LONDON

Here's a dress I wish I'd bought once it still was out there. Not that I thought it looked much on the site, but some time ago I saw a girl wearing this and it looked really good, cut, fabric and all. Damn! It's one of Cath Kidston's dresses in the London pattern, with red double deckers on a light blue background, that they no longer sell.

Well perhaps I'll eventually get over it.

At least now I get to spot some real double deckers, as I will be in London myself the following days!
Performing at Varie-Tease and Exotica Party as part of the London Burlesque Festival, come and say hi if you see me!

5 x BREAKFAST

For me breakfast is the best meal of the day; my schedule is such that I usually have the most time in the morning.

Apple-banana porridge on oats from our farm with raisins and black currants plus a little bit of almond butter on top. I cook the apple with the oats and put the banana in about half way trough, but the berries and raisins after. A basic porridge becomes more fancy that way, almost like a dessert. A small spoon of peanut butter, instead of almond such, is also good.

But here we have it on bread instead; peanut butter banana sandwhich, an apple and a hot cocoa drink with almond milk, vanilla, charadmom, coconut sugar and some cinnamon.

And peanut butter with citrus! Who would have known those two tastes would blend together so well! Peanut butter banana-.sandwhich with cumqats - I have a little tiny tree in the house and Dag kept picking the fruits off. So they ended up on my breakfast sandwhich.
Also, avocado sandwich with sundried tomato paste and chive, lemon water and some strawberry-rhubarb compote.

First outdoors breakfast of this year! Black coffee and raw bars with berries and cocoa.

(And wowza, now I am totally going to renew myself and add a fifth thing instead of my normal four):
Brekkie no5 is a smoothie made of mango-orange oat milk (oat milk with mango pulp and orange juice in it. Nice in drinks but terrible on müsli. Just sayin'), banana and frozen strawberries, together with some dates with almond butter.

BOOTS DENIM AND BOOZE

My new booties have been put into immediate use. Good for them, good for me.

I  reclaimed one of my oldTrashy Diva dresses which I have not worn in quite a long time. It's the "liquor dress" -

 - it has a novelty style pattern with different liquor labels on.
I bought it from the Trashy Diva shop few years back when we visited New Orleans.

Now I'm thinking of letting it travel to London with me.

I'm leaving on Sunday. I hate packing for short trips. (Because then you somehow need more clothes the when you are away for a long time.) I hate having to choose what shoes to wear, shoes that you can bla bla walk around in all day. Well in any case I hope it will be warm; it finally got warm here. Warm and sunny and fabulous please!

GIANT FOR A DAY

When we were in Hamburg a couple of weeks back we visited MiWuLa. That would be Miniature Wunderland - the world's largest model train world. We were there with my whole family - kids, parents, sisters and their kids - to celebrate my father's 60th birthday (which was last year already, but hey, there are only so many available weekends to match in a year...) My dad was in to trains when he was small (and still is), thus the visit. 

Things like this totally awakes the little tech nerd in me. BIG TIME. I have hundreds of  photos from our trip to Legoland a few years back with the boys (I got a bit insane there too with all the miniature Lego worlds and vehicles that move and I am not even going to start on how many pics or video clips I started taking now at MiWuLa because it all looked so real and the airplanes fly and land by themselves.)

The place is huge. It has millions of visitors per year and they have put thousands of work hours and millions of euros on building the place over the last 15 years. One of those things that give me a headache, thinking of all the planning and execution to get something like this done... Of course, it is surely The Dream Job for some.

Here they are building new landscapes. Italy. It's interesting to get to see things half way trough too, how it's made.

And yes, I managed to shut that somebody-built-all-this-stress aside and enjoy all the small details instead. And go crazy and take 1,000 photos of everything. Well in some cases the good optical zoom could help spot details that otherwise were to small to see; I took pictures of a lot of animals for ecample to show to Dag as he had a hard time spotting those out himself.

It's a good spot for kids, although it is more fun for an adult; trying to find all the small fun, ironic details and scenes. For me it's not so much the trains (that actually go around the whole damn thing, all trough different settings and scenery that blend into one another in different etages, some 10km all in all, which itself is a total whoah -well, that's kind of the actual point with the whole place) but all the things happening.

It's mostly funny things. But something terrible happened here.

And here too. (There's an angel crying behind the tree.)
Well there are quite a lot of accidents actually.

Bikers gathering.

Pride party!

Airport catering kitchen.

Nordic walking in Scandinavia, of course.

As the old harbour worker I am, I had to take a few extra shots of all the harbours.

Mm-hhhmm, mhhhm. (Add nodding of head here.)

And then that cruise ship left berth and sailed away on water! Real water. Sorcery!

No realsorcery though, but lots and lots of chords and lots of computering behind it. (There's that headache again thinking about it. I'll spare you any pics I might have taken of any chords and servers that you could see at one point. But then I looked at the wiggling tails of the elephants at Hamburg Animal park -you could press buttons here and there to have stuff happen, like tail wiggling - and left the engineering be.)

In Finland it is forever winter. That's what it feels like for real sometimes too

The light switches between day and night with sunsets- and rises too.

Here's Las Vegas at night.


And the small green men and men in suits underneath area-51.

And a concert with some 20,000 small people attending. With lighters in the air and cameras flashing when it got dark. Plus of course moving figures doing the show on stage.

If you have a thing for technique, kitschy details, miniature stuff (and of course model trains) then you should definitely stop by MiWuLa when in Hamburg (and book tickets in advance to avoid waiting for hours).

GOLDEN BOOTIES

I don't have any shoes.

That is not completely true. It fact it is not true at all. But a sneaky little part of me of me feels so. Things are different from when I lived downtown and used to, well, I'm not even sure what I used to do before I had a child and combined it with working 24/, go out on town and such. Now I go out to the playground, to our studio and to work related meetings in the city and perhaps hang out a bit in the countryside as well all in one day and the weather is shit here most of the year and I can't wear my nice pretty heels when doing all that. So, at this point in life I need to work on the more practical side of my closet (blah). It needs some more boots.

So these little ones from Bait shall help me out from now on.

Very soft and with a polka dot lining.

Probably not that practical for when the weather is shit here, but hey, you can't have it all at once now can you.

SUVI-VINTAGE / FABRIC & VECTOR

This year's poster I did for Fintage's summer-vintage-happening Suvi Vintage.
The event takes place the last weekend of June in Tampere.

I like to use mixed media and blend in patterns that look pasted on. I did that a lot just for fun too back when I (for some strange reason I can not figure out) had the time to do outfit drawings. Perhaps because I did not have a child then. Or was dependent on a businesses of my own).

I scan or take photos of materials and textures; here I took photos of a few of my dresses, a jacket and and Eddi's shirts.

Here is a photo of my Marimekko dress for example.


Which I then coloured blue.


And turned into a skirt in a row of many!

THE BLACK TERRYCLOTH SAVER

Whenever I have a bad hair day or my fringe just is not up for it (which I guess counts as a bad hair day too) I most often cover my hair with my black beret -as you know. But now as the weather gets warmer the beret gets competition from my turban. It is made of terrycloth which is soft and stretchy but stays firmly in place without pressing. It looks a bit like it was made of velvet though. I often sleep with it when I have my hair set in pin curls or soft rollers, but it works for stepping out of the house as well. Tuck everything in and Ta-da!, instant chic-points added.

My turban is from Kuokkasen Peruukkiliike which is a tiny store inside the National Theatre and open on really difficult hours. But the internet is full of turbans. It is also rather easy to do one yourself. The internet is also full of tutorials for that. Shiny ones are pretty but if you want it to stay comfy in place the whole day without having to pin it, or it pressing too tight, go for a less shiny and slippery fabric.

PUDDING

Chia chocolate pudding. The kind of dish (or even, perhaps, treat?) that I am not really sure if it's just kind of edible or actually good.

I've made a few sets of chia pudding, or porridge (or slime) and they have never been much to cheer about. Very 'meh'. So why would I still keep making it? A) Because I still have a lot of chia seeds left over to be used up and B) you know when you sort of get this feeling you should like something (happensa lot with so called "superfoods") because you would like to like it and everyone says it's really good and also good for you? I kind of got that going on with that pudding now.

God damn it a (very) long time ago I used to make a small cup of linseed slime that I tried to get down every morning because it's really good for the stomach. The first mornings it was rather OK but after a while it just got unbearable. I mixed it with porridge but I could still feel the slimyness trough. During the same time I was also drinking apple cider vinegar in the morning (yeah those were the gourmand-mornings of 2001); a couple of spoons in a big glass of water. Cleansing and good for metabolism and all that. So they say. But it was the same with the vinegar, after a while I had to start pinching my nose and thing happy thoughts to get it down. Yuck. But that was then and now is now -I eventually (quite fast actually) gave up on the linseed slime. And vinegar. So one'd think that I now at this age would just forget about any self torment when it comes to what I ingest and move on with my life without any more superfood slime or chia seeds.
But then we get back to point A and the fact that those small little f**ckers don't come cheap.

What I had been missing all the time was of course cocoa.  Because anything related to chocolate makes most things better. And  ta-da, that chia jar of mine is started emptying up and, like I said, it might even be that it does so in a very tasty way.

The chocolate chia pudding (< bolded for those who think there is way much text here by now and just want to know what's in the cup in the picture without having to read it all):
So my chocolate chia pudding consists of chia seeds (surprise!) and vegetable milk. I use almond, but hazel or maybe coconut milk (not the canned one but the runny milky one that for example Go Green sells) is next on the list to try.  Then in with some vanilla powder, cocoa powder (quite a lot) and coconut sugar. I make it semi firm, with the milk covering the seeds well before I leave it to set over night or at least for some hours. I have a jar of lingonberry powder that I also add a little bit of. That gives a some extra sting. You can also add a tiny little pinch of salt.

When the pudding is ready I whip it a bit and mix in black currants and sprinkle coconut flakes on top. This goes well with  banana too, and with some raisins or finely chopped dried apricots mixed in. I am thinking of perhaps running the pudding in the blender when done though, to get it smooth.

Also, I've noticed a lot of small things taste better when served out of a coffee up. How is that one may wonder? The reason is probably the same that makes any beverage taste better when had out of a mason jar (according to the young and hip at least).

Do you have any food or dishes that you can't really decide on, yuck or yum?

GREEN GRANDCHILDREN

I have a plant at home that has been with me since my first ever own flat. If you think about it, it's kind of funny that plants can get so old. But of course they can. I know of some geraniums that somebody's grandmother planted back in the days.

This one is obviously a green plants that is easy to take care of, as I have managed to kill of quite many plants over the years too. It has produced many new plants that are spread out in the house and at the farm and at friens' houses. And those new plants in return have produced new baby-plants as well.


That kind of makes them like plant-grandchildren.


This one is waiting for a new home at my sister's.


And this is the newest offspring;  two actually (two branches cut off and re-planted) - their parent had grown huge. I didn't have a suitable pot for this one but no problem, one can always use a tin jar instead. (The plant itself is in a smaller planting-pot for now, standing on some gravel in the jar.)

PART-EY

This year I left out on all of the Valborg- and First of May celebrations and partying. For the first time in my life actually; I have been out in the park on this day since my first ever Vappu as a little baby with a big balloon in a pram! (A couple of years ago it was Dag's turn to be that First-of-May-baby).

It is the biggest carnival day of the year over here (I will leave out any wikipedia and other wonderweb links this time, but they are out there en masse), so it feels a bit odd to just stay at home and do
nothing. Not a drop of mead or bubbly, no crumb of funnel cake or sugar donut, (which is what is usually had on this day. Although that was mostly since I did not make it to the store in time.) To be fair to myself htough; I have not been doing nothing-nothign -last night I held a pilates practice class I have a show to do tonight. It is also pretty cold out there today too, which have not stopped me past years but today I did not feel like putting 'freezing my derriere off' on the agenda. (And every time I think about things like this it feels so strange that I worked outdoors by the sea for twelve years. Shiver. How did I really manahe that.)
However, tomorrow I'll drop the calm vibes and head out to throw and host and perform at our very own recurring club in Café Mascot! This time: Leopardiklubi; leopard themed in honour of the International Leopard Day (which is really just a day for wearing leopard print, although you could of course take a moment and think about and perhaps donate and help endagered felines too).

So if you've been out there for two days, HANG IN THERE until tomorrow and see you at Mascot!

Photo by me.