Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

Have you guys tried out Rock Band yet? The student association my Micke belongs too have it on their X-box in their lair in the basement of the ICT-house. It's even better than Sing Star or Guitar Hero I tell you :) You get to try out your skills with the vocals, the drums, the guitar or the bass. So far, I've tried vocals and the bass, mainly 'cause others (who have more skills than me on the instruments!) have hogged the drums and the lead guitar. Customizing the game is easy - new songs can be bought online, and if the X-box still have some memory left over (:P) you can create your own profile (musician) to rock on with. Mine looks a little like me - the short brown hair and perky attitude, but she dresses in pink (!), which I NEVER do. This 'cause "her" band name is Oink's Pink P ! The band logo is a pink little pig with a space opera lady for a rider... Now that's some serious therapy for you!

First, I need to say that here at us we had a really nice Christmas dinner (at the 24th), and we even had Thomas over as a guest :) My cooking got compliments from both men, so I dare say it must have been fairly decent chow :P I did "my" version of the classical Finnish Christmas dinner servings and casseroles as follows: 1. turkey - instead of the ham 2. sweet potato - instead of the traditional baked potato casserole 3. pumpkin pie - instead of my family's traditional oven baked apple and prunes I gots looots of Christmas pressies! Micke liked the ones I gave him (Nokia X6 phone + 3000 pieces puzzle of the world)., and I think Thomas liked the "keypete" I had found for him. Although it doesn't look like much, this little key holder actually has a REALLY strong magnet in its "paw" It even could hold up (for a few seconds anyway) my christmas-pressie cast-iron cooking pan! I was so relieved that Micke liked his puzzle (actually, I think...

Let me see now.... Have I missed anything? 1. Food for tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that - CHECK 2. Presents for everyone fixed and sent - CHECK 3. Christmas cards sent to people - CHECK 4. Last minute Christmas cleaning + do the dishes - not yet done 5. Christmas trees fixed and decorated - CHECK 6. Clothes washed and "party" clothes for 24th and 31st fixed - CHECK 7. Remembering to unwind - not yet done *looks at the list* Well, 5 out of 7 ain't that bad... right? And besides, Micke said he'll take care of the dishes. But why does is STILL feel like I've forgotten something? Like, you know - something HUGE and MEGA IMPORTANT and CAN'T DO CHRISTMAS WITHOUT IT. Except the ham *iuh* 'cause we won't have ham this year. We'll have turkey, because my stomach can handle it better :) If I notice (which...

Oh my, I say like my cousin Saga: what a busy week! I've managed to clean the whole house, gotten my new glases from Instru, put the Christmas cards in the mail, hold a taco/tortilla dinner, buy and fix some Christmas presents, make chocolate truffles and get exhausted in the process. *sheeesh* I'm going to summarize the week in pics for you, mainly because I think pics are nice to look at :) Mimi came over because I had an idea about how to make her some hat boxes. I got the cardboard from the trash container at school, and after we had gotten them bent (using a rolling pin I might add!) into the right shape we coated them in papier maché . The glue took 2 days to dry, but afterwards we could base paint them with a basic white acrylic paint. I have to ask Mimi to provide me with some pics of how they look once she finished decorating them. Doing crafts is fun, and I used up some of my creativity creating some Christmas present jewellry and base painting a wooden box (t...

... I thought I'd catch up with making my Christmas wish list. Actually, Micke has been... well, not NAGGING, but politely reminded me at least twice that he wants me to make a list of possible presents he could get me for Christmas. Christmas ain't r-e-a-l-l-y about giving presents... right? Just because it's NICE to get presents, and nice to give them too (the last part only applies if you can afford them, sadly), doesn't mean that's all that Christmas is about. This capitalistic shopping-frenzied holiday (and that's sooo what my Dad would say) used to be about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, and before that it was about Yule and the celebration of the "returning" sun via the winter solstice . So, in honor of this, I'm wishing for: 1. Yarn , preferably in 'happy' colors like sunny yellow and lime-green 2. More tealights! And these can be those cheap white ones, since our candle holders are the ones providing the color...

I hate being sick or ill, since every time I do get sick I get REALLY sick. Same phenomenon this time too: stomach flu! Woke up this morning, felt really weird, managed to drink half a glass of water, and then... *iuh* Well, let's just say that it's not nice. Only thing that consoles me is that I only ran a fever for like 3-4 hours, and if the stomach wouldn't tell me REPEATEDLY that it feels awful, this would be pretty much okay. Only thing is, there's not much on the TV tonight. And Micke is on the Christmas party his office is throwing at Kupittaan Paviljonki , so he'll be home late. Probably really late. Talked a while with people on MSN and Facebook, but it's just not the same. It's booooooring being sick. I wish a speedy recovery for EVERYONE being sick at this very moment.

Yesterday, me and Micke went to the restaurant Kerttu to have a piece of the famous "hamburger buffé". Yum! Micke ate four (!) hamburgers while I ate some goat cheese salad. What, no hamburgers for me? No, sadly no burgers for me, as my stomach has this thing against paprika (among a whole lot of other things....). So, sadly, no hamburgers for me :/ On our walk to Kerttu, we took a detour via the newly opened Christmas market. No snow, but the feeling of good-will was everywhere. The Christmas market is going to be held from this weekend every Saturday and Sunday, until Christmas. People were selling crafts, arts, snacks and other things. I even took a video of the Christmas market, the part held at "Gamla Stortorget". After eating at Kerttu, we arrived back to the market just in time to hear them declare the traditional "Christmas peace" and light the great tree in front of the cathedral. They had a short Christmas play on the stage, and as t...

Ever since my Mom "killed Santa" (sorry, old family story there, will bore you with it another time), I've really enjoyed Christmas. Or perhaps it would be more truthful if I say that I 'like' the things that are done because of Christmas. Anyway, when we last visited Ostrobothnia, Micke's paternal grandmother Laimi kindly donated to us three small tablecloths made of lace. Now, I soooo wanted to use one of them to create a Christmas tablecloth for our sofa table, I finally got out that red cloth I got cheaply from IKEA and started getting creative. I used the sewing machine to sew the tablecloth, and then sew the lace on the cloth. Perhaps it looks a little plain, but for now I'm happy with it. Later, maybe I'll visit an arts&crafts-store and by some ribbons for the edges. Since I DON'T consider myself able to create or arrange nice interior design objects (...), I'll just point out that the candlestick-holder was one I found cheapl...

Okay, I have many weaknesses, but one of them is fresh fruit and vegetables. And it's a-m-a-z-i-n-g how many weird fruits you can find in the Finnish supermarkets these days. Thank the goddess for globalization.... The specimens under are just a few I've come across: Cherimoya/Annona Cherimoya (or annona) has a skin that weirdly enough smells like pine cones. The smell sticks to your fingers, and the skin is surprisingly hard to cut into. The fruit itself tastes sweet though, like . I read, that the seeds contain an neurotoxin, so no eating them! You can read more about annona here Cactus fruit/Prickly pear (and a strawberry...) Cacti retain a LOT of water, so it should come as no surprise then that their fruit does too. Not too sweet, but really "crunchy" in texture, it tastes real good. You can read more about prickly pear here . Papaya Overtly ripe papaya is said to smell like vomit, because of it's high concentration of pepsin. Does wonders fo...

"Päivää Gudaa!", says the yellow Päivää Gudaa dragon (Svenni!) I'm going to summarize last weeks happenings, as well as upload some photos I've taken. Last week was the " Swedish week ", as 6.11 is Gustav Adolf's Day. In the shopping house Hansa they had put up yellow signs with the Swedish names for things (see the pictures), and me and Mimi walked around and smiled at the signs. With president Tarja Halonen being THE spokes person for people speaking Finnish Swedish, the new "campaign" with the "Päivää Gudaa!" dragon for a mascot is getting more and more notice. The dragon is a little silly, but he/she/it is supposed to symbolize the courage to speak Swedish in public - even if your knowledge of Swedish as a language is not that good. (Hence the "Gudaa" instead of "God dag").     En soptunna/En roskis Heh, clearly the use of " finlandisms " have also been taken into account :) "Funeral whi...

Om nom chicken salad! Today I had lunch at GreenZ (Salad and Coffee bar) which is quite close to the library and Kino Julia. The interior can only be described as "perky green" :P Today's special was chicken salad, which I had with some balsamico. It was really good, and the price for it was okay too (8,90€). First time in long time I've had lunch while going for errands in the city center. Night time by the river Aura We have to travel up to Ostrobothnia on Friday, because Micke's grandmother Gerda sadly passed away on Sunday night. (I'm sorry if the next thing I write sounds too materialistic, but)I have to figure out if I need some new shoes for the funeral. I only have black shoes and sandals, and the boots will be too "ho" and the sandals might be to cold. I don't think Gerda would terribly mind if I came in either boots or sandals, but I think the rest of Micke's relatives will... and I don't want them thinking that Micke i...

h man, I just HAVE to tell you how unlucky we were on Saturday! After celebrating the very non-typical Halloween at a great student-party on Friday, we didn't have any * cough * extra energy to spend on making dinner on Saturday. So, we went out. And decided that Italian-type food would be nice. Close to the market square is the restaurant Frank Benelli's , which serves Italian-American food. So far so good. We ordered starters (bruschetta) and main course (pizza + chicken) and then proceeded to wait for ONE AND A HALF HOURS (!) until we got them. As compensation, offered with not-quite-so-sincere apologies from the kitchen, we got free dessert. Nice! So I ordered Sweet Lime Cheesecake, and Micke ordered a sort of haute couture ice-cream creation. And the kitchen still managed to GET THAT ORDER WRONG, so Micke got another type of ice-cream thingy. What should have taken a max. of 1 h instead took 3, and on top of it all we missed the movie we wanted to go and see, and I g...

Aah, how is it that some can't see the point in good poetry. Among them, American poet Robert Frost happens to be one of my many favorite poets. Among other great poems, he wrote " Fire and Ice " Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Ive seen a much short-shorted version of this one that goes: For destruction, ice is nice and will suffice.

Just going to show you a few pretty autumn pics I took with my new phone :) This is the "old" part of the library. I managed to grab a picture of it before the city's cleaning crew blew them all away. The plaza in front of the library building has actually been in repair since the beginning of summer, and they've just finished it. Sadly they already turned off the fountain (the one with the lion on top) for the winter. And this of course, is the cathedral... Sadly, all the leaves have been cleaned away from here now too. We only live a few 100 m away from the church, so we only have to walk out on the balcony to see it in all it's glory. They're already starting to prepare the Brahe-park for the winter too; soon there will be only the naked trees and the empty flowerbeds left.