The lottery of life

Our shop used to be the village lottery/betting dealer right to the closing of the business. So..of course we had to start looking for lottery/betting dealer (Veikkaus in Finnish) stuff. I would love to get lottery slips from the 50's/60's but I guess nobody has saved these as the dealers got new ones every year. Well, I am happy enough with the adverts we have found.

Waiting for the postman?

Do you still send post cards? I usually get loads in Christmas so not everybody just sends emails or FB messages. We send a little newsletter, not cards, but we send it by post so it counts as a Christmas card, doesn't it?

We wanted to get a card rack for the shop museum and found one quite near us and fetched it yesterday. As I don't have any 50's/60's cards yet, these two had to do for the photo. The one with dogs is by my friend Kati, beautiful even after Christmas. The Abbey road one is from Moko.

Clean up your act

People save the weirdest things. These old soap packages are from internet discussion groups and yard sales. The stand we found at the museum's attic. Maybe I should have saved some things from the eighties, but didn't. I was then a cleaning up freak and sold everything that had some value in flea markets and the rest I threw away.

Straight from a shop

I don't grow potatoes as we eat so little of them. But I like old potato measures a lot and these two were a perfect find for the shop museum as they are from the 50's.

My kingdom

There is something of a little girl still left in me even if I'm now officially middle-aged. I just love everything princessy...Yesterday I found a Swedish princess coffee tin and the little booklet I have bought for the shop museum ages ago. And with anything with princesses, pink goes more than well.

Every day is a museum day

We had open doors at the shop museum yesterday. A lot of people came and many also visited my garden which is at its summer best right now. Today my husband tried to fix our Opel Kadet and I did some gardening. To take a break we visited a flea market. I found some tins for the shop museum.

My husband bought a crowbar, I don't know how many we already have but as they say, you can never too be too rich or have too many crowbars.

Is there anything better than (hot) chocolate?

I used to love O'Boy cocoa as a child. I haven't yet find any old O´Boy packages, mostly only Makao (which I hated). Well, they are right for the shop museum collection anyway.

There is never too much sugar!

Old cardboard boxes are hard to find. Luckily I have a brother who also visits flea markets. He found this rather big sugar box that now decorates the shop museum.

Just what I need

It is a hot day for heavy gardening. If it were the 60's I could take a sip of Sinalco and get on with shoveling refreshed.

Hit the nail on the head

It is funny how old things are beautiful even if they are meant for everyday use. My father wasn't much of a carpenter, so this nail box is almost intact - and as it is from my father's father originally, I guess the not-quite-handy-with-the-hammer runs in the family. I must say, I have nothing to brag about myself. I am fifty years old and just nailed my first nail ever this winter..

Chocolate and soap

I just love old ads. These are the newest additions to our shop museum collection. The left one is an advertisment for Fazer sweets and the right one advertises soap. We have lux soap bars in the museum so this ad will be a nice touch.

Wall art

We bought quite a bunch of 50's ads that were glued on dark paperboards. A few of them we hang on the living room wall (photo below), the others are in the shop museum.

Cute as a kitten

It's rather hard to find 50's/60's chocolate boxes that are in a good enough condition for the shop museum (but don't cost too much). This Panda's box from around the 60's was a good catch.

Just before

We did a big job rearranging the shop museum a couple of weeks ago. And just as everything was in place we found "new" shelves. Now we have three meter wide (and almost as high) shelving and have to move everything once again.

Well, here is how the museum looked before the re-rearrangement:

Not a sweatshop any more

I am a big fan of our new fan :) We found a 60's Durch fan that is in a perfect working order and looks great. I am sure the shopkeeper had just one like it in our shop during the 60's!

Good ol' times

A make-believe country shop or a real one from around the 60's?

Business as usual

We have been buying a lot of stuff to the shop museum lately and almost every seller wanted to know where the museum is and how to reach us. So, we ordered some business cards. Now it is official, we really have a shop museum, the business card proves it :)

Would you?

Once again, you have to admire people in the 50's. It is a miracle that they didn't all die young. This ad promotes a poison (Sumusol) that kills all the flies for the whole summer...and the little boy Heikki and his dog Rekku sleep peacefully without the flies troubling them. I would think twice before spraying poison in my child's bedroom...

Dance on roses

Anything old is better than new, right? At least old biscuit tins are prettier than the new ones, I think.

If it is easy, it is no fun

We had a Christmas clean-up at the shop museum. Now we have more room but still not enough shelves. I just have to keep on browsing tori.fi in hope of finding old shelves that look like they belong in a 50's country shop. Not easy, I can tell you!