Happy Holidays

I can`t believe it`s Christmas Eve already! I have been busy making present, cards and all kinds of little projects. So busy that I haven`t been able to post since the magazine article reveal!

There has been some lows in my life, but now I try to focus on celebrating and enjoying this Season! One thing I love is making flower arrangements! I just buy a few flowers and then add fresh sprigs from our trees! It`s a very cost-efficient way ;). My favorite Christmas flower is white amaryllis (don`t know the name in English). Also pare branches are beautiful in a vase with some ornaments! So simple, but beautiful!

I also love wrapping presents! I want to make every present as beautiful as I can! You may call me crazy, but I also match the papers and ornaments with our decor! :D. That way they look beautiful under the tree!

This year I liked to use craft paper with some other one simple papers, paper stars and some ornaments we made from self drying clay. I also used natural elements in the presents. I love to keep things simple and natural with a little twist!

Those clay ornaments can be used as a gift tags also! I usually make different shapes of tags to every gift.

When wrapping presents it`s easy to wrap them in a box or some kind of container. I try to collect different boxes to use for gifts! This black tube came with my posters I ordered. Perfect for gifts!!!

I hope you all have a great holiday season! Enjoy your time with family, friends or other loved ones!

In eyes of a photographer

It`s been way too long since my last blog post! Time just seems to fly by. I wish I had more time to share my projects, crafts and ideas with you, but I try to be thankful for these posts I`m able to write! After all, it`s the positive things in life we should concentrate on :), don`t you agree?

Yesterday was a positive day full of excitement for me and my whole family! In my last post I wrote about a photo shoot and yesterday on 25th of November in a Finnish magazine called Kotivinkki the article was published! Due to a post office worker`s strike we didn`t receive our own copy of the magazine so my husband went to buy one today so I could share the photos with you! As I have just photographed the magazine the photos don`t do justice to the original ones, with were taken by Tiu Kaitalo, but they give an idea how our Christmas home looks like :).

The headline here is freely translated Peace on mind by the fire. It refers to my favorite spot in the house: the fireplace room. Actually we all enjoy sitting or laying in bed and watching the fire. There is something so magical and primitive in it.

Under the headline is a black text: "In Jenni`s home even Christmas ornaments are the same colors as the rest of the decor. Making things by hand take the focus away from chronic pain." 

Those two sentences pretty well sum up the essence of decorating and crafting and the meaning they have in my life.

That little house box introduces us, tells who live in this home. "Our home. Log home built in 1975 in Riihenmäki, Mäntsälä, 128 square meters home with 4 rooms, a kitchen and a fireplace room. Here lives Jenni 33 years. Mauritz 33 years and Oskari 5 years old. Jenni is a textile/craft teacher and Mauritz teaches philosophy and psychology."

I love that photo of me and Oskari! Tiu, the photographer even managed to get a smile out of Oskari, who is normally intimidated and frightened by these kind of social situations as he has selective mutism. 

Our old coffee table felt too big and now as we search for the right one, that movable bar chart has served us well. We love the fact that it has wheels, so it`s easy to roll away if Oskari want to play on the carpet or pull it closer if we are eating evening snacks by the tv watching movies. It may well be, that I have to find something else there where the cart used to be ;).

Here is the second spread with a lovely family photo. Oskari wanted to hold my hand to feel safe and even got to eat one of the ginger bread cookies we made and decorated. I love that they added a photo of our fireplace room / guest room, but I would have preferred they would have added a photo with the bed ! It`s so cozy to curl up there with my men and watch the fire <3.

My love for crafting is seen on the way I love to make every gift as beautiful as I can. And really you don`t have to pay much, I used free things from nature and sime ribbon and a free printable! 

On several years I have made some ornaments to our three, like those paper stars. They are cut from a wall paper, bought from Ikea! Do you wonder what is that numbered tag? It`s a part of our advent calendar. Each day we open one, with some kind of a fun activity we all do together. It can be anything from playing a game to baking. Before advent time we sit down and think what could be nice thing to do and I`m in charge of the execution. Lovely family tradition of our own.

This photo of our living room is so gorgeous! You can really tell, that the photographer is talented. It was fascinating to watch how a professional photographer works and how much you really need to do for a photo like this! There were four lights and a reflector in use to make everything look so light and dreamy. I really admire photographers talent in capturing something beautiful.

Here you can see one of the gifts I made for the photo shoot. Easy, simple and natural. And of course they are made to match the decor <3 

Third spread is dedicated to our bedrooms and craft room. I like how "our" colors flow nicely in the photos and really make everything look cohesive. 

Our small bedroom is mainly for sleeping. We installed those wall mounted bed tables to make cleaning easier in a small space like this. On the left side there can be seen curtains and behind them is our small walk- in closet.

What it comes to decorating Oskari`s room, he has had a lot to say about it! He wanted to pick the colors and textiles while I kept in mind the whole picture and the practical side of things. To store his growing lego collection we hacked his Ikea Kura-bed so that there is space under the bed for storage crates with wheels. Oskari also wanted to have curtains over his bed, under them he feels safe. In fact he would like to have two more curtains there, so he could put them all around the bed making a bed tent for himself. #kidswithideas

My, sorry our craft room is also one of my favorite places. I love sitting in my chair looking out in our garden and crafting. Ob the table you can see more presents all wrapped up and ready for Christmas. Too bad that they were only empty boxes as I didn`t have any presents ready then yet ;). I was given a lot of positive feedback on my styling. I had this little wrapping table set up with some unfinished gifts, ginger bread cookies ready to be eaten and little thing like that. They were able to start photographing right away, which isn`t the case in most cases.

Hearing those compliments really boosted my confidence, because even though my family and friends probably value my skills, they are MY family and that`s why biased. But hearing something like that from a professional - it totally made my day!

The fourth and last spread concentrates on our kitchen. Like many homes here in Finland, we don`t have a separate dining room, but rather open plan layout. From the dining space you can see to the living room. In fact the first shot is taken from the kitchen. We didn`t renovate the kitchen ourselves and there are many things I would like to change, but it`s functional.

Here is a closer look at the last page. Sadly we didn`t get snow so we would have had a snowy photo from our back yard as an icing on the cake, but that`s life here in Southern Finland.

I even set the table and used my "go-to colors" turquoise, gray, white and green. On Christmas Eve we normally have family here with us. Our table can seat at least eight people, but normally we keep our table smaller to have more space around it. We used to have a cabinet over the oven. It was mainly unused, looked heavy and blocked light so we finally decided to take it down. It involved some electrical work, so we had a change to get a pendant over the counter top. Having a task light there has been my dream for as long as we have lived here ;).

  

I love simple table settings where you have room to move without a fear of dropping something ;). On Christmas day, though, I might add a flower or two and some greenery in the mix.

So, here it is. I saw no point in translating the text completely and tried to explain some of the things there are mentioned and more. If you have any questions, please ask! And remember, I always value your comments <3

See you here again! Have a great time preparing for Christmas and relax. Things don`t have to be perfect, you can embrace this Nordic saying: Less is more! 

Warmly,

Jenni

Tuesday to remember

I just had to share how I feel right now! It`s already over midnight here in Finland, so I can say: "This Tuesday is going to be a day I remember a long time!". If you red my last post, you know that this week a photographer is coming over to take pictures of our home and our family. The story and pictures are going to be published in a Finnish magazine in late November. And there is a twist - our home is decorated for Christmas!

You probably guessed that THE day is TODAY!

I`so exited and ..well..proud! I feel happy in our home and it`s an overwhelming feeling that someone wants to share our story.

But that`s not all! Yes, there is more :). I have mentioned School of Decorating many times. It`s founded by Jackie Hernandez, who also writes an amazing blog Teal and Lime. Right now SoD is open for new members to join in. As a part of showing people what SoD really is she asked if anyone of us members would like to share their own decor stories.I volunteered and now Jackie shares the decor story of our home and how SoD has helped me to find my own style and to make this house a home we love.  Jackie picked me and my story! Total surprise!

The best part - she wrote a blog post which she is going to publish, yes you guessed, TODAY!

So if you want to read that story just visit her blog later today/tomorrow depending where you live. There are photos of our powder room renovation (my blog posts about it can be found here), our recent smaller project and you can even get a glimpse of our Christmas decorations ;).

I have been a member of School of Decorating for over a year now and it has really made a difference on how I decorate and what I really want our home to reflect. If you are ready to learn how to decorate your own home I highly recommend joining SoD. That community is the best support group I know! I have made some very good friends after joining and I`m so happy I decided to invest little money. What I have payed for the membership, I have saved on home decor! Now I know what I need to buy and what I love enough to buy!

Anyway - this day brings a lot of new things in my life and I`m going to learn from them! I hope I have enough time later this week to share more about the shoot and what kind of a experience it was!

See you then,

Warmly,
Jenni

Exciting news

First I must apologize for not posting in such a long time! I just had to evaluate what is most important in my life at the moment, and I had to give attention to other things in my life. There are just times, when you are so busy with everything else that you have to let somethings go for a short time!

But, now I`m back!

my son`s "treehouse"

treehouse and "the secret escape door"

We finally finished our outdoor projects. Well, there is still a little bit of painting to be done in the spring. During winter I have enough time to sew curtains and other textiles to my sons "tree house". He even wants blackout curtains :D. He has really showed his skills as a "designer"! He really has a mind of his own, and there are times we don`t seem to think alike ;).

We also bought some new furniture to my son`s room. He needed more storage for his toys, especially for Legos! We ended up buying him a small Kallax unit from Ikea and another Alex drawer for his Legos. The drawer has been a life saver! It`s so easy to organize all those little parts in the right drawer! All the smallest parts we organized by color and then we have a car drawer and drawer for basic parts as well as one for building houses. He invented the "categories" himself, so maybe it`s easier for him to put all those part on their own drawers ;). Well, at least we parents can dream ;). I`m going to post about the changes we made to his room later this month and at the same time you get to see how we reorganized his clothes!

Fall has arrived here too. I love this time of the year! Fresh air, wind, colorful leaves, darker nights and sitting in front of a fireplace relaxing while candles are burning. I have made some fall decorations here and in fact some Christmas decorations can be spotted around the house! We even have our Christmas tree up :).

But wait, it`s October - there is two more months till Christmas. What I`m thinking? Well, I do love Christmas, but not quite that much ;). I do have a good reason for this all though!

Last year we had to start Christmas decorations in early November, because I had a surgery three weeks before Christmas and I wasn`t allowed to do practically anything! This year I don`t have to go through yet another surgery, so why I have unpacked our Christmas boxes?

Well, next week a photographer and a journalist are going to come here in our home to make a story of our home and how decorating is like a therapy for me! Can you believe it, I still can`t ;). So that is what has taken all my time recently! Getting ready for Christmas isn`t that easy in the early October, I have to use last year`s decorations mostly, but I do have some new ones too. I`ve been also trying to finish many to-do projects around the house like, refinishing our fireplace, painting some walls, taking off some cabinets and getting some new furniture. And everything with a very limited budget. So stay tuned what I have for you as we are getting closer and closer to Christmas :)

Thanks for patiently waiting for a post! These past months have been the busiest ones for as long as I can remember! Now on I should have more time to write down, share and reflect those things I do to achieve a home that is me!

See you next time!

Hugs,
Jenni

My planner

I´m been extremely busy with all our building work! It`s been quite long since I last really built something, so I must confess I´m aching all over ;) . I´m glad though that I´ve had practice to use a nail gun, table saw and other tools! The last couple days I´ve spent on the roof of our future firewood "shed" ;). As soon as we get it painted I can show you some photos! There is going to be a small part for my son´s toys and for my things :). I look forward the organization project :). Yep, I LOVE to organize!

But today, I wanted to tell you about my new planner. I haven´t used a planner for a couple of years as I have used my phone`s calendar. I have lately noticed that my memory isn´t the same anymore, probably due to medication and stress. I thought long what I should do to really remember things and what to use to write things down. 

I have always admired people with beautiful planners! So that was my choice too! I opted to buy a planner cover with rings. That way I could use the actual cover for many years to come and only replace the planner pages.

I searched for a nice planner cover and found many possible ones! I loved Kikki K`s planners, but sadly all those lovely teal/turquoise ones were sold :(. Also Webster´s pages has lovely Color Crush planners, but guess what? All my favorite colors were sold out! I probably should have thought about buying one in December ;) to really get a color I want! Then I found Filofax site and this lovely aquamarine cover! 

I loved that with Kikki K and Color Crush you can buy lovely stickers and dividers etc. with the planner. Filofax don´t have those same options. From Etsy you will find many dividers, stickers and other stuff you can use to personalize your planner! I splurged and bought the cover, so I decided to save some money by making my page dividers etc. myself. With the planner cover I did get year 2015 planner pages, page dividers, note pages... None of them really were my style! And those pages were made of very thin paper.

I turned to Etsy to find a solution! I do love Jennifer Jones` from I heart Organizing planner, but it´s not really my style. So I searched and searched and finally found CrossbowPrintables. I loved the black and white design (we only have a black and white laser printer ;) ) and the style. I ordered several bundles and everything worked fine! It takes some more time to really learn what things I want and need from a planner, but these printables have worked fine so far!

  

I love this weekly view! I can write up meetings, hobbies, my son´s daycare times etc. There is also a little notes section under each day and under each page. I use them to write down daily menus, birthdays, to-do lists and all those extra notes :).

I also bought pages for my projects. I have pages for marking the work hours, meeting notes,ideas and sketches. It really helps when planning a project for someone else. In the above picture you can only see, that I divide those different projects with special pages for easy access. With the Filofax planner came also that plastic ruler. It´s perfect for sketching or drawing straight lines ;).

Even thought there are tons of different page dividers available, I wasn`t prepared to pay much and on the other hand wanted something to suit my style! The answer - Doing it myself! I bought a few cardstocks, printed some free geometric pattern pages and used those CrossbowPrintables quotes printed on a basic white paper. I also had some old scrapbook papers I used, and the total cost for all these personal pages was around 15 euros. Not bad ;)

I decided to make a different main page for each section, for meals, projects, lists, budget, blog and notes!

With that 15 euros I was able to make also these dividers! I used black card stock for the yearly calendar and turquoise for the others. I decided to only keep a six months of planner pages because I used a thicker paper to print them and they all would not have fitted in the rings ;).

For the month tabs I used an old card stock I had. I cut 3cm wide piece and clued a two sided tape on the other side. Then I folded it in half and cut out a piece for every month. Then I used my label maker to make those dividers!

The months can be seen along the long side. On the short side there is also tabs!

I made black tabs for the other pages and placed them on top of the dividing pages. That way it`s easy to find what I´m looking for! You may also wonder what is that turquoise tab! It`s a divider or exactly a mark for my calendar. I mark the current week, so it´s easy to find the ongoing week.

I ordered some embellishments from an Etsy shop P.s planning supplies and from Badges Folie for my cards and overall crafting! Some of them I used to decorate my planner, too ;). But really you don`t need that much to make a planner to look like you :). 

Here you can see how I`ve used some of those arrows and tapes to mark certain things in the planner. As I use this a little longer, I´ll be back to show you what kinds of systems I have come up with!

I´ll learn along the way :)

I just happened to bought a new pen and after a few times using it, knew it was just the perfect one for my planner! It`s Pilot`s FriXion ball pen and the best part is that it´s removable using the other end of the pen! These are available in many colors and I´m dreaming of buying a few to mark different things in different colors. I probably have to order them online as we don`t have many colors here in Finland!

On the photo below you can see almost everything I needed to make this planner more ME. I also used my label maker and needed a printer for many papers and the planner pages! It´s many times a good thing to have quite a minimal style ;)

So, what do you think? Can you guess this is my planner ;)? If you have a planner, do you make it yours in some way? I`d like to know!

Our building projects are in a good shape, so I hope to be able to post here more often! See you here again!

Warmly,

Jenni

Guest post: Petra`s bedroom REVEAL

I´m so glad to have Petra here again! You may remember her last post where she described how she build a headboard with her husband and son. Now she is here to show all the changes she made to their bedroom! I just love what she has done :) And what is best, you don`t have to spend an awful lot of money, to make a space feel more you, a place you love!

Here she is now:

Thank you all for reading about our headboard construction in my last post. It really was such a fun project and we were proud of what we accomplished! 

Here it is in the room. What do you think? We LOVE it!

Probably some of you know that I am a huge Ikea fan and from the very beginning of the headboard design, I wanted to incorporate their Ranarp clamp lamp. I really love the styling of this lamp and also the touch of brass-like finish. I hoped that introducing a few brass décor touches would help incorporate the mirrored closet door trim. My décor mentor, Jackie Hernandez, of Teal and Lime & School of Decorating says that introducing a particular color or finish three times in the room will help it feel intentional and not accidental. Between the Ranarp lamps and the starburst on the side table, the brass finish now works!

A word about color… One thing I have learned about my style is that I love color and contrast. In our living room we have a red, teal, and lime as our accent colors making a complimentary palette. Complimentary palettes give a lot of energy and fun to a space! My love of contrast and complimentary palettes is one reason why our old bedding just never felt right for us. It was an analogous palette with green, teal, and navy – a beautiful combination but just not our style. Analogous pallets are peaceful and relaxing. Not surprisingly, most bedding sets are made with an analogous color pallet. 

For the new bedding, I wanted a fairly neutral base with a few pops of color. Limiting the amount of pattern is key for me especially with those mirrored doors multiplying everything in the space. I decided on the Ikea Ofelia Vass set combined with their Nyponros set. I really love the texture of the Ofelia Vass – once washed it has a sear sucker finish that fits the modern cottage feeling of our Honest Charm style. I picked up a new sheet set at Target and also added and Ikea Sanela cushion with a hand tufted homemade pom-pom.

I knew teal would be a major color in this room. It is the one color that shows up in every room of our house and is a thread connecting all of the spaces. So for a complimentary color palette containing teal but not the same as our living room palette of teal, red, lime… why not red-orange? It is directly across from teal on the color wheel and would give me that pop of contrasting color that I really love.

When I went fabric shopping, I was absolutely blown away by this red-orange fabric from Joann fabrics! It is called “Retro Morocco Spider Floral” and has touches of aqua and navy. It almost has a Scandinavian folk art feel or perhaps a 50s style. I just love this fabric!!! {Yes 3 exclamation points!!!} I made these removable covers following Jackie’s simple envelope pillow tutorial for these inserts.

All the hard work and planning was certainly worth it! We are so happy with how this project turned out. For quite a bit of effort but very little money, we gave our master bedroom a complete update to something that feels very fresh and very us! There are still a few finishing touches to be done around the room especially with our dresser so stay tuned for the final installment.
It makes me so happy to have a bedroom that is so us! It was so worth the $125 to build the headboard and the extra $225 for lamps, bedding and a few little décor items.
How about you? Do you have a bedroom that you love?


I´m so glad Petra and her husband now have a bedroom they love! When you have those little things right it makes such a big difference! I´m so glad I joined Jackie Hernandez School of Decorating, as there I met Petra and other very talented ladies! If you want to learn more about SoD or even become a member just click here!

I´ll see you here again! 

Warmly,

Jenni

Shady front porch

Hi again! So sorry it´s been so long since last post, but we finally got to enjoy warm summer days for a few weeks! Now it´s raining again. Partly, I´m happy for these rainy days, because now we can catch up on house chores, blog and other projects! No need to rush to make a "playhouse" to our son, or building the firewood storage shed. And finally I have time to write this post..;)

In last post I showed you our back porch and promised to show photos of our front porch! But before I show you the photos, one more picture of the back deck. If you didn´t catch last post and want to see more of our back deck just click here! I finally hung the mirror and decided to add a little art, too. I just want to bring my style from indoors to outdoors! Just adding a few pieces makes this space feel like a living room!

Ok, finally the photos I promised! I wanted to keep the greens simple here too, as in our back deck, so I planted only a small tree and hostas. What comes to flowers, I love hydrangeas! I´m not a rose or a lily person ;) Luckily it´s shady in our front porch, so I was able to buy hydrangeas there!

The photo below is taken quite early in the summer, just after I had bought all the flowers and hung the curtains. I just love those hydrangeas! I had them last year, too and they bloomed all summer :)

I bought a rug for our entry, but it was too thick. We should have shortened one door to get it fit, so I decided to place it on the porch. I´m so glad it didn´t fit inside - happy accidents! But i´m still looking for a perfect rug for the entry ;)

We got that iron bench as a gift about three years ago, but it´s just not my style. I hope to replace it with this IKEA`s new Nipprig sofa. I love the natural material and the look of it! We have in our living room a Byholma chair, which has almost the same design.  What´s great about the sofa is that it can easily seat two people, as we, me and my son, sit there often listening our water feature.

Here you can see more of our porch. The floor tiles and the concrete steps really need a makeover. I have to put that my next year´s to do -list ;). Last year our house was painted and at the same time we made a makeover to our door! We painted it jade green, changed the hardware and replaced an old yellow glass with a clear one. It made such a difference that people thought it was a new door! 

Right in front of our porch there grows a pine. I just love that tree! Look at those hostas! Can you believe they are the same I planted? Now they hardly fit! 

I think that wall where the lamp is needs something more! I`ve thought of a mirror or a wooden sign. What would you place there?

Here´s the porch from another side. You can see our garage back there and our latest addition, a new water feature at the front, We made it using a pump, a large bucket and a outdoor flowerpot, which had a hole in the bottom.

Here is a close up, which you may have seen in Instagram, if you follow me there! The sound as the water flows over the container to the bucket under the stones, is so relaxing and soothing! And how easy this water feature was to make :). When we moved here, soon to be six years ago, this whole front yard was only covered with poorly maintained grass! Our yard is about 1000 m2, so we have slowly made changes one part at a time! 

What do you think? Would you like to sit in our porch and sip coffee? By the way, is porch even the right word for a space like this, as it´s not enclosed? I just didn´t come up with a better word ;).

I ´m so glad you popped in once again! I hope you come back on Tuesday, as Petra visits us and shares her bedroom makeover! She was here earlier to share how she build a headboard to their master bedroom with her husband and son. Now it´s time for the whole bedroom makeover reveal!

So see you here on Tuesday :)

Warmly,
Jenni