Merry Christmas

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the jacket!



The house is cleaned and decorated, the (artificial) tree is up, treats have been baked, gifts wrapped and Christmas CDs are playing. This year's new find and favourite is Elvis's Christmas album.



And this year's favourite decorations (besides the tree, of course) are these Victorian Christmas cards.



It's time to quieten down and relax. Eat. Stitch. Knit. Read. Whatever one feels like doing.



I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and if not a wonderful and quiet time during this darkest time of the year.

Christmas

It's that time of year again when blogging becomes very difficult, because nearly everything I do is meant to be a secret from someone. I am keeping myself busy by knitting and sewing and stitching and decorating and baking and relaxing. It was Finland's Independence Day on Thursday and DH was home from work on Friday as well, so I've also tried to have a bit of a holiday. We watched some movies and I've read books and magazines. We had friends over on Thursday and we played some board games with them. That's always fun.



Here's something I can show you, since these are just for me. I made these small patchworks starts after seeing a photo of similar ones in the latest Marie Claire Idées. The photos are awful, but the days are so lightless here now that I can't help it. Should have taken one by a window before I hung them up..

Here's what I did

I'll start with an action shot :) Me in our kitchen cutting pine twigs.



Here are the results. I made pine twig balls and hung them on our balcony. I poked the twigs into the green thing you see hanging in the first picture (it's a thing you use to make floral arrangements with, in Finnish we call it "oasis brick"). The thing you see hanging on the wall (below) was inspired by this post.



I had extra twigs left over, so I covered a small table we have on our balcony with them and put pots of moss on it. This was inspired by someone's blog, but I can't remember whose. If you know, let me know too so I can give credit to the right place.



I also tied up a bunch of the reeds and other twigs, some with tiny cones, to make up an autumnal bouquet. I'm so happy to have gotten our balcony decorated for the autumn and winter with no money at all!



The final thing I did, was to put the pine cones into a jar.

Kitchen

Thanks for all the comments on the new look!

You've seen the bedroom and the hallway and today I want to show you my kitchen. Having lived with white walls for years and years in our previous apartments (rental, so we couldn't paint or wallpaper), we decided to paint the kitchen with color. During those white walls years, I'd read and reread a huge pile of decorating magazines and daydreamed about what colors to use when I'd finally have a chance to use paint. I'd settled on a green kitchen, so we went and searched for the perfect color. This wasn't the exact shade I had in mind, but I love it and I'm so happy with it!



Here is the view from the door.



And moving in a clock-wise direction, here is the kitchen from the next corner. The stove and oven are behind me.



Here's a view from the window-side of the room. Through the doorway, you can see across the hall and into the living room.



Here you can see the cabinets. They and the tiles are a lovely soft grey color (were here when we bought the apartment) and I think they go really well with the green on the walls. Other colors in the kitchen are white and pale wood.



I took an extra photo of this shelf-cabinet thing, because it's my favourite thing in the kitchen. It was made by my father's grandfather. My parents moved and redecorated a few years ago and suddenly didn't have a place for this. I volunteered to take it and my dad was happy to keep it in the family :) It holds many things that are dear to me: my small collection of Moomintroll mugs (I don't like the newer ones, so that's why it's so small), things picked up on our travels or gifted to us, along with a few photographs. To mention a few things, on the table top you see one of my first cross stitch pieces (Teresa Wenzler's Tempest) and a cookie jar my grand aunt made for me.

So, that's my kitchen. Compared to a lot of other kitchens, it's small, but it's the largest one I've had yet and at the moment, it's working for us just fine :)

Candles

I have always loved candles and every autumn and winter I go through lots of them in our home. But this autumn, I'm really utterly in love with them :) Here are pictures from our living room yesterday evening.



This chandelier was a gift from my mom. We were shopping together for Christmas presents and I saw this one (it was on sale, too) and she said she'd buy it for me instead of getting us some flowers (she was coming to our house for dinner afterwards). I happily accepted. It wasn't hung in our previous appartment since we didn't have a proper place for it, but now it's in our living room and I love it! We went to Ikea last night to buy candles and came home with 150 of them :) !



These two lanterns were also a gift. A friend gave them to me when we moved here. They are on our balcony and you can see them through the living room window.



These two are on top of the cabinet that holds our TV. It's nice to light the candles when watching TV. They provide such a nice light and make the glare of the TV less hard on your eyes.



Candles really give out a lot of light. Something I didn't really realize until I started using the chandelier. DH's comment to this was: "Did you think they burned candles just for ambience 200 years ago?" :)

Things

Here's a picture of my progress on Monday's SAL with Nicki. Nicki is working on Mystery VIII at the moment and once I'm done with part 5 we'll do part 6 together and then continue our SAL with us both working on Mystery VIII. So I thought I'd show you what mine looks like at the moment:



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Last week while on a walk, I collected some pretty leaves from the ground. I put them between the pages of a heavy book to dry them out. On Monday I took them out and made them into a small garland and hung it on our living room door.

Tiny flowers

I finally made a cloth for the palm's pot yesterday. I took some unbleached cotton and sewed the edges on a sewing machine. Then I chose a small embroidery pattern from one of my vintage craft magazines and then I embroidered them on the corners of the cloth. I used silk threads from my stash. I also added a green running stitch. It's nothing glamorous, but it's not plain either :)

Crochet

So I started the crochet thing on Saturday and on Sunday evening I was done. Well, almost. I really enjoyed crocheting again! It's been a while since I've done that. And now I think I'm going to have to find some time to do some more :)

My plan was to do four small squares and join them into one big doily to put under the pot of our new palm tree. I was thrilled to have it nearly finished and went to show it to DH. He said it was far too pretty to be put on the floor under a pot were we won't see it at all (only the very ends of the corners would be showing).



After a while I kinda agreed with him and instead of joining the squares together I decided to use them as individual smaller doilies. I put them under the flower pots on our desk. The miniature rose and the two African violets we've had there forever.



They are a perfect size for this job. And I've been meaning to crochet doilies for this purpose for a long time now anyway. Now I've just got to come up with a new plan for the palm. I'm thinking something involving embroidery... I hope I find the time this week to make it into a reality :)

What I've been doing lately

I've baked. I made granola (again) and this lingonberry pie.



I've read. Currently I'm reading this great book by Daniel Pool. I really enjoy books from the Victorian era (and earlier), and this will help me to understand them even better. It tells about the habits and customs people had then as well as the etiquette and things to do with everyday life like money and measurements. On the background on the floor you can see my cabled cardigan. It's progressing quite nicely.



I've also taken my little pumpkins out. I bought them last year and managed to dry them so they are still good for displaying.



Today, DH and I went shopping for plants and came home with a mini rose (is that what these small potted roses are called?) for the study.



And a cyclamen for the living room. These are my favourite plants to buy in the fall. The colors of the flowers are so bright and beautiful! According to my house plant book, you should be able to grow them year round indoors, but I've never managed that. I think the most I've gotten out of them is about three months before they have died. And that was in a different house. We'll see how long this one lasts.



On the right you can see the third thing we brought home. A rather large palm (my dictionary gives two English names for it: areca palm and golden yellow palm). I love, love, love it! I've wanted one for a long time now. The pot is on the floor and naturally it needs a cloth underneath it. Since I have some crochet yarn and a hook, I figured I might as well make it myself, rather than spend time and money looking for one from the stores (or eBay) :) I've already started it.

Home improvements

I think seeing all those beautiful things on our trip made as want to have beautiful things around us at home too. I don't know, but for the past week we have really been doing a lot of stuff here.



It all started when DH finally put up the board for this valance. We've had it for six months I think! And I finally sewed the valance (I've had the fabric for it since I did the curtains. It's the same fabric as I put on the bottom of them.



The I decided to finish the window treatments for the living room window as well instead of just picturing it there in my mind. I went fabric shopping and after browsing my decorating magazines, came up with this. After taking this picture I added tassels to the very ends. I know the picture is really bad, but I hope you get an idea of what it looks like. The sun was shining really brightly today as you can see from both of these pictures! Which was lovely, of course, but not very good for photographing curtains..



Now I'm lenghtening the curtains we've had up in our living room for about a year. Why haven't I done this before? That's a really good question.



DH has been doing things too! We got the small table on the left in Germany from a small antiques/repair shop somewhere (we were just driving through some villages and I saw the sign). It has beautiful legs and was in excellent condition, except for the top, which was in two pieces and had burn marks and the varnish peeling off. So DH sanded it and glued it together and put on fresh varnish. The other table is from my childhood home. It didn't suit my parents decor anymore when they last moved and they gave it to us. The top was again in bad shape, with ring marks (from flowerpots, I guess) and the varnish was strangely a lot lighter than the rest of the table, so he sanded and varnished it too.



Despite being busy with the apartment, we've still had time to enjoy the beautiful summer weather we've been having lately. Here's small posy I gathered from a nearby meadow today.

Crochet rug

I finished this yesterday for our balcony. I really like the texture of it (the first pic is trying to show it), and the coloring. It was quite easy to do, although quite tiring for the hands. I used a 10mm hook. Even so, I think I'll buy a sheet or something from a thrift store and do another one later on.
Here's another pic, with my foot to show the size.

This is where I sleep

I realized, that although I love looking at pictures of other people's homes, I've hardly shown any pictures of mine. You've only properly seen the hallway. The rest of the house has been coming together gradually and it's almost done, so I thought I'd show you some pictures of our bedroom.


The bed is probably the spot that has the highest concentration of things I've made in our home. I've done the bedspread (I hand quilted it; I was crazy!), the nap quilt, some cross-stitched pillows and Bertil. You can also see the stars hanging from the headboard. I'm thinking of taking them down, though, because they seem a bit wintery to me. Oh, and on the nightstand on the right side (my side) you can see a bit of the lovely wedding sampler DH and I got from Christine!
I've also done the crochet doilies that are on the nightstands (and slightly visible in some of the pics).


This photo shows that I do have some framed cross stitching on the walls, too! It's the Bride by Lavender and Lace.


This pic is taken from the window and towards the door, through which you can see the hallway and the blue wall of our study. Oh, and my small teddy bear collection (from around the world). And you might also notice that the chair by the door has some of the wool socks I've done and a cardigan as well (I think it's also time to pack those wool socks away!). The pink knitted shawl is a gift from a friend.


And these are some of my favourite things in our bedroom. Some old lace, my wedding bouquet, the wooden horse and two victorian antique prints.

What I still want to do is get a new carpet/rug to replace the beige one with the stripes. And I want to put more stitching on the walls :)

New curtains

This post could have been titled "I Heart eBay", because I do. And I'm not talking about the great great bargains on knitting yarn I've occasionally had the luck of finding. Or the great clothes I've won or even the absolutely darling vintage mags I've found. This time I'm talking about these curtains I got recently.


I made this pelmet for our kitchen window this week. And I'm in love with it :)


And last month I got and sewed these for our study. The hems were pressed and all, so I just had to do the sewing. The fabric is by Laura Ashley and I got the two curtains and postage from the UK for the price of about one meter had I gone into the store to buy them. Plus this is an older pattern and it probably isn't on sale anymore.



They were just a tad too short, so I added a piece of cream fabric at the end. They are like made for our study :)


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I want to thank every one for the nice comments you've left! It's nice to know I'm not alone in hating and avoiding parallel parking (not that I thought I was, because really, who wouldn't!). Also a big thank you to all who've left me ideas on how to use the pieces of lace!