Easter in the countryside

I had the pleasure of spending Easter in one of my favourite places in the countryside (my gal Gigi's and her husband's place, aka Mäkelä farm), with some of my dearest people <3

Lassi and me arrived a day earlier, because Gigi and me had planned to do some costuming that day. As some of you know I'm working on my new act "Algae", which will be premiered in a month at the Sinsational Spring Awakening in Kaisaniemi (get your tickets HERE, the lineup is superb!) and I'm currently in the middle of a crazy costuming spree! I was silly enough to only bring two bottles of Jewel-it glue though, so I run out of it already by Saturday morning and that was the end of costuming for me that weekend :-D

costuming time!

On Saturday morning we woke up to a lovely surprise! Aatu (aka Gigi's husband) came to tell us that one of the cows was giving birth, and that if we hurried we were still in time to see the little calf be born! It was really exciting since I've never seen a birth in real life! 

few-hours-old cutie <3

Soon after that I had to borrow Gigi's car and leave to Järvenpää for a couple of hours of Tribal Fusion choreo rehearsals with the Kaira Tribe gals and our teacher Laura Luna, and by the time I came back some of the rest of the guests had already arrived. Unluckily enough not everybody could make it, but it was blissful to be able to spend some quality time with these people! <3

hungry people waiting for food
picture stolen from Gigi

The dinner was organized potluck style, so that everybody brought something. There was organic lamb marinated and slowly cooked in the oven with mint jelly, mango salsa, homemade bread, tofu and veggies vietnamese spring rolls with two different kinds of sauce, egg salad, wakame, tofu salad, oven-baked potatos with fresh thyme, fresh green asparragus and an absolutely delicious lemon and liquorice charlotte cake as dessert. Oh my, where's the extra belly-space when you most need it? 

food is love!
picture stolen from Tuomas

The rest of the evening mostly consisted of sparkly, sauna and jelly beans (actually jelly beans were a constant during the whole weekend! :-D ). And as proper adults (*coughcough*) some of us went to sleep as early as midnight and woke up to a wonderful breakfast consisting of pink soda and pink sparkling wine! Plus all the tons of delicious leftover food from the previous evening. 

breakfast of the champions!
picture stolen from Gigi

The rest of the weekend consisted of relaxing in the sun (I can't even remember last time it's been so warm at this time of the year!), walking on the grass without shoes, some wine drinking and chatting, and basically just enjoying a weekend off. Thank you so much everybody involved, and extra thanks to Gigi and Aatu for being such amazingly generous and welcoming hosts <3

Gigi's cat Pertti! She likes sleeping on my bum :-D

Fleamarket finds, Vol.3

Besides the new burlesque costume I posted about earlier, I'm currently also working on a new bellydance costume. And this time I decided to finally try out something that's been tempting me for a while, which is using buttons instead of coins! I will elaborate on this in the future when the costume is finished, but I mentioned it mostly in order to explain why I've been hunting for buttons in charity shops for the last week or so. 

After work on Friday I decided to visit a new charity shop I had never been to before, and besides a bunch of the buttons I needed I also managed to get a couple of vintage treasures: a 1940's tablecloth and some vintage buttons. 

The tablecloth isn't maybe extremely spectacular, as this kind isn't so difficult to find and one sees them in fleamarkets every now and then, but it was in pristine condition and only cost 2.5€! The buttons I found while hunting for the ones I needed for the bellydance costume. I found quite a few fabric covered white buttons in two sizes, that are usually quite hard to find nowadays, and are for example perfect for vintage repro underwear. Besides those I found three really cute wooden square buttons. I'm not sure if there are old, but even if they aren't this is a precious find since wooden buttons and buttons in any other shape than round (and in a proper material) are almost impossible to find nowadays! I still have no idea what I'll be using them for, but I'm sure they'll look pretty wherever they end up ;-)

1940's tablecloth and vintage buttons

New solo act in the making: sneak peek

I've been wanting to create a feather fan act for a few years now, but they are one of the biggest clichés in burlesque and I wanted something with a bit of a twist. I'm still not sure if I will succeed in making it a bit less of a cliche, but at least I think the idea is unusual! I decided to make a seaweed act, so that the fans themselves would also be seaweed. I came up with this idea over a year ago, but I wasn't even finished with my Mata Hari act then, and before I could start working on this one I came up with the idea for The Chap and an irresistible urge of it being my next :-)

Nevertheless, now it's finally time for my Algae act! I have barely started to work on the costume yet, but I'm showing you a few sneak peek pictures of some of the materials. Why? Well, to tease you of course! ;-D

And because I'm absolutely in love wih the indian textiles I'm using for this one, sewing is a pleasure with them! 

left top: gorgeous indian textiles, left bottom: unusual
coloured feather fans, right: some trim and fringe