I GIVE IT A DAY OR TWO

Ah, the joy of a clean surface.



Especially since it looked like this moments before:

To be honest, half of this is on the floor now but the mind rests so much better with at least one level done.

ONCE A CAT LADY, ALWAYS A CAT LADY

Some casual evening chilling with a book and my hang-around cats.

Photos by Asko Rantanen / Asko Jonathan Photography
(Actually part of another series, but Lulu was keen on doing some posing 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!

THE DRAWER SWITCH

Our bedroom, especially the far back corner of it, had turned into something that seemed beyond ever being able to look good and organised again. We had had something of a big nursing table-drawer for when Dag was a baby in the room, that stored his clothes and such, and that stuff and boxes and clothes kept piling up upon. It was black like the windows but never really looked good in the room even without all the extra toppings. One day I was out in the tiny forest behind our building playing with Dag and looking up towards the windows I thought "look at that one window with all the crap in it!". Then I looked again and noticed it was ours. Oh, damn.
The nursing table left by time and got a drawer for all the extra stuff. I liked it but I am however not sure what I was measuring when I got it as it turned out it was a couple of centimetres too high, hitting just under the window but above the window sill. Things like that annoy me more that it probably should. Also, it broke my rule of trying to keep all the shades of wood in a room in the same hue; this one was lighter than my dressing table and String shelf. But all in all it looked fresh and kept my extras away. So Ta-Da! along with getting the rest of the flat in order the two years of not-really-wanting-to-invite-people-over was about to be over!

Well,  my youngest sister and hubby moved to a new house and when we went to visit she was annoyed that the vintage drawer they had got from an auction site did not fit the room they had intended it for, a room with a mint-green and white diamond checked wallpaper. She offered it to us but I had just got that new one for myself. Turns out she had been looking at that same piece online as well... Their vintage drawer was a bit lower and longer than my piece, while the lighter one I had would suit their room better. So, we ended up switching furniture and they both sit rather perfectly where they are now! Everyone is happy!

The drawer is in the same shade of wood as the rest of wooden items the room, and actually has a little more space, so it turned out a good deal.


The checked chest stores my summer/winter dresses off-season. As one basically only needs to put things in and out of it about twice a year even I manage to do so and keep it neat. And although I am the kind of person who should never store anything in boxes (as once I put something into a box, it most likely stays there. Or, then once taken out, won't find it's way back in) I keep the rest of the extras -hair pieces, hats and rollers etc. -in boxes. And so far I have actually managed to use them properly.  In fact, lately I have even been remembering tools and utensils and such that we have stored in the basement, that formerly used to be just a place where things would go to die. Now who says you can't teach an old dog to sit?

Old cats you don't have to teach anything. They will lie wherever they want anyway.

BEDROOM CORNER AND THE STATE OF UNORGANISED SPACE THAT KIND OF GROWS ON YOU

I'm so used to everything being rather (read: very) messy around home for the moment (due to me having been more than busy lately) I'm kind of getting used to it, thinking 'alright this is what it looks like now'. And almost starting to think looks nice with lots of stuff non-strategically placed here and there.
Ah, what a great excuse.

UP-PIFFED IKEA

(I thought it sounded better to piff this up rather than pimp it. You can piff stuff up in Swedish. So so be it here.)

We had this 'extra' ikea cup board over at the country house that we had used in our kitchen while between renovations. It made it into Dag's cupboard, for his clothes and bed sheets and such, with some toys for him to dig out from the bottom drawer.

I put up a piece of curtain fabric on a string to the doors, to cover up any possible mess and mis-matching baskets inside. (Which behold, is now for the whole internet to see. The cupboard is quite shallow and it was kind of hard to find small but practical enough baskets for his clothes. Good thing they are small, the clothing, hehe. I can't stand having clothes or bed linen by themselves on shelves, everyting.must.go.into.baskets.)

We changed the metallic knobs to porcelain ones.
(But we still don't have floor boards. Aaaaaaaaa....)

Dag is still staying in our bedroom;  the lace fabric match the bedroom curtains. When we eventually get the other rooms and spaces fixed up and he gets a room of his own I can change the lace to some other fabric to suit his future space. (Or, find another use for the piece...)

WHO IS THE FAIREST OF THE LARKS? / THE BEDROOM WALLPAPER

Whenever I post something from our bedroom in the city flat I get the question where our wallpaper is from. So lets give it a post of it's own then shall we.

The wallpaper is called "Ken Kiuruista Kaunein",  translating "who is the fairest of the larks?"

It was designed by Finnish ceramic artist and designer Birger Kaipiainen (1915-1988) in the 1950's.

I had seen bits of it before, online and the test sheets they have of it, and always wondered what the hell was going on there; if you look at just a detail of it it's kind of weird and the birds sort of ugly. Well, yeah. But once I saw a picture of the wallpaper on a wall I was totally smitten by it. It builds up a beautiful pattern.

Well of course, this is really the way it is with all wallpapers, you have to see them at large to really get an idea. Some patterns that look great when seen as a detail in a catalogue may be a disappointment on the wall; personally I don't like it with decorative patterns that although they are made to appear asymmetrical turn "stripy" when put together, for example.

Ken Kiuruista Kaunein comes in four color variations. It was made for and is still made by PR-tapetit / Tapettitehdas and you can get it from Tapettitalo, where is where we have bought all our wallpapers from. (I'm also assuming that you by now figured out tapetti is Finnish for wallpaper.)

 

More known than the beautiful larks is the wallpaper "Kiurujen Yö" (The Night of the Larks), which is said to be the most famous wallpaper in Finland. It is, obviously, also by Birger Kaipiainen and comes in many colors; the picture above shows two. (Image from Kotivinkki magazine.)

(And btw by now you probably also notice you can fit whole sentences into just two words in Finnish. Or, in fact, one. End of mini-langauge lessons.)

Another little btw, there's an exhibition of Birger Kaipiainen's ceramics at Emma, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, which is just around the corner from us.

THE BICYCLE BAG TURNED BABY BAG

I have a thing for colorful kitchy items and got this oil cloth bicycle bag last summer just beacuse it had a babmi and a bow on it. First I kept it on the pram over the handles for my water bottle and baby utensils and such, which made Eddi call it the 'parade wagon'.  And it wasn't perhaps as fantasticly practical as I had imagined...

 

But now it  made itself useful; I hung it over Dag's bed in the countryside and put his toys in it. Dag loves poking in bags so I have his soft "bed toys" in the bedsie bag for him to grab and put the rest of the toys, whenever I stumble upon them on the floor during the day, in the other pocket.

CORNER / MIRROR

My view from where I lie in my bed at the countryhouse;.

(Which also reminds me we really have to get the skirting boards in place!!)

UN-PIMPING IKEA

While we were at it, upgrading Dag's bed,  we also changed our bed.
You may wonder why, and to what, as it looks pretty much the same as the old one.

I needed more storage space and wanted a bed that would fit storage boxes underneath. The previous bed had drawers of it's own but they were mostly the cats' domain; they tend to hide and sneak around in there so nothing that wasn't in need of a cat hair-bath could be stored in them.

We got the Leirvik bed from Ikea. It was a little too uu-ladi-da decorative for my taste so I bought it with the intention not to put it together all the way; we turned it the other way around as in footboard up and left the high curly part of the headboard out.

The holes intended to fasten the left-out part of the now-turned-footboard were easily filed with wall putty and painted over. And the whole footboard anyway covered with blankets and clothes and all sorts of stuff, immediately.

FROM BASKET TO BAMBI

 When Dag first arrived (you know, nice and neatly, bought by the stork. Haha) he slept in my father's old baby basket from the early fifties.

 Some time ago he outgrew it and we had to move him to a bigger crib.



Which also is my father's old one; the bambi bed that had been waiting for new babies in the woodshed  on the island.

It's the Bambi-bed because it has a bambi painted on it.

 It has some pink rabbit and crazy-happy squirrles on it too.
Funny thing is I was browsing an online vintage store and they happened to have this exact same bed!
I almost wanted it just because, but it was sold already.

Lil' mister minding his own business. 

 I got the black wooden cat at a flea market last spring.

Good night!

...for some of you out there. Not over here! This little fella will start shouting and craving for boob in 3, 2...

NEW OLD LAMP

We got a vintage lamp from Eddi's cousing that they didn't need, but goes perfectly well with our wallpaper. I love the floor lamp we used to have by our bed before, but it was getting a bit crowded with the crib in the bedroom too, so letting go of the old lamp to get more floor space cleared up the room nicely. I'm taking the floor lamp to the countryhouse instead - the house is so big there will always be a corner for it somewhere to stand in...

Someone had done something strange at some point to this lamp though; it did not have a switch but had to be plugged in and out, and the chords had been modified and attached in a weird way. I took it to an electrician who fixed it with proper old school switches too for a very decent price. It's really worth getting your old electrical equipment checked and updated by someone who knows what he or she is doing; this applies to other than just lamps too of course!

IT TAKES A RAINY DAY (OR TWO)

It's been a real deluge over here lately, with water pouring down like never before. For days. But bad weather does bring a little good with it too;  we're getting some things at home off the 'to do'-list in the countryside house.

We changed the knobs on the ikea-drawer to porcelain ones. It's an easy way to update or personalize a piece of furniture.


I put bigger more decorative ones on the small drawers on top, and plain, smaller ones on the rest.
Halfway trough I noticed it would look pretty fun with different knobs on all levels, like here, but it wouldn't really suit the over-all style of the room so I changed them all the way trough. But perhaps somewhere else?

In the background you can see some traces of our other project...


... Which was putting wallpaper on the closet door. This wallpaper used to be on one of the walls in the room.  I like it, but it did not really suit the room (the floor and the wood of the window, which would have needed to be painted in order to go along with the wallpaper), so after we painted it over I thought it'd be nice to still use it as a detail. I will put it inside the linen cabinet too, once we get one up here.

I also changed the knobs on the bedside tables to the same ones as in the drawer, for a unison feel in the bedroom.

IN THE BEDROOM

 I'm very glad we managed to paint the bedroom in the countryside before the baby arrived (the day before, actually - I probably helped incude my labour by doing the first coating my self while Eddi was farming about :) as I have been spending more than plenty of time here lately. Today I managed to sit a little while outside, first time in eleven days, whoah!

Regarding how well the last stage of my pregnancy went (I was at the gym a few days before, painted the room the day before and wore heels the day of delivery) I doubt I have ever been in a condition this physically crappy before. So yes, it's been mostly bedroom for me still since we came out on Friday! 

So it's a good thing the room looks rather enjoyable - it would have annoyed me to stare at the "old" walls all the time.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm generally fine and it's mostly admiring baby not staring at the walls. But I am very much waiting to be able to move normally again, get out and go for walks and so on!)

I aimed to paint the walls mint green (surprise...) but I suppose the colour actually ended up being more something of sea foam green. Those balls of mine will hang above the baby crib, once we get it in.

We still have stuff to do here in the though;  apart form choosing a baby bed (there are lost of old beds just "lying" around the houses here but so far Dag has been sleeping in our bed), adding baseboards, fixing a linen cabinet and changing the drawer knobs (I want porcelain ones) and so on.

But so far so good!

BEDSIDE, ON WHEELS

 I've changed those small vintage side tables we had as night tables to trollies instead.

Although the tables looked nice, they  didn't have a lot of surface and instead of looking like they should (like this: here, and here -yes, some of hte books are the same. But I read others inbetween instead!)...

...they had been a mess lately. In fact, it's been quite messy at everywhere home the whole winter as I have had no extra time for anything and also have been rather tired, so anything that will get me more organized and leave me more floor space is welcome.

Now I have three levels for my things to store on less floor space than before! Hopefully they'll keep in order... As the trolley is easily moveable I can now use the drawers under the bed with less effort than before.

I got Eddi one too. I originally intended the trollies for our kitchen and for the countryhouse kitchen but then it struck me they had a more important task to fill. (The cat lamp does not really sit well on the trolley, but I have other plans for it already. For the baby. Somewhere.)

The metallic trolley (which btw is MINTGREEN (whoah!, in case you did not notice :) is from ikea. I was stalking their site every day after spotting it in a interior magazine, until I saw they were available in the store and then rushed over. I had started seeing the trolley in lots of interior blogs the days before and had to hurry before those bitches went and bought up my trollies!

I am now on a quest to organize and tidy a lot in the house before the baby comes. One thing is to make more space in the bedroom, to fit the baby bed... I will thus exchange the floor lamp to a vintage lamp that will hang from the wall above the bed; we have the lamp already waiting to be brought into town from the country house.  But more on that later.