I sometimes get panic attacks when I think about all the free time that I had before I had my kids and especially all the free time I had when I was a kid myself. How much wouldn’t I give for having all that free time again? Even just couple of days like that would be a dream come true.

I grew up on a farm as the last one of my much older sisters that were in the process of moving away from home by the time I start remembering things. My parents didn’t have a car so getting places wasn’t easy and we had one TV channel where they showed one, yes ONE! Tom and Jerry episode a day for big parts of my childhood. Note: not on Thursdays when there was no broadcast. Later they increased it a bit but we are still talking an hour at most if I remember correctly. Lets just say that I had a lot of free time to kill and very limited options.

Nowadays I have practically no free time. I feel a bit like broken record since almost all of my blog posts complain about this fact but up until recently it just kept getting worse and worse with my free time approaching zero or less. Having my two year old drop the daytime nap made my life bearable again when he actually would fall a sleep at a reasonable hour. I was even able to make my daughter a dress before our summer vacation.

The plan was to go to North of Norway and it felt natural to use a fabric from my stash with a lot of flowers on it. Being in North of Norway reminds me a lot of Iceland and the plants that grow there. One of my way to kill time as a kid was to study the limited selection of plants and flowers in Iceland so they hold a special place in my heart.

Unfortunately we got really bad weather up there this year with mostly rain so we almost had to skip the photos but I managed to snap few looking out at the coastline in Tranøy and over at Tilthornet. Tranøy is a sweet little town in Hamarøy in Northern Norway. If you ever go there I really recommend going to the bakery there and buying cinnamon buns.

I made the Ayda dress by Simple Life Pattern Company with flutter sleeves and circle skirt. Rather straightforward pattern but I really didn’t like the finishing of it so I ended up redoing the top part. The pattern tells you to top stitch pretty much all seams which gives it a bit of an unfinished look. When I redid it I understitched the neck line and back and liked the final results much better. The shape and the fit of the dress was quite nice. I love the V-back of the dress so I am really glad I made it. The fabric I used was Lavish Voile, Blossom Swale Voile in Depth by Katarina Roccella. Beautiful light, flowy fabric. I am secretly wishing I had made this dress for myself.