Welcome to Hygge House

The Danish word Hygge (hu-gah) is a feeling or mood that comes from taking genuine pleasure in making ordinary everyday things simply extraordinary; whether it’s using real lights on a Christmas tree or breaking out the good wine when friends come over. It’s about owning things you only truly love or that inspire, being present in yourself and your life, putting effort into your home without being Martha Stewart or buying a bed in a bag. It’s about being conscious and authentic from home to work to friends to celebrations and making all events {no matter how big or small, mundane or exciting} matter. Words like cosiness, security, familiarity, comfort, reassurance, fellowship, simpleness and living well are often used to describe the idea of Hygge.

Some refer to Hygge as the Art of Creating Intimacy (with yourself, friends and home). Technology and modern day busy-ness has removed Americans from themselves, their homes and ordinary tasks, making them feel as though these things are hard to do, have no importance or are too time-consuming. Danes, however, only like to do things that are fun, nourish the soul and are familiar so they find ways to incorporate that into their daily life. By creating simple rituals without effort {such as brewing real tea with a little china cup every evening to stopping at the farmers market every week to buy flowers} the Danes see both the domestic and personal life as an art form and not every drudgery to get away from.

Taking pride in what you have now and not just what you dream are part of Danish life and Hygge. Think of it as what Chic is to the French; a lifestyle that can explain a table top to a dinner party to a charming house or a personal way of being. Basic, uncomplicated, unexaggerated - Hygge!

Hygge House focuses on how to live well; giving ideas for home, travel and personal time. Part story-telling blog, part magazine, part links to places, Hygge House isn’t just another web site; it has a soul that’ll help you find the special in the every day and in you.

All images and text (except where noted) are taken, written and copyright by Alex Beauchamp. Please don’t use images or words without permission.

ABOUT ALEX BEAUCHAMP:

Alex created her first web site in 1995 and has been a staple online ever since, creating online communities and sharing ideas. Her award-winning sites include Girl at Play (in which she chronicles how she left a corporate career in 2001 for a successful creative one), Another Girl at Play, Girls Guide to City Life, Pet the Pretty Things, and Anywhere Everywhere. She’s passionate about creating, connecting and sharing online so that people can lead amazing lives offline.

Because of all her work with new media, community and creativity, she’s been a speaker at events such as SXSW, University of Kentucky’s Writing Program, Art About series and Women in Film. You can find her work in major publications for travel and home as well as her photography on book covers and galleries. And sometimes you’ll even see her work on the big screen; she’s been working in film production steadily since 2004. Anyway she can use her creativity to connect people, she will, which makes her one very busy, but happy, girl.

Alex immigrated to America in 1999 and now resides in a very hygge flat in Santa Monica, California with her dog, Jack and cat, Grace.

HYGGE HOUSE GIVES BACK

This site is about connecting people to ideas, to living well, and to each other. And an important component of that is giving back to charities we believe in. You might have noticed Google Ads on the site and product links to Amazon Pages. These aren’t here just to annoy you or make money - they’re here to earn money to give back to two very important charities we believe in - Women for Women and Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build! Program.

These programs are very dear to us because they support others in living better and that’s why we do this blog. So each time you click an ad or purchase something from Amazon via a link on this site, the money earned will be donated to both charities as a way to give back. So thank you for your support and we encourage you to donate directly or find your own favourite charity to continue the gift of giving.

HOW HYGGE HOUSE RUNS

Hygge House was designed, coded, and implemented by me and a lot of tea. It’s hosted on the very amazing, wonderful, easy, inexpensive company, Dreamhost. We’ve used them for over 10 years for several major web sites and can’t say enough about their service. They truly make it easy to sign up, register your domain and then host your site. They even have one-click install for Wordpress which is fabulous because Wordpress is what I use to run this site along with 28 active plugins.

  Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button .9.2
» MicroPat (url)
Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts and pages using any service. [Settings]

  AdSense Manager 3.2.13
» Martin Fitzpatrick (url)
Control and arrange your AdSense & Referral blocks on your Wordpress blog. With Widget and inline post support, configurable colours.

  Blogroll Page 2.1
» Mark Allen (url)
Outputs your blogroll links as a page or a post. Add the text <!--blogroll-page--> to a page or post and it will output your blogroll links organized by category heading. Don’t use this version on WordPress 2.2 or earlier!

  Exec-PHP 4.7
» Sören Weber (url)
Executes <?php ?> code in your posts, pages and text widgets.

  Extended Live Archives 0.10beta-r18
» Arnaud Froment (url)
Implements a dynamic archive, inspired by Binary Bonsai and the original Super Archives by Jonas Rabbe. Visit the ELA option panel to initialize the plugin.

  Flickr Photo Gallery 0.95
» Silas Partners (Joe Tan) (url)
This plugin will retrieve your Flickr photos and allow you to easily add your photos to your posts. Configure…

  Google Analytics for WordPress 2.5.3
» Joost de Valk (url)
This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.

  Google XML Sitemaps 3.1.0.1
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page

  Highlight Author Comments 1.0.0
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.

  NextGEN Gallery 0.96
» NextGEN DEV-Team (url)
A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the WEB2.0(beta).

  Smart Archives 1.9.2
» Justin Blanton (url)
A simple, clean, and future-proof way to present your archives.

  Wordpress Gravatars 2.7.1
» Rune Gulbrandsøy (url)
Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section. Uses the comment authors email to display their Gravatar. It also gives the user an Author Profile picture, based on his or hers Gravatar. Developer blog at this site.

  wp-cache 2.1.2
» Ricardo Galli Granada (url)
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”.

  WP-EMail 2.30
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Allows people to recommand/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.

  WP-EMail Widget 2.30
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Adds a EMail Widget to display most emailed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-EMail first.

  WP-FLV 0.2
» Roel Meurders (url)
This plugin eases insertion of Jeroen Wijerings FLV Video Player

  WP-PluginsUsed 1.30
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP-Print 2.30
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.