Non-sillyness and OITNB

My dad-in-law requested some photos of Daniel and I were we actually didn't look silly, so I convinced Daniel to take a few photos where he wouldn't make a face. And I gotta say, it's kinda difficult!
But anyway, here it goes.

Other than smiling for the camera in a non-silly way, I've been at work, relaxed and almost fallen asleep on the couch, gone grocery shopping, and started watching season 2 of Orange Is The New Black on Netflix, which Daniel and I have been super excited about! Yay!

I'm guessing most of the weekend will go to chilling and watching the show, which is completely fine with me.

Loads of love,
Malin

New color and sillyness

I dyed my hair the other day, to a color that is hopefully pretty close to my natural color, so I don't have to keep dyeing my roots "all" the time. Saving money and time and the environment and all that! We'll see how long my urges for change stay away for now, hah.
But yeah, I don't really know if this is pretty close to my natural color, though, because it's been years and years since I let my natural color grow out, so I can't really remember exactly how it is/was, or know if it has changed at all.
I guess I'll see once my roots get long enough!

Anyways, while trying to document my hair color, I of course ended up taking some silly photos. Or WE did. As the weird little family we are.

No camera control!

Grumpy Malin and slightly creepy Daniel.

Trying to be as sexy as we can!

He was wondering what the hell we were doing, I think. While wrapped up in his favorite blanket!

Great shot of the both of us, this one.

Hope you enjoyed our sillyness and great faces. You can probably expect more soon!

Loads of love,
Malin

Oh, hi!

So what the heck happened to Venus & The Moth?
Why have I been so quiet the last 8 months?

Well, there's been a lot going on in our lives. And I mean a lot.
Our lives have changed a lot over the past 8 months in a lot of ways, we've had some external problems, but we are still together, still going very strong and still very happy!
Let me sum it up for you:
- Daniel started his new job in May.
- We were interviewed for Daniels application in June.
- I started my job at the gallery in June.
- We found ourselves a place to rent with our roomie Julie in July.
- We moved all our stuff (and my old stuff) from my moms place to our new house.
- We got loads of stuff for really cheap (and some even free!) for our new place thanks to my grandma.
- We got a dog!
- I started school again in August.
- I finished the project exams for my first two modules in November/December.
- Daniels application got denied in November...
- We sent in two complaints about Daniels denied application in November.
- We saw a bunch of lovely friends and spent Christmas eve with family in December.
- Daniel was asked to leave the country as soon as possible, but luckily we got the deadline delayed until the 20th of January.
- We packed up as much as we could of our life in Porsgrunn in January.
- My amazing mom drove us all the way to Zealand in Denmark the 19th/20th of January.
- We now live in Denmark and are looking for an apartment.

Yes, that's right. Our life was pretty great in every way until November, when we got the letter from the Directorate of Immigration about Daniels application being denied.
We were both working and enjoying what we did, we got an amazing little Italian greyhound as a new family member, we were spending time with friends and eventually I started my digital media design course, which I love. And then our lives were turned upside down a little bit. But we stayed positive, we were so sure it was a mistake in the Directorate's part, as I have read the rules over and over and have found nothing that gives them the right to deny Daniel a residence card. But yet they did, and then they processed the complaint surprisingly quick, and his complaint was still denied, and he was asked to leave the country.

But we are still staying strong and positive! Nothing can keep us apart, not even Norway!
I swear all this crap are just making us stronger. And I still feel so, so lucky to have Daniel as my husband, because none of this has affected our relationship negatively, in any way.

So now we're in Denmark, with 5 suitcases and our little iggy.

I will be writing some more in-depth posts about these happenings, so stay tuned. I'm planning on keeping this blog going from now on, as long as I have internet I'll try to keep everyone up to date on our adventures!

Peace and love,
Malin

The deal with the application - so far

So, as I mentioned, these last few months have been incredibly stressful.
Spending every day worrying about whether the person you love more than anything in the world will be able to be by your side in the near future, or even in the same country as you, takes it's toll.
Luckily we've both been good at staying positive, and luckily we have each other to vent to, and to pull each other back up when we fall down. We've both been so worried and stressed that it has affected us physically, but then the other one of us has always been there to take care.

Even though this situation sucks, I feel so lucky and endlessly happy that I have Daniel, and I am so thankful for what a great husband he is.

For those of you who don't know, this is a short summary of our application history:

• We scheduled an appointment to apply for an EEA residence card fo Daniel, and got one the 8th of January at the local police district.
• We handed in all our relevant paperwork, and was told the application was complete and would take 6-8 weeks to process.
• After about 10 weeks, I contacted the police district to check up on the application, and I was told there had been a lot of absence in the offices due to illness, so everything was a bit delayed.
• After another 2 weeks after that, I called the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration to ask some questions regarding the application, and I was told it had been sent to them because our situation was a bit too complicated for the police to know what to do with. We got some answers cleared up and was told the goal was to have the application processed within 4 months after the hand-in.
• This week I called to clear up something else, and was told the application had been sent back to the police district again so that they could interview us, as the police district failed to tell us that we had to attach a questionnaire about our relationship to our application.
• It has now been 3 months, 4 weeks and 4 days, and we are still waiting just to be interviewed.

I do realize that in a lot of situations, the waiting time is a lot longer, and the conditions are generally worse. We are renting a room in my mums house, we have enough money for food, and we have each other, our lovely pets and family and friends around us.
But when it's about being with the love of your life or not, not knowing what is going to happen, and knowing that your lives can turn around completely just from opening a letter, waiting without knowing is really difficult.
We want to get our completely own place, we want to get steady incomes, I want to keep on studying, we want to travel and visit our family and friends elsewhere in the world. We want to start living our life as a married couple. But we can't do any of this properly, 100%, before we know the result of the application.

Like I said though, we are staying positive, we are hoping for the best, and we do have a plan b.
It's just difficult to not know.
But as long as we can be together, we're both very happy!

Photo by Benedicte Eikenes Thomassen

Loads of love,
Malin

Since last time I've been ill again, very, very tired, stressed, and had a lot on my mind!
I had a photo shoot with Mayors of Miyazaki on Saturday, and it turned out great! We had a great time, and it was a fun photo shoot. I'm working on the photos, I took a bunch of digital photos, some polaroids, and some with my awesome Hasselblad. I'll put some up once they're approved by the Mayors eventually!
They gave me two bottles of fine red wine for the job, so nice!

I've also been trying to work things out with school. I'll put up a longer post about this soon. It's very complicated stuff, ugh.

Other than this, I've been taking care of a sick little rat babe, done a tiny bit of christmas shopping the days I've been able to get out of the house, relaxed a bunch (as always), been really, really cold and done a whole bunch of knitting.

I'm going back to Norway tomorrow morning, to spend the christmas vacation with my wonderful husband, and my family. Excited!


Loads of love,
Malin

The wedding!

Saturday the 10th of November 2012, we got married.

10.11.12.

In Nedre Telemark tingrett, Skien tinghus, the ceremony room, at 12.15.

The day

Daniel woke me up at 8.30am with coffee and breakfast in bed(!), and we enjoyed that together before I had to take off. My mum drove me to Brevik, where I met Annie and Christine, 'cause they were gonna get me all prettied up with Christine's make-up and hair magic! Their dad drove us to the hotel, we were there at about 10am, and started getting ready.

Christine is really good at make-up and hair, and she did an absolutely amazing job. I got dressed in my fancy wedding clothes, and I was really happy with the way everything turned out.

Photo by Christine Aurora Weber

Then my uncle came to pick up me and Annie to go to the court house.

The judge welcomed and greeted us, and our 12 guests took their places, got their cameras ready, and we sat down and got started. Our judge was extremely nice, but her English was pretty bad. But it was still a very good ceremony, and we were surrounded by great family.

My mum and little sister was there, my dad, my uncle, aunt and cousins, my grandma and her husband, my best friend Annie, and my two new brothers: Daniel's brother David and his husband Jakob.
There was a great amount of photos taken, it was a touching ceremony in a tiny, little, nice and intimate room.

We said our "I do's",  put each others rings on each others fingers, had a nice kiss (a bit of a snog perhaps?), and signed the papers.

I was so nervous before the ceremony, I have no idea why. But it was beautiful and I was so happy!


Annie was our photographer, she used my fancy king camera (Canon EOS 5D Mark II) with a 24-70mm F2.8 L lens for the day, and she took some really great photographs.
She and Daniel's brother David took a bunch of nice photos of us and the entire family both inside and outside of the hotel. It was beautiful.

 

After the wedding and the photo shoots at our hotel (and some coffee, didn't get too much sleep the night before), we moved down to the wedding dinner venue. There we got together with more of my family, some I barely get to see, and it was so so nice. We had some really tasty tapas dishes, we got some gifts, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

After all the dinner guests left, a few of our friends came down to the dinner venue to share some left overs and something to drink with us. Together with Annie and Christine (who stayed for dinner), Michelle, Sondre, Benedicte, Daniel and Lexie came down, and we had some elderberry juice, some cava and some more coffee.

Photo by Benedicte Eikenes Thomassen

After that, we moved our booties up to Arja's apartment, were a big bunch of our friends were! It was amazing to see them all together again! Arja was awesome for lending out her place for the evening, and Ann Charlotte made the place look absolutely lovely, just for us. It was the greatest.

We also got some more cool gifts.

Gosh, I love the people I'm surrounded by!

It was the happiest and greatest day of my life, I got to marry the person I love the absolute most, and I got to celebrate our love and big day with my amazing family, a small part of my lovely new family, and some of my really awesome friends!

Loads of love,
Malin, the new, loving wife!