My heart is on fire

Feeling still a bit hung over from the wonderful, perfect, everything-went-as-it-should've-and-better photo-shoot in Holland. Thought to write here a diary-like story of 1 normal day of 2 crazy Finnish women...

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I woke up 04:50, like usual. Well rested after sleeping on the floor of Paulina's office, surrounded by boxes filled with Weranna's summer products.

Looking outside - still dark, but I can hear the rain...shit. Oh well, surely it will turn into sun before we need to take off...Luckily it is not SNOWING (at least not yet, like promised for these agreed 2 days the previous week)...Had to go through a few thoughts a week before, when starting to make necessary reservations and arrangements. Shall we try this in Finland or Sweden instead?? No, how could we, there's like 2 meters of snow everywhere!! How about Istanbul? To this we actually gave some serious thought, but it was a little tight to start organizing everything - who knows what kinds of permissions you need to be shooting in Istanbul (probably not that complicated, but you never know). 

Got up, put some coffee on and crawled on the couch in the living room. NICE. Went through the news, the mail, the chat, pinterest, some blogs I follow regularly...and wrote a post I had promised to http://www.villetolvanen.com/2013/03/20/verkkokaupan-perustaminen-oravanpyorasta-umpihankeen-2/ - after it has been read thousands of times, I'm a bit embarrassed of not putting more effort in it. Oh well, some day I will learn. May be.

Paulina is awake, we go through the plans and look outside - still raining, but it WILL NOT when we'll get to the beach. We'll need to build the tent, and we'll need the dinner. And lot's of detail and hang-around photos on the beach. A sign, some textures and inspirational colors. 

My heart is on fire, but my mind is trying to say - you two really have lost it...How will you ever be able to do any summer photo-shoot, when it is +5 and raining?? And I tell the rational me - It will be perfect, don't think about it, it is not snowing!!

You know the Amsterdam apartments? Narrow (about 60-70 cm wide) stairs directly to the sky? I drive the rental car in front of the house, trying not to hit any cyclists, and we load it - sweating. We actually manage to get out of the city without getting lost or hitting anybody. The first wide smiles - we made it this far!!

Behind the scenes - spring/summer 2013

Arriving to the beach - the sun is shining!! It is a lot of stuff to carry down to the beach. Especially the metal trunk - heavy SOB! The sand is wet and....well, let's call it exercise.  

We manage to get a lot of stuff done. Even I (ME!!) manage to get some decent photos taken with my Canon IXUS. Paulina's comment: 'Well, at least the camera is WHITE...' I'm looking at the weather front approaching, my hands freezing, and Paulina is getting a bit nervous - don't look at it, it won't come this way...Until it did. At some point our stuff started getting so wet we just had to leave. Our pants covered in wet sand. Our stuff covered in wet sand. Everywhere...well...wet sand. 

We go and have some late lunch in one of the many beach-side restaurants - Kibbeling, fried white fish with salad. Delicious. Drive to the city - without realizing before the next morning that there is a parking ticket glued to the windshield. 

We do the same exercise carrying the boxes and stuff upstairs - and finally drop on the couch around 17:30. With a nice glass of red wine in front of us. Nobody has the energy to go and buy food. Or more red wine. We survive on previous day's left-over salad. And some chocolate raisins. We get all our energy from the beautiful photos taken at the beach the same day <3. 

2 crazy Finnish women in Holland - if the big brands can do it, we can do it. So many things could've gone wrong, but nothing did. We don't even think of the broken lantern, or the broken ceramics which we glued together with Paulina's nail glue ;). And we do the same the next day:

Someone said - welcome home from your photo-shoot holiday. Yes, it was a dream-come-true, but perhaps not a holiday - after all!

Earthy Easter inspiration

Hand-decorated Easter eggs

Like I wrote in my previous blog post, the earthy 2013 home decor trend is definitely closest to my heart. Here I translated the trend to Easter. I just absolutely adore these hand-decorated eggs. These are made of real brown eggs, carved and decorated by hand.

Hand-decorated Easter eggs

Hand-made ceramic plate by Petras Lera

 Petras Lera Ingrid platter is probably the most beautiful piece of ceramic I have ever seen. And I need to confess - I dropped it on the wooden floor on thursday. Side first. Of course. I closed my eyes and opened them again. I was kind of certain it would be in 2 pieces. NOTHING. Now I don't recommend to be throwing these around the floors like I seem to be doing daily ;), but they are hard, good quality pieces.

En Gry og Sif Easter hen

 And of course the Easter hen by En Gry of Sif. My very favorite this year.

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Pääsiäinen 2013, maanläheiset värit

My favorite trend 2013 - earthy

Earthy colors, earthy forms, earthy materials, earthy production techniques (=hand-made)...needless to say, it all sounds so Weranna's -like.

I have this corner in our upper floor - it's 'my corner'. That's where I sit (yes, even now) when the kids are playing in their rooms (read: at my feet) or watching kid's channel, and that's where I knit. With good light and a warm blanket (one could say I should blog about spring and summer, but it is SOOO COLD I just cannot give up my Kenana blanket (pictured above) and Samantha Holmes slipper boots just yet).

Anyways - the color of my corner keeps on changing. It's gone from lavender and blue to earthy, to red for Christmas, and now back to earthy.  Cottonhut cushions (available among other resellers at Stilrummet) are my very favorite - these are the use-and-wash type, which are the only option in this family.

My interior magazine basket is leather and from Balmuir, of course, and the hand-woven linen carpet from Cottonhut.

The idea for the crochet garland I got from a Swedish magazine 101 Ideer - there was a wonderful article about Annelie and her hand-made home decor ideas (more in her blog 'Tant brun' http://www.betongsnackor.blogspot.se). I just had to try using Novita's Hanko yarn. Perfect. The pattern is ridiculously easy, and I got my garland done in about 2 hours. Unfortunately I cannot post the instruction here, as I might get into trouble doing so, but you can find one similar at Sarahndipities. Have fun :)!

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Virkkaus, maanläheiset värit, 2013 sisustustrendit, sisustusvärit 2013

Welcome to Weranna's Easter home

Easter inspiration

Don't you just love spring flowers? Yesterday I took some (some hundreds ;), perhaps I can use 5% of them...) Easter and spring photos at our showroom, and ended up mostly taking pictures of the flowers. You'll see during these few weeks before Easter...what really BUGS me is that I still can't get the light right. I mean look at these photos - 4 of them, all in same exact spot, within 1 minute, and all the lights are whatever. Perhaps I should just stop using the Photoshop auto color option. Ahh, I don't know.

The sun was shining outside, and it was just so pretty in our 1952 traditional wooden house. The flowers are placed in En Gry og Sif Easter egg basket to welcome the guests.

En Gry og Sif Easter Egg Basket

Spring flowers

Of course my favorite bag (my 10 kg portable office still travels in one of these, carried it all around Helsinki on Thursday, for example, UNBELIEVABLY strong), Rice Raffia Shopping Bag was with,

Pink Rice Raffia Shopping Bag

as well as another absolute must, Samantha Holmes travel shawl, hand knitted in Peru of 70% Baby Alpaca / 30% Bamboo. Ivory is one of our new colors for the spring, together with the pale pink (SOO pretty!)

Samantha Holmes travel shawl

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Pääsiäisideat, pääsiäinen 2013