CHRISTMAS AND ALL THAT

I know it has not really begun yet * although it is just around the corner, and we had the first little hint of snow now, so I did a little cheating and hung up the first Christmas lights at home already! November is so dark anyway, but I did wait with the stars and advent lights so far though. Plus, I have different led-and fairy lights at home all year round so in some ways I sort of have a Christmas all the time (much to the joy of my husband).

*) other than in all the stores, everywhere,  right after Halloween as usual and apparently, as I heard, at Ikea already in October...

Then, because I had some extra banans hanging around (they sometimes tend to do that, become extras that just stay there and turn way too dark all of a sudden) I baked a chocolate-banana cake. Vegan.  It was good. Had it wit the first glögg (mulled wine/glühwein. Altough -yes really- this was the wine free version. More like spiced warm juice  really) of the year to go along. And as I was in the pre-Christmas mood I put some gingerbread spices in the cake too. Muy bueno. We can have a closer look on the how-to some other time.

I have said it before, I really am a Christmas person. The Holidays could last for at least a month and a half for all that I care. Well it usually does, as we seldom manage to get the Christmas tree out before the end of January. Ehrm. But mostly I am a "Christmas person" on the inside - for the past decade I have always been so busy I never manage to do that whole cal-getting-in-the-mood-and-relax-thing, where I have lights and candles and tingling everywhere and bake and make goodies for weeks and make and sew presents to all of my friends and family (one year I actually did, but that was a long time ago). It's more the thought of it I suppose, the same with the thought of autumn where I always wear knits and scarves and go out on walk in colourful crispy cold woods and come back home and drink cocoa. That which I have done perhaps once the last five years. Perhaps.  As with most other things and times and seasons in life, it comes surprisingly fast and is over before you know it. This year will be no different as I have lots of shows to do and classes to teach ahead of me still, and producing no less than two events within two weeks. But then I will try my best to take it easy and bake and prepare and all that and plan, make and shop gifts; I do love to hand out presents!

Speaking of which. This one here is mainly for my readers in Finland; a little hint if you plan to do some, or even some more of your Christmas shopping online, one that I had almost forgotten about myself but that comes in handy this time of year - do so via Ostohyvitys! Sign up and shop. This of course applies to all your purchases all year round as well, as you get various discounts (money refunded to your bank account) at most major online stores, both Finnish and international ones such as Apple Online store & iTunes, asos, cdon, Finnish Design Shop and The Body Shop to name a few, as well as at various smaller speciality stores, when you shop via the site. That, and discounts on many services and on magazine-subscriptions and at several travel companies etc. The system is very smart and it is easy to use - log in and then navigate to the store you want to make a purchase from and receive the discount in euros to your bonus account (and later to your bank account ). Well, as I do very little shopping nowadays I have forgotten to use the service the times I have actually bought something, so this serves as a good reminder for myself as well!

And ahoy! As a reader of my blog you will now get a 10euro gift card to use at any of the S-group stores (S-ryhmä) when you sign up and make your first purchase at any of the stores and services via the site (within 90 days).

Sign up here for more info and in order to receive the gift card: Ostohyvitys / S-ryhmän lahjakortti

Disclaimer: nothing in this post is in any way sponsored or paid for by Ostohyvitys but I am part of their affiliate network and can thus offer you the chance of to receive the gift card.

TIDIED UP AT LAST (PLUS THAT HIDEOUS MONKEY I ONCE GOT)

Our flat in the city has looked like a dump for the past year. It's been messed up by unpacked gig-bags of mine, filled with my paperwork and crumbled over with Dag's toys. As we've mainly been concentrating on fixing up and renovating the farm house, and all free time is spent there,  our apartment has been rather sad and forgotten.

But now I  finally got around cleaning it up -to the extent my sister doubtfully asked Eddi why was it so neat there, what's going on? when she came over- and it feels great. I haven't gotten everything I want organised yet, but I'm getting there. And as my nausea from the lost pregnancy is now over I apparently got an energy boos; I even washed all walls and every door in the house. And we might even get around finishing Dag's room now that I'm on fire!


I got some new plants and moved around the placements of the old ones. I always thought that plants are a great, quick and affordable way to freshen up and make a mini-renewal of the interior.

The Helsinki poster we have framed on the wall is one of my favourites by one of my favourites, Erik Bruun.

 If you know your Helsinki you'll love the simplicity of how landmarks and parts of town are portrayed.

Here's my anti-Bojesen monkey btw (and this is a total btw-mention).
It's horrible and not really supposed to be there, but I once hanged it ironically and then it has stayed. You know,  the classic wood design monkey-toy-thing by Bojesen that costs a lot and has no actual function, that people have on, or hanging from shelves (preferably a string one like this). Well, my sister and I have a thing of sending sad stories or links and such to one another. Sometimes it leads to things, like when I once saw a super sad listing for an old teddybear no one wanted and she ended up buying because she just had to. Another time a friend of mine linked me a weird ebay listing for a "hideous monkey" on my wall joking it was Plytis' evil cousin. My sister then sneakily got me the hideous monkey for my birthday the same year. Yes I did scream out in horror a little when I opened the package, before laughing like crazy.


Hideous, ain't it? I have no idea why it looks like this or why anyone would make it so, and sell it, but well, I know why someone bought it.

I can't leave you with the image of the scary monkey so here is a cuter picture of Dag, happily unaware of said monkey, playing in his play kitchen.

BARE BULBS

We have an old ceiling light in the countryside dining room that I always thought was a bit blah. (As you now, just because something is vintage doesn't automatically make it awesome). But it had been in the house for long, so it's not something you change just like that. When we renovated we took the lamp shades away and I noticed the lamp looked much better, in a fun kid of way, with only the light bulbs there.


The shades themselves were not that ugly but some of them a slightly broken plus they made the lamp rather uninteresting and, well, sort of stupid.

For some time I couldn't find any decent looking energy saving bulbs  (as the original ones are not around anymore). Most new ones have a different, white base and smaller bulb instead and for the whole thing to work they have to look like the traditional ones. But, I found some, it worked out . (And later noticed that the internet would have been full of such. Well for course it is, it's the interwebs after all..).


I thought this was a contemporary twist on an old object but then I saw a glimpse of a ceiling light just like this, with bare bulbs, on Boardwalk Empire too. I guess they've done their homework so some have apparently kept their lamps this way back in the days too...

THE LAST PAGE COMICS

Father and son reading the daily paper.

The couch is a Carl Malmsten on I got from a web auction site last year,  where I also got the old lamp. The plaid on the sofa a Eddi bought home from Bolivia.

THE FARM HOUSE LIVINGROOM, AS IT IS NOW

As you may recall we spent a great deal of the early summer painting and fixing the int living- and dining room at the farm house. As we did not have a chance to renew the floor we cleaned it up and painted over it. (One of) the problem(s) was always that there were so many different shades of wood in the rooms that did not go well together, but now all frames and boards are in white which calms the rest down.

Here's how it looked back in, hmmm, lets see: 2010, 2011 (did some re-arranging) and up to last year when I bought some new furninture from an antique market:

The whole winter and a great part of the spring it looked like this while we were renovating...


And here's how it looks now!
We're not quite there yet,  but you can do such a big difference with just paint:

As with all the other rooms, one day I will paint the windows their original white too. It's such a big job (and has to be done in summer time) that I just try and close my eyes to the difference now. Will get some curtains to help until then.

Another way of spicing up a room that you can't renew properly is to put in lots of plants. Green it up!

I think it was Eddi's grandfather who made this small violin.


A lighter floor makes such a big difference! Much of the furniture belongs to the house, so we've re-arranged them a bit and tried to make the best of them. All furniture and lighting in the living room are vintage. As noone needs thee big cup boards or cabinets (!) in one room we put some away to be put int he study, once we get that cleaned up.

 (I might have mentioned it before, that we can still put some things away and so on, but the bigger house that Eddi's brother and family lives in has some rooms that are basically not allowed to change;  that has looked the same always. It's quite nice, with old items and such, but it's also not that easy when making a home.)


My Chinese lamp I got from an auction last year now stands on the old Singer sewing machine table that we put in the dining room. Serves as a serving table too.

There's a new set of flowers in my tube collection.

The rather heavy furniture that was in the dining room also feels a little bit lighter now with the lighter frames of the room and the lighter base to stand on, and also with the new fabric I put on the chairs.

And Dag says hello!

DOMESTIC MAQUILLAGE pt.2

A lot, or, most of the furniture at the countryside came with the house. Pretty much everything is in dark wood. And you may recall me saying it before; that it is harder to decorate a home when it is already filled with items rather than starting from scratch. Not that we would have made some irreversible agreement with the universe to keep all pieces there was (unlike the other house at the farm, where Eddi's brother lives, where some rooms are not to be changed at all); we've let some things go and brought new in. I got -a little wild at an auction market and got- some new-old furniture last year to replace certain pieces and fill out blanks. A lot of the furniture of the house is in quite good condition though, and definitely useable albeit not items I would perhaps have chosen in the first place. As some of the rooms are the size of my previous flats filling them up with different furniture all at once would be quite the task. So instead I settled for some furniture refershement, by re-draping the dining room set.

 Now some of you may think this is a perfectly nice fabric and all, but it is however way to pompous for what we've got going on. I decided to drape the chairs with uncolored linen fabric instead. (Which also suits the farm itself as the brothers grow flax.)

You may recall my relation ship with crafting as not being my favorite task to do (clothes and costumes for myself being a different chapter though) and I was indeed constantly waiting to fuck up at least one chair (or a finger or so) but surprisingly enough they all turned out very well! That is, if noone gets the bad idea of flipping them over and checking htem out from underneath. Well even in that case they would still look acceptable. Good me.

(As usual I made quite the mess once I was at it...)

And the chairs did indeed turn out for the better! Also, the painted floor may have something to do with it. And we shall return to all of this some more some other time.

DOMESTIC MAQUILLAGE

The past weeks we've been finishing off the renovation we started in the countryhouse last autumn, working a lot every night after work and all the other things that one has to do all the time. During the kitchen-hall-and bathroom renovation the rest of the rooms pretty much served as furniture and kitchen appliance-storage and work space for painting and sawing jobs etc. Time (and funds) we're not enough to properly renew the surfaces in those for now but you do get a very long way with mainly a little  paint (or well, quite a lot of paint actually)! We've been going on quite intesly to the set up dead line which is tomorrow; Dag's birthday party.

 Here's one of the few before's that I managed to take.

And some of the almost-after ones. We'll get back to this later on!