What to do

When you have nothing else to do, you can always play fortuna. Have a glass of wine and challenge someone to a game. When I was a child, we had a red fortuna with no pictures on the board and without mechanics, this is a very glamorous (1970's version) of the game, would have loved this even years back.

Say cheese and maybe cherry, too

As we ate in Loviisa city yesterday, we only had some bread and cheese for dinner. Cherries wouldn't normally be included but they were literally dropping from the trees and something had to be done.

From suitcase to table

My mother-in-law is visiting us and she brought seven old and cute coffee cups with her. The cups are too small to drink coffee from but they look perfect beside a 40's soup bowl and vase.

So sweet

We found these syrup containers in one yard flea market. The containers' insides are waxed (otherwise the cardboard wouldn´t hold the syrup). The containers were never used at the farm, lucky for us! We bought three as we only had a couple of euros left after visiting several flea markets before getting to this one.

One step closer to heaven

Our new patio looks rather good even though there is still a lot to do: soapstones are still waiting to be installed, the edges are without any support (stones or planks painted in black, I think), the furniture is too small, the lilacs I cut down in the summer need to grow etc. etc. But I am happy, this is way better than weeds and mud.

The furniture really is too small for the area but this is all we had in storage:

The photo below tells it all...a robust table for eight or ten would be more fitting than the light Ikea group for four.

Traveling man

I am not very fond of old suitcases - there are lots of them in interior decoration magazines as semi-practical storage solutions but I have always thought they are rather ugly. For some reason this one is not half bad. My husband wanted to buy it and I thought why not. It is perfect for small trips in a vintage car (which we don't yet have).

It is old but new

We found a new old coat last Friday when visiting flea markets in Marttila, Salo. The seller told us it is from around 50's so it is a perfect addition to our shop museum.

Naming the dream

Finally I know exactly what kind of term to use when talking about my dream garden: Danish romantic. I bought a Claus Dalby's book "Romantiske haver" and the gardens pictured in it are just what I want. Well, not quite as I am not very fond of roses, but all the gardens were lovely! By the way, if you can read Swedish, Danish is a piece of cake, just think how you would pronounce a word and suddenly you realize it is (almost) the same word as in Swedish.

Picture by Claus Dalby

More about Claus Dalby here: link.

Lounging on the patio

It took my husband the whole of yesterday and most of today to move two huge stones (the smaller one is in the photo below) from the back yard. Now we are ready to start with the patio. This means moving a bit of gravel and then some. Can't wait to sit in the corner, sipping cool drinks under the shadow of white lilacs. Stay tuned folks, more pictures follow on a later date.

New use for old things

We don't have a very good well at Vårkulla so it is very important to gather as much rain water as possible. At the moment I have an old milk jug and an old huge kettle under the eaves. We need to find an even better solution but these will have to do for now.

Survivors

Our back yard perennial border is infested by voles and one of the most terrible weed there is: campanula rapunculoides (vuohenkello in Finnish). I have tried to find something to survive both and these lovely rudbeckia laciniatas (syyspäivänhattu in Finnish) just might be an answer. I planted them on one side of the border and they seem to thrive. I covered the other side with old newspapers and on top of the papers I put bark in the hope of killing the campanulas. I plan to plant more rudbeckias there in next spring if I don't find other flowers that can take the competition.

Everything takes time

I had almost given up on my pelargoniums but at last they started to really flower. Let's hope for a long, warm autumn so we have some time to enjoy them.

Never satisfied

I would like to have more cherries and less apples. The cherries were almost ripe last weekend and I am afraid that they'll ripen during the week and the birds eat all of them before we even get a taste. On the other hand it seems that there will be a lot of apples, which is not good news as our apples are small, hard and tart (and usually half eaten by worms).

Fields of (still green) gold

You gotta love autumn in the countryside- the fields are beautiful! This year it seemed that the crops were never going to grow but a week of sunshine did wonders.

Small but important

This pin is really small, about the size of a pinky nail. But as it is related to shops, we bought it for our museum collection (sounds grand, doesn't it?).

Colourful enough for you?

I started to collect red and orange glass vases from the 60's about half a year ago. The first one (the small orange vase) I found then and the next one took me the mentioned half a year. The green one completes the collection for now as I don't like things in pairs and haven't yet found a third one in right colour. There are of course a lot of red vases around but I don't want to pay more than about 20 euros per piece and the vase has to be old and monochrome. This means the collecting takes a little longer. Well, I have more time than money.

Just hanging there

I love floral prints and the good smell of lavender was a bonus, so of course I bought this small bag to hang on the door in our hall.

This is what I mean with a phone

This corner in our living room is a real mix of new and old. The lamp stand I got from my cousin Satu and my husband painted it in soft pink, the lamp shade is from Hemtex's summer collection. The old school board, the phone from the 60's, the vase from the 40's and the small table are from flea market. The green wall is the original from the 60's - we haven't yet decided what to choose for a new wall paper...The stack of books seen in the left corner are under the load speaker as the stool the speaker stands on is not high enough...

Five on a treasure island

Do you still remember Enid Blyton's Five books? As our ghosts at Vårkulla speak only Swedish, I bought a Swedish version of a Five book for them. The book was printed in 1954 so it's cover art is from my favourite era.