Home Pictures, Summertime

The light was so pretty that I took some pictures of our home. It's so good to have all the furniture in place after weeks of kitchen renovating, finally things are where they should be! The cats also wanted to be in pictures, naturally.

The usual work space. I have a desktop computer too, but have been more fond of the laptop lately. Möttönen loves to lounge in the sun on the table.

The kitties have a basket and some grass on the window sill. The lights are on
at night, I like the effect of having little yellow bulbs on the window.

The bedroom. I went a little crazy and bought the yellow pillow cases from H&M.
I've never had anything yellow in the apartment before, but this shade was calling to me.

My vanity. I recently added a shelf on top of the mirror mostly for hair products and it makes keeping the table free so much easier! Also a good place to store Monster High dolls ;D

View from the living room into the bedroom. 

And a little bit of the new kitchen! It's so tiny it's hard to take good pictures, but you get the idea. Black, white and dark wood. And there's a window now! It used to be covered by a huge fridge.

This is one of my favourite things in the kitchen, a black, shiny refrigerator! It's quite small, but should be
enough for us. If not, the space is large enough for a regular sized one. 

Möttönen posing by the window.

Magnus on the table (yes, the cats are allowed on this table).

Möttönen once again. I love the wide stone window sills and I think the cats share my feelings ;D

White Floors

Whew, finally all the sanding and painting and carrying stuff is done! When we moved into the apartment almost two years ago, my other half and I discussed painting the floors but decided to skip it and maybe look into it later. Back then I painted only the bedroom floor so we can see how well the paint stays on and can it take the beating the racing cats give it. The paint was meant for floors but water based, so we were a bit unsure of how durable it would be. But the floor has stayed nice all this time, so we finally decided to go ahead and paint the rest of the wooden floors. The original colour was birch, if I remember correctly, a very yellow toned wood which was also quite soft, cat claws leave marks on it.

We started on Tuesday and finished today on Saturday. This included packing all the furniture from one room to another (we did the study and the living room), sanding two rooms twice and painting three layers on both. I'm really happy with the result, no more piss-coloured floors ;P I do predict that there will be more floor washing in the future, since the white shows stains easily. But since the bedroom that is the sort that you walk through it all day long has been okay and done well with the occasional floor wiping, I think everything will work fine!

The curtains are still knotted, I only now noticed ;D

I love how much light the white floor brings! On the left you can see our bookcase,
which is made of two Expedit units from Ikea stacked on top of each other.

Sleepy kitty. They were in the apartment the whole time, only shut in one room at a time.
It was sheer luck that when one kitty escaped he didn't run into the wet paint but
preferred hiding under the bed!

Booze, books and a cosy chair. What more could you ask?

White brings out other colours, the carpet looks a lot brighter than it did on yellow floor.

The kitties are sleepy since they have been climbing on stacks of stuff and running
around in the empty rooms endlessly ;D

Sleepy like this.

I'm so proud we did everything by ourselves. A big thanks goes to my dad for lending the sanding device thingie, sanding by hand would have taken for ever! And that machine is a miracle, it's apparently older than I am but worked great. The project cost us around 170 euros, that includes the paint, a paint roller, masking tape, two handles for rollers and sand paper. We had a few paint brushes and one roller already. Everything went smoothly, no cats running on wet paint, long enough drying times. Now we just need to find a place for all the stuff floating around the place, it always seems things multiply when you try to pack them away!

Light in the House

Finally the sun has come out! It feels like spring when it still should be the coldest time of the year, but I'm not complaining. The streets are dry and the gravel has been swiped away, so I can take my spring shoes from the closet. In celebration I took a few pics of our apartment when the sun was up, it seemed like such a precious moment.

Mörkö taking a nap.

I got this plant from Ikea's discount department, I have soft spot for sorry looking plants.
Back when I got it it had three leaves in total.

My other half wanted to get a bed, so we found second hand one. I've had a mattress on the floor for years, but actually having a bed is quite nice, you can hide stuff under it! And cats too, they can hide themselves under it.

My orchid grew some more flowers and buds. The fuggler was my other half's gift
to me, and the vintage postcard of a Messerschmitt plane was my Valentine's gift for him :)

And a kitty picture! Our newest addition to the family still has no name, but he's now comfortable eating with humans or other cats present. He still doesn't like to be touched, but it'll come with time. He is such a handsome cat, I love the spots! So far he's broken two cups and shredded a magazine, stolen beef from my plate and gnawed at things (not the chewy things I got him, but on other things, naturally). I had forgotten how mischievous kittens are...

Autumn at H&M Home

While in Helsinki I visited the H&M Home store, and they had a huge banner on the window about new stuff. It had a picture of a gorgeous pillow with a raven on it, but sadly they didn't have it in the shop yet. I found it online a few days later and just had to get it. Since the raven didn't really match the other pillows we have in the bedroom, I decided to change them all. My other half loved the raven too, so we just chose a few other pillows to match it.

The raven pillow is printed canvas. The print has warm brown shades in it, but not too much, it still goes well with black.

All of the new pillows. There's one with black PVC on one side and white canvas on the other, and a black satin pillow.

And one of the old pillows I in the end kept, it's also from H&M Home but I've had it for years. I might get a few more of the black satin pillows, since they are so pretty and don't seem to attract much cat hair!

New Jewellery Box

I currently have rented a table from a local self-service flea market, so I go there often to tidy up my spot. I've been trying not to browse much while there to avoid bringing as much stuff back home as I'm selling off, but I've still bought a couple of small things I thought were great finds. So far I've gotten a pair of Alchemy Gothic earrings for 2 euros, two satin linen sets for 2 euros, and this lovely acrylic jewellery box for 2 euros.

It was really dirty and hiding in the darkest corner of one table when I found it.

The top part opens with a clear lid, and the lower part is a little drawer. All the sections
are adjustable, so I can create larger or smaller spaces for the jewellery.

The leftmost earrings in the middle row are the ones I got from the flea market! 

All of my jewellery doesn't fit in it, but almost half does, so I'm planning on changing the ones in this container to encourage myself to wear jewellery more. All except earrings have been tucked away in a drawer and I don't even remember to always check if there would be something to match my clothes or make-up.

Some Home Pictures

I've been having such a busy week! I have one last course to pass this semester and it has proven to be really cumbersome, tons of work for just a few credits. It's also been hectic at the office, and we are having a house warming party next Tuesday, so the preparations take time too.

I took a few pictures of our apartment since we've been trying to find all place for all the stuff and fixing a few last things, like taking off the bedroom double doors and putting up curtains instead. So yesterday was an Ikea day ;P I love Ikea, I had a tiny hotdog and found some gorgeous straws for the house warming party!

But on to the pictures!

First the bedroom curtains. I'm so happy with them! The fabric is thick and easy to iron,
and it doesn't seem to suck in cat hair. Victory! My other half chose the curtain rod, it's
gorgeous!

Deer horns and a mirror still waiting to be put on the wall.

Stuff to swatch on my desk.

Nana and Nivek napping on top of the aquarium. Nana immediately took the
white circle scarf as her own when I just casually put it on the aquarium hood for
a few minutes.

I got a venus flytrap from Ikea. I hope it survives, the kitties seem to think
it's delicious.

A new nailbrush from Tiger. It look cool on the sink.

The black sink is so pretty, but a real bitch to clean. Any tips?

Some stuff on the wall behind my work desk.

A watercolour piece by me and the horns and mirror.

Möttönen holding on to her foot while sleeping.

Möttönen yawning.

A collage of kitty pictures (and one template since I accidentally ordred too few
portrait prints ;P)

The living room wallpaper.

Thing I've got for the party!

I like Oscar Wilde.

The bedroom window sill.

What the curtain rod's end are like. Super pretty!

The living room window sill.