Sinimalist

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DAYBED

Last summer we made an extreme makeover to the upstairs of our summer house. Before the makeover the upstairs room was just one big empty space without any kind of interior designed for living. It had been used mainly as storage space and after a hundred years it was quite a sight to behold.We renewed every possible surface and the only original things we left visible, were the wooden timber walls that are essential to the style of this house. There were no separate rooms and the bottom of the roof and the wooden frame of the house were visible. Even a decent floor was missing, basically the top of the downstairs roof served as a floor.

We decided to divide the space into smaller pieces with a big bed-/ living room, a small bed room, a walking closet and two small rooms for storage. We may convert the storage rooms into something else in the future, who knows…

We had a successful team behind this project. I was in charge of the interior design, and the men in the family (my dad & my boyfriend) took care of the actual construction work. My sister helped me with the main design with some details and our mom served as the voice of reason, since we had some pretty crazy ideas along the way! All in all, we are all very pleased with the outcome, since this is an important place for us all and we managed to make the place even more special than before.

The biggest room in house is a combination of a bed room and a living room. Since the house is an old farm house it has a high, pointy top which makes the room really high, the highest point being 5 meters. I love it! The height of the room means that the room will remain cool even during the hottest summer days and it makes sleeping a lot easier (yes, there´s no modern A/C, since it doesn´t belong into an old wooden house like this).

The floor is of course wooden and wooden floors are the best!  They make lovely sounds when you walk on them. Every floor has its own sound, it´s almost like they have their own personalities!

Now, I´d like to introduce the crown jewel of the room, the daybed. I love it so much, I think everyone should have one. It´s a perfect place for hanging out, chillaxin, watching Netflix and napping. The best part of it is that it´s self-made. I´m usually not big on DIY projects, but this was an exception that came out perfect. We had a couple of hundred old hay poles laying around, so we decided to create something out of them. I got the idea from Pinterest and since my boyfriend is pretty handy, he did the rest.

To make this kind of daybed, all you need is 20-25 hay poles, 10-20m of rope, two 2×4 boards, screws, a mattress and a place to hang it from. Ours is hanging from the wooden frame boards of the roof, which makes the whole thing look pretty nice or what do you think?

THE ART OF DOING NOTHING

The last few days have gone by and I have managed to do pretty much nothing. This seems to be the main theme of my vacation –no plans or schedules, which is perfectly fine. Well maybe “nothing” is an exaggeration since picking strawberries is a task that has to be done every second or third day and it takes a good few hours every time. And it does raise my stress level, since there are hundreds of horse flies above the strawberry fields and they bite hard! Talk about a First World problem…

Having a fridge full of strawberries is another First World problem, since they require a lot of space and I need to figure a way to eat and make use of them. One solution has been a strawberry-rhubarb pie that has been on the menu every day for the past week or so. I´m not exactly a specialist when it comes to baking, but I have done this pie so many times by now that I know the recipe in and out, and I´m very satisfied with the outcome. This pie (recipe only in Finnish) is delicious!

My other activities have included animals. I have been visiting our neighbors horses and ponies every day and yesterday I met with a pack of puppies that stole my heart. Then there is a feral cat, that has five kittens. I have tried to make contact with them, but since they are feral, it´s not that easy. The fun part is that they seek shelter under our barns, so basically they live in our yard and it is really fun to follow them through the window.

What else? Yeah, we have finally managed to finalize the upstairs of our summer house and I´m very pleased with the outcome. More of that later, a separate post coming up…

But anyway, the most important thing for me has been the lack of pushing myself too hard. I have been able to do whatever feels right and comfortable at the time. That is something that is easier said than done but so far, so good!

PS. I really like this outfit, what do you think about it?

Top H&M, Skirt Zalando, Shoes Vans

COUNTRY LIFE

I´ve been on vacation for 1,5 weeks. The first thing I did when I got out of the office was a train ride away from the city. After a few hours I arrived to the lovely Finnish country side and felt the immediate effect of it. No stress, no schedules or busy people running around. I was on vacation, no question about it.

Our family has a summer house that is located literally in the middle of nowhere. It´s an old farm that used to belong to my grandparents and it´s located in a small village with a population of around 30 people. When you look out the window, all you see is horses, grain fields and lots of forest, so this pretty much is a perfect getaway from the hectic city life. I even had trouble sleeping at first, because it is so extremely quiet in here!

So, what do you do in a place like this? Pretty much nothing, and that is the beauty of it. Sure, there are strawberries to pick and a garden to look after, but that´s about it. When it´s time to have dinner, this time I cannot rely on Wolt or a nearby restaurant. Instead, I walk out the door, dig out some potatoes from the ground and collect a little salad from the garden. Whether we are baking or cooking, we get to collect most of our food from our own garden. So there is a lot of time on my hands, which means lots of sun bathing. And collecting flowers. And sun bathing.


So, at the moment everything is perfect. Well, almost. There are hundreds of horse flies everywhere, and they make me lose my mind! Then again, if that is my biggest concern, it only means that life is good at the moment 🙂

Dress Asos