finnish apartment room layouts

Before we even firmly decided to move to Finland, I had decided that I was only going to shop at thrift stores and I was going to patiently bide my time and make-do with nothing until I found the right something for my new home. But now that we're here, I've changed my mind.

I don't know if any of you have ever gone from having a lot of stuff (some would say too much) to absolutely nothing, but it's hard. Every time you reach for something and it's not there, is really frustrating. It gets to the point where you've had enough of not having what you need and seeing stacks and bags of your things on the floor (that you're constantly having to rummage through like a pack rat).

So yes, we found a thrift store close to us, but it was a major let down. I was so hoping to find more old vintage-y Finnish-style things and even more helpful kitchen items -- like a cheese grater -- rather than just cast off IKEA kitchen stuff and really (really) worn and disgusting IKEA furniture. Therefore, I've come to the conclusion that if my only option is to buy junk IKEA things at the thrift stores, I might as well buy nice new IKEA things that I actually like.

Something to note is that this apartment came semi-furnished. The unfortunate part is that I'm definitely not using any of the decorations or rugs because of their colour. Almost everything is either brown, red, or orange. So despite the fact that it would be easier and cheaper to just work around these things, to me, these particular shades of red and orange are really the worst when put together.

What I am keeping includes: 

2 TROGSTA lamps, (maybe) 2 NOLMYRA chairs in black, 2 LINNMON/ADILS tables, 2 vintage or thrift club-style chairs in grey with pastel green, purple, and blue flecks (these were a major bonus since they were covered with orange blankets, I had no idea there was amazing fabric underneath until we moved in), 2 ADDE chairs in white; (maybe) 1 LACK tv unit in white, and (maybe) 2 LACK tables in black.

{living room/office}

I was experimenting with more colourful pieces from IKEA and ended up with something I really truly love. It was kind of an unexpected colour palette, but I really like how bright and happy it is.

It all started with the {1} NITTORP in blue. I wanted a tv stand that wasn't particle board and I figured, "what the hell? Go with colour for once!"; And when I started considering fabric instead of premade curtain panels, {2} Malin Cirkel fabric was kind of a no-brainer. I love the ikat pattern; A quick test run of the {3} STOCKHOLM rug in yellow and the living room is all set. This picture has changed about a thousand times since I started working on it, but I think I'm finally pleased with it!

The living room is big enough to include our office space which isn't pictured because it'll just be one of the LINNMON tables plus the grey chairs as mentioned above.

{master bedroom}

In comparison to the living room, the bedroom will be a little more understated. It's better to have a more calming atmosphere where you sleep and I really wanted to be sure to get black-out curtains since this room is surrounded by street lamps.

Everything started with the bed and the bedding. I really want the {1} BEITSTAD headboard but I'm not sure about it cuz it would have to be free-standing due to the bed style. We've already got the Anno bedding from Kodin 1. I'm going european with my bedding options and using a flat bottom sheet with a duvet cover only. Like everyone, I love the {2} RÅSKOG kitchen trolly (green or grey?), and I thought it might be useful as a bedside table. It provides a lot of storage (and keeps tubes of chapstick from rolling away), though, if we can, we might use the {3} RAST dressers as side tables instead. They're so versatile that way. Should I paint them (like one of the amazing RAST makeovers out there), or leave them plain with interesting knobs? The wood isn't as yellow as I thought it was going to be, so the natural look has really grown on me these past few weeks (and maybe it's the country wearing on me, but natural wood looks surprisingly good with grey).

{baby room/dressing room}

I figure this final room is a good way to announce that I'm pregnant. I didn't really want to mention anything about it on the blog because I absolutely hate it when blogs turn mommy. But don't worry, I'm just about done cooking this turkey (2 months to go) so you're not going to have to endure any of that. This is my main reason for wanting to get things done around here as soon as possible. I'm way too exhausted, uncomfortable, and grumpy to walk my way around Helsinki trying to find things (I won't lie to you like I now think a lot of people do. Pregnancy is awful and I don't particularly want to do it again). Anyway, there shouldn't be much (if any) baby stuff showing up around here, I just loved the colour outcome in this room and had to share it with you.

This is also our dressing room because it's the only room with a closet system. It's the smaller room and it's dark and kind of depressing with only one sliver of a window and no view, so we both figure that dark is better for a newborn and (let's get serious here) what do they need a big bright, heavily windowed room for?

I found one curtain panel at the thrift store in this {1} FINLAYSON pattern (only existing in pillow form online) from Kodin 1. It was pretty much meant to be since the colours were 100% what I've been thinking about this whole time. I spotted the {2} Bellini rocking chair at Kodin 1 on sale, so I jumped at the chance to get it (it's now sold out). It looks very similar to this tutorial (which I loved and became obsessed with) and the price actually ended up being cheaper than if I did the tutorial myself (given the fact that I no longer have any tools or supplies or space or bendability anymore). And because of the lines and graphic patterns in the fabric (it's hard to tell from the photo), I really had to add black and white which is where the {3} VIRRING rug (which I wish came in a larger room size) and black and white furniture comes in.

The rooms don't look too IKEA-y, do they?

jumping point: black trim

So last weekend, I was sitting around watching The Lucky One (I know I'm a total sap, but I'm also someone who will generally watch anything that's "new" on the Movie Channel) and I completely fell in love with Zac Efron -- psych! I fell in love with the black trim. Specifically, the black trim with teal-blue walls. I've already got paint chips stuck on the walls in my kitchen, and now the black trim thing is making me rethink everything.

Here're some stills of the room that captured my heart:

These are the colours I've been entertaining for the kitchen for a few weeks now. 

I've already got the manta grey in the living room and the bathroom (it's probably my all-time favourite grey). I'm thinking about restless sea for the main kitchen area, around the cabinets. Since I can't change the dark cabinets, I thought painting the wall behind them a dark colour would make them less noticeable. Then I'd use girls' night out on the opposite wall as kind of a feature wall and to add in some brightness.

And, considering the colours I've already chosen (pre-movie), the idea of black trim just works, you know? It really makes sense! But if I paint the trim in the kitchen, I'll have to paint the trim in the living room, and then I'll have to paint the whole main floor and then eventually, I'll have to paint all of it black. Is that crazy? I feel like that's crazy. But given the fact that my trim is a darker shade of mushroom already, I don't feel like it'd be a big stretch to go black. It's just a lot of work!

Maybe it's spring fever but I feel like a need a huge change and that might include overhauling everything in the house! Do you ever feel like that?

best posts of 2012

I'm just stopping in to wish you happy holidays and to say thanks for reading Idle Wife this year!

{top five 2012 posts}

You sure wanted to learn how to crochet your own rag rug! All of the steps were top of my blog charts this year, so I'm going to count them as one. part 1 part 2 part 3 and part 4

You loved s'more d'oeuvres as much as I did! Next time I make them, I'm going to add some peanut butter or nutella between the marshmallow and graham cracker.

You also wanted to make your own shower curtain from a thrifted sheet, too. I'm still really proud of myself for learning how to sew button holes for this one!

Thanks for reminding me to make more crockpot applesauce! I really should use it for some gingerbread men before the year is over.

I hate to say it so soon, but Valentine's day is coming up. Give your loved one some chocolate bars wrapped with unique paper sleeves. Easy and pretty!

{my favourite 2012 posts}

My diy spring seed packets were such a pretty and easy gift, but they also lead to this.

I kind of got to realize my dream decorating project in Greece this year! I rearranged the apartment but I used what was already there. The floor plans are now as I imagined them, just with the old furniture (except the bed -- we were blessed with a double bed as a gift this year). I can't tell you how much more comfortable the apartment was when we stayed there. There is still too much stuff for the space, though, and I couldn't believe how badly it needs painting. These things are going to be addressed if anyone expects me to go to Greece ever again. ;)

I think it's the depressing fact that we just passed the first day of winter (what?! But we've had snow and cold since forever!) or the fact that I was spoiled by going to Greece halfway through, but I'm already dreaming of my garden and my peonies (and these photos are still some of my favourites). I'm planning on building some vegetable beds this year (and stealing some found cactus to plant for the cats in the front yard)!

The snow globe postcard was (and is) one of my favourite ideas. I love it because it's not Christmas-y at all and can be sent, well, as soon as it starts snowing or it would be fun to send to someone in a warmer climate where there isn't any snow. I used simple hole punches and wax paper, but you could definitely take it to the next level using a snowflake hole punch and some vellum to seal it all in.

I love my dinosaur ornaments so much! They look really neat on the tree when the lights are on. I'm definitely going to have a mini tree dedicated to them next year!

foodie christmas decoration

I know I said I was tired of wreathes, but somehow, the Christmas wreath still makes sense to me. Plus, as I was cleaning out my pantry, I had a great idea for my wreath decorations and I couldn't exactly ignore myself now could I?

I bought this plain wreath at the thrift store last year. It had nothing on it. Please see last year's post for the full story and to see what last year's decorations were.

Anyway, while cleaning up the pantry, I decided I should pull out my cookie cutters because I had thought to string them up on the tree and then I remembered that during the summer, I came across some small cooking utensils and fake vegetables. They were only a buck and I thought they'd look so cute on the Christmas tree as decorations. I still had the fancy dried corn out from fall decorations and many other prop ideas came to mind, hence the foodie wreath was born.

I attached everything with bits of floral wire which I got at the dollar store. I think that's the single most versatile purchase I've ever made there.

The only thing I bought was some pasta. First, the penne for a garland. I was going to dye them Christmas colours but decided I liked the natural pasta look better. There're some fake tiny tomatoes from my fake vegetables and you can see a tiny wooden bowl in the background.

Second, I bought a bag of bowtie pasta for little bows (obviously).

Fake beet! Oh the cuteness!

Fake carrot! And some cookie cutters. I liked these solid types for the wreath because they were a little easier to see than the usual cookie cutter types.

Tiny rolling pin and I added a medium sized pin that came with a ravioli making plate I have. Both of which I've never used. The red beads are a store-bought garland I already had. I thought they made nice "berries." An alternative could be some of those fake beaded necklaces you can find in abundance at thrift stores.

A real clove of garlic! Just push a piece of floral wire right through the whole bulb and tie it on. Those little green and yellow flowers and stems are sprigs of Greek mountain tea. Idle Husband's mom has sent me far more than I'll ever be able to drink in my lifetime (I have a huge peanut jar filled with the stuff plus three arm-sized bags of it). There's no need to wire them on, they'll stay if you just shove them in.

Some other items that were not pictured or hard to see: dried mushrooms (you can buy these literally anywhere and are really tasty once rehydrated, but I also attached wire to them and added them to the wreath), fake grapes, tiny cutting board, tiny mallet, tiny whisk... I just thought it might be nice to add some bay leaves or other herbs, candy canes or wrapped candies, gingerbread men... I mean, there're so many different ways you could go with this idea!

For the outside of the house, I wanted to do simple swags with the garland and lights this year, but I felt like there should be something at the top of each swag. Out came the mountain tea! I made little upside-down bouquets of the stuff, twisted it together with the floral wire, then added a cookie cutter (that I know I'll never use) to the top. I'm not 100% sure I like the cutters (they're kind of hard to see), but I really like the mountain tea bouquets (plus they smell so nice!).

To attach the swags, I used (you guessed it) floral wire! I just put two pieces together so I'd have a long enough wire to go around the railing. There was enough length left on the wire to also attach the mountain tea bouquets.

And that's how I've done up the front of the house this year. It's something a little different than the typical Christmas fodder, but it's still pretty Christmas (who's NOT cooking and baking at this time of year?) and it fulfills one of my main objectives for Christmas decor: It MUST look good during the day when the lights are off.

I hope that gives you some outside-of-the-box (and cheap!) ideas for decorating your home, wreath, or tree this year!

quick origami balloon advent calendar

I've noticed that there have been a lot of tutorials for origami water balloons this year, so when I finally decided to pick up a piece of paper and test out the folds, I had the idea to use them for a quick little advent calendar. You might think that making 25 origami balloons would be really difficult and time consuming, but this is one of the easiest origami figures I've ever made and I found the folds to be very basic. After you make two or three, you'll figure out the quickest way to make them. Generally, I would fold all of the creases for one side and then do the other (less flipping).

It took me one Saturday to complete the whole thing and would have gone quicker if I hadn't been trying different methods for the advent portion along the way. One hint I'll give you is to find yourself a thimble for your creasing thumb. Mine got awfully sore around halfway in!

Here's what I did:

Start with a piece of square paper (origami or otherwise) pretty side down (if it has one). Fold it corner to corner.

Then fold it again corner to corner.

You'll end up with this. A little triangle! Unfold it now. (How contrary.)

Using the lines you just folded as a guide, fold the paper into a sort of cross and flatten the sides together so you've got a triangle like this:

Flatten the whole thing down.

Next, follow these folds on both sides of the triangle:

Once both sides are folded as such, lift up one of the four flaps and fold up against the middle triangles.

Fold the edge that extends past the figure back in to make another little triangle.

Open one of the middle triangles (they're like little pockets) and tuck the triangle you just made into that pocket. Do this for all four flaps.

They should tuck inside pretty neatly.

You'll end up with a figure that's got a clear closed end and an obvious open end (well, it should be a tiny-ish hole). Don't blow them up yet (as tempting as it is!).

If you hate my instructions, I found these pretty helpful when I was first figuring it out and, as always, it's best to do a practice figure on a piece of scrap paper first!

This next part is kind of up to you. If you've got different colours of paper like I have, you might want to arrange them in a nice colour order so you don't just get a whole bunch of one colour for two weeks. Then you can number them if you like. The only thing you have to watch for is that the numbers are facing up with the closed point also pointing up. That's important or you'll get upside-down numbers when you go to hang them.

I decided to use a stamp for the numbers, but you could also hand write them or leave them blank. The smooth side of the balloon is another good place for a number if you want. You just have to fold the figure in half lengthwise. I debated for a while on how best to do this. I even thought to leave them blank and put the number on the little flag.

Next, ready the balloons for hanging. This is as easy as grabbing a needle and thread and pushing it through the top or closed part of the balloon and tying the ends to form a loop.

Now the fun part of the advent calendar! I decided to go with written notes and things to do this year instead of using actual candies and treats (some of the written ideas, though, are just for us to get candies or treats), and then I wrote them on a little flag. Just take a skinny rectangular piece of stock paper, fold it in half at a slight angle, and cut the corners to look like little paper ribbons. 

Write a fun thing to do on one side of the folded ribbon so you have a written side and a clean side.

You can now blow up your little balloons! Finally we're getting somewhere, right? How exciting! If you find any of them to be a little harder to inflate, gently ease the folds out with your fingers.

Now remember the corners that served as little pockets when you were folding? They're going to be little pockets again for your little paper ribbon. All you have to do is shove it in there with the writing facing in so you can't see it until you pull it out on that day.

I look at an actual calendar when I'm adding the flags. I don't want to have something like, "Go see a new movie" on a week day when Idle Husband's working. I try to pair things up with the dates so they make sense with what we'll be doing at the time.

I hung mine up on a piece of driftwood that I have hanging on the wall.  I also think that if you dedicated an entire mini tree to these, it would look really cute, too.

Another good thing to mention is that even though the balloons look really delicate, they're actually pretty tough, so when Christmas is over you'll be able to (carefully) flatten them back down and pack them up to reuse them again next year.

ikea 2013 catalogue

Those who know me well, know that I'm not that huge a fan of IKEA stuffs (they're not cheap or well made I don't care what anyone says) but despite that, I always go there and look around and check out their clearance section and like their ideas and request their catalogues. So... that's a little contradictory, but they do (admittedly) have some pretty good design and design ideas.

The new 2013 catalogue is out online, so I thought I'd show you some of the ideas I liked!

Ever since we got the bigger bed, I've been really obsessed with the concept of putting a dresser behind the bed as a headboard (with storage) or using the headboard as a divider to separate the room. Our master bedroom is kind of awkwardly designed so the builders (or the house designer) designed the bed to go on the wall adjacent the bathroom. But I hate sleeping with my head pointing towards the bathroom door. It just feels... uncomfortable. So I put the bed on the opposite wall which happens to be a little half wall that's shared with the master closet so the bed doesn't fit on the entire wall. It sticks out about two feet. I don't mind it, but there definitely needs to be some sort of division or pretend wall or extra wall to make up the difference. I never thought of curtains before! And if I had even more space, I love the idea of having the table behind the curtain. I wonder if I could fit one of their standing closets into our closet. I need to organize in there BIG TIME.

Why are bathrooms designed as shitty little piddly things here? I don't get it. Why do I need all these bedrooms when having a master bath like this would be such a dream? (For anyone -- don't give me that "resale" spiel.)

I just read an article about this and now I see it in IKEA. Apparently, in scandanavian countries, it's pretty typical to have a large bed with a set of sheets and blankets for each occupant. As above, they've got a queen bed and bedding folded in half each to their own comfort levels. At first I thought that was kind of a dumb way to sleep, but the article I read mentioned that if you're a light sleeper, you'll get an even better sleep not having to fight and wrestle for covers with your partner all night. I might give it a trial run. Idle Husband never grew up with the concept of an upper sheet and it totally stresses me out at night if the sheets are messed up and tangled. Maybe I could have the sheet and he could have his own duvet. (Regardless of what you think about this idea, you can't deny how cozy this bed looks!)

Finally, I loved how they tied the patterned portion up and let the liner hang loose on these curtains. It looks so fresh!

I also wanted to mention how inspiring I found the photography in this particular issue. The items were laid out and arranged in a very simple yet clever manner. Very nice!

Did you see anything in the catalogue that interested you?

update

Sorry I've been a MIA this week! Things have been a little busy and hectic around here and I haven't really had the chance to work on anything creative.

But I did get the opportunity to help mom clean out her garage, so we finally went through boxes we packed (not kidding) about 10 years ago. It was like discovering treasure! Here're some of the things I came home with:

A couple antique pictures. My favourite is the one with the dogs. I find it so interesting that they used this "new" technology just to take a picture of their dogs.

Personal pics of our cows -- I miss them so much sometimes! They all had their own unique personalities -- and one of my gram on a motorcycle. I need to get that one framed.

Brass hand clip

Chicken salt and pepper shakers

The flying dutchman! Another weird and wonderful lamp

I realized that I had accumulated more chicken bones and stock in my freezer than actual meat, so I've taken to having soup for breakfast every other day (which works out pretty well since it's still snowing and it's almost May), so I was pretty happy to find this cute soup cup. Cups are my preferred soup container.

This is 6 feet of crocheted shelf edging. I was SO excited to find this! I've been lamenting about how we used to have it and wouldn't it be nice to find it again so I could put it here:

See that middle board? It was accidentally nailed in wrong.

But now with crocheted shelf edging, no one knows and it looks extra pretty!

This is a brass wall sculpture... brass art piece?... brass thing you hang on the wall. I think I should spray paint it. Or should I? Maybe gold or silver? I haven't decided yet.

I've also purchased this year's tomato plants. I'm kind of excited about them because Walmart had purple tomatoes available so I can't wait to see how they turn out. And I bought a ton of seeds! As soon as the weather straightens out, we're going to be designing our backyard garden and planting like crazy people.

And I'm babysitting these huge goldfish. They're in my garage and I'm freaking out about how they're doing! I would be so sick if anything happened to them. The water's cold and it's cold out there so they've just been laying on the bottom of the tank since they got here which is pretty typical for the temperature. Still, I worry-check them three times a day.

How's your week been?