RETRO BABY

This little baby here is dressed in mommy's old clothing and heading out to the islands!
Not the Bahamas though, but the Finnish archipelago. Ta-ta!

THE PLAN B-PONYTAIL

I have a ponytail! A clip-on one, obviously. I got it in case my hair will go bad (me being a milk-central nowadays, you know) and for when I won't have time to fix my my locks properly (mommy issues). A plan B, that is. Plus I've always wanted one for that sixties look, but have been stressing about not finding the right colour when bought online. I decided to finally just go for it and that I probably am a strawberry blonde - which was pretty close to jackpot!

For a more retro feel I clip it on with the claws sideways, to get a broader 'do. But I still want it to look somewhat natural - this hairpiece is not over the top in size but the length kind of gives it away. However, I actually got it with the intention to roll it into a big bun, and not wear hanging loose like this, which will make it more hard to tell. (But to be honest, it will so far it seems I will need a bit of practice for it to be a quick fixer like I thought; it was not just to clip in and go and look good at the same time...)

A FEW FAVORITES

I've often been asked to write about what make up or beauty products I use. A post promised but that seems to take me forever to get done. Maybe because I for a long time really was not enthusiastic about beauty products, just went for the same ones that I found alright year after year; mostly pharmacy products, some natural oils and some of the basic brand's stuff when it came to skin care, and quite the basic make up ones too. But during the past year I have been updating the contents of my bathroom and make up bag to mainly all-natural and all- eco (for many reasons) and have been really interested and enthusiastic in finding and trying out new ranges (can you read: shopping sprees, yes, in plural, here? Oh yes!).
Here are some favorites of mine, both old and new:

From the left-right:
Dr.Bronners 18-in-1 hemp oil pure castile soap - I totally love love love this multi use soap! My favorite is the peppermint one, which I keep in the city apartment, but the one with almond oil (pictured) also smells so good! I also have this on in lemon and lavender for my kitchens, heh, talk about addiction :)
I took a small bottle of the peppermint soap with me to the hospital when I went to give birth as it works for as well the face, hair and body. You can also dilute it with water for cleaning.

Cocovi cold pressed virgin coconut oil - we'll I've already mentioned how great coconut oil is before. I use a lot of natural oils, but coconut is my favorite. It's firm when the temperature is under +25c, and now in summer it's in between melting, so the texture is heavenly. Dag's skin is sensitive like mine, and he got a severe rash in his face. I tried different baby oils and regular brand baby lotions and finally tried soothing the rash with coconut oil and it worked wonders!

Balm Balm's baby balm - I really love this one too. It consists mostly of shea butter, has a gret texture  and as well as the coconut oil  it has been good for Dag's skin. But also on mine; I put it on my lips at night for example.

Melvita extraordinary rose water - a serum to put on after cleaning and before moisturizing. It's a creamy fresh-and softeness boost. Serums or special lotions are of such kind that I seldom think of buying them myself, but every now and then it's nice with some minor extra everyday luxury.

Vapour Organic Beauty blush stain - I blot this on my lips and cheeks with my fingertips and sometimes a little in the outer corner of my eyes too. It's a perfect red that gives "snowhite lips"" (as in lips that look like they were a perfect super red by nature) when I blot it on without a liner, and works as lipstick applied from the stick or with a brush when I have lined my lips. This one is seriously addictive! Vapour has a lot of other sticks and creams I've tried out in sample size that I'm eager to get too!

RETROFYING DRAWERS

We retro-pimped a pair of small IKEA-drawer units to put in the kitchen.

Everyone knows these small multi purpose plywood drawers from ikea!  (You can apparently also get similar from Bauhaus for example.)  I've painted a lot of these for different purposes earlier but the idea to this one came from a Finnish interor blog. You should treat the drawer with oil for wood or wood stain for a sort of vintage look -we treated ours with Roslagen Mahogany (linseed oil tar, a poison free wood preserver. It dries in about a day but we had the units stand for around a week, as I did not want the scent of tar, although otherwise nice and traditional, in out kitchen.) The inside of the drawers were treated with cold pressed linseed oil only, as we'll store food in them. Linseed oils are pretty multi-purpose; we used linseed products from Eddi's and his brother's farm.  (I've done the packing for those.)  The drawer units looks pretty neat just like that already but turning the drawers around adding handles or knobs gives the drawer a more 'old' look. I tried to find some handles at home but they were all too big so we bought suitable ones from Byggnadsapoteket.
And then voilà, pimped drawers are done!

IN VINTAGE BLUE & A TINY SAILOR

 Hello there!

Here we are on our way to a party!

My dress is vintage (once again relying on a shirt dress) and Dag's sailor hat is so big it actually makes him look more like a miniature chef.

SUNDAY BAKING pt.5 - BERRIES & BUTTER

Cake time!

This is one of those yummier-than-you'd-thinkcakes. I remember my mom making something similar to this a lot at our summer cottage in the archipelago when I was a kid; it's easy to make and you can do it out of basically any fruit or berries. I personally think the best result comes from using something sour, at least partly. I basically just make a basic sockerkaka (sponge cake) ; the version with no butter (or oil), add the fruit and then put thin slices of butter and sprinkle sugar on top. You can do it in a regular cake mold; I did mine here in a rather small but deep pan.

I use a bit less sugar for the batter than what the regular sponge cakes usually have, and as usual blend regular white flour with spelt flour.

This cake consisted of:
4 ecological eggs, fluffed with- 3 dl sugar, blended with - 4 dl of mixed flours - about 1dl of milk - 2 large teaspoons of baking powder and a hint of vanilla sugar.

I sliced three peaches and added a coffee cup  of red wineberries and black currants that I picked in the garden. They are not ready yet, but I really wanted some, so I scanned the bushes for those few berries that were ripe - got just enough!


And, cold butter sliced in thin pieces over the cake. This is easily done with a cheese slicer. I sprinkle brown sugar over it, perhaps two tablespoons all together, depending on thee size of your mold of course (my brown sugar had gone hard so I used the slicer for that too - works well!). Then it's overn time until the cake looks ready. As I did mine in a pan it was thus rather thin and was done in about 25 minutes.


Alright, off to make your cake now and serve it with something white! Ice cream is always a good choice.

HOW TO HELP YOUR SCARF STAY PUT ALL DAY

From the series first world problems: don't you hate it when your scarf/headband/bandana slips off your head and you have to correct it all the time? 

It actually gives me an headache, wearing something on my head (or a loose hair do) that needs to be constantly adjusted, concentrating and worrying about it sliding back. You know, as in an actual aching heda, maybe because I then tie it too tight, or make my head tense thinking about it. Or something.
But - I have a little trick to help a scarf stay put well. May not be anything new to many but I know it will help some of you out there:



Take your scarf and place the middle in your neck.



Make a knot in front of your forehead -



-and push back, it in place where you want  it. Of course, this is when you want your hair pulled back. If you have a fringe, or if you made some sort of a roll or swirl in the front, just tie the knot in place on top of your head.



Now here's that little trick: place two bobbypins attaching the scarf to your hair, one from each direction, crossing each other.



Do the same on the other side. If you wish, you can also do one of these sets in the middle of your neck, or on each side below the ear. For me this is enough.



Pull the ends of the scarf back and tie in the neck.



Ta-da, done!

When I want a bigger knot on top of my head, or if I am sporting an up-do, I tie the scarf the other way around, as in starting and finishing off on top of my head. The cross-pinning works just the same.
When I wear a bandana; as in a square scarf folded first to a triangle and then slim, I wear the smooth side towards my face and the folded part towards my hair - that way I can stick pins in attaching one layer (the lowest one) of the scarf to my head, without the pins showing.

Not that it is the end of the world would the pins show. (But then again there would be less of a point with this post then.  Zip-a-de-doo-dah.)

LEMONS & CHAMOMILE

Tea time?
Noup, it may be five o clock, but what I'm about with these is to refresh the shade of my hair!

Lemons can dry your hair out but since mine has been in a little too good shape (=harder to style) since I stopped bleaching it about two years ago I would not mind a little dryness. Also, I put some argan oil in the ends afterwards. But let's see what happens to my locks after a few months of full breast feeding... my mother had waist length hair and had to cut it after feeding me, since it thinned out. Also, for the moment I'm thinking I might start to grow out my hair again -we'll see if I'm able to. Or if I have to go pixie :D

PASTELS, MIXED PATTERNS AND THE SIXTIES

Today's outfit on chair.

 And here on me. Yey.

The dress is 1960's vintage (from Love Miss Daisy), vintage style (mint green-ish!!!! Whoah!) cardigan from Pull & Bear, shoes from Clark and the accessories old.

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.

A GIFT

I received a nice gift from the lovely ladies of Jolie recently; a pack of ecological products for the baby and me! I only use natural and ecological skincare products nowadays so it feels natural to use such for fresh and new little baby skin too. Although a few good online and very few brick-and-mortar stores, the market for eco cosmetics is not that big in Finland yet (compared to Sweden for example) but it is definitely growing. So it's nice that Jolie.fi, which is a new portal for wellbeing as well as a webshop, will open up an actual store in Helsinki later this summer! It is run by two creative ladies of which one is a professional make up artist; so the make up products are well chosen.

The thing is, I was actually at the launch party for Jolie when Dag decided it was time to start arriving; my water broke there big time and I left the event for the hospital. 23,5 hours later my baby was born.

SMOOTHIE OF THE DAY

Something fresh and "sunny" for a day when it's (once again) not just pouring down, but more like standing in a shower: Some dried eco apricots soaked in apple juice over the night, frozen mango bits, linen seeds and lots of fresh coriander. Plus apple juice. I intended to add some maca root powder too but forgot. (Ooops.)

FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW

I've been carrying Dag around  like a kangaroo baby in my carrier shawl. But it gets hot as hell so every now and then he rests on the fabulous blanket my fellow Bitties made for me.

In baby-land it is not uncommon to have breakfast at four in the afternoon.  I made myself a super porridge of spelt manna and oat, with pear, dried dates and lingonberries, plus some virgin coconut oil and maca root powder. The coconut and maca did not perhaps improve the porridge taste wise but sometimes I let healthiness go before deliciousness.

I noticed my deadstock vintage hairpins Ina gave me for Christmas are the exact same fiery orange shade as my nail polish. The polish is ecological btw, and has a very nice covering but somewhat thinner texture than conventional polishes, which I like. This one can be found at Jolie for example.

Talking about kangaroos, let's get to koalas; this little fella from down under says hello. It was sent to Dag from Miss Tallulah Porkchop, thank you :)

BOTH IN BABY BLUE

Here we are yesterday before going shopping (nothing fancy, just for essentials) and having dinner with all grandparents!

...not that you can see much of the baby blue on Dag (he has a blue gingham  collar). And not that we actually managed to go shopping either as after we finally got dressed and even managed to take a photo (after first eating a bit more, having to have the diaper changed and then peeing on mommy who had just showered) we had to eat some more again, do anpther round of nappy change, get back to eating and changing and then peeing on daddy's jeans just before the frsh diaper was on again. That's the baby way!

My baby blue cotton dress is from Shabby Apple. I got it a little big in my early pregnancy, so it fits me now. My favorite piece of clothing in general is the shirtwaist dress, as it is so versatile. It is comfy (if the right size of course), practical and easy to dress up and down. Also, it fits you trough different sizes as it still looks good a little loose cinched in the waist, as well as when it's more tightly fitted on you. Plus you can button such a dress down for feeding the baby.

NATURALLY...

... I had to get myslef a pair of heels to go with the pram.

THE SECOND CHALLENGE

Wohoo, an outfit.
The skirt is from Lindex, it's the stretchy one that I wore a lot during my early and mid pregnancy. The top is Tara Starlet and the belt (which is a bit hard to see as it has sunk in between the squish) is Vivien of Holloway.

Anyway. I'm going to tell you two things - many commented on the fact that I "still had the strenght to make an effort and dress up" while I was pregnant. Or now with the baby. And what I'm going to tell you first is this: it takes the same effort to put on a plastic bag, something nice or a pair of leisure pants. In which most of the cases I'd go for the "something nice". As you may remember, I often point out that nice can also be comfy! Most of my clothing is rather comfy actually. (The pieces that are not, are the ones I wear more seldom, you know, special occasions. And yes, it is of course also a matter of what you are used to and prefer.)Also, if you're not sure weather you are feeling that nice yourself it's certainly not going to make you feel worse by wearing something pretty rather than just whatever.

I actually enjoyed getting dressed during those nine months since it became something of a challenge to come up with what to wear; my body was changing and growing all the time which kept the challenge going. I wasn't sure in the beginning how it would be later on, but it was rather fun all the way until the end.

Now it's yet another challenge to find items to wear. Items to fit in as well as items that will work while breast feeding. And I have to say, it's a bit less nice of a challenge, as this time my body is not changing in the same sense that I'm expecting something big to happen - I'm just waiting for things to get "back to normal". Neiher is it any fun now to buy new items as I'm just hoping to start wearing my "real" clothing again. However, the second thing I was going to tell you is that even though I may sound a bit cracked up about this, I'm not! It's merely three weeks since I gave birth and I've only been up from bed for about five days, so I'm not really taking any stress about anything bodywize. (Yet, hehe. )
It just comes up when talking about clothing, that's all.
Toodely-doo!

THE FIRST PROPER WALK

We're back in the city and I'm able to walk normally again (well, almost) and took Dag out for a walk to the park in his new pram. I wanted to take a photo from the same spot that mom has a first-walk photo with me of, but that whole lawn is dug up and full of pipes and tubes and building barracks due to some, uh,  pipe-thing.

(And yey! I'm wearing my new dress which almost fits me - it gaps a bit in the waist but give it a few more weeks and many walks I'm thinking I'll be wearing lots of my other dresses too. Fingers crossed... This two-piece dress is Bettie Page clothing from Miss Bamboo in case you were wondering.)

AFTER THE RAIN

It's been raining like crazy here for two days. This evening the sun came around for a while and we went out for an evening stroll around the farm among wild strawberries, vintage tractors and all the fresh green.

 (And Dag is all like "no papparazzis, please!")