Late August Saturday.

The weather has turned very unstable, making it feel more like April than August. It rains heavily one minute, while the sun shines the next, making the air hot and cold, in a fast, alternate manner.
This is the first Saturday for a while that I am spending entirely inside. I am back to my "Lazy Saturday Afternoon" with a good cup of coffee, Batcat relaxing languidly at my feet and a couple of good magazines, which I have not had time to read yet. As I am reading, once in while I lean back to watch the rain pounding at the window pane, followed by the sun shining through the drops.

I love reading magazines and still today have two subscriptions; one is a fashion magazine and one is an interior decoration/culinary magazine. Both excellent and very inspiring. A perfect company for a rainy day.

In Denial.

I am with a strong reluctance realizing that we have reached the summers peak. The second summer month is half way gone and even though I have not even considered giving autumn a thought, it is not possible to avoid with all the fashion catalogues that keep dropping down into my mailbox.
All my favorite on-line stores are having big summer sales and the autumn fashion is already being presented on their front pages.

It was not long time ago at all that I was sitting and looking through all the summer fashion in January; but somehow that felt so much more exciting.
I can not believe that anyone out there seriously thinks about autumn attire yet! Often I do not touch the magazines until at least September, but this weekend I decided to actually look through them, despite the overwhelming feeling of denial. (Did you know that denial is a Freudian term?)

I liked what I saw and much of it actually pleased me. However, in contrast to January, when I spend a whole weekend ordering summer clothes as soon as the magazines arrived while I dreamed of summer, this time the new catalogues were thrown under a pile of summer fashion reading, to be forgotten at least until the end of August.

H&M.

Since I became fashion conscious, that is since my early teens, I have loved the fashion of the H&M. The full name is Hennes & Mauritz AB and it is a Swedish clothing company. In Sweden we refer to the store as "Hennes", but I believe in the rest of the world it is know by the H&M initials.
Hennes is a Swedish word that actually means "hers" in translation, as it was originally selling exclusively women's apparel.

“Fashion and quality at the best price” is the company slogan and I have to admit that it lives up fully to this mission.
In all those years that I have been their faithful customer, they have manged to supply me with fashion that is not just hip, stylish and fun, but is possible to obtain to incredibly reasonable prices. No matter the age, one can find plenty of interesting clothes and jewelry in their stocks.
During the 90's, while living in North Carolina, I truly missed the fashion and style of my favorite store. Since my return back to Scandinavia about a decade ago, I am again a devoted fan and today my purchases are made solely on-line. Even though I occasionally visit the multitude of store in the city, the internet store is still my favorite place to shop.

This year, H&M introduced a new branch in their on-line shop, entitled "Home". Now, besides clothes, I can also purchase everything from sheets and towels to cutlery and china and decorations. Just like their fashion, the design for the home is anything from stylish, simple and elegant to items that are bursting with colours, with eclectic feel and patterns.
Soon, I indeed will find no more reasons to leave the house.

History In Print.

This weekend I was going through some old boxes in my basement and I stumbled upon an array of items I have not seen for many years. Some of the items originated in my childhood, even back in the time when I lived in the former East block. I love this bittersweet remembrance of times long gone.







Among old drawings and some toys I also found old Swedish newspaper clippings. I guess as a young teenager I liked to save articles that interested me at that time. Such was the story of Charles and Diana’s royal wedding, printed the day after the ceremony on the 30th of July 1981.

Or the article describing the preparation for the first launch of the space shuttle in the December 1980. The newspaper states that it is to be launched on the 11th of March 1981, when in fact it was launched first on the 12th of April the same year.
Both of these events were highly publicized and I recall that we were even allowed to go home from school to watch the Columbia lift off. It is in some way amusing to contemplate the fact that once these were events that were happening in my present, while now they are history.

My more recent possessions of value in print are my three ELLE magazines from 1992. They are probably not worth anything to anyone, except are of sentimental value to me. It was my first year in the US and I finally made enough money to be able to afford a yearly subscription. This was in the time when supermodels still graced the covers, instead of actors and stars of reality shows. Come to think of it, it does feel like ancient history.