Pink versus white

Two years ago I bought bulbs of Turks cap lilly from a German online store. I bought white Turks cap lilly bulbs. And look what I have growing in my garden, not one but three pink Turks cap lillies. How frustrating.

Last summer only two stems made flowers and those were white so I thought I had got the right stuff, but now the other three that are making flowers are pink. The two that flowered last year flower again and in right colour. Makes me wonder if the German online store tricked me. They knew the white ones will grow first and then I woudn't complain. But after the "warranty" is over the pink ones will appear. Those sneaky Germans! Watch out for them. No, seriously, maybe it's just how these want to be and even if someone tries to make them white the nature will fight back.

Perhaps I just have to live with pink flowers, I'll just snap off the flower before it starts to seed so it won't spread.

On the other hand the Turks cap lillies are not the only pink flowers in my garden.

Those are pink! Perhaps slightly too bright for my taste but I'm certainly not moving those. The Piony is one of the hardest plants to move and plant. It takes many years for it to get accustomed to a new place and might not flower in years. Even though I don't enjoy it's super bright flowers I do enjoy the size and amount of them. And perhaps white flowers against white pergola would look pretty boring.

But soon the Campanula carpatica will flower in white and now the Mock orange is in flower and the smell is amazing. I wish you could smell it.

Estonian Midsummer

For the last four years my friends and I have spent the Midsummer in Estonia. We have been to the islands of Estonia and then in the north western part and now we had rented a cabin near the Latvian border on the cost. We've allways had great time and this Midsummer was no exception.

I don't know how we originally desided to go to Estonia to celebrate Midsummer, but it turned out that the cabins and food are a whole lot cheaper in Estonia than in Finland and there is so much to see in Estonia that we desided to celebrate the Midsummer there again and again.

Our cabins have allways been very nice, this time we even had our own cabin dog (it was actually from the neighbour house, it visited us many times). We named it Repe. It was a really friendly god dog.

On thursday we travelled to our cabin and on sunday we drove back. On friday which was the Midsummer Eve we visited Pärnu, the near by city. In south Estonia on the cost there are very long beaches and Pärnu also has a long beach. On the way to Pärnu we stopped on a trail build to the woods and there was also a observation tower with amazing scenery.

On saturday we visited Latvia, we were so close to it so there was no point not to go there. The beaches continue on the Latvian side. Too bad the sea is still so cold that we didn't dare to have a swim.

Every evening we returned to the cabin to have dinner and to enjoy the cabin and just hanging out. So relaxing.

Cork board

I bought a cork board from a driftstore, I had been looking for a small cork board to hang in the wall near my desk in the home office. So I was at the drift store searching for something else totally and I found the cork board and bought it.

I didn't like how it looked thought. So I disassembled it.

Then I painted the rims white, first two coats of primer and one top coat of fresh white paint.

I added a canvas on top of the cork. I used spray glue, which by the way I hate, at leats this brand. It spreads so widely and usually even if I do cover the place I use the glue at every place gets sticky and icky. I once used it in the office and eventhough I had huge cover from paper under my project it spread all over the place. I think I can still feel the ickyness of it when I walk with socks over it. I might be imagining though. Also it smells horrid. Now I used it outdoors so I did not really matter about the spraying or smell. I used plenty of the stuff to get rid of it sooner.

Then I placed the cork board upside down on a canvas and glued the edges of the canvas to the other side. I assembled the cork board after everything had dried. I did not even attach the the board to the rims on anyway, because with the canvas it was such a tight fit that I doubt it's going to fall out or anything.

After I put two nails on the wall I was able to hang it. It's perfect for the spot, just slightly bigger and it would not have fit.

Today is the Eve of Finnish Midsummer. I'm off to Estonia, where we have rented a cabin and luckily the Estonians are spending the Midsummer at the same day. If you are intrested in Finnish or Estonian Midsummer festivites, check here.

Happy Midsummer!

Carpet -suffix two

I promise this is going to be the last suffix for the livingroom carpet. I promise. I could also promise that this is the only blog post I will ever do that's related to cars, but that just might be a promise I cannot keep. I'm certainly not changing the topic of this blog from home to cars but I cannot promise I'll never mention a car again.

You know when you get a car from the store and it looks pretty good, it's clean and shiny, even if it's previously owned or not, and then you take it home and you're afraid you're going to make the first spot to the upholstery? Well you try to cover the nice upholstery. In our car the result of that covering previously looked like this.

I atleast am a very messy car user, I've been known to transport big plastic bins full of horse shit in the trunk also I have wood and timber in the trunk frequently and paint and empty paint cans, just to give you the general picture. I think that's what cars are for, for transporting stuff or shit. A on the other hand thinks cars are for sport and they should look good, all the time.

So since the carpet from the entry tambour was resently replaced by the old livingroom carpet that was replaced by new livingroom carpet I had again an extra carpet. It was the perfect size to cover the trunk with. I removed the original upholstery from the car and draw cutting lines according to that and then I used the carpet knife again to cut it in size. Then I just popped it in the trunk. Easy.

Looks a whole lot better now, doesn't it? There is still enough carpet to cut out covers for the legrooms in the car, but as promised I will not make another suffix out of that, I know you get how I'm going to make those. The old carpets in the trunk of the car went to trash, so no suffix from those either.

Carpet -suffix one

So I desided to keep the thicker carpet, suprise suprise. I quess there was no turning back, I liked it so no one could have talked me out of it. I am sometimes bit stubborn.

So what then, I now had an extra carpet to put somewhere. I could have sold it or donated it, but I desided to reuse it. See this carpet in out entry tambour (as I called it in a previous post), it's dull, it works fine, but I've never enjoyed it's appearance. If you would look more closely you'd see that it's not actually only grey, it also had green and yellow dots in it.

Under the carpet is bare concrete, so it definitely needs a carpet, or somethign on top of it. I generally enjoy the feel and looks of natural materials and the sisal carpets in general are made for entries.

I used the old carpet as a model and cut the same shape from the old livingroom carpet with a carpet knife.

 

I cut the new one slightly bigger than the old one had been because it had been originally slightly too small. But ofcourse in some parts I cut the new carpet too big and I needed to adjust it a bit after placing it in the entry tambour.

But all in all this was such an easy change, with the old carpet as a model I finished this transformation in half an hour. I love to find new use for things I no longer like in their original place.

There will also be a suffix two for the livingroom carpet, stay tuned for that on wednesday.

Carpet issues

I've never been much of a carpet person. I think that in the entry carpets are essential, they collect all the smudge from the shoes and also protect the floor from getting scratched and wet. In other rooms I don't think they serve much of a purpose and it's harder to vacuum and wipe floors clean with carpets than without. I think there is only one room in my home that requires a carpet from only aesthetic reasons and it's the livingroom.

This is what the livingroom and it's carpet now look like.

 

I had this carpet in my previous home which had almost white, or very light grey floors. But in this apartment I just don't think it fits too well. The darkness of it is quite depressing on winter time and it's made from sisal which A does not like one bit. He often complains that it stings feet when walking barefoot and maybe it does, eventhough it has never bothered me.

A week ago I went to lunch with my coworkers to a mall and after the lunch they wanted to check a nearby clothing store, but because I'm not that interested in clothes I went to the carpet store next to the clothing store. A salesperson came to me and asked if I'm looking for something and I noticed myself saying that I'm looking a carpet for the livingroom that is made of natural fibers, but not sisal, and that it's light in colour. So she showed some to me and I liked them. She also mentioned that I can take few carpets home to test them and if I don't like them I can return them. I had never heard that one could do that and desided that I will take A there with me and depending if he likes them we could take one or two home for testing. So today we went to the store and brought two carpets home, a thicker one and a thinner one.

They are both made of wool, the thicker one has a cotton base and loops made of wool weawed in. Both can be washed with cold water (I can go to the rug washing station with these too), they are both the same colour and from the same manufacturer. They even cost the same. 

 

Here on top is the thinner one, the weawing is very simple, similar as in rag rugs. And under is the thicker one, with loops. 

 

Click photos to enlarge and to see details better. The thicker one is slightly bigger than the thinner one, but I think it's better big. I think I'm slighly leaning towards the thicker one, it looks more stately than the thinner. 

What do you think? I'd like to hear your opinion. I need to return at least one of them on monday. You think having this light coloured carpet is going to be a problem? I mean if it stains, although wool shouldn't stain that easily. Do you have any other suggestions that I could try?

Edit:

Look what A had done while I was out on friday night. He had moved the chair on the carpet (He played something with kinect and had to remove the chair and table and then moved them back). I was thinking it would look too crowded with everything so close together, but I think it looks fine.

I'm cured

You know the final week of the hybrid cure was officially two weeks ago? Well it was, but I finished today. Remember the post I made about the hybrid cure for the terrace? Probably not, it was so long ago. I had lot's of plans and I'm happy to say that I carried out most of them. Since the start was so long ago I'm going to show you the before shots again.

Two weeks ago approximately we sanded and painted the pergola, also I power washed the whole terrace and then I repotted the tomatoes. On monday you saw that I washed the carpets. Whew, I mean that was a lot of work all those things. I could have never done them in a week.

I washed the conservatory wondows finally! I've never liked to wash these windows, they have so many grooves and rims that they are not easy to clean. There is allways some smudge left in the grooves and the fact that these windows are outdoors does not help one bit, they are even dirtyer than the regular windows.

Then I placed the carpets to the conservatory, they had been in the sauna, it started to rain on sunday night, so I had to move them inside. Then all the stuff I had lying about was put away and now the terrace is ready!

I know, I'm drowing in plants. I even got two zuccini plants from my neighbour and I have no idea where I'm going to put them. And by the way the seat cushion covers are now in the laundry so they are missing from the pictures.

And as a final comment to the hybrid cure or to the eight step home cure defined in this book, I must say the cure is quite laborius, it's not probably even supposed to be easy, but if you'd like to do all the steps mentioned in the book, I have no idea how in only eight weeks you could do that. The terrace and the kitchen were the rooms I payed most attention to and after the kitchen session I was dead tired and the terrace session took me three weeks. I have no idea how anyone with children or bigger house could ever finish this.

Nevertheless I still enjoyed the cure and I will do it again, but perhaps I'll only consentrate on a few rooms per cure.

Rug washing

 

The terrace rugs need deep cleaning once every year. They get so filthy from muddy shoes and feet. I went to the rug washing station the city provides. I think washing rugs is very fun, on a hot summer day, like it was on sunday, it's very refressing to splash around with the water. There were few other people in the station, but I was lucky that the wide washing tub was available. That rug on the picture wouldn't have fitted to the narrow one.

 

The place I went to was very well equipped and it had a mangler to press the excess water from the rugs.

Then I left the rugs there for few hours to drip dry. I went home for the meantime to have lunch and clean the terrace (you'll see that on wednesday).

I returned later to get the rugs. They were not even nearly dry, but they did not drip any water anymore, so I could put them to the car more easily. At home I hung them on the pergola pilars. And the rugs are still there drying, it seems to take a while. Hope they are dry by tomorrow.

Herb sill

On summer time I love to have lettuce and herbs in the kitchen, well I'd like to have them on winter time too, but they usually die from lack of light. On summertime our kitchen table fills up with different herb pots and they started to bug me. So why not get a window sill for all the pots? I would have bought one but I couldn't find any that suited this position. The trim from the window gets in the way of the brackets. But luckily I'm a resourceful gal.

I bought timber, cut it in four pieces, and then three brackets. The small pieces are for lifting the sill higher a bit so it will level with the original very narrow window sill.

I used glue to attach the lifting pieces. I could not find my wood glue, or then I've run out of it, so I had to use crafting glue. I could see no difference in it. And there will be some screws too holding the pieces.

Then I waited for the glue to dry and then I painted. I sanded after the first layer of primer, don't know if that is necessary, since the wood was plained. Then another coat of primer and then finally topcoat.

After painting I attached the brackets, ofcourse first in the wrong way. Doh!

Think before you do, Leena! I should really learn, I allways do things wrong on the first time. Well then I attached the brackets again. This time the right way.

And then the window sill was done. Only to attach it to the wall in the kitchen was left, which went really quickly. I asked A to hold the sill while I drilled it to the wall.

Now we have a herb sill, handy!

 

Edit: Actually now that I look at it, I think I could have added a trim to the egde of the sill, what do you think? I can still do that (if I have time and energy)