Knit'n'Tag

One of my goals when I came to Finland was to learn how to knit and crochet.

I haven't started with the knitting, but I am kind of a beginner regarding crochet matters.

Last May, my friend Helena recruited me for a very special project: decorating a tree.

Introducing you our tree.

Helsinki's Youth Department organised an event for covering with yarn graffittis the trees of one of its most famous parks: Ruttopuisto park. The event was part of Helsinki's World Design Capital 2012 programme.

Everybody was able to participate, not depending on age, nationality or any kind of condition.

The morning of the 25th of August the park was full of people willing to decorate the trees with all the colours of the rainbow.

The trees became more alive.

And I didn't know where to look or which pictures I should take

It was as if the summer finally arrived to Helsinki and the flowers started growing after a long winter.

It was not only the view and the trees, it was also atmosphere. After having a not so warm summer, the weather was almost perfect so the people organised picnics and ad hoc teaching lessons.

It's amazing how many original people there is out there!

Do you remember the rings I learned to make in June?

They were part, together with many others, of a very long chain that was used to decorate three trees.

It was a pleasure walking or having a sit underneath them.


And you should be wondering about our tree. Ok, this was the result of 5 people working apart but together in the same topic.

My collaboration was the two buntings that decorate the upper and down part of the tree, plus some granny squares that we used to close the round.

Nothing compared with the beautiful things that my colleagues did, but I am just a beginner.

Here 4 of the 5 members of the group.

The park became so nice that it was a pleasure walking to work every day. Not even the rain, that has been with us almost every day since then, has diminish the positive effect of all that colours.

A nice day to remember, I am not going to forget it.

Moments that make me happy

After a period in my life where things seemed to be more difficult that expected, I have decided to remember myself that the small things are what make our life special.

I love it all

For that reason, every Thursday,  I will try to post here special moments that remind me (and you) that life is beautiful and a perfect adventure.

Here you have the first pill:

Picture taken by Jaume with the phone.

Many thanks :)

I was trying to take some nice pictures of the ground, specifically of one small mushroom, but it was not possible. My little helper was too interested in my exercise and he didn't get quiet enough.

This was the best I could do:



#momentosquemehacenfeliz

(I always publish first in my Spanish blog. It could be possible that I will be late for the translated post, but I will do my best to come here any Thursday :) )

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.