FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW: INDEPENDENCE SUNDAY

It was the Finnish Independence Day today.  One custom is to light white-and-blue (the colour of the Finnsih flag) candles in the window, but I just had a huge white one, that got to make company with the cactuses on my window sill.

We are back in town now for the following week. We have not been here properly for ages. I had to search for matches like crazy - as I no longer smoke (never was a heavy smoker,  but did have an occasional one every now and then, sometimes more frequently sometimes less) and as the one that does carry a light all the time is now at the other side of the world I was scratching my head wondering if it really was so that we had nothing to light stuff with in the house. But then I went trought my old handbags and purses stuffed in my closet (that all contained the following: bobby pins, emergency tampons and 5 cent coins, the ones you never really use) and ta-da, in the bottom one was a box with matches.

We baked an apple cake with Dag on things I could pull together out of the cupboards (the stores are closed on Holidays like this).

As we have indeed not been living here in the city apartment for quite a while, just a night here and there, the whole place has looked like shit for the past six months. The flat is still what I've considered my real home so far, so it feels good to get to clean it up and spend some time here other than just dropping in to get something or just to sleep. Making it cosy and enjoying having everything in one place for a while. And cooking food in my pastel pink kitchen. Eddi lives at the farm all the time as the older boys lives with us now constantly instead of every second week -their mother moved out there a year ago and the boys switched schools to the countryside. A couple of months later she moved back to Helsinki and as you can't really yo-yo kids from one school to another they remained with us. We stay in town with Dag every now and then as I have my studio here and work late, and as Dag already had a spot in a playschool in the city a few days of the week. (That's a lot of driving back-and-forth with a lot of ikea bags on the back seat. ) But now Dag and I will be in town for the whole week while Eddi is away on a work trip to Australia!  (The older boys will stay with their grandparents who also live on a house in the farm; I have a lot of work in the evenings so we won't be going out there. I even brought the cats back with us to town.)

So as it was rainy and really stormy outside we cosed up and stayed in baking. Dag really loves to cook. He was very anxious for the cake to be ready in the oven.

So while waiting he set the table and made us a fancy Independence Day dinner. It had broccoli, porridge with strawberry jam, carrots, egg and a "garlic he had fried in a special way so it was not so strong in taste".

And then finally  the cake was ready (yum) and we had it while we watching the Independence Day reception on TV. (That's really the only independence day how-to-thing I managed to do, it's pretty much the same every year. Or well, I did get a fancy mini-family dinner  ;)

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW

Wearing warm and yellow. That's nice when it's grey and cold outside.

Put together a jar of home made granola from products grown on the farm only.

Our kitchen is full of new herbs and extra plants that the crew left behind after shooting a commercial here last week.

And now it's time to study some more pilates! Have an instructor camp and test coming up next week. (And you know, if you want to come to my classes you can do so Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings at out studio!...that still does not have it's website up and running properly yet. Uaaaa!)

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW

I am changing my colours (and nails) into autumn mode. As usual there's an itch for darker colours and plaid patterns. And red wine. So wine red it is for me.

More colours! The last tomatoes from my garden pots. So cute you'd almost not want to eat th..munch munch nom! I like to mix them red and still green and fry them in a pan.

They got some feta cheese, garden herbs, salad and omelette to blend along with.

Now packing for Berlin; going there to perform in the weekend. There will be lots of pastel coloured things in the bag. Not for me, not for the trip nor the show, but for next week - we still have some work to finish off on the costumes for the Norma book release show; when we are performing the custom ordered numbers based on the themes of the book. Phew!

I heard it will be real warm in Berlin this weekend so might have to lighten up on my plaid-autumn-beret-and-kints mode then. Hmmm.

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW - MESSY, MAGAZINE AND MOROTSKAKA

Trying to figure out what to wear today.
Everything is a mess at home and it seems I have somehow managed to magically hide away all my autumn clothes. The agony of living at two addresses.

But there has been times that it was not messy at home. Proof of that in the latest issue of Glorian Koti for example, where there is a short feature on the farm house. The pictures were taken a year ago.

 Breakfast.

Includes this too.
Carrot-zuccini-date cake (=breakfast worthy.) Not sure if it's very good or just ok; the price you pay when you never measure and just randomly throw things in a pot and stir and bake. After a night in the fridge this could be quite chunky though.

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FOUR THINGS TODAY

 Put on some red and beige and polka dot.

Went to pick up something mint green (alright, sea foam) and very fluffy and flowing.

Made a salad with things from our garden. Goat cheese and red wine berries makes a superb combination!
I mixed lettuce, spinach leaves and rucola,  random veggies (tomato, cucumber, yellow bellpepper) edible flowers, wine berries and goat cheese. Plus a balsamico vinaigrette. Summer points to the max!

Went up the hill to Eddi's aunt. She lives in a small house on top of a hill just nest to the farm house, She had picked berries and baked a blueberry pie with Dag. More summer points! (We need them, the weather is still a huge disappointment...)

A little bonus one still: you can pick cherries right out of her window! Summer points, ca-ching!

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW: THURSDAY EVENING

There's a 1930's postcard of me and Dag.
My mom sent me this.

 I harvested some of the spinach and mangold from my growing boxes. I put them in the freezer but a handfull got to join some pasta earlier tonight.

I've sewed and embellished a lot ot blingy skin-tight stuff.

(People have a custom here in the countryside to just walk trough the (front) door wihtout knocking when they come over, which can be a bit funny if you happen to be trying out the tiny showgirls pants you just sew in front of the mirror. Which is next to the front door.)

Been making lots of shimmering thingies as well.
(To see these in action head over to our Paris-themed club Pariisiklubi at Mascot this Saturday!)

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4 x SUMMER RAIN

Midsummer rain in the archipelago.

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW

Or actually, turns out, two days ago, when I though that I had pressed Publish.*

Painted my nails five shades of red.

Took a little nap in my little in-house jungle. It's this spot here.

Read up on some pilates and anatomy.

Although right now I'm mainly waiting to get back to another kind of read.
We sometimes read crime novels together with Eddi and the new Kepler one is pretty addictive.

*)Sometimes I find drafts in my email spooking around too that I thought I had already shipped away to their receiver. To the extinct I thought there was something wrong with my account. But I guess it's just me failing at multitasking...

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