FAUX

I have a big vase in the farmhouse living room that I got once with the idea to put "something huge" into, but that then I have then noticed has been rather hard to fill.  I've kept blossoming branches or the occasional huge flower in it, but in some cases I am very much for consistency - like here, I want it to have something more permanent to go along with. (Partly because, emptying/filling and washing a huge vase is kind of tricky. Tricky as in annoying.)

I wanted some flowers that would clearly not be or look real, but not in a almost-but-not-quite-polyester kind of way, rather something more stylized. At some point somewhere I saw really nice and simple but still well detailed flowers made of wood, which I have later tried to find but without any luck. Or then I just really pictured them in my head until I thought I had actually seen them somewhere (that can happen you know), as not even the internet seems to provide..

A few days ago when on a totally different errand I spotted these huge flowers and they got to move into the big green vase for now.

I think they're fun.
The flowers are from Kodin1.

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.)

POTS AND PLANTS

As you may recall me saying before; I am a huge plant consumer and I start feeling all green-thumb at the change of seasons and usually spend a small fortune on plants and flowers for both the house and garden and balcony. (And now in spring time on seeds to. But I seldom get as far as to actually plant them to be honest...).

Some plants I've managed to keep alive and even grow for years*, but the ones I try to treat like they should be treaten over winter (like my geraniums) always die. So I've just stop doing that, and the ones that are by the window all-year round instead of being put in winter-mode make it.

This week I had a couple of days kind-of-off, so I took the time to change the soil for my indoor flowers, took come cuttings, bought a lot of new plants.

I haven't really liked it at home in quite a while as I have been so busy and everything has been so messy but new plants and flowers really do magic!

I always thought this part of the dining room was too pale and lacked something (while waiting for new wallpaper or some paint on the furniture or what we decide to do when the time is right); I have been seeking a large colourful painting for the wall to give it what's missing but for now, plants shall do the trick - they can really save a lot of things.

Ah, orchids, I love them, but have never managed to get any to bloom again after loosing their blossoms, even thought I've cut the stem like adviced. This time I'm going to try and be more consistent with fertilising etc. I think I'm going to name Monday my plant day so I'd remember to do all those other things that plants need to thrive other than just water them.

I clearly have it in me to become not only crazy cat lady but also crazy plant lady one day.

(*btw, someone was worried that the large plants in the living room would not make it as they were not by the window but I can let you know that they are doing just fine ;)

HOME(S)

Or, why we have two.


Sometimes it may seem confusing posting pictures and stories of two kitchens and two different bedroms, from two homes. Where do I-we- really live?

Well, we live both in the apartment uptown in the city, and out on the farm. For me the city home has been my main home, for my husband the farm.


It is not uncommon over here to have a "summer house" or country/weekend cabin, either owned or rented for the summer, often shared within the family trough generation(sisters, parents, uncles aunts and cousins and so on), and often rather plain and simple without running water. Like my family's place in the archipelago, bought in the 1930's, which does not even have electricity, or the small cabin from my grandmother's side. But the farm house is not like that.



Even though we tend to stay out on the farm during the weekends and holidays and practically the whole summer, it's not what one would call a leisure or vacataion house or a weekend home. My husband grew up on the farm and was living there when we met. He now runs the farm with his brother, who live in another house on the premises. So there is a lot of work involved, and Eddi often goes out to the farm after work to work some more, even when we stay in the city.

The farm is about (a little less than) an hour away from town, so it's possible to live there and work in the city.

But why do we then have the flat in town? It of course results in a double set of bills. And it can be a bit annoying dragging  kids and cats andthings between two places. And as I sometimes tend to joke, hard to keep plants alive in two homes.

Well, there area lot of things to it,  but in short it has been the most -and only- practical solution. Eddi's two older boys, now in school and high school,  live with us every second week and their mother lived in the city so they went to school there. Our flat is close to their school, my studio and Eddi's work. And while I was working from 5:30 in the morning or until night in the harbour the shorter the way to work the better.


We rent the flat from my grandmother and after I sold my old small flat downtown we renovated it before we moved in. It's in the same part of town where I grew up in (so we both have ended up in our childhood homes, sort of).


We have been renovating and renewing the farmhouse too, as you know. And as it tends to be with big old houses it is something of a never-ending process, and there is still a lot to do. Like open up the roof and take out some more windows so we can get a few rooms more and more use of the upstairs. And open the floor down to the ground in another room downstairs before it can be renewed...

As we have been renovating the house on the farm we have also been staying there more.  One day we will move there out permanently, as keeping two places and going back and forth is not the most economic solution.  But if that is sooner or later is yet to see, now it's one week at a time.

And well, one week at at time is actually literal, as from the start of this year, with a very short notice - as everything tends to be so from that behalf- the boys moved with their mother (for every second week still) to a small town west of the farm, and now go to school in the countryside. So from now on, for now, we will basically live every second week out on the farm and every second in the city.

Bedside in the city. (this is my most pinned and shared image btw. Sadly not the most credited one...)

TURSKISH (DE)LIGHT

Eddi goes on lots of trips for his work and when he went to Istanbul jsut before the Holidays I asked him to bring me some lamps back home; I've always loved turkish and ottoman style mosaic lamps and I wanted something to colour up the dining room which is rather pale.


I got these two small table lamps as Christmas present. They sit well among the other things I have at the countryside house.

CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas! Which you know still goes on for more than a week! (Officially, over here and in my book at least.) Hope you all are having a good one!

This year turned a splendid one over here, with much awaited snow falling just a couple of days before. We've been out in the countryside and altough it's beautiful and cosy it also gets rather hectic, with dinners and family gatherings and lots of to-do's. The middle days in between Christmas and New Year's have always been my favourite as those contain a lot of taking it easy.





And eating chocolate. And having wine. Plus lighting candles everywhere.


This year I made our Chrismtas tree to resemble the one's the Moomins make when they once wake up at winter and experience Christmas. Dag is a huge Moomin fan, and I am a big fan of Tove Jansson.



The tree has random items like sea shells (I got huge ones from a masquerade shop and cut them a bit smaller and glittered them over the course of a few days) and spoons and cups and pearls. Altough I used pom poms instead of pears.

Instead of a star it has a huge rose on top.

Quite suitably they read the chapter about the Moomins on Christmas on the radio earlier during Christmas Eve.  Here's what the original looked like from the books:

I noticed I have now apparently reached that stage of adulthood (that some have been in all of the time, I know, but not me) where one changes the textiles at home according to season. I made this table cloth for the holidays, consisting of different bits of red-and-white fabrics - X-mas points to the maxxx!

On Christmas Eve my whole family and Eddi's parents came over to us -four generations all-in-all.


My youngest guest -my new nephew- was just two weeks old!

Dag was a little eager to start with the Christmas dinner. (He's too young still to know to be eager for the gifts. Well, that will propably change nexgt year already...)

Then Santa Claus came over!
I remembered being scared of him when I was very young but this year, being the first Dag met Santa, he was very brave and only a little shy when he shook Santa's hand and introduced himself.

He had been a good boy and got lots of toys.

Calm Christmas Day morning.