My biggest dream has come true!

I have something so exciting to tell you! I finally decided to follow my biggest dream and open my own interior web shop ~Interiorboutique Cimla Interior ~ and the grand opening is today!

I'm sooo excited about this! It's something I've been wanting to do for so long! I remember how I loved to play that I was selling when I was a child. I used to build a store out of cardboard boxes under my desk, and sell my treasures to my family.

In elementary school, me and my two best friends, sold our Eastern crafts in the local shopping mall, in order to raise money for the school trip.

The road that led me here has been a long process, with numerous courses and preparations. But it has all been worth it! Finally I decided that I don't want to look back on my life, when I'm old, and regret that I never pursued my dream.

Everything has gone so fast now in the starting phase. After all the years of preparations, the opening only took about a month. But I've been working night and day and had a lot of help from my partner and my family.

But enough about me for now! I think you're excited to hear more about the store! The store is called Sisustusliike Cimla Interior and is going to be a web shop in Finland in the beginning. You can find the shop here: Sisustusliike Cimla Interior.

In the shop you'll find beautiful products, handpicked by me. For instance we have pillows, decorations, storing solutions, textiles, lanterns, candles, kitchen supplies, decorations for the kids room and a whole lot to give as a gift. In the picture below, there's a little sneak peek of some of the products that are in the store at this moment.

I really hope you'll enjoy the web shop!

I would love it if you would take a look and let me know what you think!

I'm really excited about hearing your thoughts!

Sisustusliike Cimla Interior

Have a look at the products

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This blog post was made in collaboration with Sisustusliike Cimla Interior

Beat the Spring Fatigue!

I might not be the right person to write about spring fatigue, because I'm hit by it really hard and have always been. But maybe that's the exact reason for me to be writing about this..

I have always had real trouble sleeping, ever since I was a little girl. I remember going to the school nurse already in elementary school for tips on how to sleep. I remember them telling me to open a window a while before bedtime. Maybe helpful to some, but didn't help me at all... Not long after that, in high school, I was already on sleeping medication. But the problems never ceased. Since I didn't want to get addicted to the medicine, I only took it if I really, REALLY needed it, and still do.

I believe my sleeping issues are one of the reasons spring fatigue hits me so hard. I'm usually always tired, but comes spring I'm totally beside myself with exhaustion. I also suffer from migraines, and in spring they are constantly picking on my brain. So I have a really hard time functioning during spring. I'm tired all the time, light sensitive and I get migraines that just don't go away.

Only a couple of weeks ago I did what any normal person would do, I googled it! And what I found out was that D and C-vitamin is a really great way to beat the spring fatigue.

To get the C-vitamin I started a new morning routine, I started to make freshly squeezed juice of orange and pink grape fruit and had one glass every morning. And all of a sudden all of my tiredness and my migraine were gone! Now I just need to get my sleeping rhythm in order and I'll be all set.

I'm not an expert on the matter, but this is what worked for me and I hope this could be helpful for someone else! Because would I have known this before, I think spring would have been so much easier for me in the past!

And if you have the time, please let me know how spring fatigue affects you and what you do to beat it?

Have a lovely day!

A Perfect Day For Breakfast in Bed

I noticed I haven't written anything here in a long while, so I just wanted to pop in to say hello to everyone and wish you alla a great Sunday! We're making breakfast in bed today and our plans for the day is to get some cleaning and organizing done before we enjoy our day off relaxing with a bit of Netflix. What are your plans for the day?

Have a great Sunday!

Christmas Table Setting

In this blog post I'm going to share some simple tips and tricks you can use when you set the Christmas table.

The winter brings so many emotions to me and so many fond childhood memories. The anticipation of Christmas, with snow, Santa's gnomes, and the whole Christmas spirit! For me Christmas is about family and friends. To gather, eat great food, laugh, hang out and have fun together.

A well set table is very inviting and puts the mood on top for the evening. I'm going to share a table setting I made in a minimalist Scandinavian style and what I keep in mind while setting the table.

I like to stick to a color scheme of 1-3 colors to give the table setting a harmonious look. I love white interior and it also shows in my table settings. But even if I like to have the rest of the table fairly neutral, I usually make sure that the napkins are more colorful. But in this table setting I made an exception and used completely white napkins, to instead put the focus on the decorations.

I like to use influences from the nature in my interior and I just love to bring it inside for Christmas. In the table setting I have chosen to add a little fir twig. These twigs gives a nice color boost to the table setting and they also spread an incredibly good scent around. I tied the napkin and the twig together with a small piece of yarn and finished with a wooden reindeer decoration from Valona. Alternatively you can use a candy cane or other nice decoration you have at home.

I like to have an eye-catching center piece on the table, it can be flowers, candles or some nice decoration. In this table setting you can see a few different variations of center pieces you can use. The stars in the last picture are from Valona.

Candle lights is an absolute must to create the cozy Christmas feeling and of course you can't forget the Christmas music in the background.

I really hope you liked these tips! Please leave me a comment below about what you thought and how you usually set your Christmas table.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Super Easy - Three Ingredient Nutella Brownies

A couple of weeks ago I tried to make some Nutella brownies and they turned out so amazing, I really wanted to share this recipe with you. I loved how fast and easy they were to make. It took about five minutes to whip up the batter and then they took care of the rest them selves. I love frosting so I added some frosting on top but this is completely optional. They are also good without the frosting, and can be served with a bit of ice cream if you'd like.

Nutella Brownie Recipe

4,5 dl Nutella (~ 600 g)
3 eggs
1,5 dl flour

Begin by preheating the oven to 175℃. Mix the ingredients in a bowl. Put the batter in a baking dish (I did not notice the batter rising so you can put them in any baking dish the batter fits in.) Bake them for 25-30 minutes. Check regularly so you don't over-bake them, which would make them dry.

Once they are done, let them cool off. After that you just add the frosting if you like and toppings of your choice.

White Frosting:
1 dl whipped cream
100 g cream cheese
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter (room temperatured)
2 tsp vanilla sugar

Brown Frosting:
1 dl whipped cream
100 g cream cheese
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter (room temperatured)
1 tbsp cocoa powder

 Happy baking!

Oh my!!! I'm on a Korean reality show!!

You'll never guess what I did! Ok, I think the title might have given you a clue.. But let me start from the beginning! This Thursday I was asked to do a styling project for a home that was going to be on a South Korean TV show, featuring South Korean celebrities visiting different countries. I immediately thought this could be really fun, since I'm an Interior Decorator and love styling and decorating. Also the theme for this styling really made me excited since it was Finnish Christmas. Of course I said yes! I mean, who wouldn't! Right?

So far so good, nothing too weird.. But then the crazy stuff started to happen! The evening before the styling project, the homeowner called me and asked if it would be ok if they film me too.. Weeell... I'm actually kind of a shy person, that performs better behind the camera than in front of it.. but face your fears right? You only live once and that kind of stuff.. I guess why the heck not? I thought it wouldn't be such a biggie if they took some short takes here and there while I minded my business. But guess what! It turns out the whole house was rigged with cameras that would be on the whole time! And as soon as I arrived they put a clip microphone on me. Oh my! What did I get myself into? There were cameras in every corner of the house, and a filming crew of 24 people (I think), there was absolutely nowhere to hide! But I just kind of tried to forget about the cameras and did what I love the most, styling! I styled a Christmas table setting and sprinkled some Christmas feeling around the living room with some ornaments, candles and fir tree branches. The whole experience turned out really well. I'm still alive, I did not faint from overwhelm and actually had a pretty good time.. So that's that about my 15 minutes of fame now let me show you what I did on the set!

In the pictures you can see birch ornaments from Valona and handcrafted tableware from Tuias. These beautiful Finnish design products really came together in the table setting. I also want to give thanks to Valona for recommending me for the project.

I would be really happy if you would take a moment and let me know what you think about my styling and about the crazy day I had! I'm also really interested in what your answer would have been, if you would have gotten the same telephone call I did! Leave me a little comment below!

BIG REVEAL - We Remodeled our Staircase!

I can now officially say that we finally are done with our staircase remodeling project! I can't express how satisfied I am with the result! It's much better than I ever could have imagined! I was so disgusted with our previous staircase situation, which consisted of carpet covered concrete stairs. The carpet was almost 40 year old and also a really disgusting color (see the before picture). I could not have lived with the whole carpet situation for much longer and I'm just so thrilled about our new staircase! I just get so happy every time I walk up or down the stairs. So fresh, so modern and best of all: so bright, even though we didn't change anything about the lighting. Have a look at the before and after picture:

Now we're just pondering whether to put in stair railings or leave it without. I think it gives the staircase a more clean look to not have the railings and we don't really need them right now.. What do you think? Railings or no railings?

I made the plans for our staircase, but guess what! My absolute favorite part is the railing upstairs. I came up with the design and the idea of using tile, but my hubbie came up with the amazing idea of not fastening the tiles in any way, this way we can mix it up and change tiles when we feel like it! Isn't that just the best idea ever! I just love it! And I ofcourse am now a proud owner of a whole pile of different tiles!

Let me now what you think about the result in the comments below!

To find out more about our project you can read these earlier blog posts:
My Top 5 Interior Dreams (including the stairs)
The Hell of Living in the Middle of Renovation
Progress on the Stair Remodeling Project

Progress on the Stair Remodeling Project

During summer our staircase renovation project took a break, since it was way too hot to renovate. But this fall we've been back on the project and it shouldn't be that long anymore before we're done. There's just some finishing touches left. I can't wait until the whole project is done so I can show you how it all turned out!

But I'm so excited about this so I do need to give you guys just a little sneak peek! But the rest will have to wait for a little bit longer.

I'm really excited about the stairs!! The transformation is so huge and we're not even done yet!

If you've missed our project you can find out more about it in these posts:
My Top 5 Interior Dreams (including the stairs)
The Hell of Living in the Middle of Renovation

I hope you enjoy your day!

Summer Memories II

In my last post I started to share my best summer memories with you. But there was so much fun and so many pictures to share so I'm continuing in this post, and I believe in a few after this as well.

Almost as soon as my hubbie got his vacation in July we jumped in the car and went for a week long roadtrip in Sweden. We visited Jönköping, Varberg, Smögen, we took a trip to Norway and visited Fredrikstad, after that we drove to Enköping and last to Sala where we visited the silver mine. I just love Sweden so much. One reason is that they speak my mother language there and another reason is because of how kind and sweet the Swedes are. They have amazing small shops and I love the nature in Sweden. We spent a whole week driving around visiting both familiar and new places. We've been on many roadtrips to Sweden, but this time we drove the longest distance yet: 1850 km.

I have to say, that of all the places we visited this roadtrip, Smögen was my absolute favorite. I've never seen a place like that before. It has a really long boardwalk by the sea with small shops and restaurants. Beautiful boats, a huge amount of cottages and amazing scenery. I love this place and I really need to visit it again!

To be continued...

Summer Memories I

I hope you all have had a wonderful summer! I had an amazing time and the weather in Finland was awesome.

I love to do as much as possible in the summer, so the time we spent at home was limited. This also means I'm more inactive on social media during summer.

But now I'm back home and every day life kicked in again, which means I'll also try to be more active on my blog and on Instagram.

I wanted to share some of my favorite moments of this summer with you. But I noticed that I have so many great memories and beautiful pictures I want to share with you, so I'll have to do a couple of posts!

I visited so many beautiful places and spent time with my wonderful friends and family. This summer was filled with trips, parties, cottages, weddings, camping trips, swimming, boating, amazing food and a lot of other fun stuff!

At the beginning of summer I visited Hankoo with my mom and my aunt. I love this little seaside town! We did some interior and clothing shopping in their cute stores. We walked around, took pictures, went to a restaurant that had an amazing seaside buffé! We stayed all day and as you can see in the pictures the weather was  incredible!

We had so much fun in Hankoo that me and my mom decided to spend the next day visiting Tammisaari. Another beautiful little town by the sea. We did a lot of shopping and went to our favorite restaurant and our favorite café: Café Gamlastan.

To be continued...

Join My Give Away!

Hello everybody! I know it has been a while since I wrote here last. I'm having a bit of a struggle coming up with things to write about. I'm more of a person that loves to take pictures, but the text part of it all is not really my strong suit. That's why I'm much more active on Instagram.

And now we get to the fun part! I wanted to tip all of you, who live in Finland, that I'm throwing a give away lottery together with Jotex at my Instagram page to celebrate reaching 3000 followers. You can win this beautiful lantern.

Just click HERE and follow the instructions to join the lottery! 

Note that you need to live in Finland in order to join! 

I wish you the best of luck!

How to get your Magnolia to bloom!

I can't quite believe it! I finally got my Magnolia to bloom!

I really wanted to have a Magnolia, because I've never had one and I thought it was going to be easy. You just buy one and instantly get pretty blossoms! Some pretty pictures for your Instagram and blog and a beautiful flower to admire. But no, that's not how it goes at all!

First I bought one branch, and I did exactly as they said in the flower shop, room temperatured water, one teaspoon of suger and changing the water every other day. Nothing happened and eventually all the buds were dried out.

But I of course wasn't going to give up this easily so I went to another shop. They also told me that it needed room temperatured water. But they told me not to add any sugar in the water, they said it could prevent the Magnolia from blooming. They also advised me not to change the water too often, that once a week is fine.

So I tried this and it took a really long time! I checked the receipt and it looks like it took one whole month before anything happened! So you need to be really patient.

Also what I find interesting is that only this one bud is blooming, and this bud happened to end up behind a painting, so it got the sunlight trough a white canvas painting. Wonder if that has anything to do with it.. But if it did, it would probably be good to have the Magnolia branches behind curtains and not in direct sunlight.

I hope you found something useful in the instructions I was given.
I think I might try this again next year... but I'm not sure because this was a complete struggle!

Have you ever had a Magnolia? 

How did you take care of it?

Floral Beauty

I'm just popping in to say hello. Right now there is not much else happening in our lives except for the renovation that's going on. And every blog post can't be about that (update coming later). So today I'm just sharing some floral beauty.

Have a great day!

The Hell of Living in the Middle of Renovation

As you saw in my last blog post, we have some upgrading dreams for our home. The first one on our list we already got started on during Easter. We are redoing our stairs and also the hallway on the second floor.

But after the holiday when everyday life takes over and you are left with minimal time to finish the project, it just gets super dragged out! So far we teared down wallpaper and panels, we filled holes in the walls, sanded it down and yesterday Ben washed the walls. So there is some slow progress going on, but never the less: progress! And today we are painting the ceiling.

But living among a remodeling chaos is everything else but fun! The first thing I get aggravated by is the amount of stuff everywhere. I thought this was going to be easy peasy since we didn't store anything in the stair and not that much in the upstairs hallway. But oh my what a mess it makes anyway! We immediately put up one ground rule: nothing, and I mean NOTHING, goes into the bedroom! We at least need one place of serenity! And that has worked out fine. But here in our home office it is completely crammed, so it feels a bit stressful sittning here writing right now.

So stuff everywhere stressing me out. And then we come to the remodeling chaos. Right now, even though it has been vacuumed, there is dust all over the renovation are. You can probably imagine what it's like living with dogs and of course walking through it yourself: it means you have dust all over the house. Oh my!

But we are both super happy that we finally got rid of the last piece of wallpaper from the previous owners. They had wallpaper on every single little bit of surface! And of course layers and layers of wallpaper. It was a complete nightmare when we moved in, since we wanted to get rid of it all!

So that's that about the nightmare! There are also plenty of positive stuff while remodeling. Of course the number one reason that people do renovate: to get something better, more beautiful, something more like you. Making a house your home! I love the planning part, the searching for ideas on Pinterest part and having an eye out on Instagram. This is going to be so beautiful when it's done! I can really imagine it!

Here you can see how far we've come on the stairs. The first picture is before the renovation and the second picture shows our progress right now. I'll keep you updated during the process!

And of course I need to leave you with some eye candy and tips on remodeling stairs! 

Pics found on Pinterest, links behind each picture. Enjoy!

I hope you all have an amazing weekend!