LOTS OF BLACK AND ONE FLORAL DRESS

Earlier this year I got a cotton dress on sale that was so 90's (well isn't everything these days...) with it's cut and buttons and small floral print, that it almost made scream. Or laugh. Especially since I wore it around the house with clog sandals. Just brown lipstick and a black velvet choker with a camé missing...

But this is actually something of a 2010's does 90's does 40's all depending on what you wear it with. As it is with many things. And here I am winterizing (ok ok, autumizing at this point still) the dress with something warmer - a cardi and thick tights- my beret (how surprising) and black boots. My red velvet MaryJanes would actually be a tad nicer but as my base camp nowadays is mainly the farm with all the mud and dust surrounding it, it's kind of boots time all the time.

The dress is from Indiska.

THE HAIRCUT

Dag got his first real hair cut the other day when we visited The Barbershop!

I've of course cut his hair several times already, with various results, but thought it would be nice to get it properly done for once without all the fuzz of me trying to get him to sit still. He had been very excited the whole week about his very own appointment, "when we are going to Rody" as he said several times, proud to get to sit the same chair he has seen his father getting  a haircut in as well.

So he sat very still and quiet the whole time!

Here he is doing his instant photo face. Mommy's girl!

All done, clean and neat! (Dag is such a big boy already it's insane!)

The Barbershop is located downtown Helsinki and very recommended if you want a classic mens' style haircut (and listen to good music at the same time).

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!)

MINT GREEN, WELL OF COURSE

Eddi gave me a new jacket for my birthday. 

The clothes for the colder season mainly tend to be a dark, grey or beige colour - so are most of mine - so it's nice to break the pattern.

(Although I did think about having a new coat when I still have old ones that are wearable. It is some sort of old thing, , that still spooks around in my head. Considering that it is rather cold here half of the year, and that your coat is the one item what you wear most of the year, it is not perhaps that strange to have two or three. When again few people think twice about getting a new summer dress, which you with luck can wear a quarter of the year at most...)

PANCAKES AND THE COSY CORNER

After picking up dag from playschool and before starting my evening classes we visited my youngest sister and Dag's youngest cousin.

You know how you sometimes think it's strange that your younger siblings are all grown up? With a house and children and a dog and other normal everyday adult stuff.  Kind of like my I still tend to think of my parents as in their forties, before I have to think again and remember that in fact my husband is in his forties. And that the nineties was not about ten years ago. (The 90's will probably be ten years ago for ever.)

 My sister recently got married.

 We looked at some of the photos from the disposable cameras they had at the wedding (oh my).

And then Dag got his favourite.

Pancakes!

Little Walnut is too small for those, although he disagrees.

But otherwise Wallu is so big already he's almost walking on his own. Strange, how fast things go! Another thing that is strange is how quickly one forgets what babies were like. As in: how it was to have a little one that did not talk to you in clear sentences and who wore diapers and had to be fed and who did not sleep at night.

My former drawer, from our drawer switch last year, is now in the nursery.  (I got the vintage one they had before.) It was a good switch indeed.


Waylo (my sister has about 1,000 nicknames for everyone and everything. I like the little Walnut best.) has his own little cosy-corner next to it. Dag also likes to hang out in there when we come over.

VELVET AND PLAID

Wohoo autumn!

The pendleton jacket is vintage and the high waist velvet leggings are from World of Leggings.

1-2-3-BLASTOFF! SPECTAC-O-RAMA 2015

Tonight it's time for the rock n'roll vaudebilly spectacle again!
At MusiikkiTeatteri Kapsäkki tonight and in December plus next Friday at Voimateatteri in Kouvola!

Last year we were part of producing the event, and so this year, although this time we've only produced the burlesque parts for us and our student troupe The Shangri-La Showgirls and not so much the setup for whole evening.
Poster by me.

PASTEL PEACH MEETS STRAWBERRY BLONDE

It's already been a month since I coloured my hair but there hasn't really been many pictures of it yet, but now I've almost already forgot how it looked before. But here it is, a pastel-peachy straweberry blonde rose gold shade! That is also really hard to get to show right on photos. (And to keep up.)

Those who have read my blog a long time (thisblog turned eight years around last week, can you believe that, eight!? That's a very long time.) know that I used to be blonde for many years (with some pink addition in the very end) before I had to give up on the platinum. My hair had turned so bristle and thin from all the bleaching and purple shampooing I had to do something about it, and back then it felt like a big thing because I had been blonde for so many years and also felt it was a big part of my stage character. Thus my "hair project" began to get my hair healthy again; I started colouring it closer to my own shade and growing the bleached parts out (eventually cutting it short in between). As that project has been 'completed' for some years now -my hair grew out strong and annoyingly healthy (especially after the herb colours) and thus much harder to style and curl - I guess it was time to turn it around and start damaging it again... Of course.

It took two visits to the salon (I go to Pinkki Paplari) with a few days of a not-to-be-seen-in-too-many-photos kind of in between-shade (as in the picture with the braids). We did bleach it with Olaplex in the mix, which should make the bleach less harmful on the hair.



t's quite a big change going from all-natural hair care to 'needs-a-lot-of-maintenance'-hair. But it was a thought I got into my head, pastels, (again, I have always had a thing for cotton candy hair, even though I didn't go all the way now) and  I couldn't get rid of for a few very intensive days when I also had a chat with my hairdresser who got all worked up too and when I then all of a sudden I had booked an appointment. But as the waiting time was long and as I actually really like my own colour as well, I started thinking of all the work (and money) involved with keeping a hard-to-maintain shade,  so when I got to the salon I hade decided bail out and just go a little lighter and more intense in colour with some herbal shades on instead. But alas, peach happened anyway!

So my hair is now something of a half pastel half natural shade!
(Me to Eddi: "this could almost, you know, almost-almost pass for natural, right? " To which he replied with a simple "No".)

It does change a bit after every wash and requires colour masks to not just turn a golden blonde (read: yellow). And even though the olaplex-treatment may have helped the hair from getting too damaged it is still dryer now. Which in fact is a good thing as I am growing out the bangs, as it is easier to style them away now and they stay in place. Wooh! And also, curls stay longer, going on day four in the pictures. Yeeey.

AUTUMN CRAVINGS (AND YES THEY INVOLVE CHECKS AND TARTAN)

I don't really often (as in nowadays never, almost) post about shopping, and I don't do that much shopping myself now either, but I really like this autumn collection and styling from my old fav Tara Starlet , so I just have to say it out loud a couple of times:

Yes yes yes and yes.

Ah, that's better.

Also now at xxx:am it feels like my life would go much more smoohtly in a pair of wide legged checked pants. My next morning sense, visa-card and chairdrobe might not agree though.

SOFT SUNDAY TUNES

There hasn't been any Soft Sunday music* here for quite some time. Probably because there has not been that much of softness for the Sundays lately, but work -so on this one; rehearsing Spectac-O-Rama. But here's some music nonetheless:
So many beards...bears...whatever, John Grant is awesome! And he had a hedgehog cake!
*)I've been adding to that same list for six-seven years already!  And I still do, and still return to play it, because it reminds me of what I used to do and what things were like and what I though about at the time I added the songs. Like a music diary.

NORMA

Two weeks ago we did the biggest show of this year, when we performed with three custom-ordered acts at the launch of Sofi Oksanen's new novel Norma. (It's weird as it feels like just the other day; but there has been so much happening since and no days off in between so everything just melts together into one fast blur. Perhaps that's a Yey! asit means it will be summer again soon. Trying to see things from the positive side...)

Anyone who has ever made any acts where there needs to be choreography, functional costumes and a working storyline/idea knows how much work it then is to do three. Three group acts. That involves rehearsals that fit five persons schedules together. And whole lot of multitasking (like sewing meters of braids together on an airportt while waiting for the flight home..) Most often you just work on one act at a time. I can honestly say that few things I do ever really pay enough, considering the amount of work one has to put in, and neither did this. But it was an interesting project to work on nevertheless and of course also an honour to be selected to do.

Here posing in a teaser for the event with Minna Kivelä, actress and tv-personality, who hosted the event. Photo by Toni Härkönen.
(..yes it really bugs me I did not notice the old tag on the brush and that it was not photoshopped away...)


The biggest challenge however was coming up with the idea of what to actually do; coming up with an idea for a number yourself is different than from when the subject is handed to you, and that is what took the most time, just planning. Because you can't just go ahead and do an act without an actual idea that has a point even if you have a theme. Or, you can do that if the aim of the number is purely for aesthetic purposes (like say, a dance act with a colour theme, for example  having everything in red) or just for the sake of entertainment (although then too I prefer there to be something of a "thing", like in the previous example, the layers of the costume to be in different colours or the all-red costume ending up being blue at the end or so...).  Those of you who know Oksanens books know that the themes are seldom very light. Neither so in Norma. The main theme is hair, and it focuses on such things as hair trade and human trafficking, and, among other things also somewhat the beauty industry.  Different from the earlier books this story has what one could perhaps describe as supernatural elements, like that of a modern fairy tale. Such elements are easier to put into a performance but the hard part was, of course, being able to use the main themes in a show that would be "easy" to watch, entertaining, still being classified as burlesque (as, that is what we do, although the end result was closer to what one would perhaps just label as performance art), without the risk of being interpreted as something of a too light comment on very heavy subjects. Politician Pekka Haavisto was interviewing Sofi on the themes of the book in between the acts and it's not like one wants to come in with jazz hands and shake butt right after hair theft and baby farms have been the subject.

 Rehearsals and setup.
 

Backstage.

On stage. Posing as old French postcards at the beginning of the evening. Screenshot from the live stream at HSTV of the show. (Recordings of acts are often hard as they tend to focus on details and thus the big picture goes missing.)

Perfect hair, perfect life. At the salon. Screencapture from HSTV.

With lots of hair draped around. (Photo from Iltasanomatby Jussi Helttunen.)

Shot from our final number, where I am shooting my confetti gun with dedication.

More things in life should end in a confetti rain. (Iltasanomat/Helttunen)

And we got good feedback. Phew!

Ending this with a fangirl pic with Oksanen and Haavisto. (And yes those boobs are faux. Just one detail that adds on during the act, but they seemed to be the one ting definitely noticed. Even made it to the evening press...)
Photo from @sofioksanen by Toni Härkönen.

BITS OF BERLIN

Rather small bits as my trip this time mainly consisted on the way between our Air Bn'B flat and the venues, stops by the closest falafel (four in four days!) stand and sewing for and reharsing another upcoming show at the apartment... Plus not bringing my camera with me either. Because of that and the late shows it was a rather tiring trip, which you notice when you are standing in confetti rain with people cheering and you don't really feel a thing except for that your make up lays heavy and your feet feet aching. (And get a heay flu when you return home.)

Having that said, it was of course fun still - I do love Berlin!

I can't believe it's been five years since my last trip to Berlin. Went there a bit more often in the early 00's. Which is ten years ago. Ten years and beyond. (Scary, isn't it! Also, looking at old photos, damn one can age in five years.)

Rehearsal at Heimathafen.

Here's a shot of the number in question live, performed by Mama Ulita.

Backstage.

And onstage.

In between I had a little change to meet up with Frollein von Sofa for lunch in the sunshine!

An awesome lunch that is (here).

Wintergarten, the venue for the following nights, was just incredible. So pretty, with starts in the ceiling and old costumes and posters on the wall.

The backstage however not quite so for the moment. The inner yeard and containers.The glamour of showlife...

More rehersals/ soundchecking, which often is mainly just waiting. We did some chorus girl bathtubbing in those tubs on Saturday.

 This was beautiful. Sheila Wolf on Friday.

And this was totally fab. Tansy on Saturday.

And we came to realize that we actually celebrated seven years of performing on this very weekend!

Live photos by Tuomas Lairila.
Final shot of us taking a bow at the curtain call by IndieBerlin.