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!

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!

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!

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!

My Top 5 Interior Dreams

Do you have stuff you would love to get done in your home, but time and perhaps also money gets in the way? Because that is something I really can relate to! I'm that kind of a person that has to have everything happen immediately. I go mad if I get an idea and then I have to wait to implement it. It's totally my worst quality, I'm very impatient.

So here are my five interior dreams that I wish we could get done right now this second!

1. Stairs

On the top of the list I have stairs because we have this really ugly carpet covering our stairs, that's been there since the house was built in the 80's. Not cool at all, and it's a beige-brown-grayish kind of color and I don't even want to think about if it's the original color or something else..

Anyway, I want to freshen them up and put some wood on top of the stairs and some ornamental pattern on the stair risers. This is the first thing we're going to do on my list. We already begun this huge project during Easter: we teared down the wallpaper and the panel. But as you can imagine it's going to be a big project before we are anywhere near done.

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

2. Bathroom

This is also something I wanted to get done already when we moved in (2016), but it has been postponed for a long time already, because this is something we can't fix ourselves. We would need to hire some help and help is always expensive. The worst problem with our bathroom is the bad floor planning. The washing machine is blocking the sink. You can just try to imagine what it's like brushing your teeth there. There is also not enough storage space, cords everywhere and I really hate the see trough cabinets. And of course I'm not in love with the tiles, but that would be too big and expensive to get done, so they'll just have to do. I thought about painting them, but the shower is in the other end of the bathroom, so I think it might be a little bit tricky.

So what I want to do is turn the sink so it's beside the washing machine. I also want to add more storage space by adding cabinets above the washing machine and both above and underneath the sink.

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

3. Painting the celings

This is not that expensive and we can do this ourselves, but oh my what a big project this is! We don't have such a huge home, but still, this would take a really long time, with moving furniture from one room to another and covering up the rest. But it's going to get done for sure, as soon as we get around to it! It will freshen things up amazingly!

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

4. New counter tops in the kitchen

When we moved in, I painted the wooden counter tops black to get a more modern twist to it, but it was a temporary solution. What I really would like is counter tops made of stone, preferably black or light marble. But that is crazy expensive and as you can see we would need al lot (485 cm to be exact)! But since we only have early morning sun in our kitchen it is pretty dark the rest of the day, so maybe some white laminate counter tops could lighten things up a bit. But I'm not sure, I really like the black so we'll have to think about it.

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

5. New floors
And for my last dream it would be getting new floors. I love laminate floors because they are so easy to maintain! Easy to clean, doesn't get scratches and they can handle some amount of water. Love it! We do have laminate floors right now, they are not bad, but they are definitely not the color I would've selected and the moldings are a complete mess! Upstairs there are double moldings that are unnecessarily wide and they are taking up a lot of the floor space. So new lighter laminate floors and new floor moldings would be awesome!

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

What interior dreams do you have?

Happy Easter!

I just wanted to pop in to wish you all a happy Easter! I hope you have a great time with friends and family! Just make sure you don't overdose on chocolate eggs (I might..)! 

Happy Easter!!

Am I too early?

I know it might be a bit early... But I did buy tulips already in January because I wanted spring.. So the fact that I decorated for Easter already last weekend isn't that bad right? My behavior might have something to do with what I wrote about in my last blog post (click!)

How about you? Have you done some Easter decorating already or are you waiting for Easter to come first?

Throwback to Past Interior Styles (So Embarrassing)

Even tough I've been interested in interior my whole life, I can't say I've been good at it for as long..
But practice makes the master, right?

So as I promised (even though this really is a bit embarrassing for me), I will now share some pictures from my previous interior styles. I'm sorry to say (but luckily for me), I couldn't find any pictures of my absolute worst interiors, since I didn't photograph spaces and decor at that time. I started taking pictures of our home in 2012 when I started my first blog, there you can find a lot more pictures of my previous interior styles.

Let's have a look!

I'll start out with most recent styles and end up with the oldest and worst. So I'm starting out in year 2016 in our old home. At this time our home started going from my previous romantic styles towards a more Scandinavian and simpler look.

In the beginning of 2015 I still had a lot of my previous French Brocante style going on, but towards summer I calmed it down. For instance I redid my bedroom as a project for my interior school. I remember being so happy with this new look for our bedroom. Romantic, but not overly shabby.

From summer 2014 to autumn in 2015 I had my French Brocante interior where everything was really worn down. I loved to collect antique finds at flea markets, antique shops and fairs. And I remember dreaming about visiting a real Brocante market in France.

In the end of 2013 my style was a happy mix of pastels and shabby chic. I remember falling for GreenGate at this time, and I've loved them since then!

From 2012 to the beginning of 2013 I had a really colorful phase. I loved colors, especially turquoise and pink. I also liked the mix of purple and black, as you can see in the bedroom. 

At the same time our home office looked like this. I think this is the worst of them all. But I was really proud of this room at that time.

And before this, I can promise you, it was a lot worse, a lot! I had my crazy pink princess kind of phase. But I won't be able to show that since I wasn't that into photography at that time. The only pictures I have are of my friends.

It was pretty cool doing this throwback! I would really like to see someone else try this as well! Wouldn't it, for instance, be fun to see interior influensers showing their old styles! I dare you all to try this! And leave me a comment below if you do! I'll be sure to check it out!

And if you're interested in seeing my current interior style you can find it in a previous post (Click!) I also have a lot of pictures on Instagram.