Spice up your life

I buy every (cheap) little old spice tin I can find - not a lot of them around. This red pepper tin is made out of cardboard except for the lid. So you shouldn't exactly call it a tin, but I do anyway..

Cream for your coffee (and some fish on the side)

Punahilkka (little red hood) cream bottle is a pretty addition to our Christmas decorations. After the Christmas I'll probably store it in the shop museum. The herring tins are also old (and empty). All three now stand on the new scale I wrote about a few days ago (link...).

All that is missing is the summer

Last weekend was a great one as we found a lot of stuff for picnics next summer. The lunch box is a beauty and we are sure to never go hungry again if we fill this to the tilt. We also bought a "new" picnic table - we already have one but it doesn't have enough chairs, the newest has four so we might invite some frieds to picnic with us. Just wait for the invitation!

Time for sausages

It is funny, yesterday we ate delicious home made salmon sausages and today we happened to find an old scale that was labeled by Oy Suomen Suoliliike Ab that sold scales and other stuff to sausage makers in Finland from 1930's on. This scale is perfect for our kitchen as it is rather small. We have a white Konesilta scale but it is way too big for the kitchen, so it is in the shop museum. Both scales are for professional use so they are really well made (and beautiful to look at as things usually were around the 50's).

On top shelves

Top shelves in the kitchen are not for gathering dust. They are a great place for a tin collection! No use to store anything useful there as the shelves are too high to reach without a chair and you'd just risk your health by reaching for everyday items.

Kitchenalia or just kitch?

You know me, I'll collect almost anything, not the least kitchenalia. I'd love to get more of little old spice tins but their prices are really too high for me. This small red one cost 4 euros and it was cheap...

Not so hungry

Even though we seldom (read: nearly never) have a picnic, I bought a picnic basket. It has room for two large wine bottles (1,5 litres) and a small cheese and some bread. So, perfect for those days when you are not so hungry but like to drink a lot :) By the way, any picnics today are had in our living room due to heavy rain and strong wind.

Say cheese

I've been on a lookout for old cheese molds for some time now, but never seen any in flea markets. On saturday I happened to find three (cheap) ones. My husband wasn't too impressed by the engravers' skills but for me the molds were good enough even though the patterns really are very simple ones. I think I'll hang these somewhere on the kitchen walls.

Working for peanuts

You need beautiful cups for eating peanuts, don't you? We found the perfect ones when visiting Iittala's outlet in Arabia. These are from Rörstrand (Svenska rödlistan -series).

I love pink!

We got two pretty little pink (or violet) 60's glasses from my mother-in-law. Lovely!

Back to school

Ms Ebba Masalin illustrated the most amazing educational (plant) boards for Finnish schools in the 30's and 40's. New productions can be bought in Taito Shop (link...). They are rather beautiful but the originals are even better as the colours are much deeper. The tins here are of new production, too. The whole product serie is new in fact, there were no tins with Ebba's illustrations when she was alive. I think she would have loved these, the colours and design are quite beautiful. I saw the new productions in one magazine or another and first wanted to have a table runner with Ebba's design (new product line this, too). Luckily I went to Taito Shop in Helsinki to see the product instead ordering the thing online right away. I was a bit disappointed as the supposedly black background seemed blue, not black. So the runners stayed in the shop and I bought two boards and the four tins instead.

Mission impossible

I have tried to find crystal glasses to Vårkulla for ages. I didn't want traditional ones with a lot of ornamental cuts, I wanted to have really simple ones. I would have loved to get Finnish wine glasses but the Finnish factories don't produce crystal glass.

It was a good thing that my husband visited Germany a couple of weeks ago and brought me the German Elle Decoration. In it I saw the perfect glasses from Villeroy-Boch (link...), the Old Luxembourg serie. As there is only limited space in the kitchen, we decided to buy only glasses for red wine and champagne (so all you white wine drinkers, be prepaired to drink your wine from the wrong glasses). The Villeroy-Boch flagship store in Helsinki had only four of each so we have to wait a little to get all the glasses we want. But there are enough glasses for two to enjoy wine next weekend :)

Picture by Villeroy-Boch

No room for ugly stuff

I love beautiful things. A good thing about them is that they look great even when everything is a mess. We decided to oil the worktops in the kitchen and had to move everything away while the tops were oiled (by my husband) and while the tops were drying (at least six hours). As I said, even messed up our kitchen stuff looks rather good.

Good forks are hard to find

We have Hackman's Memory flatware in Vårkulla and as the series is discontinued, we need to find the smaller utensils from other series. But nothing seems to please my eye. For serving salmon and herring etc. we found these small forks for an euro - they look cute and the price was right so finally, result.

Eggs galore

I love Easter eggs and it is impossible to have too many (or to put them on display too early). Here are some and beware, there are more to come before the Easter is over (or even started).

Spicy things

We already had Stelton's Emma coffee thermos and when I saw these salt and pepper shakers in 60 % discount I just had to buy them. I still lust for Emma water cooker but hadn't found one in Finland.

The rosemary is from Lidl. I think the terracotta vase and the turquoise ribbon I added just for fun look great with the pastel coloured Emma shakers.

Morning coffee

It should be easy to buy a new coffee maker, but isn't. Our requirements: hot coffee (we put cold milk into the cup and the coffee must still burn your tongue), only one button (don't want to get confused in the morning), no separate parts (of which one you can't find and others fall from your stiff hands), simple design (no curves, no stripes, no "perky" colours)  and big enough to make 10 cups of coffee but small enough to fit on your kitchen work top and in addition we don't want to pay hundreds of euros for the thing. I almost cried when our Braun coffee maker broke at Vårkulla (after about ten years of service). We went to several stores and found nothing to replace it. Then we went to Prisma and found a new version of our beloved Braun KF 47/1. Now we are happy again!

Photo by Braun

Happy Valentine's day!

We have been looking for (old) small stemmed glasses for schnapps for some time now. Yesterday we finally found a set of six in an antique store in Artjärvi (link) - you have to buy six or five because at least one is going to break sometime soon and then you'll be an unhappy owner of only three glasses (and guests very often come in twos).

The small glasses, organic berry marmalades and the small Pip studio (link) bowl I found today at flea market make a perfect vignette for Valentine's day.

Something missing

Did I mention that we also collect old kitchen appliances? This coffee roaster is really old but in an amazingly good condition. Not that I would start to make coffee from the very start but we are  missing a coffee grinder. The ones I have seen have either been to expensive or ugly.

We found the roaster when visiting an Isnäs flea market happening - there were only two sellers but it didn't mean the visit was wasted as we found the roaster and the monkey pen sharpener I posted about earlier, see here.

Stars in my eyes

I seem to always rave about stars and here we go again...I just love these brass star molds. I'd buy more if I could find them - the smallest one I found last week.