Apples came all down

Finally a non rainy day. We picked all the apples from the trees. We have two. The other one makes hardly any apples and they are usually very small, the other one makes big sour apples. We have excellent plans for the apples, one batch will become apple cider and other apple wine. Those are what we did a few years back when there also was a very good apple year. I will post more about cider and wine making when we have started the fermenting process.

Enthusiasm bites me back

Being enthusiastic is normally a good thing but being enthusiastic and way too optimistic about the time it takes to hack two IKEA bed side tables can lead to having no bed side tables at all. 

I placed an add for our old bed side tables in the net and one person was interested in them so I lifted them to the entry. But she didn't come to get them, so technically we still have bed side tables, I just wont bother lifting them back. The new ones are like almost done... almost.

Shanghai souvenir

A returned from Shanghai again and what had he got me as a souvenir. Bags? Shoes? Clothes? Electronics? No! He brought me rice paper. Yippee!

It's also known as Xuan paper, it can be used in painting with water colours and crafting and maybe even making a lantern. Or even a shoji screen, although it's not probably sturdy enough for that.

And OK he did also bring electronics, one small mp3 player for me. My old one had broke.

New schedule

I'm not sure you've noticed but for more than a year I have been publishing blog posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I liked that schedule. I feel it gives structure and I also like having the need to publish something, I feel like that keeps the standards a bit lower. Sounds weird but when I must write that often I will need to post all sorts of things, even things I don't have the time or energy to polish till perfect. Not that I'm a perfectionist anyway. Some of those posts are of course not that popular and some... well... some surprise me.

But I'm afraid that is not working anymore. Recently there has been many posts that I have not been inspired to write. Mainly it's because I just don't have as much free time as I had before. I spend way more time commuting to work than I did before and I also have worked later since summer. I like what I do so that is okey, but it means that I do not have as much time to spend in home. So I'm giving myself some slack. I will continue to write on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, BUT I might skip a day once in a while. Not that I really needed to write you this, I know you get it. But I had made myself a promise of some sort and now I'm adjusting that promise.

Just so you know.

Flea market finds

Flea markets are fun places but I go way too rarely to those. Last week I did go and found some cookie cutters. I especially like the bird and the mushroom cutter. The others are a bit more standard. Also the cutters came with a cool ring. I added all my cookie cutters on the ring, it was such a handy way to store the cutters.

Also I bought some baking forms, similar what I used when redoing the soap. But these are a bit bigger and more traditional in form. 

Rain and cold

Rain in a way is nice, it's calming some how. We've had some pretty heavy rain showers but the temperature outside has been surprisingly warm. I am just the one feeling cold. I have a flu. I've spent most of my time drinking tea, knitting and watching junk from tv.

Sun flower self picking

You saw a glimpse from the sun flowers on Monday's post. I picked the sun flowers from a field not far away. On Tuesday I went to get more and I also bought my camera with me.

The field is provided by the city and I know a few areas in Helsinki where self picking of flowers is free, but this particular one in my home city does cost. You are supposed to pay 1 euro per four flowers to one bank account. I doubt many pay, but I did. I love to support this kind of activity.

Pickled cucumber

This summer has not been very warm here and all the cucumbers I had in the backyard are only now starting to be big enough to pick. But now they are all ready in the same time and that is why I pickled them to store them more easily.

I cut out the stump from the cucumbers, but few of the smaller ones had a beautiful star shape on the top and I just had to take a photo of one before I sliced them.

The process for making pickled cucumber is fairly easy. You just pile cucumber slices in a desinfected jar together with some spices. I used mustard seeds, dill stalks, garlic slices, white pepper and horseradish slices.

When the jars are full the cucumbers are covered with water, vinegar, sugar and salt cooked together. Caps are closed and the jars will be placed in the fridge. This way the cucumber can be enjoyed all year long.

Decluttering hand bags

I am proud to say I have very few hand bags. Okey I know I have a few and I know some of you will think that "oh, so many, I have only one", well yes I have more than one, but according to the stereotypical image of women I should have gazillion handbags. But I have... no... I had 10 hand bags.

One of the bags is missing from the photo, because I use that one ALL the time. There was no need to declutter that, I know I love it. But in a closet between the bedroom and the office I had a box where I kept these hand bags. I lifted all the hand bags out and placed on the office floor to assess them.

There were two bags which I cannot even remember the last time I've used them. One black and brown evening bag. They were both a bit old fashioned and not really my style. Also there was one that I would call a shoulder bad that smelled funny and it was really difficult to open or close. It was made of fake leather and it had smelled funny even when I bought it.

I kept only those hand bags above plus the one I use all the time of course. The dark shoulder bag is not my favourite in style but it serves it purpose and I have used it quite a lot in situations where my regular favourite shoulder bag looks too fancy. The stripy bag has seen it's better days but it's very handy in size.

Oh and the Pupu Tupuna bag. It's a bag I got when I was a kid. Pupu Tupuna is series of Finnish children's books. I'm quite sure I got the bag with the books, it's very cheaply made and it's broken from some parts but I can't make myself part with it. So I'm keeping it. Even though I never use it.

I placed all the bags inside a cardboard box and placed that inside my clothes closet in the bedroom. It is not that I decluttered much here but I still love the feeling that I was able to find something not usefull to me anymore and get rid of those.

Positive sides of blogging

It was a good idea to show to everyone all over the blog world my unfinished projects. It was good because that post brought to my attention the projects that I've seen all the time but have not noticed in a long time. Now that I was "forced" to actually see them I began to work on them more actively. So far I've already tied off the threads from the gloves and I did finish the onion bag I almost had desided to unravel. I even made a nice lace edge on it. I'm still not liking it though. But it will do.

Apple pie and jam

Some of the apples have already ripened and fallen from our two apple trees. But I cannot eat apples as is, my bowel does not tolerate them. So in order to eat apples I need to cook them first. I started out by making the pie, but noticed I had so much apples that they wont fit inside one pie so I also made jam.

I used this recipe to make the pie. I'm not that skilled making the crust so the fillling bubbled on top of the crust a bit from the edges, but that was just yummy. The edges caramelized amazingly. Jam I just made using the instructions from the jam sugar package. Instruction also here (in Finnish).