Moving gravel

It is nice to have a tractor! Even though there is not room to drive it everywhere it is still a great help as our house is on top of a hill and it is really (too) heavy work to move gravel from one level to another with just a wheelbarrow.

How many bars did you say?

It is not enough that we collect stuff together with my husband, we both have our own collectibles, too. Don't you ask me what you can do with a bar meter, the only bars I know sell people drinks.

Thanks ma!

My mother had gotten this porcelain blue-and-white Arabia cutting board from my godmother in the 70s. The board was gathering dust in ma's kitchen cupboard and as it deserves a pride place it now gets to stay in Vårkulla's kitchen. A little correction...there is no dust in my mother's kitchen, this was just a figure of speech!

Tins and stuff

Our cigarette tin collection grows a little every month. Maybe I'll put some of the tins on the show to our museum when it opens :) (read more about the museum here, link)

The tins are on a flower pillar that we bought in the beginning of the summer. We got it cheap as the pillar was missing a top. We bought a metal cake stand from Ikea and it's top fitted the pillar perfectly. We just need to paint it black but as we have worked a lot in the garden, we haven't yet have the energy to do the smaller renovations...and once again, when I say we I mean my husband...

Shopping for a museum

I got an idea last weekend. I want to open a little shop museum in our shop someday. I need to sell some more flea market stuff before we have room for a museum in one corner of the shop.

We already have a 50's sales counter, cash register, table calculator, a slicer, lots of coffee tins, a couple of nappies (these were found in the back room of the shop, they have been sold in our shop tens of years ago), cardboard chocolate bars (my brother found these, they have been used as marketing material in shops, just right for our museum!)  etc.

Last weekend we found the sweet tin below. It is at the latest from 1960 as SOK Vaajakoski changed its name to Panda in 1961. The hunt goes on! I'll be sure to tell you when we open the museum (if ever).

For once, a little was enough

I picked a couple of deciliters blueberries yesterday. The main crop is not ready yet but you can find ripe blueberries in sunny places.

We ate the berries with Finnish "viili" (kind of like sour cream but made from milk with only 1 % of fat) and rye bread. Yummy!

Something blue

This jug is really big so I gather it has been a part of a morning toilette set. I don't usually buy much blue things as my blue period ended during the late nineties - until then I had blue glasses, blue glass plates: you name it, I got it. Anyway, at the cottage I still have some blue decorations and I could have taken the jug there but somehow it seems too beautiful for an outdoor vase and so it stays in Vårkulla's living room.

I tried to find the blue decoration in the net to date the jug but couldn't find a similar pattern. I guess this is from the 40's or older.

No need for gasoline

I love old metal toys. We already had a bus with a missing key. Luckily this key we got with the "new" car fits both to the bus and the car.

Something missing

Did I mention that we also collect old kitchen appliances? This coffee roaster is really old but in an amazingly good condition. Not that I would start to make coffee from the very start but we are  missing a coffee grinder. The ones I have seen have either been to expensive or ugly.

We found the roaster when visiting an Isnäs flea market happening - there were only two sellers but it didn't mean the visit was wasted as we found the roaster and the monkey pen sharpener I posted about earlier, see here.

Which side do you prefer?

The left side of the back garden looked like this on last weekend:

And the right side is a work in progress:

We cut down the lilacs again as they were a bit damaged and we also need to thin out the bushes as we want to get more room to move in the front of the house. The big stones are for a wall and steps that will lead from the house to the shed. Just you wait and see, the right side will look good after a couple of weeks (years).

Monkey business

For some reason I always have had an antipathy to monkey toys. The real monkeys are cute enough but toys are not so sympahtetic. And then...we found this old (50 to 60 years old, told the seller) pen sharpener for 50 cents and we bought it. Even the russian dolls seem a bit wary but I guess they'll get use to the monkey as he is quite sharp!

Key matters

It is no fun to have modern locks with remote controls and such. I want real keys and nice key rings! After finding (=buying) the two below I guess you can say that we just started to collect key rings...

From mud to heaven in one day

What to do when you have vacation - to shovel gravel of course! I hate our muddy lawn at Vårkulla and yesterday a large area of the lawn was replaced with gravel. Can't wait till all the weeds and clay has been changed to either gravel or perennial borders.