Dagen Efter

More about trees

According to the recent report of Finnish Forest Research Institute (Korhonen & Mäkelä, METLA), there are over 77.1 billion trees in Finland. This figure doesn't cover hedgerows, trees in cities or growing stocks in parks. Counting those would increase the number with roughly 1.3 billion trees. These interesting (and very well worthless) facts made my boyfriend call me on Tuesday, when he was reading the local newspaper at work. They are now saved in our collection of worthless information (he loves worthless facts, I love the fact he loves them) but in my opinion they were worth of sharing. So I wrote them here just to let you know. Some day you may win a quiz with this, or just impress a cute girl with all the things you know.

This fact may also explain why we love real Christmas trees here. We have where to take from, you could say. For me it's the most important thing of the whole holidays. It may sound silly and even a bit brutal: to cut a real, living tree just to decorate it and have it die in your living room. But still, if I don't have a tree, I don't feel like Christmas at all. I love the smell of it, and that's why I can't have a plastic one. I would love to live in a house with a huge tree growing in the middle (Moomins had one in the comics, didn't they?) but cause it's not possible, I love to have one even for a couple of weeks in the winter. It just makes me happy, I can't explain it better.

This year I got our tree (or I maybe should call it my tree, cause my boyfriend just hates it...) from my father, who lives in the middle of the forest. Our Christmas trees have traditionally been ones growing in wrong places in his yard, and that's why they're never the prettiest ones. They are thin and wispy and drop all the needles in a week, but I don't care. I don't even want a perfect tree like in Disney movies. I'm a Finn and know what real trees look like, and believe me, Disney doesn't have a clue. For me buying a perfect tree from the market place would be as bad as having a plastic one. But sadly enough there seems to be just a few of us thinking like this. Most people want a fantasy tree and that's why the ones sold are planted in and imported from Holland and Denmark. Mind you, from countries having a very few trees, even fewer of them firs. To a country with 77.1 billion trees, most of them firs and pines. To me this sounds mind-blowingly stupid. I just sit in our living room and am happy with my crooked one. It may not be the most beautiful tree in Finland, but it's mine. And it creates my Christmas spirit although we are giving a damn of most Christmas traditions and mostly celebrate with sleeping a lot and eating pasta.

Details

All these pics are taken in our kitchen.
As a interior decorator I concentrate on
colors and quirky details, they make me happy.
I want my home to be cozy, colorful, unusual and a little weird.
(Just like myself.)
I decorate and craft only when I feel like it,
ant most of my designs are developed spontaneously,
without any exact plans.

Afternoon irritation

Today I finally made my way to the post office (I was running out of tissues so I had to leave my bed anyway) and was able to send a little something for my partner from


I won't tell anything else yet, as I want it to be a surprise for the receiver. Even though that clerk made me write what's inside the package on a sticker he put on it. 'Surprises' wasn't accepted, so I had to reveal a little. Anyway, I wasn't very exact, so my partner won't know it all in advance. Still, how very annoying. And the value, blah. I just made that amount out of my head cause he was staring at me and I had to write something down. But how to explain for an annoyed postal worker who has a queue of 20 people waiting that 'you know, there are things that are hard to measure in money'? But I hope the custom workers will be happy and let my envelope through. Cause if they won't, that will make two girls very unhappy.

And now I have to wait wait wait to see what she thinks of my gift. Oh, the hardest part.

This is the first day of the rest of your December

This morning I got up and tried to get dressed as quickly and quietly as possible so my boyfriend could continue sleeping while I'm on my way to work. Well, it's not possible to succeed in such a small room so he woke up, asked me to give him his iPhone from the other side of the room and then pulled the blanket over his head. When handing the phone I saw the date of today in the enlightened screen. "Is it really the first of December today?", I asked. "Seems to be", he answered sounding a bit impatient. "So I can open the first window of the advent calender?" The eager sound of my voice made him laugh. Well, in my opinion it's a reason good enough to get out of bed. But that lazy boy just crawled back under the blanket.

{via}

My mum sent me an advent calendar a month ago. It's the traditional Finnish Scout's one, basically cause my cousin always sells them as a scout-member. I'm used to have one from Unicef, cause they are big and colorful, but this one is also very nice. Anyway, I've always preferred those pictured ones, cause the chocolate in chocolate calendars is never tasty, and once you've eaten it, that's that for the day. But you can look the pics as many times as you want, and in my opinion the best calendars are the ones that complete the big picture a bit more with every little window you open.

I bought my boyfriend one as well. He doesn't like advent calendars that much, but couldn't resist this one. Well, who could resist a pop up-one that promises you 365 penguins before Christmas? It still didn't get him out of bed at 7 o'clock to open the first hatch, but I'll make sure he does it today. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I wanna know how many penguins are in there today.

{via}

I you don't have one yet, this is your day to get it. If you do, please tell me what does it look like! Yes, I am a bit too eager for a twenty two-year-old, but in my opinion advent calendars just are one of the best things about Christmas-time.