2013/04/28

Party Planning

Tuesday we are celebrating the 1st of May (it's called vappu in Finland) and I'm hosting a little pre-party at my place then. I'm thinking outdoors parties at my back yard including good food, drinks and fun games. Here's couple inspiration pics.

Pics from here and here.

I've already purchased most of the stuff (food) I need, since there has been no work disturbing my party planning today. I bought only the things that I can use both outdoors and indoors, because we are still in the middle of the spring. There is a lot of sun but there can be also a lot of rain, so I have to be ready for the plan b indoors. Fortunately it's no problem to host the party indoors if needed. Let's hope it'll be as beautiful day as today. Sun is shining and I'm loving it!

Shopping list and board game for the tuesday.

2013/04/27

Home Sweet Home

It's weekend again and I'm home! I took a work trip in the beginning of the week to the city where I have my other shop. After couple nights of sleeping on a couch it was nice to come back home and have a good night sleep. I had the dogs with me and it wasn't just me who was sleeping uneasily. They woke me up around 5am - I'm normally waking around 7am. Luckily it was only the first morning, the next ones went better. Despite that the journey was worth to make.


It was great to see my employees after a long time, too long actually. Sure we phone each other all the time but it's always different to see people face to face. Anyway the training went well and I think everybody got something out of that; employees information about the products and the business practices and me loads of new ideas and energy for the shops. Win-win.

Why I'm living in another city than my employees? I have two shops with my business partner and I'm managing mainly the one that is located at my hometown. The other one is managed logically by the other owner. Simple as that! :)

Now I'm already planning next weeks parties. I'll tell you more about that a little later. ;)
Have a nice weekend!

2013/04/24

Chicken Pie


I bake/eat pies every now and then. There is two reasons for that. The first one is simply that they taste good. The second is that they are easy to make. You can't really fail with pies. You can add almost anything in it, so it doesn't matter whether the ingredients are specially purchased for the pie or leftovers from yesterday. It's perfect meal for an entrepreneur like me who doesn't always have time to make a gourmet dinner for herself. I often take the rest of the pie to work next day, so also lunch problem solved. Just add a little salad and that's about it.





This time I made chicken pie with blue cheese and tomatoes. I added also the normal ingredients like eggs and curd there and on the top some grated mozzarella. All the components worked well together and the pie disappeared quite quickly.

2013/04/21

Summer Jacket

Yey, today I got to wear my summer leather jacket first time this year. It was warm and sunny after couple days of raining, so I did not hesitate to take a walk around the city. I also had a lunch on the same trip because this girl loves to dine out. (Btw you can find me nowdays also from Twitter and Instagram. There you can see where I stopped by.)


Last week there was snow all over the place but suddenly I see flowers and butterflies everywhere (at least I saw one of each). The mood of the city is changin along the weather. Today there was markets all around and a lot of people just hanging out and enjoying the sun. I see summer coming, fantastic! :)


At this moment I'm already on the other city for the next weeks work. I'll have a hectic week of training the employees starting tomorrow. Until then I'm gonna take it easy and have some Ben&Jerry's.

2013/04/20

Favourite Things At Home

I'm living in a house built in 1914 - almost 100 years full! It's half brick half wooden and the condition of the building is great thanks to the previous owners. I've lived here about eighteen months so the place is getting familiar to me. Now I want to share my favourite things about my apartment here to you.

Favourite things at home - No.1
Wide Windowsills

I'm living on the ground floor so I'm surrounded by bricks. Nevertheless I'm not feeling like being in jail thanks to the big windows to three different compass point. The bricks means thick walls and the thick walls means wide windowsills and oh boy, I looove them! (You have already seen them here, here and here.)



You can see that I've collected quite a good amount of stuff on some of the windowsills already. I try not to overfill them but sometimes the temptation is too big. ;) Thanks to Vili, my Jackrussel, I need to keep a little space there so that he can every now and then hop to the windowsill and do his thing = stalk the neighbours.



Please ignore the dirty windows, it's because of the dog's nose. I'll clean it tomorrow. Or propably next week. Most likely next summer... in 2014. At least they were clean when I bought the house!

2013/04/18

Rainy Day


It's been a grey and rainy day, but I don't mind. I have to take the dogs out no matter what the weather is, so I've learn to a) love all weathers, and b) dress weather-appropriately. The Hunter Boots are one of my favourite pieces of my wardrobe - especially when it's, yep, raining. They've helped me through many puddles and are pretty enough to wear everywhere.

My Hunter Boots are pink just because the times I usually wear them are days like today and it's nice to brighten up the day with some color. And believe me, they've brighten my days. You can see from the pic that I've used the boots many many times. I'm not sure if I'm able to get them clean anymore. But that's ok too, just like the weather.

2013/04/16

Cheese&Wine

As I wrote here, we had cheese&wine theme evening with my friends last weekend. We had quite good variety of different cheeses served and many of them were unfamiliar to me. Sure there was the old favourites: gouda, brie, pepper cheese and blue cheese. But in addition there was also wasabi, safari and smoky cheese.


The wasabi cheese is the green one in the pic and it tasted softer than I imagined. It was actually quite nice - I'll add that one to my list of favourite cheeses. The red/orange one is the smoky cheese. It tasted smoky, so no suprises there. Anyway, it worked well with grapes. The safari cheese was the most vibrant by flavours. I believe there was bit of chili, olives and pepper in there. The safari cheese was fun experience, but is it consolidating its place on my cheese plate? Unfortunately no.

Here is my top 3 list of cheese & garnish:
1) Blue cheese & rye bread chips
2) Wasabi cheese & pretzel
3) Pepper cheese & grapes


2013/04/13

"Early" Weekend

Today I had already second day off this week, crazy! I had only an hour long meeting with my staff this morning. After that (but not due that :)) they told me to go home since they'd handle today's work by themselves so I can start my weekend a bit earlier this time. Love my employees!

Anyway, I did what I was told and took off. Naturally I head to a grocery because no one wants to see me hungry and I had nothing to eat at home...

Here is my lunch/snack & dinner. Bakery-maid garlic-focaccia & semi-self-maid sweet chili chicken tortilla, yummy! With these food I'll keep my appetite in control later this evening when we're having cheese&wine party at my friends new home. Too much cheese&wine can cause a sad tomorrow. ;)



Have a nice weekend! :)

2013/04/12

Design I love - Work Lamp

Yippee, I have it! I've been wanting this lamp for about a year or so. Now when I got a good discount I finally went and bought it, the Work Lamp of Design House Stockholm.



I like the industrial look of it and even though I'm not living in a loft I think it looks great in my apartment too. The Work Lamp goes well as a ceiling lamp but I like to keep it on a dining table or on a windowsill. The brightness of the light can be adjusted so there is a reading lamp and a mood lightning in the same package. I love it!

I guess because of the name of the lamp I have to label this to work too. ;)

2013/04/10

First Day Off of The Year

I rarely have day off in the middle of the week, It's just sundays when the shop is closed and I'm taking it easy. After last week's tiring amount of work I decided to start 'one free day a week' project. Let's see how that goes. I guess until now my motto has been "don't do what I do, do what I say", since I'm keeping this blog to show that an entrepreneur can have leisure as well, but were still working eeeevery day. But with this day off I confirm that I'm on a right path!

But anyway, here's what I was doing today.


First things first. Every girl needs to feed herself with good food. This was a simple meal with chiken, spinach&ricotta tortelloni, rucola and mozzarella. In addition a slice of rustical bread and the dish was done! (By the way, check out my brother's blog, DoneDishes. Not many full plates there. ;))



I went shopping and found among other things this pretty dress. Mainly for leisure or for special occasions since it's narrowing downwards and the lenght is just above the knees. I like the pleated bodice that make the dress look interesting and the grey color gives a chance to combine the dress with different kind of jewelry (golden/silvery) and other colors (red shoes&red lips/colorful scarf etc.).

I also went to the hairdresser and got a great new hair color. More of that a little later. :) The rest of the time, after heavy shopping and getting my hair done, we were mainly napping with the dogs. Perfect!

2013/04/08

A Week Starter


Yesterday I bought some flowers to brighten up my apartment - they did the same thing to me too this morning. It's good to start the week with fresh flowers. Fresh start for the week also.

Last week was a bit exhausting because of a minor water damage. Snow was melting through a building roof and ended up into my shop, so that caused a bit of extra work. Luckily it was solved with just a couple of phone calls. Men from property maintainance came and repaired the roof and fortunately not many items from the shop was ruined. Let's hope this week will be a bit easier in that matter.

Despite the water damage last week was just fine and ended for a relaxing sunday with my two lovely jackrussel terriers and some interior magazines. Yesterday I indeed loaded up some batteries so I'm ready for the week.



The dogs will continue to load the batteries.


Hope you'll have an energetic week!

2013/04/05

Pastel Spring Shoes

The spring has come and so has the spring shoes. I had to take these little pastel colored cuties home from the shop nearby. I think they'll be my favorite of this spring/summer. Easy to wear, light and goes with many outfits. Goes both work and leisure - perfect.

2013/04/03

Blue Cheese Meatballs With Pasta



I'm loving blue cheese, well, almost in every way. This time I added it to meatballs. I combined couple of different recipes to get the meatballs the way I liked them but nevertheless I kept the formula quite simple. I believe in cooking less is more. The recipe includes mainly just minced meat, egg, milk, white bread, onion, salt, pepper and blue cheese. I'm far from being great at this but this tasted goood!


2013/04/01

Trouser hunting

Yesterday my mission was to scoop out my favourite red trousers for the upcoming summer. Well, they were as lovely as I remembered. Only problem was that I loved = wore them last summer so much that they are quite worn out. So today my new mission was to find new ones. I found some inspiring pics, here is some of them.




After these I'm not sure should I still stick with the red ones or go crazy for example with yellow this time? Both goes well not only for leisure but for work too. New colour for new summer, what do you think?

Pics from here, here and here.

Why this blog?

Hello and welcome to my blog! The reason why I’m writing this is the prejudices of being an entrepreneur. I often heard that entrepreneurs are working 24/7, seven days a week and they are neglecting the friends and family and forgetting themselves too. That may be sometimes near the truth, but in that kind of situation the entrepreneur can blame no one but himself. I want to be an entrepreneur of the next generation, who has other life too, who blogs and tells.
The other reason is my lust for beauty. I love beautiful interiors, I love cool outfits, I love to eat good food, sometimes cook it too, I love my funny dogs and I love the beautiful city I’m living in. I love my friends and family and I’d love to share it all here to you. Hope you like it. Loving maybe? Even better.
Let’s see where this takes us.
xoxo Elina