Moving gravel

It is nice to have a tractor! Even though there is not room to drive it everywhere it is still a great help as our house is on top of a hill and it is really (too) heavy work to move gravel from one level to another with just a wheelbarrow.

How many bars did you say?

It is not enough that we collect stuff together with my husband, we both have our own collectibles, too. Don't you ask me what you can do with a bar meter, the only bars I know sell people drinks.

Thanks ma!

My mother had gotten this porcelain blue-and-white Arabia cutting board from my godmother in the 70s. The board was gathering dust in ma's kitchen cupboard and as it deserves a pride place it now gets to stay in Vårkulla's kitchen. A little correction...there is no dust in my mother's kitchen, this was just a figure of speech!

Tins and stuff

Our cigarette tin collection grows a little every month. Maybe I'll put some of the tins on the show to our museum when it opens :) (read more about the museum here, link)

The tins are on a flower pillar that we bought in the beginning of the summer. We got it cheap as the pillar was missing a top. We bought a metal cake stand from Ikea and it's top fitted the pillar perfectly. We just need to paint it black but as we have worked a lot in the garden, we haven't yet have the energy to do the smaller renovations...and once again, when I say we I mean my husband...

Shopping for a museum

I got an idea last weekend. I want to open a little shop museum in our shop someday. I need to sell some more flea market stuff before we have room for a museum in one corner of the shop.

We already have a 50's sales counter, cash register, table calculator, a slicer, lots of coffee tins, a couple of nappies (these were found in the back room of the shop, they have been sold in our shop tens of years ago), cardboard chocolate bars (my brother found these, they have been used as marketing material in shops, just right for our museum!)  etc.

Last weekend we found the sweet tin below. It is at the latest from 1960 as SOK Vaajakoski changed its name to Panda in 1961. The hunt goes on! I'll be sure to tell you when we open the museum (if ever).

For once, a little was enough

I picked a couple of deciliters blueberries yesterday. The main crop is not ready yet but you can find ripe blueberries in sunny places.

We ate the berries with Finnish "viili" (kind of like sour cream but made from milk with only 1 % of fat) and rye bread. Yummy!

Something blue

This jug is really big so I gather it has been a part of a morning toilette set. I don't usually buy much blue things as my blue period ended during the late nineties - until then I had blue glasses, blue glass plates: you name it, I got it. Anyway, at the cottage I still have some blue decorations and I could have taken the jug there but somehow it seems too beautiful for an outdoor vase and so it stays in Vårkulla's living room.

I tried to find the blue decoration in the net to date the jug but couldn't find a similar pattern. I guess this is from the 40's or older.