Respected Reptile

As mentioned in the previous post, Pink Lady had a birthday yesterday. And, as is customary, she has bought a present for herself. It is really the only way to guarantee getting exactly what one wants.
Pink Lady was naughty....she had a half hour to kill while waiting for her hairdresser's appointment and, alas, her hairdresser's is located right next to a really super vintage store (Ruuturouva): clearly a recipe for disaster! ;-) Pink Lady seems to have some kind of radar that instantly draws her to all luxury items: whenever she is in a vintage store - or even at a flea market - she seems instantly and mysteriously drawn only to the most expensive materials....cashmere...angora...silk...suede...leather... and yes, now even genuine crocodile! The purse pictured is the real thing: croc!!! Pink Lady's first (well it's about time!)
The vintage store owner said that croc is normally not even sold in Finland because it is so prohibitively expensive. In other countries (she mentioned England), it can cost thousands if not tens of thousands. Oh yes, Pink Lady is an investor!! This purse "only" cost 130 euros (buy low, sell high - you know the drill...)
However, a word of warning to all croc-owners or future croc-owners: it is to be worn only in the daytime, it is not an evening accessory. Here is a quote from Genevieve Antoine Dariaux (former Directice at Nina Ricci) from the book: Elegance - for every woman who wants to be well and properly dressed on all occasions.

"...I cannot restrain myself from expressing the dismay I feel when I see a woman carry an alligator handbag with a dressy ensemble merely because she has paid an enormous sum of money for it. Alligator is strictly for sports or travel, shoes as well as bags, and this respected reptile should be permitted to retire every evening at 5 P.M."
Pink Lady is a bit unsure if the same etiquette applies to alligator and to crocodile....hmmmm....after a quick bout of googling, she is none the wiser...there does not seem to be a huge difference. They are different animals, but it is not clear what is the difference between alligator and crocodile accessories.
What is the point of this scribbling? Do we need one? Well, if we must find one, here's a thought: a luxury accessory lasts a lifetime, is timeless and therefore always in fashion: a luxury vintage accessory is the ultimate green purchase. Pink Lady's conscience feels clearer already! ;-)
Have a good weekend dearies!
TTFN!
Pink Alligator

The Birth of Pink

Pink Lady is thinking a lot about birth right now. It was Pink Lady's own birthday yesterday - hence the beautiful (pink!) flowers (pictured) that Hubby brought to her (a day late...). There was the usual dining, bubbly-drinking, gift-giving extravaganza on the day, however.
But the other reason that Pink Lady ponders birth is that she is awaiting news any minute/hour/day now from a friend....she is late...i.e. she is in a blessed state and her due date is already past...so exciting. She is a collegue and all of us are bombarding her with SMS's, phonecalls and Facebook entries asking: Are you STILL waiting?
So any minute now....and we don't even know yet which one it's going to be....could it be any more exciting? Well, she was always one to make an entrance and to make everyone pay attention to her...it seems her offspring is no different! ;-)
Good luck - hang in there ma chérie (yes, she is French), won't be long now. One thing we can be sure of is that no baby ever stayed inside for ever....they all come out sooner or later. ;-)

The world is awaiting with breath that is baited!

Pink Lady - awaiting news of a pink baby... :-)

I resolve, I resolve, I reserve, I HAVE a reservation!*

It was inevitable: Pink Lady is writing down her new year's resolutions for 2009. 

*The title is  from the Madonna song Act of Contrition. 

The photo shows Pink Lady mountain biking near Rovaniemi, Lapland - near the Arctic Circle. 

In 2009: 

• I choose health
• I choose energy
• I choose well-being
• I choose happiness
• I choose joy
• I choose beauty
• I choose wealth
• I choose freedom
• I choose courage
• I choose strength
• I choose determination
• I choose growth
• I choose progress
• I choose flexibility
• I choose gratitude
• I choose appreciation
• I choose peace of mind
• I choose calm
• I choose passion
• I choose love

What does all this actually mean? It means that since life is about choices every second of every day, I wish to conciously make choices that lead to the results I wish to have. E.g. I want to make choices in my eating, resting, working and exercize habits that lead to long-term health, energy and well-being. I wish to make life choices that lead to my peace of mind. I wish to make financial decisions that lead to my long-term financial well-being, i.e. wealth. You get the point. 

Aristotle has written "We are what we frequently do. Excellence, therefore, is not an action but a habit."

Someone has also said: "The secret of our success is found in our daily agenda."

The average person watches several hours of TV per day. What else could we do with a couple of hours a day?

• learn a foreign language
• learn to play a musical instrument
• get fit
• get an education
• cook (from scratch - instead of "food that goes PING")
• practice a creative hobby - that could potentially turn into a new profession
• start a home-based business - that could turn into a second (or first) income
• spend time with our kids, spouse, family, friends
• Clean the house (it's therapeutic - and good exercize!)
• Organize our closets
• Do volunteer work

We say that we "are busy" and that we "don't have time", but the fact is that we have lots of time - it's all a question of how we choose to spend that time. 

So let's spend less time in front of the TV and more time doing the things that we actually enjoy the most - or the ones that will give us what we truly want in the long-term. 

And in order to have the energy to do the things above, we need to take good care of ourselves. The older we get, the more important this is. It's easy to have tons of energy at 20, not so easy at 30, 40 - and beyond. The older we get, the more we need to work at being healthy and fit. But it's worth it since this one body is all we got. 

All the Best in 2009!

Luv,

    Pink Lady

Tall Puppy

OK, it's not really "Tall Puppy" it's "Tall Poppy". But it's much funnier to imagine a really tall puppy - in fact, it's hard to imagine a tall puppy. But....I digress.

I'm reading the novel "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho (a fave author of Pink Lady's). He mentions something called "the Law of Jante". I became immediately very interested and googled it. The law is first mentioned in a novel by Aksel Sandemose called "A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks" (1933). It is, however, believed that this unwritten law is in effect thoughout Scandinavia and also in some other societies - especially those that claim to be egalitarian. Being Scandinavian myself (from Finland), yet having lived in many other countries as well (see previous post), I inately recognized this "law" and felt that it is still very much in effect in Finland.

Finnish movie director and producer Renny Harlin, who nowadays lives in Hollywood and makes movies there, has said that one of the reasons he left Finland is because our society does not want anyone to be too successful (or something along those lines).

Here is the Jante Law (from Wikipedia):

1. Don't think you are anything. (Du skal ikke tro du er noget.)
2. Don't think you are as good as us. (Du skal ikke tro du er lige så meget som os.)
3. Don't think you are smarter than us. (Du skal ikke tro du er klogere end os.)
4. Don't fancy yourself better than us. (Du skal ikke bilde dig ind du er bedre end os.)
5. Don't think you know more than us. (Du skal ikke tro du ved mere end os.)
6. Don't think you are greater than us. (Du skal ikke tro du er mere end os.)
7. Don't think you are good for anything. (Du skal ikke tro du dur til noget.)
8. Don't laugh at us. (Du skal ikke le ad os.)
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you. (Du skal ikke tro nogen bryder sig om dig.)
10. Don't think you can teach us anything. (Du skal ikke tro, at du kan lære os noget.)

A friend of mine has said that the best way for a Finnish woman to be popular and liked by other Finnish women is to put herself down, e.g. by saying that her thighs are fatter than those of her friend, that she is less pretty than her friend etc. If you doubt the truth of this, try the opposite and see how popular you will be... ;-) Many Finnish women are also constantly putting down their husbands. It's as if they are an extension of themselves.

One of the biggest sins in Finland seems to be pride - we say that one should not praise one's children or they will "become proud". Envy is also one of the common characteristic of Finnish society. There is an old joke about this:

"A Russian and an American find themselves in the exact same predicament: their neighbour has a nicer car than they do. The American decides to work extra hard in order to make more money so he can buy an even better car. The Russian waits until it is dark and then vandalizes his neighbour's car. That'll teach him!"

Especially laws 7 and 9 are horrendous - yet that is the idea that many people have of themselves. Finland has a very high suicide rate (it is similar to former Soviet Block countries). Perhaps one reason for this is that too many people really believe laws 7 and 9, i.e. "Don't think you are good for anything" and "Don't think that anyone cares about you". If you really believe this about yourself, what is there indeed left to live for?

I truly hope that you don't believe these laws. In fact, I think we need new laws. So here they are.

Pink Lady's Law:

1. Know that you are amazing and unique. There has never been and never will be anyone quite like you in the history of the universe.
2. Know that you are just as good as everyone else - if not better.
3. Know that everyone is good at something and that there are many different kinds of talent, skill and intelligence. Know also that emotional intelligence is a much more important indicator of success and happiness than IQ. And know that emotional intelligence is not something that you are born with but something that can be developed and improved.
4. Know that we are all equal. There is richness in our diversity. Know that it is OK for someone to be better at something than others. Everyone should develop the very thing that they are already good at instead of trying to improve the skills that they are not so good at. Find your area of strength and make it even stronger.
5. You are allowed to learn as much as you wish. But never forget that stupidity and ignorance are two different things: just because you don’t know something, does not mean that you are stupid. Know that you can learn whatever you need to in order to achieve your dreams.
6. Everyone is amazing and can be as great as he or she chooses to be. Everyone can make a difference. It only takes one person to change the course of history.
7. The universe would not be the same without you. Decide what kind of difference you wish your presence here on Earth to make – it is all up to you.
8. Let’s all laugh together.
9. First and foremost, love yourself unconditionally. If you care about yourself, others will also come to care about you. On the other hand, never be afraid of making a fool of yourself – others are too concerned about what others think of them to even notice. And keep in mind that anyone who ever does something truly new and innovative risks ridicule - but who cares? If someone laughs it is only because they believe the other laws, Jante's laws.
10. We can all learn something from one another. Everyone has something to give. Younger generations can teach the older ones and vice versa. We can learn the most from those who are different from us.

Pink Lady has spoken

Photo from Free Digital Photos.

Project Pillow

I guess Pink Lady is now really grown-up and boooring, because she bought herself a Singer (yes, a sewing machine, not Amy Winehouse) as an X-mas pressie. Pink Lady is a big fan of Project Runway (the US version) and Project Catwalk (the UK version), so she undertook her own challenging
"Project Pillow". The result is shown.

Pink Lady's colleague was kind enough to donate to Pink Lady & hubby a set of sofas in a beautiful forest green (shown). However, Pink Lady's living room's colour scheme was - obviously - pink, so something had to be done urgently to tie the two together. The green sofa was in desperate need of accessorizing.

So Pink Lady ventured where Pink Lady has seldom gone before: the fabric department. Being a big fan of all things Marimekko, Pink Lady found some nice Marimekko stuff: the green pillow shown behind the pink one was bought ready-made, but the pink fabric had to be couture'd to fit. It wasn't as difficult as one would imagine and turned out rather nicely. Pink Lady was both the designer and pattern-maker, as well as the seamstress of the project. Pink Lady turned out to be the proud winner of Season One of Project Pillow - a questionable honour considering that she was not only the only contestant but also the judge and client.

Where will all this new-found success lead? Pink Lady is also a fan of Wardrobe Refashion and has a closet full of rags in serious need of re-fashioning. Will Pink Lady do a full, Tim-Gunn-style makeover of her closet? Remains to be seen...

This is Pink Lady, signing off

Pink Lady Ties the Knot!!

Yes, Ladies and Gents, it's true. Pink Lady is now married. So she is now truly a Lady (with a capital "L") since she is no longer living in sin. ;-)

The happy event took place on Friday, the 16th of May 2008. It was a modest ceremony with only the Best Man and Maid of Honour as witnesses. The Bride wore a dress by Rils and shoes by Penelope. Hair by Pink Lady's trusted hairdresser (for more than a decade), Lisbeth Jansson-Apiala of Peili. Photo by Nina Stolt of StudioOnni (notice her cute, pink website!). Green chair in photo by IKEA. 

We (notice the "we"!!) have been a bit slow to do this, but we are planning on creating a website of our wedding. Well, there were actually several wedding parties. We did not have one big party, just several smaller ones. All the parties were very small with a limited number of guests - so if you were not invited, we do apologize. This was the second time for both of us so we did not want to have the huge, traditional wedding thing...

The other exciting thing that we did was to have two sets of professional photos taken. The first set was immediately after the wedding and they were slightly more traditional studio photos. The one shown here is from that shoot. But then, when we had finished with all the various wedding parties, we had the second set of photos done, the kind known as "Trash the Dress" (TTD) photos. The idea is to do some very Vogue style photos. Mostly they are done of just the bride alone, but some also have the groom in them as well. In our case, my hubby was in about half the photos. The idea of the photos is also that the bride can be lying down in dirt or swimming in the sea in the dress etc. The dress will never be worn again, so at least you get all the possible mileage out of it. What a brilliant idea! 

I may be able to wear my dress again since it's so simple that it doesn't necessarily scream "bridal". (In fact, it's not actually a wedding dress, it's just a pretty white dress). It had quite a bit of seaweed on it but I think I got most of it out... 

Our photographer said that we were her first TTD shoot. Who knows, we may have even been the first ones in Finland? Our TTD shoot was on June 6th, 2008. If you live in Finland and have had a TTD shoot before us, please let me know. I'd also be happy to see your photos! :-)

And what has Pink Lady been up to since the wedding? Well, the pink newlyweds went to Greece for nearly a month for the honeymoon. Tons of photos about that trip of course - to be posted in our wedding website. 

And after the honeymoon it's been all about clutter-clearing again. So if you refer to my previous post of nearly 9 months ago, I am still working on that project....but more on that in a future post. 

Mrs. Pink Lady

P.S. I kept my last name. In fact, my husband took my last name! :-)

Time to relax...

Well, it's finally Christmas and all the shopping is done. It's time to just relax!

The photo actually shows the spoils from a shopping trip in Paris in February (Notice the Burberry bag! That's was my new Burberry trench - in light pink!). But I did do a lot of shopping before Christmas this year, as I do every year. However, some of it is now done on-line and delivered to my home and that certainly reduces some of the hassle. Well, I actually love shopping, but enough is enough. It can get a bit extreme around this time of year.

Actually, this time our Christmas preparations have been more about getting rid of stuff than about acquiring more. We moved just over a month ago (on Nov 19th) and we got rid of a lot of stuff before and after the move. I am doing a major de-cluttering currently since I really want our home to be spacious and airy. For anyone attempting to do the same, I highly recommend the book "Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui", it is both very practical and very deep; it goes into the reasons why we are afraid of throwing away even things that mean nothing to us. I really recommend it - even for people who are not interested in feng shui at all.

It’s been hectic moving twice in the space of a year, but that’s what it can be like for those of us who are renting – we never know when we’ll need to move. I lived in my previous place exactly a year. I hadn’t even finished decorating it and then it was time to move again. But the positive side of it has been that my stuff is now more in order than it has been in years – or perhaps even decades. I’ve been forced to go through it all so I’ve had to decide what to keep, what belongs together, etc. It’s by no means finished but at least I’ve made some serious headway into the project.

My next major steps are:

• Converting all of my (over 500) CDs to MP3 format and managing them on my iTunes. I recently bought an iMac desktop and it’s great. The actual computer and the screen are integrated into one so it reduces clutter that way as well. And it can even be used as a TV – we are seriously considering getting rid of our 2 TVs now. I also got a new iPod with 160G’s of memory. I won’t be running out of space on it anytime soon (my previous iPod had 20G's of space and I could no longer fit everything in my collection on it at once). Once all of my music is in MP3 format and also backed-up in some foolproof way (e.g. burned on DVDs), I can get rid of my CD collection. The advantage of MP3 is that it doesn’t collect dust. ;-)
  
• I want my home to be as paper-free as possible. Just like they talk about a paper-free office. My office (at work) is in fact nearly paper-free now since I recently had to move into what is called a “flexi-space” or “modern office concept”. It means that nobody has their own desk, they just sit at the first free place when they get to the office in the morning. So all our files need to be electronic so that they go with us in our laptop (and are of course also backed-up on company servers). I now want to implement the same thing in our home.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• All photos are digital. We only take digital photos and I have bought a scanner that scans both photos, negatives and slides. So I will slowly convert all old photos to digital format as well.
• Whatever information I need can be kept in digital format. Information does not need to be kept on paper. This means that I can get rid of things such as address books, phone books, shopping lists, magazine and newspaper clippings, instructions booklets, most receipts, etc. Whatever I really want to keep can be scanned and filed electronically. There is very little paper that we really must keep in paper format (e.g. for tax purposes etc). And it’s a good idea to scan those as well so that there are back-up copies in case of fire or other disaster. So it’s a good idea to keep electronic back-up copies of those kinds of really important papers somewhere other than your home. I, for example, send myself a copy of my passport to my gmail address. It’s a great (and free) back-up place with lots of room.
• I have now started buying books in audio format. They are available in both MP3 and CD format, so they can also be kept in your computer and you can get rid of the actual piece of plastic – so there’s no clutter. And it saves time since you can “read” a book e.g. while driving or while doing housework, exercizing, etc. I still do have a huge library of books (6 bookcases full) but I keep them in bookcases behind glass so that there is a minimum of dusting to do (I’m allergic to dust and house dust mites so this is a big consideration). I am also thinking about which books to keep and which ones to get rid of. For example, do we need encyclopedias as books anymore? It’s so much easier to do searches with an electronic one. These are things to consider.
  
  In addition to clearing out paper junk, I have been going through my wardrobe and clearing out clothes. I have also done a lot of repairs and have taken lots of clothes to the cleaners, shoes to the cobblers etc. I am trying to see what I actually have before buying more. And I'm slowly going through things in my kitchen cupboards etc. and am seeing what to keep and what to get rid of. Getting rid of stuff you never use (and don't even like) is good because you then have room in your closets and cupboards and can go out and do more shopping! ;-)
  
  Happy New Year 2008 – and happy clutter clearing! :-)
  
  Pink Champagne Lady