THE CATS ARE SETTLING IN

They are everywhere and all at once (goddamit :)!

MIDSUMMER'S DAY'S NIGHT

On the night of midsummers day I drove out to Eddi's house in the countryside after work. Eddi and his bother have taken over their family farm and run it besides their normal work. It's about a 50 min drive out of town - not that much maybe, but enough for me and oh-so-out in the country.

Muuh, see?

Quiet.

Wherever you go outside of town there are always something growing to put on your sandwich, or salad. Chive at least.

(Obvious problems keeping the sandwich together.)

One o clock in the night.

The next morning I drove back to the harbour. See how my magnificent car sparkles in the morning sun :)

SAFARI DRESS, LIVINGROOM IN PROGRESS

Today I started my much longed for week off after seven days of working. We went furniture shopping after work and I had some problems with what to wear, or rather how to find it as most of my clothes are still in suitcases (except for the really pretty ones; they were the first things I brought over and hung up :). Eddi was wondering why I cared about what to wear when going chair hunting but after a week in the harbour in these "babies" looking like this, I do care a lot.
Plus, you always get better service when you look at least slightly impressive.

Flat is developing, but it takes time and I am oh so impatient. I'll head over to my accountant and then the beauty salon to cool down a bit.

Safari dress - a great find from a charity shop a couple of years back
Shoes - a surprising bargain at Andiamo (or was even it K-Kenkä!) a couple of years back
Belt - my mom's old I think.

SUNSHINE & SOFT SUNDAY SONG

Led Zeppelin is a great band and this is a great song for lying on the grass in the sunshine, having the wind mess up your hair, resting your hangover/melancholy/lazy afternoon away; feeling the summer.

(Oh those you tube videos. This one has the words attached so you can sing along. Ta ta!)

...AND A LIL' SOMETHING FOR MYSELF

I've gone bazookas over the internet here at work, following one strange link after another - you know how it goes. It's one crazy world out there.

But as I'm sitting here making loads of money (well, depending on how you see it of course, at least loads more than if I'd be out celebrating midsummer and spending it you know) I also decided to get myself a little something (those ladies at my new local post office will get to know me very very soon. Almost have already :).

So I got this little lovely romper!

From ModCloth.

Let's just hope it will fit over my behind! Or hips (a common problem with items that have legs and not a wide hem). And since it's rather short I might have to take a run or two as I've compensated my lack of exercise with eating pizza (makes sense yes) over the past months.

The only problem with rompers and playsuits are the fact that you basically have to get naked in order to pee. But I can live with that.

A LIL' SOMETHING 2

Next Friday, July 2nd (is it going to be July already? Oh my.) Tampere will go all exotic due to the Burlesque Coctail-party, held att YO-talo, organized by Tampere Burlesque.:


I will be elsewhere as the Helsinki Cruising Club is on the same night, but you can catch for example Sally Vanilla and the Finnish Blonde Burlesque troupe on stage. There will also be a Mucha-inspired Dr.Sketchy's held before the event starts!

Now the following one mostly goes out to the Finns, but of course to everyone else too who happens to be around: Vaudeville Boutique is offering one of you the chance to win two tickets to the event!

Enter by leaving a comment below and make sure to leave me your email if you do not have a blog or such trough which I can reach you. The contest is up until Wednesday, June 30th at around 15:00(EET).

A LIL' SOMETHING 1

Fifty Dollar Vintage lists nine vintage pieces a day, fifty dollars a piece.
They are now offering you a 15% discount with the coupon code FREELANCERS.

The offer is valid until July 15th.

BLADI BLA-BLA

"The sun get's up at 03:55 and sets at 22:50. The day is 18 hours and 55 minutes."
( Helsinki forecast 25.6.2010 / Finnish Institute of Meteorology)

(Bedroom, still in progress.)

I've been away for a while, well, kind of; had a busy week behind me; working the early shift, having a record sleeve shot, living around boxes, running around picking up ordered house-stuff here and there. And I also smashed our work-van in an accident in the harbor. Chaotic. I am a very right here, right now person when it comes to some things, like home. I hate not to get the shelves up right away I cannot stand it when parts to whatever are missing. The wireless internet is not working fo some reason. It drives me crazy. Bazookas. But, things are starting to find their place now and I calm down.

Today it's midsummer and most people have fled town, heading out for the countryside to celebrate the light (and get totally drunk) like the tradition is. I'm staying in town alone however as I'll be working all holiday long. A lot of people get devastated when they here someone will have to work during midsummer as most places are closed, but - the harbor never closes. Its not that bad; I've worked many midsummers before. I'll just take it easy with some white at home and try to get rid of all the boxes, boxes, boxes tonight.

It's so light up here at this time of year; the nights around midsummer are pretty magic. It never gets darker than a pale shade of lavender, and that does not last for more than a few hours.

I've been getting up at five the sun is already shining brightly then. It feels as amazing each year, every morning - I always tend to forget that this is what it's like (and get as chocked every winter at how dark and cold it actually is…)

I remember those summer nights years back that were all spent out on town - eyes almost hurting when coming out of the nightclub into the bright late night, early morning. It always felt as strange. Sometimes I went straight to the morning shift from the bars, blinking my make up heavy lids to the strong morning sun at four thirty. (I could never pull that off nowadays). I've spent some June nights higher up in the country at festivals and such - the sun doesn't set there at all (as compensation to the almost total darkness that hangs over for the winter-half of the year.

This year however it's cloudy and raining so there will be no nice late evening sun to enjoy. I don't really mind, I keep the balcony door open and listen to the rain outside. I like it.

(But you know what I hate? It's getting darker now (since Monday), a few minutes per day. One won't really notice that until August or so though. But still. Depressing isn't it?)

SO,

today is the day I'm moving. I will be in the middle of bags, suitcases and boxes, but over here I'll be joining Dotti at her virtual coffee party.


(Dress - Big Beautiful Barbara Brown, Head piece - Frollein von Sofa. The gloves and bag are vintage. )

PACKING.

The Sounds (and yes once again, the Finnish Sounds form the 60's, not the contemporary Swedes :) - Kaipaan Sua

The Sounds did typical rautalanka music, using influences of melancholic Scandinavian traditional songs, like in this song (although rautalanka in general is instrumental).

(Updated Soft Sunday on Spotify : here)

HELMET!

I've been shooting a commercial today and the hairstylist put a whole bottle of spray into my hair - it looks like a wig and feels like a helmet! Like I can safely go and bump my head into doors and walls now.
Insane. (And we cut off hairs peeking out of the 'do. That's insane).
But anyway, it looks normal on film.

FROM MY CAMERA / LAST DAYS IN THIS HOME

Blooming.


Reading.


Eating.


Packing.

I, SUCH A LONG TIME AGO

I love playing around with photo effects (especially at those moments when I should be working with something totally different or say, just be sleeping). Photoshop is a brilliant too if you know how to use it (can be devastating-or embarrassing- if you don't)*, and full of new things to find out all the time. Although I prefer to alter my images myself- for work, promo or just me- I still find interesting and fun to search for and try out online image generators; see how they might be built, how similar the transformed images turn out, and perhaps to copy the effects. At one point I was a bit fascinated with poladroid, and now the hipstamatic application that everyone's sporting (well, which is for iphones and not computers - yet ).

Tonight I got stuck on a japanese site transforming my pictures into very very old:


You can find and play with it here: labs.wanokoto.jp/olds




I think it only works properly on pc's though as I was not able to download the pics to my mac. I transformed a lot of pics for fun to see different results and on what kind of images the effect works on; it's easy as the site is rather fast.
The pictures featured above are screenshots.

(The images with the parasol are originally by S.Korhonen)

*)= Once a girl commented on a post of mine saying the picture was badly photoshopped so that my arm looked strange. I coulnd't get what the hell she was talking about** - that pic was straight out of the camera. And btw even if I often correct the levels and light, sometimes may blur away a messy flat in the background or add some colour filters for effects I do not change my limbs here on the blog :)

**)= You don't put me, bad and photoshop in the same sentence!
(Unless someone else fucked up a picture with me in it, of course:)

FINALLY!

La la la la lallalla!

FOR YOUR LOVER GIVE SOME TIME

HOW CANDY CAN YOU GO?

Very candy; I'm matching the colours of my new kitchen:

I think it's alright to dress super pastel and candy-like to the verge of getting a toothache if you break it off with some darker colour, like here, deep red. And after a week of wearing a paint-covered old Iggy Pop t-shirt it felt great to break that off with something totally different, even if it only was for a moment.

Now it's back to the tee and a whole lot of wall paper!


The skirt and the bag are vintage from Q's Daydream, the top is from Freddies of Pinewood.
(The hairflowers are from Tiimari, cut of their branch and tucked in my hair roll and I think you all know the shoes.)

FLAT-TO-BE phase 4; DETAILS

I've been running around on meetings and doing errands and renovating. In other words, I've been way from the internet most of the time and that makes me feel terribly isolated.
(Such a 21- century problem, getting all anxious after couple of days away from the internet!)

But with the flat; we're getting there. (There's not too much else to blog about this week I'm afraid :)
The living room is getting it's wall paper and I've put the old, cleaned light switches back on.


A lot of thing s will be in my favorite color combination, pearl grey and white (as seen in my header among other things). The door frames for example.


My mom was cleaning out one of the closets and saved this tin jar for me. Fazer is the biggest company (and also and one of the oldest) of bred, biscuits and most of all sweets, in Finland.


We are also keeping the original wardrobe closet. I planned to paint the closets sky blue but there was a lot of pink over from the kitchen. Alas, closet is now pink.


And the kitchen is coming up. We're making it pretty much the same as the original kitchen, only with some modern benefits. Some parts were bought ready but we have also ordered some items handmade from a carpenter. We've kept the original door handles from the old kitchen.


Eddi put up the tiles yesterday. Kitchen will be ready today and I'm off now to pick up some more wall paper we've ordered!

(YOU CAN MAKE UP THE HEADLINE YOURSELF AS I CAN'T COME UP WITH ANYTHING SMART)

One of the many smaller things I like about summer is that it is so much easier to dress. And nicer since it's less to think about. (And in general you can wear nicer outfits too, but that depends on how you see it. Sometimes I prefer autumn outfit-wise too). Either way it's not that warm here now, so I still have to drag a jacket along to be on the safe side.

This is what I'll be wearing today, for a little while while doing some errands. Then I'll slip into something more, eh, practical as I start painting doors in the new flat.

The skirt is vintage, found at our summer cottage, and the blouse Trashy Diva.

MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME

Some Soft Sunday music for you:



Have a nice one! (Sunday, that is :)

FLAT-TO-BE, phase 2 1/2 & 3

Mostly phase three, as I forgot to take pictures there in between... pretty much how things are now:

This is the room with all the stuff in it you could see in the previous post. The study. Btw you'd never believe on of the most heavily trafficked roads in Finland runs just behind those trees.

Bedroom floor done. We'll most likely paint it, but struggle between two colors; pearl grey and black. A shiny black wooden floor looks great, but it might be too dark for this room though.

New shiny kitchen floor and strawberry milkshake-coloured walls! There's not much else in the kitchen for the moment though, except electrical stuff (as you can see).

My grandparents lived in Canada and the US, California mostly in the 1950's and 60's and later in Tanzania. There are some items of that time "left over". I found this wooden box in the basement. I think I'll keep flowers in it, on the balcony. (I'm also keeping the small table the box is on as my grandmother had no use for it in their new home.)

The wooden fruit box was lined with old, early 60's newspaper ads.

Soon it will be kitchen time!

CARS AND CHICKS AND CRUISING

"Oh, tires!"

Tomorrow, on Friday night, it's time for the first Helsinki Cruising Club at Nosturi.

It will really be a great happening but I mostly just feel like sleeping backstage until my turn is up; I've been going to work at 6:AM, then renovating after that, coming home late after which I've worked on a commission until midnight. Every day, the whole week. Needless to say, I am so very tired. I'm going to have to pin curl my hair and glue some sequins that've fallen off back on my outfit in between the ships at work tomorrow. Oh oh oh.

But then again I really want to try and stay awake before my show too as I want to catch the bands; Rob Coffinshaker (from the coffinshakers), The Barnshakers and Kim Lenz & Nick Curran.
Damn work, it calls at Saturday morning too.

But back to the cars, here are some of our car inspired pictures from the Cruising shoot to get you in the mood. (Set up-and behind the scenes pictures were to be seen here as you may remember).
The pictures are taken by Marko Saari.

Lola.

Vera.

Tinker Bell.

Jackie.

We should make some "The Itty-Bitty Tease Cabaret-cards: Collect Them All!" don't you think?

FLAT-TO-BE, phase 1.

Or, what I've been up to lately.


Here are some pictures I took just before we started the renovation, which have now been going on for two weeks. I feel I've done nothing but renovate lately.
I hate renovations.
But I love the result.
I aimed to do as little as possible and hire as many professionals as possible, but still, in some strange ways, we see ourselves doing a lot of work all the time. Well, I guess that's the way it goes.

The flat we are moving to is my grandparent's. They moved out this winter when the whole building was having the plumming changed, into a more suitable building for those 90+. (With like, well, you know, elevators and such. Ovens that are not electrically damaged and dangerous and so on).

I spent a lot of time in this flat as a kid, and grew up just behind the corner myself. So its kind fo like going back to my roots then I guess :) Which is not a long way, only across town; barely 10 km from where I am now. But since it's at the other side of the highway bridge into -or, out of- town, making it another city, it is considered far away.
And sometimes feels like that too.
Sometimes just like home.

It looks so different now already!

We'd love to have kept the old stove, but like said; it has become kind of life threatening.

There was a lot of my granparents' stuff around. And still is, only hid in the closets for now. Tons, really, tons of books.

There hasn't really happened much in the past 40 years since they moved there - or 50 since it was built either, so there's quite a lot to do. Like taking out ugly carpets. Which I'm not doing in this picture though. I'm just pretending.

But I did break a lot of stuff! Stuff that had to be broken to get out. I felt very strong afterwards. Me and my crowbar were like this: X

The view is nice -

-you can catch a glimpse of sea from behind the trees.

More phases coming up.