project 366: 081-087

Hope you all have been and are having a lovely Easter! If you've been reading my blog recently or for a long time, you should know that I absolutely love Easter. So I will be enjoying my Easter treats, flowers, egg painting and other Easter goodness for as long as I can. Hopefully seeing too many Eastery photos won't bore you because that's pretty much what my Project 366 has been about (and will be about):

081:  Got the Easter decorations out on Monday. The two painted eggs you can see here are some old ones that my dad's done. And when I say old, I mean the one with the blue framing is dated 1986.

082: Had my first work day and that many hours away from my bed made for a happy reunion in the evening. I am such a home rat.

083: Made some more Easter cards!

084: Dog-walking with le mother.

085: Pretty daffodils.

086: Eggs and soldiers for breakfast. Later in the day I had two birthday parties to attend, one 97th and one 20th.

087: Yass, Easter Sunday. My lil' chicken with my Easter treats.

what does it mean to you?

 Dress - Vintage/DIY

Cardi - Mum's old

Shoes - Mum's

Here's an outfit I wore to a little birthday party/lunch earlier this month. The lighting's a bit different in almost every photo because I took these at different times of the day.. But never mind that! I don't think I would have thought of pairing the dress with this cardigan in normal circumstances, but I had red nails and no time to redo them which resulted into this red and blue ensemble. I still don't own nice winter shoes of my own (and what's the point in buying some now that it's supposed to be spring?) and have to make do with whatever we have in the house. I actually found these 2nd hand boots but since they're a bit too big for myself, I let my mum have them. With an extra pair of socks they were quite nice, though!

On another note, this outfit isn't even red, white and blue but the amount of snow still makes up for the lack of white in the outfit. Because wherever I see red, white and blue it always makes me think of There'll Always Be an England. I never remember more than the lyrics 'red, white and blue/ what does it mean to you?' and it drives me mad not being able to mind the rest. But it also reminds me of my dad singing this. And most memorably singing this when he gave me his red, white and blue tie and taught me to tie it properly.

Anyway, hope you're all having a very good Good Friday!

project 366: 074-080

I was "busy" yesterday, so here's last week's Project 366 photos:

074: Crappy nails with hearts on in the dark.

075: Ate a plateful of ugly meringues, haha!

076: Outfit details. Shirt is 2nd hand, necklaces both Kalevala Koru that I've gotten as gifts:-)

077: Home-grown and shop-bought plant-life.

078: Had a day of 2nd hand shopping and ended it with my favourite doughnuts. Obviously, the big one is mine. (Also bought the most amazing jumper that I need to share with you all (if you've not seen it on Instagram yet)!)

079: I went to an ice hockey match!

080: And on top of the times I've skied on the river this winter, I've now gone on a walk/snacking trip on foot to the island as well:-) Definitely still thinking of going skiing this week or after Easter. I am such an athlete.

sun and snow and some listed things

I look like such a round-faced lil' gremlin but that's what winter does to you.

How happy does wee rays of sunlight make you in late winter spring? Even rain is making me happy since it's helping the snow to melt. I am still okay with there being absolute hills of snow but the fact that roads are starting to be clear is definitely grin-worthy as well. Since I'm talking about things that are making me happy at the moment (and in an effort not to talk merely about the weather) here's a list of happy things:

1. Longer and lighter days. (The sun shines directly to my bed in the mornings which does force me to get up earlier most days, ha!)

2. Less snow. But still enough snow for me to continue ice skating and skiing for a while!

3. The first two reasons combined together resulting into nearly no coat weather. Honestly I'll probably still be in my winter coats in May because I'm not fool enough to go without when there's half a metre of snow left anymore, but yesterday it was almost +15°C in the sun! (I do love to talk about the weather, don't I..)

4. It's almost Easter! I love Easter, it's my favourite holiday. I was going to go to Helsinki, but am leaning towards the option of staying home alone and going to Hki in the summer:-)

5. Re: Easter, I'm almost done with my lent and am looking forward to all the Easter chocolate and other treats. My snack stash is looking pretty hefty already!

6. It's Palm Sunday this week and since I've not been in Finland for so long I'm excited for all the traditions:-) As far as I know (after checking on Wikipedia) it's not a thing elsewhere, and this is what happens: "In Finland, it is popular for children to dress up as Easter witches and go door to door in neighborhoods for coins and candy. This is an old Karelian custom called Virpominen." It's kind of like trick or treating but during Easter and the children give you a decorated pussy willow branch in return. (My branches used to be freaking amazing back in the day, let me tell you.) So I've bought sweets for the neighbourhood children and hope someone will turn up. If not, all the more sweets for me!

7. I'm going to be working for at least a month starting next week!

8. There's definitely not any flowers starting to bloom outside, but my own wee plants are coming along nicely and growing every day. I'm such a grandma with my gardening but I do love it. And scientifically, digging your fingers into some dirt does release some endorphins and makes you happier.

9. I was advised to start keeping a headache diary again before going to my migraine control appointment (both of which I've not done in years, haha..) and this might not seem like a big deal, but for two weeks so far I've not had migraines and no above average headaches. And it's spring which is usually the worst for me, so that's been a really great thing!

10. Another big deal that maybe doesn't sound like it; I've kept on exercising and drinking water.

11. I might have bought some new fabric even though I have loads that I've not used yet. AND I have loads of sewing projects planned!

12. There's a campaign in a Finnish supermarket that lets you buy some Moomin mugs for half the price, so I'm super excited about getting new ones! I may have thirty already, but gotta catch 'em all! (Also, have you seen the new Too-Ticky and the Ancestor mugs? So bloody pretty.)

What're some happy things in your life right now?

project 366: 067-073

067: Found my old The Beatles patch and stitched it back on onto one of my coats. Now I'm kind of wanting to start collecting patches and having loads of them on this one.. :-)

068: Nails of the day(/most of the week).

069: The snow's been falling off the roof, but now most of it's frozen like this. I don't think anyone's going to be using the storage door to go out until all of the snow falls down. That much snow and ice falling onto me would definitely kill me, haha!

070: Market day! I only ate this waffle (or possibly two..) and bought some liquorice by the metre. The thought of all that liquorice makes my mouth water but I'm saving it for Easter since I've given up sweets, chocolate and crisps for lent!

071: Lil' icicles. I'd always like to stop to take photos of every row of massive icicles, but so far haven't done so. But these small ones on our garage look fine as well:-)

072: Oh, I might have lied. I did stop to take pictures of this icicle bush! It was such a curious-looking little thing. The bush was completely covered in icicles and it was both so weird and so pretty!

073: Been making some Easter cards!

Have a great start to the week, you guys!

snowy river trip

I'm not known as the most athletic person, so when I posted my skiing pictures on social media I wasn't surprised that my friends were jokingly cyber bullying me about it (ha). But I actually do like sports, and always have. Sometimes my lazy attitude just gets in the way! You won't be seeing me skiing 20km every day, but I do actually really enjoy some casual Sunday skiing (although this was on a Friday). I had a lovely little time with my mum, first skiing and then snacking. Because, obviously, hot chocolate, sausages and other wee treats are an essential part of Sunday skiing. We're planning on going again, possibly even every week until the snow melts and we won't be able to get to this lil' island in the river. I might even go without the snacks, you know!

Have you done anything fun recently, or even been skiing? :-)

P.S. It always makes me laugh how my mum's dressed for an expedition to the North Pole in the winter and compared to her I look like I must've been freezing! (I wasn't.)

happy international women's day

Happy International Women's Day, you all!

That's all I really wanted to say, but you can check out yesterday's post here or stay tuned for another post later this week:-) (Me actually posting thrice a week may be unheard of but it's happening, you guys. At least this once.)

project 366: 060-066

060: Not unsurprisingly, I was feeling a bit ill on Monday and therefore drinking all the fluids and eating all the fries.

061: My first plant babies of the year have almost all grown now..

062: ..and I've also planted new ones!

063: My skate bag ready for a day of ice skating. I should actually take photos of the actual ice skating next time I go!

064: From mine and mum's skiing trip! I'll share more photos later this week:-)

065: After a few more active days than I normally have in a week (haha!), I had a reading day. After watching the first episode of The Night Manager, I decided I'd rather read the book first. Super excited about both, though!

066: Hope you all remembered your mothers on Sunday! I only gave my mum a card and bought her food, but it seemed enough. And if it wasn't I'm sure I'll hear about it and can do more when the Finnish Mother's Day comes around in two months' time, haha.