a good morning

Yesterday I ate breakfast when it was already bright outside.

I start my days very often with coffee & muesli with nuts, sunflower seeds and lovely minced Hippophae rhamnoides - sea buckthorn powder to put it more clearly (Fin: jauhettu tyrnimarja). Sometimes I add crushed linseeds among the mix (Fin: pellavansiemenrouhe).

I can not leave the house without a proper amount of energy and this is the ordinary way for me getting it.

hmm... some nice ideas for Christmas

Have you visited astubutiikkiin.fi lately? I think I have an idea of what I wish for Christmas this year...

I admire HienoStella's way of creating both delightful jewelry and innovative interior pieces from recycled bicycle parts. For some weeks I have craved for these beauties as seen at astubutiikkiin.fi:

The charming little Pohjantähti -candle holders would go great with my linen tablecloth, which rests on our kitchen table.

I already gave a loving home for a pair of beautiful HienoStella -earrings when we celebrated the AB launch event back in August. How about these then?

Christmas is tapping doors very soon, so be well, behave well and eat well. :)

love for Olo-huone second hand & lifestyle

Olo-huone second hand & lifestyle is a new vintage shop + café, located at Fleminginkatu 7, Kallio district. I love the concept - it's the coziest living room I know, and there's also a kitchen (= café) and a bedroom too. With reasonable prices you can have something to take home, whether it be a teapot, vintage chair, AND Sälekori, YCM feather earrings or a bag of freshly ground coffee.

This week we celebrated the opening with smiles and a good, warm atmosphere. And this is how lovely the place is:

Photography by Sami Tirkkonen.

Definitely worth visiting!

imagining myself a home under the sun

Now the temperatures are back to boring (=zero) and the whole city has turned into a living mayhem of grey. Right now I'm dreaming of a sweet little house in... hmm, Croatia maybe... Here are my current deco-feelings.

I chose my favorite colorful pieces by Indiska. And to get deeper into the right mood I browsed through my laptop and chose a few pics of our beautiful trip to Croatia:

 

Waiting for the spring already - have a pretty day!

- 23 °C outside

This morning the weather was supremely cold here in Helsinki. I was sipping my coffee, doing the laundry and sighing as the sunlight was shimmering through my living room curtains. I have been inside the house last few days due to the irritating cough and runny nose of mine. Feeling better already, though.

designing a magazine layout

Let's have a look at some more schoolwork. Lately we have been doing interior magazine layouts. I'm already familiar with Photoshop and InDesign, but I'm still totally enjoying the assignment! The task was to visualize your own home in a few magazine spreads with some self-photoshopped pictures and decoration ideas. I named my magazine 'Homehow' and the issue is inspired by traveling.

I had fun with textures and went wild with writing. :D You see, now our tiny student apartment has been turned into a "renovated residency" with natural floor planking, vivid green-painted wall surface and an edgy brick wall. Oh how I wish all that would be true...

(Click to enlarge)

All the fabrics seen on the pillows (x3) contain woven textures from my previous post. I have adjusted the pillow colors to fit in the surrounding atmosphere.

Below some details in bigger size (click to enlarge):

feathers for Christmas

Looks like metal but it's not. So beautiful! Precisely just my kind of Christmas decoration. Period.

knobs

I'm in need of new knobs for my dear old drawer because the old knobs have partly gone lost or are just about to fall down. Doesn't help trying to tighten them up. But now I'm totally in love (!) with these antique-looking knobs. Down here you can see where the short process started from:

And next the results. Looks good I think!

coffee in a cup

I decided to dedicate a post for coffee - the joy of my early mornings and peaceful afternoons. At home I drink my coffee with milk, but I also like special coffees with a hint of sweetness. I have several packs of different coffees so I can choose the blend according to my mood. I store my coffee in the following two jars among others. The Paulig jar is decades old and from my parents while the second one is from Espan Enkelit.

I have collected a variety of cups:

This Marimekko cup with the girl in a plaid scarf has been my absolute favorite since the day I bought it! It's exactly the right size for the coffee to stay hot and it fits in my hand just perfectly.


I also have some series of smaller cups. The first ones we got from my boyfriend's mother and I think we have a set of 8. I simply love them! The red ones below are from Indiska - they are actually meant for mulled wine (glögi), but I wanted to take a picture of them too because they are just beautiful. :D

And how about the coffee? I hate it when it's lame and love it when it's full, aromatic and soft yet strong. The scent is also very important. There are reasons I like Indiska's hazelnut and cinnamon coffee.


The best coffee I have had came from a small independent coffee shop in Etu-Töölö and also from a coffee & tea store in Oulu, called Kofeiinikomppania. At both places they grind the beans on the spot. Oh and I must not forget the coffee in Portugal! Every time I smell either freshly ground or roasted coffee I get these small vibrations...

Today when I added the two Siirtolapuutarha cups with the city theme to my reservoir I also joined the Marimekko customer club and received a free pack of dotted napkins! It was a really nice surprise.

But as I am a huge lover of coffee I also appreciate tea. We have even more tea than coffee at home since my boyfriend drinks it approximately two pots a day...

The tea jar is from Indiska (for the hundredth time), but those tea bags have a bit different story. We brought them all the way from Mauritius where the tea had been cultivated. It was served at the hotel room and we decided to take the whole pack with us because we enjoyed the flavor. Too bad we didn't know there were some limits to importing tea. We came to know that with all the other little packages of tea we had brought maybe like five times too much tea to our home country. Well, no-one accused us of being smugglers. :D