YOUR COVER BOY (AND -GIRL)

Dag and I are on the cover of family magazine KaksPlus (translated Two Plus). I was featured in an article on how to maintain one's style, or how style changes, with a baby.

The article itself is well written but I freaked out a little when I saw the headline on the cover labelled mommyfight and "High heel mothers vs. sweat pants mothers". Whoah! But it wasn't that bad. Just covers and selling headline, you know...

PAINTED

Nadja Mikkilä used one of my pictures for the latest painting in her stencil series! This is a photo of the painting. You can see more of Nadja's art work from her site nadja-art or at her blog.

RASPBERRY

I love it when you have an idea you've been waiting to realize forever and then you finally get around doing it and it turns out just as you planned; right - we put up wallpaper in the small hall between the back porch, kitchen, laundry closet and bathroom-in-the-making.  As it is pretty much just a walk-trough space with four doors no one ever really stays in I wanted the walls to be bright, colorful and heavily patterned, kind of like a piece of candy you can spot from the other more calm rooms. En karamell.

And I wanted it to be this exact wallpaper, Vadelma (translated: raspberry). Kind of looking like something people would have put up during a previous renovation in the sixties that we would have discovered under the eighties wall paper we torn away.

Like most of our other wall paper also Vadelma is from Tapettitalo, a company that sells old and classic patterns from past decades and centuries as well as vintage dead stock of old their factory rolls. The doors are old, we've moved them around a bit from room to room, opening to opening.

I know this post totally makes it seem like I would have been putting these up but I so did not this time (phew), the handy men and Eddi did it.


Bonus pic: You can see the bathroom coming along in the background. But that is still for laters, as is the kitchen... but looking pretty good so far, right?

VINTAGE; FLORAL; FLOWING

I got myself a new vintage dress kind of by accident, spotting it on the mannequin at Helsinki's smallets but most delicious vintage store. (That would be Hoochie Mama Jane.)  Long and soft with a bold pattern and with some dangerous cash in my pocket it had to be mine right there right .

I've been avoiding polyester since my teenage years in tight non-breathable seventies shirts but when it comes to certain garments - a flowing dress like this one- I have to admit it can acutally be rather comfy and soft against the skin.. So I let go of my old ban of 100% polyester. With a slight temptation to cut this one into knee-lenght, I am also letting go of my fear of long hems; the dress will remain ancle length. I see it with a big rolled up do, or 30's style waves, or my black turban; with heels, sandals or boots alike. Versatility rocks.

DESATURATED IN THE USUAL MANNER

Here's my Atelieri O.Haapala performer photo from this year's burlesque festival!

THE DOG TOOTH SKIRT

It's all about re-discovering skirts nowadays! I tucked this old thrifted one away a couple of summers ago when I in a unusual, delirious moment of practical thinking realized it is not so-so smart to keep up space in the closet for clothes that belong to another season (like wools skirt in summer etc). But to be honest the actual reason for hiding this skirt away was the one that it had, ehrm, strangely shrunken to be a bit too tight around my hips. I decided to try it on the other day and noticed that it oh-yah! is no longer uncomfortably small but just right!

SCENES FROM A BELATED SPRING

Mint green left heel: (tiny voice) Ummm... hello?


 (small, desperate, squeeky voices) Let us out!

And hey! Don't forget us over here! We're trapped in here!

Wear me! Wear us!

Weather (determined): NO!


Winter boots (fatigued tone): We are so done and tired! We're supposed to be off-season already!


Winter (mad scientist voice): MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

ENAMEL AND ADVERTISING

You may remember reading about how I love everything enamel a few times before...  well I do.
Now, after stocking up son seom vintage enamel kitchen wear the last time it was time for some accessories; I got myself a pair of enamel earrings and a bracelet. They are from Nea's Stiching on Etsy, who I found via a Project Wonderful ad her eon my blog actually. I almost never have time to properly browse Etsy or such but my own ads help me, heh :) And I rather often end up buying something too... so see, it is worth it,  advertising here pays off!

You can place small ads here in my sidebar via Project Wonderful and slightly bigger ones on Blogads.

And yes my nail polish matches our wallpaper. (It's kure Bazaar's natural nail polish in the shade Boyfriend, if interested.)

BURLESQUEPOLIS

Molla by Atelieri O.Haapala at Burlesquepolis

I can't wait to get my hands on this year's Atelieri artist portrait I took at the Helsinki burlesque festival! the back drop was inpired by Metropolis and Blade Runner, which I think you can spot from the featured photo above.

THIS HERE...

...will soon turn, or; is very much already turning into a bathroom. And it will oh yes fit one damn big tub too! Which I am looking very much forward to.

BROWN AND BLUE, CORDUROY LEATHER AND WOOL

 I've been digging trough the piles and drawers of my closet, mixing textures and re-discovering old items.

Well there are a gazillion pictures of me here with a black beret looking out into the unknown. But the swirl here is new, bigger than before, very 2.0 :)

So I  ended up weating lots of things I haven't worn in a very very very long time.
The skirt is my grandmothers old, vest my mom's old and the bag vintage, the rest just plain old.

AND THERE WAS LIGHT

With an evening light this bright and fine, it does not even matter that the kitchen is a bit messy! (Or, as you hear read me say every time this year; the windows in need of washing.)

There will be a lot of going on about the returning light, there are a lot of posts about that everywhere up here already. But you got to hand it to us; it's been reported that we've just had the darkest winter in fifty years. And so I believe it was. But give it a few weeks and the winter coat and dark mornings will be long forgotten!

FANTASIA

Print of the day: Fantasia by Erté.

Erté is one of my favorite illustrators, you may remember; I've written about him before.

MONDAY BLOSSOMS AND THE AFTERNOON LIGHT

Some flowers in the hair can make an everyday Monday at home feel a little bit fancier. Not to mention a bit more like spring too, together with the light that's starting to come back in trough the windows.

The hair blossoms  were a gift from Anastasia last year. The blouse and belt are vintage and the pencil skirt is a comfy stretchy thing I also wore during my early-and mid pregnancy.

ON THE TRACKS

Today I went all sportus maximus and went crosscountry skiing, first time in a couple of years. After the first ten ridicuous obligatoire minutes instagramming about it I actually had myself quite the refershing run.

I'd been eager to go for some time already, not so much for the outdoors and nature, but rather for the good work out it gives. But then in the middle of the woods I noticed what wasa best about it: solitude,  the calmness, the absolute silence. Ah.

FOOD!

Isn't food just the best thing sometimes?

When we are out in the countryside I do a lot more cooking and baking than at home. More space, more time; during the weeks there's a pressure of getting dinner done fast. Today, after many weeks in a row being a family of five it was just the three of us, me and Eddi and Dag. I made us a layered dish of aubergine, mushroom-tomato sauce and oatmeal cream (with nutritional yeast flakes and fresh herbs) with roasted soy nibs and, on demand from the man in the house when he found out about the oat cream, hehe, some sliced mozzarella in between. Would have made a perfectly enjoyable vegan meal without the cheese too.

Funny how when I one decade ago started cooking vegan (I went by a completely vegan diet for a couple of years then) had to think about what I ate, puzzle it together, how to make it; what to eat, reading lots of books on the subject. Now vegan goes without thinking, no prob. Or, it's not that strange in the end of course, given the thought I've had years of practice. Also, the selection in the stores over here are almost not comparable to what they were in the early 00's, not to mention the nineties. But really, for those who wonder -and there are many- vegan food is not that hard nor that strange, and as I've said before, many common dishes are vegan without even thinking about it. (Not to mention vegetarian. Strange how some still want to make a fuzz about having to have a meal without meat.)

But there is always something new to learn and master - when it comes to raw food I still mainly look up and follow recipes, although I have started to create my own in that field too. A bit tricky to catch on photo in a way that does this one justice perhaps, but here's the dessert for today; a chocolate raspberry raw food cake. The best one I've had so far, no doubt about it. Even Eddi who is not that in to cakes had another slice! I might have died a little bit having this one, the kind of cake you'd never guess could go under the label healthy. Swoon!

The exact recipe can be found here (in Finnish); I altered it a bit. In my version I used walnuts and almonds plus raisins, a couple of figs and fresh dates for the crust (with a tea spoon of maca, lots of cocoa and a little chili) and made the frosting of a mix of coconut cream, ground coconut flakes with a spoon of coconut oil with cocoa powder and honey plus some real vanilla powder.

I set a batch of too-easy-to-be-ture-bread waiting for tomorrow (very domestic, am I not?); now it's time to finnish the dinner bottle of red with some episodes of The Wire. Good night!

THE TOY BOX

One perhaps wouldn't think so due to how it has looked around here lately, but I really hate it with items lying around the house; on the floor, on surfaces, without a place of their own. I came up with the idea to put wheels on an old wooden crate, to use in the countryside bedroom for my laptop and magazines and such under the bed and for Dag's toys in the livingroom at home; I had seen something similar in a mag at some point. 

I noticed some interior shops had picked up on this too and sold old boxes with wheels for a ridiculously high price, but I instead picked up some wheels from where-else-but-IKEA and set out to find a couple of  suitable old wooden boxes. Which I knew all stores everywhere were filled with at some point. Only that it seems the rest of the world had come up with this idea too, as there were no wooden boxes anywhere to be found any longer and I seemed to had used up the ones that had been lying around the sheds at the farm too for other purposes. This was ages ago already, and I was now about to label this one of those eternal to-do projects-that-won't-happen. But then I stumbled across old boxes on Fab with the right measurements (and not costing their weight in gold)! I put in one of the bits of mexican oil cloth I have hanging aroudn on the bottom and will need to give it a go with sand paper in order not for small chubby fingers and  hands to catch any occasional sticks.

Wheels yes, they are a little bit like pockets - they make everything a tiny bit better!