Purple Petit Points

This is a petit point needlework that I did as a kid. I don't know exactly what age I was, but I know I was less than 12, since I moved to Canada (from Finland) at age 12 - and I remeber doing this in Finland.

I think it looks nice with the purple crocuses!

Purple Lady

Violet

Here's a detail of a gorgeous violet crocus. If you look very, very closely, you can see a bumble bee inside!

Violet Lady

Spring is here!

Hello World!

This photo was taken in our backyard a couple of days ago. Crocuses are always the first flowers to bloom in spring. Then come the daffodils, then the tulips. I planted hyacinths too, but they never appeared. I still don't know what happened. Did some animal eat the bulbs? Or did I plant them upside down (my boyfriend's theory)? I guess we'll never know...

When we first moved into our current house almost two years ago, I bought 100 Euros worth of bulbs and spent a cold November Saturday on my hands and knees planting them all. But Boy was it ever worth it! Now I don't need to do anything at all and I have a garden constantly in bloom during all the Spring months. Crocuses sometimes start to bloom even when there's still snow on the ground. This year, they didn't. But, as you can see, the grass is still quite dead around the pretty flowers - rebirth!!

Lady in Pink

P.S. Why do we say cactus -> cacti, but crocus -> crocuses? Or do we? Should we say croci?!!?

Cactus blooms

Hey there,

I'm a bit late posting this photo, since this was taken sometime after Christmas. If I remember correctly, this plant is called "Christmas Cactus" in Finland. It's a plant that is given as a gift during the holiday season.

I got this one from a friend several years ago and - miraculously - it's still alive and blooming! I sooooo don't have a green thumb: I usually manage to kill off all flora within a 100 yard/meter radius in a very short time. Fauna prosper better - the last cat I had, Tina, lived to be 19 years old. And she did not die but had to be euthanized due to illness. I'll tell her story another time.

I had been planning on replacing the soil of all my plants (a whopping total of two!) for several years and this year I finally got around to it. And here's the result: cactus in full bloom. And pink, as is appropriate.

The moral of this story? Take good care of your assets.

I learned this from the books by Dr. Lois Frankl. She has written books such as Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office and Nice Girls Don't Get Rich. These books don't advocate that you shouldn't be nice - they advoate that you should stop being a girl and start being a woman! Don't worry about "being nice" all the time (men don't).

Dr. Frankl reminds us that in addition to taking good care of our financial assets, we also need to take care of material assets, i.e. all our belongings. This means getting clothes and shoes repaired, taking good care of jewelry (e.g. pearls) etc.

Coincidentally, Dr. Lois Frankl is descended from Dr. Viktor Frankl, developer of existential psychology and a holocaust survivor. Incredibly, he discovered the meaning of life while in a Nazi concentration camp. He writes about his experiences in Man's Search for Meaning - a truly incredible book.

He found that in a concentration camp, the ones who survived were not the ones who stole food from others - they were the ones who shared their tiny, moldy piece of bread with those who had none. It is not calories that keep us alive - it is our will to live. In order to have a will to live, our lives need to have meaning - a meaning that each one of us must discover for her/himself. We need to find the desert blooms in a forest of cacti.

The Lady with the Pink Thumb

Purse from the Far East

Bloggers,

This purse was a present from my elder brother and his wife. As I mentioned before, my sister-in-law is an artist and she has exquisite taste. Actually they are both artists. They always give me the most amazing and unusual gifts: the kind that nobody else has.

They brought me this purse from one of their trips to the Far East. I don't remember which country it's from (they've been to so many!) You'll notice that it has another tiny purse attached to it - so cute!

I only use this purse in the summer, but then I do use it a lot. It's very lightweight and the bamboo handle is very pleasant to hold.

Thanks for the lovely gift!!

The Purse Freak

A Dream Come True

Dear Readers,

A bit over a year ago, I was obsessed with the TV show Sex and the City. I had bought all the DVDs and would watch them every day. My boyfriend was really sick of it and kept asking me why I was so into that particular show.

I started asking myself the same question. What is the fascination for me? The answer that immediately came to my mind was: "I want to BE Carrie Bradshaw!" But why?

She's beautiful. She has a perfect body. She's really smart and really funny. A good friend. She is really fashionable and always has really amazing outfits, clothes - and above all shoes. She lives in New York City. She has really great female friends and an active, fun New York lifestyle. All very good reasons to want to be her.

However, then the answer really hit me: of course, I want to write!! It's what I've always wanted to do. I want to do exactly what Carrie Bradshaw does: I want to live an active life, to observe the world, and to write about it in a column. The column doesn't need to be about sex (as in the TV show), just about life. So - waddayaknow - sometimes something as trivial as a TV show can act as a revelation of a deeper need.

So I figured out what I wanted to do. However, I was not sure how to go about getting there. How would I become a writer? How would I get published? Not so easy.

It was only some weeks after I had started this blog that I realized that for me, writing a blog is living my dream. I get to write about my life.

Go figure.

Yellow Storybird for Easter

A Belated Easter Greeting Dear Readers!

My parents are planning on moving to a smaller apartment (in three years or so) and are already now starting to get rid of as much stuff as they can. While we were celebrating Easter at my parent's place, my mother asked me if there was anything I wanted to take! Wow! I took a whole bunch of great stuff and this adorable long-beaked creamer was one of the things my Mom gave me. Thanks!! It's by Arabia. I have the whole set of Storybirds in white, plus one big grey one (all the pieces have been gifts) but I was missing this cute yellow one. This gorgeous set of pitchers is no longer in production, but is still hugely popular. You can always try eBay...

It's such a nice Easter decoration too, goes well with the little chickies! :-)

TTFN