Central railway station detail

There are about 5 buildings where I go every day. My life is quite simple o_O
One of them is the central railway station, where I have to change from train to metro or vice versa. For a long long time I never noticed these lamps and their beauty, but now I look at them every day. In awe. Simply the most gorgeous lamps I know :) I'm a lamp freak. But I'm a little sad that I don't know who designed these. Possibly Eliel Saarinen, who's the architect of the central railway station.

His son, Eero Saarinen, also became an architect. He designed these classics and monuments (I hate to use other people's pictures, but now I just have to. One day I'll go to these places / buy those furniture and capture them myself):

Can there be a better word to describe an arm chair's comfiness than womb? :) No.

Origami snow

I got this beautiful origami snowflake / flower from my dear friend one day. I can't believe how someone can have the patience to do something like that, but I'm happy that she did. I just have to figure out a new place for it, because it wouldn't stay on the wall with the power of Jesus tape.

Tokyo's Christmas Market

The amount of ooooohs and aawwwws was quite big in this Christmas Jumble Sale where we went with my friend one day. TaiK is the art and design university in Finland and this sale was organised by them. I didn't buy anything because I had 0 € in cash :( Maybe that was ment to be, because otherwise I would've lost all my money. Here's some evidence of the goodies I saw. I especially loved these Vesa Sammalisto's drawings. He sold these city prints there for 70 €. Huuuuuge prints. I'd die for one to hang on my wall... He's so freaking talented. He even did the cover of Monocle's Finland edition! Monocle! www.vesasammalisto.com

 

 

Another yummy staff I saw were these glass gummy bears (plus other yummies) turned into jewelry:

  

 Bad Face Day paper bags and disgusting underwear by Tärähtäneet Ämmät /Nutty Tarts:

 

Jumbo scarfs from textile industry's leftover tricot by Lankasiipi

Omstart - Second Hand Made 

And sugar on the bottom: Calendar with hilarious pictures of toilet writings (kalenteriprojekti.wordpress.com)

For example "Pussy tastes like fish".

Winter Wonderland

Maybe because the view from my window this morning was this...

I finally get to use my new this :)

Last summer I had to sell my old winter jacket that I had been using the past 3 winters every day, because it looked more like it belonged to a homeless person. I hope this jacket will serve me better the next winters to come :) What was interesting when I was looking for a warm jacket was that this one costs as much as same kind of jackets in Mango, but mine is so much better quality! No feathers trying to see the daylight through the seams. And I can not even remember the brand of mine (and I'm a really brand-aware person). Sometimes branding like Mango's just concentrates in wrong areas. Quality is shit like H&M's, but prices (in Finland at least) are quite high. I don't get it. Or actually I do. That's why I just decided that I could stop wasting my time in the future and skip Mangos on my shopping trips. There's no point supporting companies that produce clothes that go straight to waste after few months. Like Iittala, I'm also against throwawayism :)

Tin boxes, more tin boxes!

Tin boxes are the № 1 thing I keep searching for in the 2nd hand markets and lucky for me I keep finding them every now and then. Here are the boxex I've found since June. Actually it would be really easy to carry them home constantly without requirements, but I'm really picky with them. They must send certain "eye candy -signal" to my brain with some level of retroness and beauty, they must be cheap and last of all, rustfree (or at least have only a little amount of rust and only on the inside). The most expensive of these is the upper left one with the text 'Rettigin sekoitus' (= Rettig's blend) and that was only 4€. I think it originally used to contain tobacco. I really wanted it because it's Finnish and it has a charming carving on the bottom saying 'isiltä Tertulle' (= from daddy to Terttu). And the seller told me that her little sister used to store all kinds of treasures in it when they were children :) Awww. 

My favourite is still the red one that used to contain some kind of Italian cookies, because it's perfect for keeping my spice bags in order! The one below that is from IKEA, but I bought it from someone for 10 cents and there I keep my breakfast oat bran. The big one was 3,5€, but I haven't found use for it yet. Maybe I'll just store some small knickknacks in it. Who cares? It's perfect even without a purpose!!

Moominhouse mouse pad

One of my favourite things I've bought this whole year is this mouse pad. I don't even have a mouse, but I had to have this when I saw it in the store. I was just moving into my new apartment and I thought that I'd also buy a mouse. And I will. Some day. Maybe. I don't even have to hurry, because of this mouse pad's awesomeness it doesn't look incomplete without the mouse at all. If anyone is interested, you can find these from Tiimari.

United Buddy Bears

This is gonna be one of these "I <3 Helsinki" -posts, because I just can't help myself but loving this city so much. This fall until today there were a lot of bears here. It's an exhibition that started in Berlin in 2002 and now tours around the world. Now all the UN countries present a life-sized fiberglass bear painted by an artist from each counry. The Buddy Bears hold hands symbolically for peace, international understanding and tolerance among the nations, cultures and religions of this world. Cute and heart warming! My absolute favourites are the sunny Albanian bear and the psychedelic Dutch bear.

Oh, and this same day when I saw these bears the first time, we met one Greek/New Zealander/(??!?!) guy via CouchSurfing with my friend Agi. Couch Surfing is such a splendid concept, but I've never really used it myself. But this guy was really fun, we just went to drink hot chocolate and walked around the city until he continued his loooong trip around the world the same evening. Plus we made him buy a lot of candy and ended up eating almost all of them ourselves :)

I was also in some crazy 80's/50's/Mario Bros (???!?!) party in Hungary to where my CouchSurfer friend got invited by some CouchSurfer. Just like Buddy Bears, CouchSurfing unites nations and their people around the world :)

Fathers's Day Card

Last Saturday I went to my favourite 2nd hand market again (like almost every weekend) and found a bagful of Hama-beads and those "bases" for 50 cents. I'm totally copying my best friend, because she went crazy about Hama-beads a couple of months ago and I wanted to try too :) She has some inexplicable charisma that makes other people want to do the same stuff that she does and want the same things as she has. So, I made a Father's day card from those beads. I hope my dad doesn't read my blog, at least before his big day, because here's a picture of my creation:

Tour de Room

I moved to my new place 1,5 months ago, but didn't want to blog about it until now. Don't know why. I live in a huge apartment now with two awesome girls, but the common areas are not ready so I only post pictures from my own room now. Compared to my previous bedroom, now I have my old table back and my mom's old glass-steel-shelf, which is now my bookshelf and a "make-up-station". I also have some new 2nd hand findings, like a blue square glass vase and an old tin can, typical stuff that sometimes travels home with me from the 2nd hand market :)

The only NEW stuff in my room is mainly my bedside-table-combo (IKEA TV-shelf a.k.a. bedside table, lamp and an Iittala's Aalto steel vase, on which I keep my mini Philippi alarm clock (I've used it once) and sea shells that I collected from the coast of Spain and Internet auction. The lamp was such a bargain! It's from one luxury design chain Vepsäläinen, where stuff normally costs thousands or at least hundreds of euros, but my lamp was only around 60 euros! The Aalto steel vase was a graduation gift from my god parents and I absolutely love it for it's elegance and shine.

 I also bought one Aalto glass vase myself, because it was 50% off with some stickers you get from one grocerie chain :) I'm such a coupon lady. And a huge fan of Aalto in general (including Alvar Aalto, Aino Aalto and Artek).

Here's also a link to Iittala's webpages: http://www.iittala.fi/web/Iittalaweb.nsf/en/home

And last is the view from my window. I just love the colors of autumn and the fact that I can live in Helsinki like this, "forest" behind my building. Five minutes after I took this picture there was a horrible hail storm and I watched people running through the forest like crazy with their jackets on their heads so the hail woudn't hurt their heads so hard... Yeah, that's one thing I don't like about autumn. But I love to stay inside in my warm room and curl up in my perfect bed reading piles of books.

Halonhakkaajan puhelin on kii

 My favourite poem in the world happens to be Finnish. And it just has to be part of my blog, which is part of me. And some pictures that remind me of the atmosphere of this poem.

Heli Laaksonen - Halonhakkaajan puhelin on kii

Prinsessan päiv ei men ninko tahtois menevä.

Kruunu takerttu koko ajan pyykkinaruihi

eikä ripustamisest tul mittä.

Hän soitta kolmannen kerra, vaik tiätä, ete vastat.

Assia ei ol mut see on kiireellist.

Hän sanosis:

Eerikki, arva mitä,

mul ikkunalaural o linnu varppa jälje lumes,

mää olen löytän hianon tiä meil,

kun tarttis hiuka appu taas,

osasin peril, kehu munt,

sain klasist haava, tul puhaltama

lämmitin talo ja puus huus hullu pulu,

kuljin kaisliko läpitte ja ajattelin meit.

On päivi ko mää tahron sunt kokonas

ja päivi ko mää tahron sunt kaikkines päivines

ja muit päivi on kans, ettet peljästy.

Eerikki hei, arva mitä,

ei mittä

ja kaikki mitä ossan sanno.

ARTEK CHAIR 69

I bought an old Artek chair from Internet auction with only 31 euros. The same chair costs 230 euros in stores :) Of course my chair looked absolutely horrible when I got it, but I showed some magic for it (sandpaper and gold paint) and I made it look fabulous!!! At least I fell in love with the result of my I-didn't-even-count-how-many-hours-it-took-to-remove-all-the paint-without-electricity--hard-work. Ta-daa!!!

Habitare

The biggest design/home/decoration/renovation expo Habitare was in Helsinki again! And it was my first time there! I was always so unlucky in my life before, because I lived in the cold cold north and never had the chance to come to HABITARE. But this year I can participate in all interesting design events. And we got the tickets -50% off with my friend because some guy was selling corporate tickets half price in front of the real cashier. We just had to come up with some name for our company. My suggestion was Unun Design, because that's the name of my blog. And I want to give this name for my future company. Or our company, because maybe we'll have our own collection & shop one day :) Here are some pictures of things that caught my eye: