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:

Open Helsinki @ Temppeliaukio Church

Living in Helsinki is brilliant for people who are interested in culture and art. If you just keep your eyes open and look for events for example from Metro newspaper, you can find tons of interesting and also free things to go to. Some days ago I found an event called Open Helsinki: open doors and tours to places where you normally can't go in to. I always wanted to see the Temppeliaukio church (tourists call it the Rock Church) from the inside, but there was always a wedding when I tried to go there. Now I was extremely happy because I was  able to go in and get an interesting lecture from the architect Timo Suominen, who is the older half of the brothers who designed this church 1969.

From the outside it doesn't look like anything. Pile of rocks mainly. And you almost have to concentrate to notice the cross. That's the thing I love about this church. It's an unique pearl of architecture. It's a church where you can not see pictures of Jesus, God, Maria, Josef or sheep.

This is the place I wanna get married if I ever get so lucky/unlucky :D I never go to church volunteerily and I really don't believe in God, at least how it's presented in religions. Actually I normally get anxious in churches when I have to go to them. But this church made me feel open and free. Maybe it's the absence of religious images, or the fact that it's amazingly natural. It's walls are pure rock. The architect Suominen told that here are the oldest church walls in the world; 1850 million years! And it's full of natural sunlight. The roof is a round metal dome which lies on 180 beams. This place is always full of japanese tourists (during the tourist hours...) and the architect told that they are especially fascinated about the round copper dome, because it symbolizes sun like in their flag.

For me it's almost weird to write about a church, because I always hated them. I've seen most of the most famous ones in Europe: St. Peter's, Sagrada Familia, Notre Dame, Hagia Sofia, Westminster Abbey etc. etc. although we always had this motto with my mum when we were travelling (it doesn't work in English): Let's go round all the museums and churches.... from far." = "Kierretään kaikki museot ja kirkot.... kaukaa." Only St. Peter's curch made a real impact on me. And Temppeliaukio. The last thing I'm gonna mention about is actually quite funny (at least for me...) The seats are comfy! This is the first church ever where I've seen comfortable seats!!!

Design Week @ Skanno

1.9. there was a fun evening event in one really cool and luxurious design furniture store in Helsinki as a part of Design Week. Skanno in one of my favourites and I love to go there eating eye candy. (I can't afford the stuff they sell there... yet!)

This nigh was all about Diesel and it's new collection with Foscarini, Moroso and Zucchi. My absolute  favourite is the X-Ray Table. The second picture below gives a good view of that and the free beer that was served in the party! :) In the end they gave free Diesel's BE STUPID T-shirts to everybody, which I'm wearing right now! And then there was also a fantanstic beatboxer Felix Zenger. You can listen to him here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCtO4AxdtSQ&feature=related

España

Here's a little story of me and Spain. I graduated from my university last June and I had no freaking idea what I would do next so I applied to some weird job in Fuengirola, doing phone interviews by provision mainly. I got the job and I was totally crazy about the idea of moving to Spain! I found a really small and really cheap apartment next to the beach and I loved the apartment the first 5 hours. And the neighborhood I loved soo much, because it was really beautiful and I had really nice neighbours, who became my good friends. Every night we used to hang out there on the benches and I tried to learn Spanish. Fun!!!

So, I spent about 5 hours in my apartment until I saw the first cockroach. (After that I saw them there maybe every other day, sometimes more than one in one day.) I had NEVER seen a living cockroach before in my life, although I've always been travelling very much, all over southern Europe and Thailand. I freaked out and asked my new neighbours what to do with them and they told me to chase them with cockroach spray, but that didn't really make me feel any more comfortable, because that didn't prevent them from coming inside again. Later, maybe a week after that, someone gave me some extra poisonous cockroach poison that I had to spread all over the place after I almost had a heart attack because of the insects. I was just about to fall asleep when I noticed that there was one on my pillow! That was when I started to sleep with the lights on. This is how the place looks like then:

There were some days when I couldn't think about anything else than the cockroaches. I taped all the windows and holes and put salt around my bed (useless tip btw) and covered the drains and sinks etc. until I realized that the cockroaches always come under my laundry machine! There was a huge hole in the wall and the laundry machine was in this hole and there must have been a really nice hole also for my pets because one morning I woke up to the sound when one of them was climbing out from the detergent box. Then I jumped out from bed, went to supermarket, bought more tape and tinfoil and did this:

COOL, EH?!? At this point I kind of already had decided not to stay in Spain so I preferred to block the hole and thus deny myself the pleasure of using a laundry machine, but I really really didn't want to share my flat with those gross bugs anymore so I didn't care. After this they didn't come anymore. Happy ending!

End remarks: I loved my time in Spain and I recommend moving there, but you should try to find a flat from a new building or get it as high as possible in a block of flats. Ground floor was just bad. Or you can party every night until the sun rises and sleep in the day time, because the cockroaches only come when it's dark :D