DELICIOUS ITALY

Italian pastry for breakfast with your cappuccino...

Local wine from Irsina area...something between wine and grape juice...

Tomatos drying in a garage....

Figs from the garden with ham and creamy cheese

Entrance to the old part of Irsina...

BEAUTIFUL DAY IN ANDORRA

Living in Andorra gives you spectacular views. And this time of the year it's starts snowing. There are nothing more beautiful than a walk in snow when the sky is blue and the sun shines. A real moment of enjoyment.

We still need some more snow before the skiing season can start, but meanwhile I enjoy these post card views while walking...

THE LOVELIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD

This is not only a book about these girls, it's book about all us "GIRLS", young or old. It is about how lovely we all can be. And we all the LOVEliest Girl in the World. This book has the most beautiful photos and graphic art, some parts looks like you are looking at a wall paper or a fabric. Last weekend I went to a book fair in Turku, Finland and I had the opportunity to meet Miina Savolainen the author of the book. What a marvelous lady, she has manage to bring these girls souls in to the photos. Her long term work has given confidence and courage to these young girls. And it shows us all how empowering photography helps many ways. The text in the book is in Finnish and English. This is a type of book that every mother should buy to her daughters. It gives something good for all us girls with our growing pains in life even we are older already.

This award winning book looks like a fairy tale book. The girls looks like fairies in a mystic environment but they all are real with a real life story behind each of them. It is a real art book for the whole family to read about how these girls went through the process of growing up without their parents. If you want to get The Loveliest Girl in the World book you can order it on the www.voimauttavavalokuva.net you can find on the link the English version as well. It will also give for all us girls something to think about ourselves. We all are lovely...

DECORATE WITH LETTERS...

There are so many different ways of using messages and letters when decorating your home... in these following photos I will show you what I did to the entrance area of my holiday house in Finland...

In 2006 when we signed the contract with the company that was going to do the base and the wood part for our house. And while busy going through the contract the house builder asked, how would we like to call our house... we had no ideas and in the same time four cranes flu over us so, I told him that the name for the house should be the "FLY OF THE CRANE" and since that our house was officially called "Kurjenlento" meaning the fly of the crane in Finnish. For quite sometime I wanted to have a sign outside of our house and finally I found some letters that could make the text for the sign... But they were white and bright...too white to hang up on a black wall of our house. So I have to find a way to change the letter to "grey" looking colour and the way, how to hang them up nicely, because the word was quite long.

To paint these letters, I used black spray paint and the way I did it, is the following: I just sprayed small amount of the black spray paint on the cardboard and then with a clean small paint brush took a small amount of paint and the brushed the paint over the letters. If you want to do something like this and you are going to use spray paint you have to work quite fast. The paint is drying really fast. Other wise you can also use normal paint but it will take much longer to dry. 

I have bought a long wooden board, and I painted that in light grey and it was one of those paints that gives the colour to the wood but leaves the natural look of the wood not covering it too much...

If you do something like this and want to keep it outside you have to use nails to attached the letters to the wood surface. I was first thinking to use a glue, but the weather conditions, from the warm summer to cold winter will not keep the letters attached for long on the board... The best way is to nail the letters with a nail gun and use very fine nails. You can't see the nails at all.

...And here is the result of it... with some other details that we added in same time to our entrance area...

...And here it is...hanging on the wall...

                            A black board that I found in IKEA is fun to use for different messages...

DESIGN HOTEL IN MILANO

A week ago when I was visiting Milano with my friends, one of them had made a booking for one night at the NHOW Milano Hotel. A real designers quarters. Here is the photo of the drive way to the hotel...Very promising already...

This is the room door, it looks like a real tagging, the corridors are painted in black and the atmosphere is really dark.

The entrance hall is huge and the place is a real  heaven for colour therapy. Most of the furniture are made of plastic and the huge chandeliers too...

                               I took these photos while eating my lunch at the hotels restaurant

I told you colour therapy, as you sit on the coach like this you feel happy straight away...