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  ;)