The Scandi-Farmhouse Begins

I got to go to an antique store here in Finland last week.

Definitely a junk store ...

Floor to ceiling ... my favorite ...

Filled with favorites like statuary ...

Yard art ...

Transferware...

Teapots...

Original art ... note the Finnish flag?

Here it is again.

Loved the water color.

This old bible from the mid 1800s

was just 12 Euros ... I'd have bought it had it been Finnish, but alas it was Swedish.

This English hutch called to me. I love leaded diamond pane glass ...

How great is this carving?

In the end this copper kettle went home with me ... yep  doing a bit of Scandi-Farmhouse!! ❤️❤️❤️

A Different Kind of House Tour

Yes, this is me and Mr P at the Tampere IKEA ... and me a sworn IKEA dissident, I know! The whole 'force you to walk through every inch of the store'  thing has always put me off. But alas, when you must ...

fully furnish an apartment in 3 days IKEA is a must ...

We are the Housing Missionaries here in Finland, serving our church, The Church of Jesus  Christ of Latter-day Saints.  When we have more missionaries coming than we have leaving, we rent new apartments and furnish them. 

As you see it's a fairly bare bones furnishing, which I admit is hard for me to walk away from ...

But a fun orange rug still makes me smile. I used to go garaging with a friend who loved orange. She's fun and has great style. One tender mercy for me, here, was running into a young Sister Missionary, who grew up down the street from Dyan!  I asked her if Dyan still loves orange!  YES!  

We found this amazing couch at a thrift store here. Super comfy, but hubs and two younger missionaries had to haul it up three flights of stairs because it's too tall to fit in the elevator. Oops. 

Here's the study area for a companionship of missionaries, back to back desks. 

Did you know that IKEA furniture takes an hour and a half to assemble?  Yep, neither did I, and with five kits we ended up staying a day longer than planned. Yes, Mr P is a rockstar, must have been all those erector set projects when he was a kid!! 

When we were loading our cardboard to take to a recycler, an older man in our parking garage asked if we were moving in ... he was so friendly and had a twinkle in his eye. We were a little sad to admit that the apartment was not for us. I'd would have loved to have had him as a neighbor. (This is not actually him, Finnish law prohibits publishing pics of people without their express permission) 

... and we drive away ... another first behind us!  It was a lot of hard work, but we've always loved doing projects together... and for the first time I've come to appreciate Ikea, and their meatballs!! 

Turku Castle Built From the 1200s to the 1600s.

Last week while out fulfilling our responsibilities we had a chance to see the castle in Turku, Finland. We found out that Turku used to be the 'center' of the area where Finns lived. The country itself is just 100 years old, and it has a history of belonging to both of it neighbors, Sweden and Russia, even though they've had a unique language and culture. We are excited that we will be here in 2017 to celebrate the 100th year since they declared their independence from Russia 

The castle was built in the 1200's with additions for 400 years. 

As you can see it was built on an enormous rock, we've seen many such rick formations since we've been in Finland. 

This is a closeup of the stone walls. 

Going through the entrance we were surprised to enter a town square, that was open to the sky. 

With dwellings on all sides, leading into other courtyards... the outcropping of the original rock on which the fortress was built coming up through the street. 

There are doorways and balconies. 

There's even a drawbridge. 

The windows have lead dividers, I loved them!! 

There was this walkway along one wall 

This pictures shows the opening from the second court yard into the larger town square area. 

This archway leads to two more open areas, one of which is much later ... 

You can see from this shot of  the wall that the  surrounding wall apartment structure is four and five stories high.  The footprint of the fortress is several acres. It was really a town. 

We loved our visit and will later go back and do a tour of the apartments, so we can see how people lived 700 to 800 years ago. 

Here's my last view of the amazing castle through my rain dotted window.