My morning classes were canceled today so I had an unexpected free morning at home (aren’t those the best?). Here are a few details from our kitchen for you today. The black candle holder is a recent thrift store find, I couldn’t resist those three little legs! The napkin holder is from the Iittala Outlet in Haparanda, Sweden and so are the green napkins and the black and white twine. The lovely calendar is of course from Camilla Engman.

Here is (most of) my plate collection – most of them are vintage thrift store finds but some are bought new. I don’t really mind which it is as long as it doesn’t break the bank (most of these have cost around 3-6 Euro) and I like the look of it. The latest additions to my collection are two gorgeous black and white Marimekko Siirtolapuutarha plates (a Christmas gift from Minna’s mom) and the plate with turquoise flowers on the rim (a vintage Arabia plate, a recent thrift store find). I don’t know if ‘collection’ is really the right word, maybe it implies that I display them on the wall or behind a glass because in reality they are in the cupboard with rest of the dishes and are used quite often. Some of them I use mainly outside of the kitchen as little catch-all places for jewelry etc or under a flower pot or to hold a stack of coasters in the livingroom.

Have a good weekend!

Snow on the ground and freezing temperature outside (and a bit chilly inside this old house too), December is already proving to be much nicer than November was. Even though the days are very short, the few daylight hours that we have are beautiful. I found some great pillowcases at a thrift store, this blue and white one is my favorite. Now I’m dreaming (maybe a bit unrealistically) of making a quilt in similar style – I was really inspired by this quilt I saw on Design*Sponge.

Ps. Once Upon A Tea Time… Design Stories featured our home recently, click here to read the blog post. Thank you Priya!

We haven’t had much thrifting luck lately but last weekend I found some lovely vintage photographs at the local Christmas fair. This young lady is my favorite of the five black and white portraits I bought. The small bird is a thrift store find from months ago. Even though it’s not really a Christmas decoration I think there’s something wonderfully wintery about it so I think I will only have it out for the holidays and put it back in the storage for the rest of the year. If I’m lucky to find a few more I could even start a small collection that I would only display around Christmas time.

I came across this photo when sorting out my photo files and I just had to share it with you. This tiny vintage Arabia egg cup is one of my favorite thrift store finds ever. We haven’t had the time to go thrifting in a while so unfortunately I don’t have any new finds to share with you. Have you found anything nice recently?

Ps. Isabel from Decofabulous featured our home on her lovely blog, click here to see it. She also has a really wonderful house tour of Catherine’s home on her blog. Thank you Isabel for your nice words about our home!

A big part of going to thrift stores is accepting that most times you don’t find anything nice at all (at least not anything nice that’s in your price range) and come home empty handed. But every once in a while you get lucky and find something that you’ve been looking for (or maybe something you had no idea you were looking for until you saw it) and that’s what keeps you going back. When we go around to thrift stores I am always on the look-out for two things: vintage dishes and furniture. A little while ago we had a great thrifting weekend, I found the Arabia Syksy plates (for 2€ each) and we found this vintage dresser for the livingroom. It was quite a lot (for us) at 80€ but we figured that since we saved by going with the inexpensive Ikea bookshelves we could splurge a little because we really liked it. Isn’t it lovely?

Syksy is Finnish for autumn. It is also the name of this vintage Arabia plate I found at a thrift store last weekend. (I actually bought two – will let you know soon what I plan to do with the other one!) Today it looked like we would skip right over autumn and go straight into winter when it started snowing. For a little while the ground was white but thankfully it has all melted away now, a few hours later.

I have the organizing and arranging bug lately, I want to make little changes around the house – display things we love and throw away everything we don’t need.  Even though we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff (sold at thrift stores and given to charity shops), I still feel like there’s too much stuff in the closets and the storage room that we don’t need at all. I think we will have to do something about it! Autumn is the perfect time for these things, preparing your home (and yourself) for the long (and dark) winter months ahead.

The print on the fridge door is actually a page out of the new Marimekko “newspaper” they hand out in the store for free. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Have a good weekend!

A happy find at the thrift store yesterday, a small vintage Arabia bowl for only 2 Euro. Isn’t it cute? I recently made a new blog category called Thrifted, and will soon add all the old blog posts about thrifted goods to it, so you can easily find them all if you are interested in our thrift shop finds.

On our two week summer holiday together we visited the local thrift stores many times as we are still in search of a perfect sideboard or bookcase for the livingroom. We still didn’t find it, but we did come across three vintage dinner plates that match this cute bowl I bought earlier this year (also from a thrift store).  The dishes were manufactured by Upsala-Ekeby/Gefle in Sweden. I think that the shape of the dishes is really fun and quite unusual and the simple yellow and blue-ish grey pattern is beautiful.

Every once in a while I come across these vintage photographs at thrift stores and pick one or two that I like the most to add to my tiny collection. Last week we went to the summer market place in the city and I found two new black and white ladies for my collection. Minna and I amuse ourselves by inventing stories for these young ladies, we know nothing else of them except that some of the photos were taken in Sweden, some in Finland. This young lady has a name though, on the other side of the card someone has written ‘Martha’.