Material Crush

During the summer time (even the summer hasn’t really felt like summer this time, since it’s been so c-o-l-d) I feel like I’m spending a lot less time at home compared to winter. Maybe there’s just still a lot more going on during the summer. But now, that the fall is getting closer, it’s time to focus on the house again, so that I have a nice little base where I can hide from the frost in winter… 😉

After we moved to Espoo (a little over half year ago!), we had to get a lot of necessary furniture, like dining table and a couch. And we purchased a lot of those as new, since someone else was always faster than me, when I was after nice recycled ones. After we got all we needed, furnishing the house has been on a break. I guess I needed to breathe a little between running from store store looking for everything… But now I’m starting to feel like I would have the energy again to start finding what we want on top of those necessities we’ve already got.

I love the fact that our house is new, clean and feeling spacious, but still I wouldn’t mind adding some “old” to it. I mean, if a house is too clinical, it just doesn’t feel like a real home. And I found the perfect item to start my new decoration plans with, to bring in the good vibes: beautiful wooden chest! Just what I’ve been searching for.

I discovered it from a market place in the internet, and the seller said they had found it from her grandmother’s house. So it might actually be as old as it says in the front: from 1858. Now I just have to find something else in that blue-color, that the chest will match the rest of our apartment… 😉

Flower Talk

Now that we have a yard of our own (very very small, but still a yard) I’ve noticed a whole new enthusiasm in me towards plants and flowers.

My mom usually spends the entire summertime outside in her garden, and when she isn’t there, she is most likely reading one of her gardening books. I’ve always wondered what’s the catch?

But now that the snow has almost melted, small green signs of spring appear here and there, and the sun rays start to be warm, I catch myself thinking about flowers, plants and gardening… What’s happening in here? 😀

More and more often, I find myself at the gardening section at stores, looking at flowerpots and seeds. I google for advice on internet about how to keep my plants alive. I’ve even thought about getting a small flower table inside, so I could have more flowers here (because I have now idea when the constructor will finnish our backyard, so I could actually start doing something gardening-related outside…).

The funniest part is, this all could be such a huge waste of time and money because I seriously don’t have a clue, am I able to keep any plant alive for long. When I was studying, life was so irregular, that it was best to go with plastic or cut flowers. Well, I had one orchid experiment, but that didn’t exactly encourage me in these gardening and growing plants -endeavors…  (Btw, despite everything that orchid is still alive and well and often blooming, because it has been in my mom‘s care for years already).

We’ll see if this craze settles down, when the reality kicks in.

P.S. I’ve managed to keep those white saint paulias in the pictures alive for over two months already. That has got to be a good sign, right?

Let’s Stay Home

Travel fever starts to burn again in the back of my head. It’s been almost three months from Berlin, and I still got no idea where I would go next and when. I mean it’s weird that I don’t even have a clear idea about where I would want to go next… This year I’m mostly stuck at work anyways, so short holidays limit get-aways a lot too. And lately my travel budget has been splurged on moving and decorating the new house…

I don’t know if it has something to do with having no travel plans, but I also woke up to the fact that for the first time when I’m living “on my own” (away from my parents house), I have a home where nothing annoys me.

I’ve had nice apartments, but the first one had way too small bathroom, I could hardly sit on the toilet seat without my knees touching the wall opposite to it. The next one had big toilet, but dust kept building up in piles everywhere at megalomaniac speed. And that student apartment had too sensitive fire alarm system  too. (Waking up to an alarm sound sometimes twice a week get’s old after a while…). Then the last apartment at Tampere was nice too, but some little things were broken here and there, and we didn’t have quite enough room for all my clothes the stuff. And I don’t even wanna start with all the summer apartments I’ve had. Living in the middle of strange peoples stuff or without no furniture at all isn’t too cozy.

With the new place, I can’t come up with any big reasons to complain about. Everything works fine and  the floor-plan is good. Well, location could always be closer to downtown Helsinki, but it isn’t the apartments fault is it? 🙂 

New Details

New in: plate for fruits (but apparently also suitable for holding flowers ;)), basket for magazines/mail and curtains with a black and white tree-print.

I love the phase in settling in to a new home when everything starts to be so ready, that it’s possible to begin to pay attention to details. Then the hardest part is choosing from all the endless ideas and styles…

Today I got some new decoration-stuff that I had ordered online. I became so excited about how everything will look like (at least I imagine everything from the curtains to carpets is going to look good!) I had to snap a few pictures of the details around the house with my phone before running off to work. I wish I had time to put all the new pieces and things on their places soon!

Last week I offered a new home to this second-hand armchair. The pillow case is self sewn.

In The House

I still have a lot of unfinished business with decorating the house, like getting the new dining table build (parts arrived yesterday) and buying some other missing items like curtains etc. (Payday can’t come soon enough!)

But now at least most of the boxes have been unpacked (or taken into the storage out of sight), and a big part of our things have found their places… In other words, it’s starting to be possible to distinguish the house from all the unorganized stuff, so I can finally give a sneak peek to our new home and unveil a little bit what it’s like. 😉 There’s lot of things from our old home, but in new surroundings…