RAWR magazine

Long time ago, when my little one fell in love with dinosaurs, I found this poster on internet:

JSGD shop en Etsy

I don't know whether YC and Daniela knew it when they created  RAWR magazine, but I feel that the previous sentence is a definition of what they usually do.

RAWR is an on-line Finish magazine about kids' fashion, children, home-made parties with a sense of style, design, real but exceptional mums and everyday life in Helsinki.

Although being located in Finland, they write in English (thanks god) and I am lucky enough to be a monthly collaborator, writing post from the point of view of an expatriate family living in  Helsinki.

During October, they are participating with Design Forum, one of my favourite shops in Helsinki, in a kids shop in shop section: Scandinavian design for the little ones.

 The inauguration was this Saturday, so we went there to have a look to the exhibition and say hello. As expected, it didn't disappoint us.

There was furniture as colourful and special as those stools with the shape of a button.

(I wanted to tell you from which brand they are, but I do not remember. Promise that I will try to know it)

Design toys as these Pony from Eero Aarnio.

Rattles for babies, so cute as those ones:

And clothes from many Finnish brands, all available in the same place:

Those little dogs are sold in a diy package. The package contains the fabric with the silhouette of the animal printed on it and you have to cut it and sew it at home. We have one but it is currently at grandma's as I am not very good on those matters.

Do you know Aarrekid?

It is a Finish brand that sells kids clothes with beautiful prints. I love it and so does Pol.

Besides all I have shown you and much more Finish design (not only for kids, I must say), RAWR has opened a pop-up store with Scandinavian brands as  BANGBANG Copenhagen, Mini Rodini, Jumina and the famous Finish brand  Ivana Helsinki , that has created a girls collection specially for RAWR.

YC and Daniela welcome us with cold lemonade and a big smile. They are so lovely!

If you live in Helsinki or if you are visiting us this month, I highly recommend you to pay a visit to the Design Forum shop. It is one of those shops that always have something to offer.

And if you feel so, you can take some Finish design with you. I was on love with almost everything, even with the package, isn't it beautiful?

Do you want to share a lemonade with me?

 

My 12 portuguese treasures

After a long, long break, we're back again. Back to work, back from holidays and trying to organise our life after moving to a new apartment.

But today I don't want to talk about the future, I want to go back to the past and show you a sneak peak of our holidays in Portugal.

During them, we were playing with the photographer Jackie Rueda and her flickr group "La Vuelta al Mundo" in the hunting of 12 treasures all around the world. I always enjoy those games that allow you to discover the places you visit from another point of view, so here we go.

The first treasure was a grocery store. We found this one in the neighbourhood of Graça in Lisbon:

The kind of place where the owner knows anyone and always asks about your family and friends. The  kind of place I like the most and that I cannot find here in Helsinki unless I drive to the marketplace.

For the second one, we have to show our favourite place.

I have been thinking a lot about that. I really did.

I could show you our apartment in Lisbon, an oasis of design and relaxation, or any of the multiple beaches where we were almost alone, enjoying the sound of the see and the smell of salty water. I also could show you the hammock under the tree in our small house located in the middle of nowhere or the rural fields bathed with the beautiful light of sunset.

But after thinking in all of them and revisiting one by one in my memory, I realised that this was our favourite place:

 

In the middle of the Alentejo area, hanging on the top of a tree, this tree house was definitely our favourite place during the holidays. Too high for an almost 2 years old boy, but a dream to anyone not depending on the age. Love at first sight.

There we spent many of our afternoons: singing, playing or telling tales. The definition of happiness.

If I weren't told you at the beginning of the post where we went, the third treasure could give you a hint of our destination. Portugueses tiles reflected in a beatiful old building. I was amazed for the different designs and patterns they have and all of them were beautiful.

And we return to the sunset in the Alentejo area, because the 4th treasure was a swing.

This was too dangerous for the little one, mainly because he wants to do everything by himself with no help from anybody, but when he allowed me to swing ourselves together, we were able to touch the sky.

Coming back to Lisbon for the 5th one, the night. I can hear the trams up and down, smell the grilled sardines and feel the breeze entering in the room. Can you?

 

You are not going to believe it. The 6th one was the easiest: an ice cream or an ice cream parlour.

Summer in the south of Europe calls for an ice cream everywhere you go, but not this time. We were always so full of nice food that we didn't find the moment to eat one. Once we were almost buying it, in Santini, the most famous ice cream place in Lisbon, but Pol thought that was the perfect moment to run down the hill at full speed. No comments.

In the way back home, in the airport of Munich we found this one, ready for my click and here it is.

The 7th treasure was the most difficult one. The idea was to photograph drawings in the ground and although we tried hard, we didn't find any.

The solution: did it ourselves. We dedicate it to the Portuguese landscapes where we left a piece of our heart.



An coming back to Lisbon, we needed to photograph movement for the 8th treasure. Here you have the most blurred picture of the history of photography, but with a small toddler wanting to see what your are doing all the time and without tripod, I discover a new definition of movement.

Lisbon can be chaotic or peaceful as peaceful was the place where We found treasure number 9: books.

While Pol was sleeping under a tree, I was going up and down everywhere, trying to see what it is difficult to reach for a baby stroller. At the bottom of thousand of stairs I found my treasure: a small bookshop crowed with old books that were also colonising the street. A paradise!


We were supposed to find the 10th treasure in a playground but we didn't found many. We preferred to play in the streets or climb stairs up and down, so we chose this bench that we found in the middle of the street.

 

I love it because seem to have spent ages there, hearing all the gossips of the neighbourhood, enjoying long conversations or being the perfect scenery for sharing summer loves.

We are almost at the end of our search. The 11th treasure was postcards. Those pieces of paper that show how a city is or feels. In black or white or with a profusion of colours.

I love these ones. They are different and very colourful, aren't they?

And with the last treasure: a parasol,  I say goodbye. I will imagine that I am under it, reading a fancy magazine and looking to my favourite men in the world.

But this time, I promise coming back sooner and try to show you a bit more of what we have seen.

See you soon!

Arigato

Sometimes we do not do things because they seem to be difficult, but they are not. You just need to try to see that they are simple, very simple.

This is what happens when you try to cook sushi, or at least this is what Jaume has explained me, because last Saturday, while I was multitasking all around our place, he made this delicious sushi.

I am participating in a challenge, where 11 spanish bloggers without any knowledge of cooking try to prepare a new recipe every month. This month  María, from escarabajos, bichos y mariposas, suggested to cook sushi, maybe thinking that we are better cooks now than at the beginning of the year.

For me, sushi, as the typical Spanish paella, are these kind of dishes that only experts know how to cook properly, so I went to the supermarket with my shopping list and the feeling that it was going to be a disaster. Did you know that many sushi recipes contain mayonnaise? I did not.

If there is something that all Nordic countries have in common is that salmon is a delicacy in every format. So I decided to go for salmon sushi as well as avocado and cucumber.

What I didn't know when I went to the supermarket, and you should know if you're planning to cook salmon sushi, is that you should ask for beginning of the fish, rather than the tail.

Now I know, so the following  time I will remember this, as well as my list of ingredients, as this time we went easy and bought a kit box with everything on it.

Let's start, do we?

First step is to eliminate as much starch as possible from the rice. This will help the rice to stick together, so we can "build" the maki sushi better.

For that we have to wash it gently several times.

Once it is ready, we have to boil it. Accordingly to our recipe you need the same amount of water than the weight of rice. Easy.

At the end it's so sticky, that you can almost build cathedrals with it. :)

Now it's time to season it with sugar and rice vinegar. As we didn't have a hanguiri (a japanese bamboo basket) we used a baking pan from Lekué.

As you need to cool it down while you add the vinegar and the sugar, we used a Spanish fan for it. The poor one was forgotten in a drawer, as the Summer does not want to arrive to Helsinki. Are you hiding it from us? Because we are missing it.

Now we are ready to slice the filling,

and to put everything together. It is very handy to start with a ball of rice and then spread it along the alga.

You mustn't cover it completely or the roll will not close. Let a centimetre or so between the end of the rice and the beginning of the alga. Then add the filling, whatever you have chosen.

and close.

You can see here my favourite cook showing the world that you do not need to go to Japan for a high quality sushi at home.

When Jaume offered to help me with the recipe, I was so sure that everything was going to be ok, that I invited some friends for lunch. So while he was cooking, I was tiding the house, helping Pol to sleep his nap so we were able to have some adult time, stopping by to the kitchen for taking some pictures,..., you know, the normal multitasking stuff.

In the very last moment, I decided to prepare something for setting the table (a kind of collaboration in the making)

My first idea was an origami crane, but I didn't know how to do it and I was running against time, so I made a ship, something very easy that I learned when I was a little girl. At the end they turned to be a perfect stick holder.

Sticks dressed with washi tape and a no so perfect ship

The sushi was amazing and we will repeat for sure. Maybe next time I will join the cook and do something in the kitchen, although I have to admit that I prefer the niguiri type with much more raw fish than rice.

This that looks so incredible was our breakfast when we visited the fish market in Tokyo. An amazing place and a tasty sushi.

Do you fancy a walk after lunch?

Sayonara.

Kiitos

This is Pol's last week in the päiväkoti (daycare in Finish).

In Finland, summer holidays are totally different than in Spain. Schools close earlier and it is July, instead of August, the month when everybody goes on holidays.

I know that it is almost impossible to believe, but this picture was taken in January.

Outside was nearly -15ºC but Pol's päivakoti organised a summer party.

I din't take the picture, it is in the cd that Pol's teachers gave us as a present. Isn't it the sweetest idea?

In July everything stops. The shop are closed, there is no restock and the city empties.  I cannot understand yet why almost all restaurants close when is high season for tourism.

But let me come back to my first topic, the end of school period, because today I want to show you the present that we prepared for Pol's teachers.

As we do not speak any Finish, along this year, all his four teachers have been forced to talk to us in a foreign language and, as English was not enough for them, they have learned some words in Spanish just for the sake of repeating them to Pol.

There is something I will not forget. As Pol's grandparents live far away, the teachers have sent them a little package full of Pol's pictures showing a normal day in the daycare and some paintings made by him.

This picture was taken in November. I do not need to explain you that Pol was learning to eat alone.

Again the picture comes from the cd that the teachers gave us as a present.

During this year, they helped him to eat, taught him to do it alone, to wash his hand and to share things with other babies. They looked after him, checking all the time all the dangerous places as these are the ones that he loves, and even they have gone with him to the Hospital.

Our little one loves them and we also do. And for these and many other reasons we want to tell them THANK YOU.

And this is what we did.

Kiitos means thank you in Finish.

We made some salty cookies using these beautiful cookie cutters.

Instagram conchig

I will not post the recipe because it was not so good as we were looking for, but if you are interested, I know that SandeeA, from la Receta de la felicidad, is planning to publish one. This is a lovely blog and she also writes in English, so go and check it.

The most difficult thing was finding a box big enough to keep them in. The idea was that they will be able to read the word when they open the box and there are not so many nice big boxes in the market.

At the end, I found these beautiful suitcase, aren't they?

Instagram conchig

I used some washi tape and some beautiful stamps and here you are.



4 different styles to choose from. Flowers, neon, glitter, bakers twine,..., it was funny to prepare them.

I also used some stamps: butterflies, houses and fancy bikes in different colours.

Everything made with love and with the little one help (at least he tried to put some washi tape and ate the cookies dough before putting it in the oven)

I knew beforehand that they were going to love it. When they asked for an envelope for the grandparent's present, I gave them decorated with washi tape and colour pens.

They loved the idea so much that they prepared this garland inspired in mine.

We gave them the present last Friday, as some of them started today their holidays and they love it.

If there is any teacher reading this, I would like to dedicate this present also to you. We want to tell you  "Kiitos".

Because everything you do for our kids every day means a lot for us.

THANK YOU by heart!

Fulfilling resolutions

Some time ago, Ariadna talked me about Minna and her shop Paloni.

Ari’s creations are selling there and she told me that Minna is such a nice person that I should go and meet her.

 Corazón de galleta

This is how I fulfilled one of the resolutions I made to myself when I moved to Finland: crocheting again

Actually my resolutions covered also learning to sew and knit, but I think that this is a good beginning, isn’t it?

I learned to crochet long time ago, as many of other Spanish girls of my age. My great-grandmother taught me, but I considered it too old-fashion at that time and never did it again. It is funny to see how it has been reinvented and I am happy to see that it is a new trend everywhere.

Do you know las abuelitas modernas (modern grannies) of Barcelona? One day I would like to be like them.

3 deseos y medio

In my first visit to Paloni, I learned how to crochet baskets.

Mine is the grey one. I know that it is not perfect, but I am very proud of it, because last time I used a needle I was only 10 years old.

Our teacher; Molla Mills, is a real institution in Finland. She is the type of person that it’s a really pleasure to meet:  friendly, close and with an eye on design in everything she touches.

It was such a good experience, than when I knew that they were organising a crocheting event, I was totally into it.

The idea behind it was making crochet garlands for a project I will explain you in the future. A project that is focused in doing things prettier and I love it.

When we arrived, the tables were full of colofoul yarn and many people working hard and enjoying as well.

The weather was awful, as you can see from our clothes, but the people and the colours warmed the environment and we didn't feel the cold so much. Ok. I admit it, the blankets and the hot tea helped a bit too.

As always I was the slowest of everybody. I needed to count carefully and restart several times, but I am sure I will be faster next time and able to participate in the conversations.

(How hard is learning ! :))

Of course, I stopped to make this pictures and watch how the others were crocheting one stitch after the other.

At the end I only finished one link of the chain, but I brought yarn home and I am determined to decorate the whole Helsinki with garlands. Let's see if I manage!