SUVI VINTAGE; THE SUMMER VINTAGE FAIR

 Last weekend we took a daytripp with the smaller version of our family (which would be the version sans Dag's half-brothers) and headed up to Tampere to attend the Suvi Vintage fair.
This year the theme was the 1930's and holidays.

I've made the poster for the event  three years in a row but never managed to check out the whole thing before now!


Dag saw the carousel the minute we arrived and that was it for him.


Det var kört så att säga, as one would say in Swedish.
And you know how it is with toddlers, it does not matter if they get to do something they want once or twice or five times, they cry just as much when it's over anyway. Well, as the vendor said, his best customers leave screaming!


So I left Eeeeengi! (that's what Dag shouts when he hears me calling for Eddi) with some coins at the carousel and went to check out the rest of the fair.

 And I immediately ran into this bunch!

 Lassi organises the whole thing.

 Pepper and her curls. She made Lassi's hat btw!

 Olivia and Those Nails!

Atelieri O.Haapala were there shooting their ever so popular cabinet portraits too. Here is the other half of the duo; Saara aka Onyxei Haapala.

 

The venue, Tallipiha, is a very pretty place!

 This little fella walking his grandma (or more likely mom, but grandma makes it sweeter!) was so cute!


And so were these very young dancers.

I actually did not buy anything! I'm not really good at shopping when there is a lot to choose from and when I don't really need anything. Which makes me rather smart in the end.
Well, I did get something lovely for both my sisters' future babies though!

Some days it's easy to go anywhere with kids -they are fine to just go along looking at things- and other days it is not. This could be described as the later. Here Dag is trying to make his most cute faces in order to get yet another round of the carousel.

 So we let him look at some real horses instead.

 And he got to ride a pony!

And then it was time to head home! But first some pancakes.

CHANNELING MY INNER PEGGY BUNDY

Because there is a little animal print dressed waist belted Peggy Bundy inside all of us waiting to get out every once in a while. Or, in some of us at least. Especially if you are on your way to watch young beefy men strut around in very small and tight sequin swim pants (that would be Tyra Therman's quirky male underwear show, suitably timed for Pride week) and go watch a drag show afterwards.
But yes I know my hair is a tad bit too small tough.

The velvet leo-leggings are from Sockdreams.

PAIRS IN COLOUR

 Green & orange.

 Purple & yellow.

Red & blue.

YELLOW VINTAGE SUMMER DRESS WITH SOME BLACK ON THE SIDE

Even though summer got some sort of bug and forgot to load properly after a promising start I defied the shitty weather and took a night off for tiki drinks in a summer dress! This one has not made it out in the sun enough, yet. This dress has more of an empire waist but worn with a broad belt this time the waist sneaks back to it's own place.

Turns out the tiki bar was closed, but you can't always win now can you.

The shoes are old and the rest is vintage form here and there.
(I apparently have a thing for mixing yellow with black.)

SHADES OF COOL FOR THIS SUMMER SUNDAY

Most Finnish people will still be out of reach of -or not interested in -the internet right now, post drunk and hungover from Midsummer, but for everyone else in the world, here is some Soft Sunday music.

No one can make living in a valium haze, getting shitfaced on daiquiris by 2p.m. or haunting your old lover's life with the bittersweet memories of you look as good as Lana Del Rey. I don't like all of her songs, but the ones I like I love. This is such a sad and beautiful video I've watched over and over; I've always loved Lana's appearance and also how she makes her videos look just like she sounds.

DAG'S CAKE - A QUICK ALMOND AND FRUIT CAKE

Here's a quick cake I made for Dag', not for his birthday actually but for his name's day some time ago.

The original recipe uses apples and marzipan (or, actually almond mass, which is almost the same) but I made my own by mixing almonds and sugar; then you can choose how sweet you want it, and added nectarines and strawberries.  I used so called Indian Sugar which is a little bit healthier than regular, white sugar. (I would have done this with coconut sugar but didn't have any at home). The cake is basically just marzipan and eggs. So it's gluten free for those who can't have it. We buy our eggs directly from an organic farm.

You will need:
3 eggs
300 grams of marzipan store bought/home made
2 nectarines
Fresh strawberries

Mix the almonds with the eggs in a kitchen mixer or by hand, using a fork at first and then a wooden spoon.

Pour the mix in a cake mold and decorate with thin slices of nectarine.

Bake in a 200C oven for 10-15 minutes.

 Let cool and decorate with fresh, chopped strawberries.
(See the small impatient hands in the background, waiting to grab the cake. Aaaw.)

Serve with something white with vanilla - I mixed some real vanilla with thick Turkish yoghurt.

And enjoy!

I'm thinking a version with our sugar, with an almond-date mix instead could work too.
I would also like to make a vegan version out of this, perhaps with some soy yoghurt instead of the eggs. Let's see what I come up with!

TWO YEARS!

 Having birthday pancakes!

Last night two years ago I had the strangest pizza of my life - eight days before Dag was due my water broke Niagra-falls style at a launch party I was at. After being monitored for some time at the hospital they sent me home in the evening to await the labour (pains) to begin, or to return in the morning to get it started for me. It was around ten p.m and we hadn't eaten during the day so we stopped at an Italian restaurant on the way home. I had a pizza and it felt rather absurd to sit there munching it, knowing that the next day our baby would be with us. Some memories are such that you can't really place them; they feel like they could be five years or five weeks ago, but this one feels like a lifetime ago already.

Dag about one hour old.

And today my little baby turned two already! Time goes so fast!

 Opening his big present.

A trrctr! Tactoo! Trr! 

And a paaanda!

Dag has developed into a charming little person, and also a very stubborn little one. It gets more fun to be around him day by day, as he interacts more all the time, naturally, developing from baby to toddler to child.  Which means he can also be very annoying.  Which he usually makes up to by giving you a truly genuine hug with all the love a two-year-old-with-half-of-his-sandwich-mashed-out-over-his-hands (that are now nestled in your hair) can, and a big gooey kiss on top of that. Saying MOM! and being very sorry for pulling the cat's tail for the n:th time.

And just like the love to any other person or living creature develops by time so does the love to a child. You grow to love your child more; it's a very different kind of love that I have towards my son now than I did when I he was a newborn.

Before you become a parent you always hear about how you will have your hands full and how absolute it is. And you get it, even though you can't really realise what it will be like, to have someone so dependent on you, before you have that little caterpillar in your lap and instantly learn that it is constant, there are no free seconds, it is ON all of the time. I did have something of a clue as we already lived with Dag's half brothers although they of course are much older. But I was a bit surprised (and, yes, annoyed) the first year over how everything always was about the kids' schedule, when they would need to eat and be; all arrangements had to be made according to them, they way it is when you have children - so I had some training. But thinking back now the 24/7 babyperiod was over rather soon, after a few months it was smooth sailing; eating, getting dressed, going out, taking a shower (or a piss for that matter too) and all that gets easy after a while. (Altough, leaving the house will not be the same for another ten years or so. It takes so, muh.more.time to exit trough the door...) By now I've almost forgot how it was like to have a tiny baby! Well, both my sisters and Eddi's brother will have babies during the following months (bye bye babysitting grandparents, damn!) so I will be reminded...

And if the constant on-duty of being a parent is something that is not possible to comprehend before you are there, so is the parental love. I thought it would be similar to the love of you pet, perhaps the closest you can get to imagine it if you don't have children, but stronger. And yes perhaps it is like that, but of course different too. (Well, sometimes I compare babies and small children to puppies too. They are always crazy happy to see you, for example. Hehe. ) And as with any love it comes with worries as well, and also with the worlds strongest urge to protect. The love for you child s filled with parents-only moments with stings of your heart melting over the smallest things, his small shoulders bending over a toy car,  over how much happiness a slice of apple can bring, or a truck driving by "THERE! LOOK!" and aaaaw how well and concentrated he eats with a fork and tries to pick up his macaroni one by one and there he's pouring out one and a half litre of -what, wait, uh-oh, NO DAG NO!

BLUE JEANS

I got around getting myself a pair of blue jeans, like I had been thinking about and searching for, quite suitably before our summer here got into some kind of syntax error mode and dropped the temperature back to April...


In the end I went for a black horse and did get any of the common brands I'd thought of but grabbed these from Emmy Design instead. They cost a whole lot more than Freddies, Collectif or Vivien's (a swooning 160 euros) but it was not an issue for me this time as I suitably had a gift card to use for Pin-Up Garage, that carries Emmy, that I got for modelling for them once.

These jeans have a hidden zipper inside the pocket which is pretty neat but on the other hand also makes them a bit tricky to close. Otherwise they are great and rather comfy, which you know nowadays is a criteria for me to ever wear anything. I'm still a person with some sort of pants issues though -I always tend to go for the skirts anyway - so now I just have to learn to be practical when needed and actually use my jeans more often than just sometimes.

AND ONE DAY IT WILL BE A -RATHER TINY - JUNGLE IN HERE

If I like it a green and lush and a little wild in my garden I also prefer so indoors. You know I like to keep lots of plants indoors and have now started gathering bigger greens to slowly fill up the living room.

Not only because I like it how big plants can blend in the interior or even be used to divide a room and how they maintain good air, but also as it was common back in the days with huge plants and so goes with the style of the room and it's old furniture.


The latest plant I recently rescued from my parents' garage where it had been set away to die as it had turn a bit floppy and had no place of it's own. I replanted it and am keeping my fingers crossed that it will recover and grow huge and green and healthy soon.

IN AND AROUND THE EVENING GARDEN

There are lots of flowers blooming here and there in my garden. I mostly let them tend to themselves.

So things get a little wild, but that's OK. Here we have a mix of (edible) weeds (edible and healthy, what a great excuse to just keep them there!). strawberries, chive and parsley. Plus some random flowers that have found their way there trough the wind.

 

The garden is very well set originally though, by Eddi's grand-aunts and parents. There is always something blooming and when those flowers have faded the next ones are on their way.

 My little gardener.

Saying good night to the lambs.

Brothers and farmers. Talking farm stuff.

 

I love these light nordic summer nights - it's past eleven int the evening when I took this photo!