When baby is awake - the blog sleeps

There has been a long silence here. But I hope my doughter (7,5 months old now) will soon sleep better so mama can attend to her hobbies more :)

The decorations I mentioned on that last post are mostly ready. New curtains and especially the fabric on the wall in our bed room are a small success.

The painted tree on the bed room wall needs more leafs (They are cut from different wall paper samples and glued to the wall). An owl lives already on the tree! I also got a new idea to hang our pictures on the tree trunk (I've got a group of small picture frames I have found at flea markets) - family tree!

New interior ideas

If I would make an interior magazine, it would have to be called: Slowly but Surely. It would be a small, sympathetic number, with lots of unfinished rooms. I ask you: Who ever got the idea that interiors of homes should look like a modern art museum where nobody actually lives?

I've been so sleepy and tired the whole summer and autumn - the reason is our upcoming baby, so it's kind of OK. Although it would be nice to get more done at the home. ( So many ideas - so few of them ready!) But small things make a difference: For example this lantern and lights make me happy (more so because I have to get to the bathroom at nights and it lights my way there)

Then I got my great grandmother's old chest delivered from my home town to Mikkeli. It's from 1920's and needs a bit of loving restoring. Well, there is no hurry with the restoring, because the thing is already on use in our living room. The space above it is looking really empty and I'm planning a big, colorful, textile board on the wall. (The fabric I've bought for it, is on the chest there).

A close up of one of the wood carvings from the chest:

Then the next big thing: A challenge! A possibility! The room that is to be 50% home office and 50% baby's room... At the moment the room contains just all our junk that has no other, better place yet (We have been living here only for 1 year - for heaven's sake!) And all the baby's stuff we'we acquired. Well as usual - I'm planning something really useful....

Instead of worrying the boring stuff (like the baby caring unit, that I let the father of the baby to get) I'm planning to paint a funny big tree on that blank wall (picture above). White walls are not my thing and this, for me, will make a huge difference on this room.

I've found many different tree silhouettes, but this one, I think, is the best:

I'ts a decorative sticker from Djeco. I might just buy the tree, but it's way too small.

Painted Sofa

The sofa-project is ready
Sofa isn't the original design I was thinking (look at the older post). And lucky it wasn't, because this easy-lookin pattern was suprisingly hard to do! I painted it twice with acrylic paint and then I made the mattress from old textiles I wasn't going to use anymore (like felted wool gardigan, old towels, a stained and really old bedspread...) I'm always really happy when something garbage-like thing can be re-used!! The striped fabric was just waiting in my fabric stash (it is wast)... And the pillows I found really cheaply from work, when we had closing-down sale of Esprit Home. The dog tried to eat the buttons that I made for the mattress :) Before the hall was so lame

And after!

I'm thinking of doing a picture collage over the sofa. I'm thinking ancestral dogs. I'm thinking fake (I'm so cheap) gold frames! You'll see

Newspaper wallpaper

I saw, maybe ten years ago, a small room wallpapered with old newspapers in some interior magazine , and I still remember thinking: SWEET! I newer thought that there might be a ready wallpaper just like that! Until I found the perfect wallpaper for the "room" (picture below) I call this tiny place that leads from the hall to the bathroom and kitchen. The wallpaper is going to go on only one wall (that you can see below) because all the other walls are with doors (and because the whole room is 150x150 cm, there is not so much wall left there).

I love this appartment, but the bath+wc+loundryroom is really tiny (150x165 cm!) I'm planning a small loundry-maintenance-area in the "room" above. The wallpaper is going to go on the wall and the the white board you can see on the picture too, is to be a kind of worktop. Underneath it will be a place for dirty laudry and I'm also planning a narrow closet to the corner to keep clean towels and stuff.

BTW, Jaakko found that ceiling light on a dumpster. He cleaned it and it looks as new alltough I expect it to be some 40 years old. We re-wired it because the old wires weren't lookin too reliable.

Decorating, it's almost spring!

Mornings are beginning to light up and it always makes me more active and hopefull. It also helps that our "new" appartment is strarting to look like a home (Can I call it new if we've lived in it for 3 months now? Yes I can!). I like painting and woodworks and thatkind of stuff, but it's nice to focus on the little things occasionally. Like clocks! And I have my heart set on this one:

http://www.habitat.co.uk/fcp/product/browse/Analogue-wall-clock/968486

It would be big enough (50x50 cm) and just look at it!

The other thing that made me smile this week, was a story about Hammerpress. I'ts really old school and still working press. You can see from the picture what kind of things they do. http://hammerpress.net/

From Wikipedia I steal this next sentence: Letterpress printing is a term for the relief printing of text and image using a press with a "type-high bed" printing press and movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image.

Sweet! Small industries like this always appeal to me for some reason.

Less mysterious - more beautifull

There's something really pleasing for my eyes in this collage. Red, white and black together mmm!

To have a spacious kitchen! Well I almost never cook, but it would be nice to read the paper and drink my tea without cramped conditions :)

Lovely colors in this photo - I would love to have more room for my unique flea market finds.

lovely floor - weird bed..

Fun idea that curtain behind the bed.

My friend lend me this book, and I just have to share the best parts. Click the pictures to enlarge them.