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

Women's day in Tallinn

When one lives in Helsinki, travelling to Tallinn is roughly twice as cheap as for example travelling to Tampere (a Finnish city about 1:45mins by train), and if you add to that how cheap everything is compared to Finland one could easily understand why it's such a popular destination. 

As a burlesque performer who makes most of her costumes though, there is an even more important reason for travelling to Tallinn, and its name is Karnaluks. Karnaluks is a huge store full of everything one may want for the making and embellishing of costumes (except maybe fabrics), and not only are they many times cheaper than equivalents found in Finland, but I would guess 80% of the products CAN'T EVEN BE FOUND in any shop in Finland. I guess some of you lucky people living in London or the States are used to these kind of stores, but I personally almost had a heart attack the first time I was introduced to Karnaluks. 

Since I am at the moment working on a new act, and one of the ferry lines that does Helsinki-Tallinn happened to have discounted prices a few weeks ago, my dear friend Tiitta and me decided to book a day-trip for the 8th March. 

happy faces in the ferry

What we actually didn't know, but found out as soon as we visited a couple of stores, was that it seems they have crazy sales in Tallinn on women's day! So the shopping part of our trip was even a bigger success. 

The first and most important stop was in Karnaluks, because it was the store that closed the earliest. I found almost everything I had written down on my "shopping list" (and absolute must-have unless you want to end up buying tons of things you don't even need!), and still found one crazy pretty trim in another store called Kangadzungel. This already took a few hours, so by the time we were done with the shopping, we were starving!

The other reason why I absolutely love day-trips to Tallinn is that food and drinks are much much cheaper than in Finland, so you can actually pamper yourself with a small budget. Our first stop was an indian restaurant called Bollywood in the Old Town, which Tiitta knew from previous visits. We got one of the low tables next to the window, so we could enjoy our food surrounded in cushions :-)

waiting for the food in Bollywood

Since it was a special occasion, and we had agreed to pamper ourselves, we decided to have a piece of cake and hot cocoa for dessert. For that we chose one of the cutest cafeterias I've ever been to, which is a tribute to the amazing Josephine Baker. This cafeteria is also in the Old Town, and their selection of homemade cakes and chocolates is really impressive! (besides dangerous)

We decided to go for a hot cocoa each and a piece of chocolate cheesecake and a piece of calvados/white chocolate cake to share.  

taking pictures inside isn't allowed, so the 
lower pic is from www.likealocalguide.com/

And of course no pampering day would have been complete without a proper cocktail! And for that we headed to African Kitchen, which is an amazing little restaurant in the edge of the Old Town (conveniently close to the harbour) that not only has exquisite food but also absolutely delicious cocktails! The cocktails are named after African countries, and the one I tried this time was called Zaire. I liked it so much I may repeat next time!

After that we headed to the ferry and back to Helsinki, but we're definitely coming back soon! 

Tallinn I love you <3

cocktail awesomeness in African Kitchen and some
of my Karnaluks loot in the ferry, pics by Tiitta

Winter wonderland <3

Unless you live in Finland, you may not know we've had "Black Christmas" this year, which means there was no snow during Christmas. As a matter of fact we've only had snow in Helsinki since about a couple of weeks. Why is this such a big deal? Well, when you live in a place so far north that you only get a few hours of daylight during winter, having snow makes a huge difference. I specially like it when all the trees and bushes end up with all their tiny branches completely covered in snow, it really looks like Winter Wonderland! (remind me I said this around April, when I can't take snow anymore :-D)

winter wonderland <3

Yesterday we had a really fun day at my Tribal Fusion teacher's place. She lives in a small town called Järvenpää some 30mins north of Helsinki, in the cutest little house with a lovely yard and an absolutely SUPERB sauna! The day started with two hours of dancing and sweating, after which some of the other girls and me started to get food and sauna ready. A proper old-school wood-fueled sauna like hers takes around two hours to warm up properly, and the furnace has to be taken care of regularly by feeding it more wood every 20 mins or so, but it is so worth it! It was just a pity there wasn't more snow, because winter sauna is usually best when you can roll on the snow in between! ;-D

path leading to our teacher's house

After sauna we had some delicious food and s few drinks in good company. I must confess I'm not much of a party animal and you'll rarely see me in bars (unless I just performed there), but I sure love a nice relaxed party with lovely people. 

The evening was perfect even when we arrived to the railway station and realized the next train back home was leaving in about 40mins, because that gave us a chance to head to the closest pub and enjoy a warm jallu cocoa (Jaloviina aka Jallu can probably be described as some sort of Finnish Brandy, even though it is not a Brandy). 

Because Finnish winter! <3