pronounce Betty Friedan’s last name, Americans from my generation felt her impact. Many of us born in the mid-1970s learned from our parents and our teachers that women no longer needed to stay home, that there were professional opportunities awaiting us. In my own school experience, homemaking, like farming, gained a reputation as a vocation for the scholastically impaired. Those of us with academic promise learned that we could do whatever we put our minds to, whether it was conquering the world or saving the world. I was personally interested in saving the world. That path eventually led me to conclude that homemaking would play a major role toward achieving that goal.

Read the full post in Yes Magazine

More on this subject from me
Värdefullt pyssel
Joan skiter i tvätten och fixar biffen
Are role models and core family values contradictions?

Värdefullt pyssel

Att pyssla - är det något fånigt det? Något värdelöst? Det har inte slagit mig tidigare, att det finns de som tycker att pysslare håller på med något meningslöst. Jag känner inte så många tjejer som inte pysslar. Det är ju det man gör. Sätter in bilder i album, klipper bilder och sparar i pärmar, syr, stickar, målar en vägg, letar krokar att sätta upp, sår frön och ställer i fönsterbläcket, skissar upp drömmöbleringen, möblerar om, klipper ut fina bordsplaceringar, skriver ner ett vackert ord på papper och sätter upp på väggen, bakar en kaka.

Är det pysslandet som titt som tätt associeras med den negativa tillbakablickande hemmafrun? Det är ju inte hemmafru man är, utan pysslare.

Jag är en stolt pysslare. Jag pysslar för att jag tycker om att spara saker på ett organiserat sätt. För att inte ha saker överallt, utan i en ordning. Jag pysslar för att det ska vara fint där jag bor. Jag pysslar hellre än städar så det lyckas inte alltid, men jag har samlat min kreativitet och gjort något med den, det har blivit något fint av den. Är det något värdelöst det?

Läs också Joan skiter i tvätten och fixar biffen

By men for men

On the airport today I saw a rare commersial. It presented about 50 men dressed in jeans and white shirt, looking the same direction. It's not very often men are presented in groups. Men only. Men are often the only guy in the commersial. The one and only. In group they are homosexuals - targeting the gay audience. What men would like to be sexy around other men...

When googeling 'men' or 'group of men' I get no commersials but teams. Sport teams. Office teams. Hunting teams.

Women are often presented in groups with no association to homosexuals. When googeling 'women' I get lots of commersials with groups of sexy looking women. To whom are they selling? To women who want to be sexy around other women or to women who are not very unique, but one in a group, a group of preys.

These images are both reflecting the existing society and reinforcing it.

Only for Children's apps for iPad

Playing games with your kids can be really fun, or really stressful and enervating. Much of the pain comes from playing games suited for another age. It's amazing how exact the development of the mental skills are, they differs from month to month. A game that didn't work this summer, can be perfect only a few months later.

Before I've listed some iPad apps that works fantasticly for both 2 year olds and moms. Creative games tend to be fun for any age if you like the theme. The same goes for leasure for fun games that don't require any preknowledge to perform.

These three games below completely stress me out right now as Zack, 2,5 years old, love them, but doesn't fully understand them. He's just tapping the screen making things happen without any strategy or improvement. This kind of games are much more age specific - great and developing for the exact targetgroup but not as fun for others.

Itsy Bitsy Spider 7 kr

An interactive sing-book giving respons when finding the interactive areas. This works almost fine but Zack's tactics are to just tap the screen and see if anything happens, he's not using any kind of higher strategy to complete the story or song. In a month he probably will.



Pocket Frogs Free

This is more of a leisure game and works fine for any ages - or rather anyone older than 3 maybe. Zack adores it but hasn't a clue of that he's supposed to lead the frogs to catch flies and at a certain size they should find another frog to merge with and produce new colorful patterned frogs. I'm getting nervous by him not doing it the right way, while he's happy with it for hours.



Monkey Preschool 7 kr

This is of course a very age specific game and it's not made for children below 3, and yet it's amazing to see how both puzzles, colors and fruits drop into the right gaps - even though it's in english! Not so sure it's good for his staggering swedish: Mamma, jag vill ha en banana!



Peek-a-Boo 15 kr

I almost forgot this lovely app for the absolutely youngest ones. The baby is just going to find the hidden animal in each image and there are three different levels of difficulty. It's short fun though and Zack is drop dead cute when looking through his fingers saying Peek-a-boo in english, but it's only taking a few minutes of his attention.

iPad lekar för 2åringen... och för mamma

Vad är det som är så bra med iPad?

Bästa iPad leken hittills! Let's Create Pottery

The things you put a lot of time on must be important

When I was a teenager I thought it was not aloud to paint and illustrate realistic, to copy a photo or to paint exactly the way it looked. The 70s was much more about abstract and naivistic arts. It wasn't actually until about 10 years ago when I saw Gunnel Wåhlstrand's magic huge canvases that I realized what it was that I wanted with those paintings.



It's the fascination of the history - what was - and of the moment - what once was now. When someone put a lot of time to visualize these moments, they gain importance. There is always something in that photo that has fascinated the painter, and I want to know what it was. When painting myself I kind of look into my own childhood when copying a photo. I see and remember new things when putting lots of time on it.

What to begin with looks as 'only' beauty often includes something more that makes us see it as beautyful - a feeling we share - as in Gregory Thielker's inside cars in the rain paintings. Melissa Cooke has put a lot of time in presenting the choking horror feeling, and the big size and realism makes it awfully obtrusive.

Today this kind of photorealism is well adapted into many different themes. They always work for me.

More fascinating art

Old and new in a wonderful mix

I love when you recognize something from the history, take it to our times and the mix goes all new. You get a sense of both history and of future in the same breath.

The first plastic wrap hairstyle is one of Kate Cusack's wigs - a fantastic mix of the strange 1800 century fashion with powdered pompous curls, and today's plastic orgies - both so unnatural. They remind me of how trends change even though we can't see them while we're in the middle of one. It would be weird wearing both the originals and this wig today.

The second is a promo picture for the CuldeSac Crazy Hair Art Workshop and is a fascinating mix of new techniques and an old fashioned almost etno style. It's one potion of russian, one of medival and a big one of future. I guess maybe Catherine the Great would have been proud to wear this overwhelming powerful hairstyle while we today prefer more sublte signs of wealth and power such as manicured nails. These are the times.