friday fixations: 2014 calendars

Clockwise from top left: huge colour-blocked calendar, shapes calendar, risograph calendar, perennial calendar, birth gemstone calendar, colourful hexcode calendar tea towel, colour composition calendar

happy holidays

I just wanted to pop in and wish you all a great Christmas and a bright New Year! And as always, thank you for reading and following and commenting and generally just paying attention to Idle Wife this year!

friday fixations

{bird bnb} Oh god this is too cute! Look at him! He's eating popcorn on a couch! (This is my favourite picture from the bunch, obviously.)

{insane christmas wishlist} This made me laugh out loud. Not the list, the fatherly explanation of said list.

{cat flakes} This is silly, but good for a moment.

{different sized christmas lights} Maybe you do this already, but since we were lacking in decorations this year, we opted to go a little bit crazy on the lights. We bought a small ball-style light (the options in Finland are more for bulb shape and size instead of colour and movement as in Canada) and later we bought really tiny fairy lights that are in the same colour family as the larger ball light. I think the combination of a larger light bulb and a smaller light bulb makes the tree look a little more interesting and, dare I say, twinkly.

{jaffa cakes} These look like cookies but are totally cake-like. They've got a fruit topping which is more like a jelly instead of a soft jam, and it's dipped in chocolate. Jellies and chocolate? On top of a cake-y cookie? I want have to try more flavours.

{christmas gifs} I love a good gif and some of these would make great e-cards.

{finnish gifts} Twelve ideas for Finnish-themed gifts. Wouldn't it be great to get a pair of scissors? You can always brag about their strong Finnish design and your knowledge of said design. (My sarcasm doesn't translate here very well.) I would like to try that liquorice, though. I like things that can potentially be so divisive.

{lionel stitchie} Clever street art always has a place in my heart.

{gingerbread deaths} Those poor gingerbread men.

diys i {really} want to do

If you're wondering why it's a little dead for DIYs around here lately, it's for this one plain fact: I had to leave all of my crafting supplies in Canada. They simply didn't get on the plane with us (four suitcases was more than enough for us to handle and check). I'm looking into finding craft stores here, but I also don't have a mode of transportation plus, you know, jet lag, scary unknown, language barrier, want to go with a friend, have no friends, gotta wait for hubs to be off work... plus we're in a very tiny temporary apartment with only one table (that we are currently using as a desk, a dining table, and a shelf to throw all our stuff on when we come home), and it (plus the whole apartment) would be a complete disaster in a matter of minutes given my usual crafting habits.

 But I'm still thinking about DIYs!

Here're some that I really would do, like, yesterday, if I had the tools and the space.

{anthropology inspired painterly shoes} I have these exact shoes. Exact brown colour, exact style, exact everything save for the cutesy painted sides. Wanna know where I found them? In the boys shoe department at Superstore, on clearance. And they fit like a dream! But wouldn't this be a great way to feminize/update them? It would, but I have no idea where to buy fabric paint or little paint brushes.

{himmeli anything} We managed to find a small tree for our apartment and we've got lights on it and a few tiny ornaments I brought with us, but I'd really like to add a little something more. I've been thinking about trying to make some himmelis, either with straws or, as pictured here, pipe cleaners. I have no idea where to buy pipe cleaners (let alone sparkly ones) and if I bought straws, I have no idea where I'd get string or anything to put them together.

{ikea hack -- soft rocking chair} I am obsessed with this chair. We saw it at IKEA last weekend (when we went to snoop on Finnish IKEA), and it's a really really comfortable chair. With rocking feet, it would be amazing. Alas, I no longer have any power tools or a tape measure or screws or paint stuff -- pretty much everything that's needed for this hack.

{dior double-pearl earrings} If you know me at all, you'll know I'm pretty fixated on earrings. If there's one piece of jewelry I'll always wear, it's a pair of earrings -- I never leave the house without them. Something about these double-pearl ones really makes me want to have them. Badly. The hack is so easy it literally breaks my heart that I no longer have access to my kicky jewelry supply shop, and, naturally, I have no idea where to find one here (goodness, it took me five years to find one in Edmonton and even then I pretty much accidentally tripped into it).

{pretty much anything that requires printing or paper} I'm working on a new calendar for myself but I've just realized we no longer have a printer or any paper, and I have no idea what the Finnish equivalent of a Staples would be. Plus Christmas cards would be really fun to make and send... speaking of sending, where the heck is the post office, even?

I know, I know, I should just order some of this stuff off the internet. Maybe I will... some day... once our mail gets sorted out.

In the meantime, if you want to see what's been inspiring me and interesting me in the world of, pretty much everything, just check out my Pinterest boards. I've been A LOT busier over there than normal!

december desktop

Just a few days late, not too bad considering we have finally moved and are now residents of Finland!

Granted, it's only been two and a half days since we arrived (after a rather nightmare plane experience), but so far so good. The apartment we have is light and bright and cozy (and quiet!), and we had our first official grocery shopping experience yesterday. Two things that I liked there: when you get vegetables, you have to make a note of the product code (kind of like when you buy from bulk bins in Canada), then you weigh the item on a scale and print your own bar code which you stick on the bag yourself for the cashier. I love this so much! You know instantly (and I mean instantly -- it's very fast) what price you're going to be paying so you can take a tomato out if it's too much or scrap the purchase altogether (I've always hated the whole vegetable guessing game we play in Canada and how nice is this for cashiers?). Also all lettuces are sold with their roots and some dirt in a little pot (I guess you'd call it), and they're wrapped up like little potted plants with cellophane around them. I didn't know how to handle it, so I put them in cups of water and they perked right up. They seem so much fresher this way and I just had to snap off a few leaves for our salad. Cheap me wishes I had a planter box.

Anyway, the December calendar is kind of Finnish inspired and it definitely supports my growing fixation on black and white and geometric shapes. It's pretty simple, but it did take me a while to figure out how to draw the gems in photoshop. Not too shabby!

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