FOR THE LAST TIME

At the beginning of this month, on my way to the airport (everything is about multitasking and combining two things these days) I stopped by the city flat to take down the last lamps and to leave the keys there for the new owners. Moving out is always a little sad, and even more so if you've lived in the house/flat for some time and put a lot of memories and heart into it. I think this was one of the hardest moves, as I have been around this flat since birth. The absolute worst move at the tie was then I was  four and we moved away from the first home I'd ever known. (Which happens to be across the park from this one.) I missed it terribly, and some months later my grandfather took me to the building so we could go up with the familiar elevator and look at my old door. He showed me there was a new name on the door, and told me there were new people living there now. I remember being very sad that we could not go in and look at "my home" because surely they would have understood.

This is the flat I bought Dag home to first, and it's Eddi's and my first mutual home. It was the first home I was able to decorate and renovate totally as I wanted to, (with my mint green Smeg for example that I took with me now that we moved). This was also the place I had my first "job" at; I used to clean at my grandmother's as a teenager for pocket money, so I really knew every corner in and out. As a child my grandparents would watch me when my mother was at work, and I'd sit on the kitchen table watching the cars turn down from the big road and drive along the park and I'd be as enthusiastic over each and every one NU KOMMER MAMMA!; "this one is mommy!. Some time ago Dag would do the same and try to see when Eddi or me were coming home.

Here's before we started renovating it in 2010 -

And later the same year in action.

Bye bye kitchen!

It was also on the floor of this kitchen that I realised who my grandparents were (one of my earliest memories; I was propably two or three years old) - sitting there playing I heard my mother say MOM to my grandmother and was all "aaah, so that's why we're hanging around these old people all the time". We used to spend many Christmases here, and one time- I must have been around five- I was a hundred percent sure I saw Santa flying in the sky with his reindeer sleigh. Like, for reals, he was there. Weird that my parents were not that stunned out by it, but just sad that it was great.

Before the renovation in spring 2010.

 

And six and a half years later when leaving.

In between it was nice!

This photo was when we had just moved in and thing weren't really in place yet.

Now it's empty. Or, was.

I will miss my bedroom window view!

Most of all I'll miss the kitchen window!

We are now settled in the countryside for good, with a lot of boxes and ikea bags, no room for a Christmas tree this year, and with a big need for further renovations. Neither Eddi nor me have been home a lot lately and won't be for some time either, so I will have to be patient and take it bit by bit.

And now some new people are living in the flat. I hope they will have lots of great memories as well!

THE PERSISTENT ORCHID

I have an orchid in my soon-to-be-former home, that keeps in growing and making new branches and new flowers. As soon as the flowers fall off new ones appear. And I don't know how this little fella does it, considering most orchids just come to wither and die under my tl-and-c, as I've pondered upon before.

Not sure what I've done differently this time, perhaps watered it with a more constant routine, or then it's the fact that I only sleep in the apartment a couple of night per week and it grows better that way because it's just not fond of humans.

Either way, I hope this one will survive the move out to the countryside and can keep making me happy with it's amazing prettiness!

HOME(S)

Everything is so clean and tidy at home now! I've been organising and cleaning (late at night, after work) for several days! 

It hasn't been this little stuff around for years.

But that is of course, because everything is now in bags and boxes in the farm house livingroom. And the place seriously looks like crap.

So after days of cleaning in the countryside I am actually dreaming about getting to organise and clean some more! But that would require the opportunity to some days off, so alas, lets see when the universe grants me a few. That, plus some renovation, and things will eventually be tip-top! (Uh.)

The reason to all of this is of course that you can now buy our lovely city home.

All though I've renovated it myself it has been on rent all along from my grandmother, who has now decided to sell it. It's sad but was of course inevitable at some point. Although I hadn't thought I'd move out to the countryside permanently before my kids were grown up so that will take some time to adapt, even though I've been living out in the peryphery most of the time by now already...

WINTER WINDOW

I am staying in town for some time now; it's nice to be here for more than just a quick stop to pick up things or just sleep and leave. The view of open fields out in the countryside may be magnificent but I've always loved the view from our windows in town as well. The kitchen window with it's pine trees always remind me of a Pekka Halonen painting.

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  ;)

HOME(S)

Or, why we have two.


Sometimes it may seem confusing posting pictures and stories of two kitchens and two different bedroms, from two homes. Where do I-we- really live?

Well, we live both in the apartment uptown in the city, and out on the farm. For me the city home has been my main home, for my husband the farm.


It is not uncommon over here to have a "summer house" or country/weekend cabin, either owned or rented for the summer, often shared within the family trough generation(sisters, parents, uncles aunts and cousins and so on), and often rather plain and simple without running water. Like my family's place in the archipelago, bought in the 1930's, which does not even have electricity, or the small cabin from my grandmother's side. But the farm house is not like that.



Even though we tend to stay out on the farm during the weekends and holidays and practically the whole summer, it's not what one would call a leisure or vacataion house or a weekend home. My husband grew up on the farm and was living there when we met. He now runs the farm with his brother, who live in another house on the premises. So there is a lot of work involved, and Eddi often goes out to the farm after work to work some more, even when we stay in the city.

The farm is about (a little less than) an hour away from town, so it's possible to live there and work in the city.

But why do we then have the flat in town? It of course results in a double set of bills. And it can be a bit annoying dragging  kids and cats andthings between two places. And as I sometimes tend to joke, hard to keep plants alive in two homes.

Well, there area lot of things to it,  but in short it has been the most -and only- practical solution. Eddi's two older boys, now in school and high school,  live with us every second week and their mother lived in the city so they went to school there. Our flat is close to their school, my studio and Eddi's work. And while I was working from 5:30 in the morning or until night in the harbour the shorter the way to work the better.


We rent the flat from my grandmother and after I sold my old small flat downtown we renovated it before we moved in. It's in the same part of town where I grew up in (so we both have ended up in our childhood homes, sort of).


We have been renovating and renewing the farmhouse too, as you know. And as it tends to be with big old houses it is something of a never-ending process, and there is still a lot to do. Like open up the roof and take out some more windows so we can get a few rooms more and more use of the upstairs. And open the floor down to the ground in another room downstairs before it can be renewed...

As we have been renovating the house on the farm we have also been staying there more.  One day we will move there out permanently, as keeping two places and going back and forth is not the most economic solution.  But if that is sooner or later is yet to see, now it's one week at a time.

And well, one week at at time is actually literal, as from the start of this year, with a very short notice - as everything tends to be so from that behalf- the boys moved with their mother (for every second week still) to a small town west of the farm, and now go to school in the countryside. So from now on, for now, we will basically live every second week out on the farm and every second in the city.

Bedside in the city. (this is my most pinned and shared image btw. Sadly not the most credited one...)