Happy Vappu!

We're having brunch still:)






Pancake chef:








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Rock the Ballet

We went to see Rock the Ballet last time in 2009 when they were in Finland and when I saw they are here again I told Stefan we had to go. Their show is fantastic, it's funny, beautiful and they dance well. We just came home from the show and I wanna go see them again.

If you are in Helsinki you still have time to see them tomorrow or on Sunday in Savoy.

Unfortunately their trailer is a complete disaster compared to them on stage but as I didn't find any other official video you will have to do with this.



You can also check their website from here.

Tweeeeet!

I haven't yet started with twitter but I'm tempted to steal this bike and tweet it to the world.












Nice little nest the birdie had made, I wonder though how long the bike has stood there:)

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Will & Kate

I know there is a Royal Wedding going on but that is already old news...even though I was surprised that prince William is almost a bit bold already? Here's some proper hair for you!

Veronica

Like Sabina already has pointed out. Veronica Maggio's new album is great! Been listening all day at work and still could go on.



But now bedtime. Good Night!

Eating out

Since we got the dog it's actually not often that we take the time to go out for dinner. Instead I like to invite people to our place because I feel bad leaving Faro alone any longer than necessary. Yesterday we were supposed to have dinner guests again but since the week has gone by so quick I haven't had the time to put order at home and think about what to cook so instead we went out to eat to a place of our friend's choice. We went to Bar no 9 in Uudenmaankatu and it was nice except for that I wanted a Ceasar salad but got served a Sesam Salad. haha! Perhaps they shouldn't have such similar items on the menu :-D

I hadn't been in this restaurant before but we have been many times in Bar Tapasta just few meters away. Bar Tapasta is small but super cosy. Bar no 9 was much more like a bar than a restaurant but very relaxed athmosphere.

Feel free to recommend us places for our next restaurant visit :-)

Decisions

The question of the day is how to know to make a good decision on something important?

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Perspective

Happy late Easter

We're back from some relaxing time in Liljendal. My Easter lilies on the balcony had started to bloom while we were there, nice welcome back:






Faro is quite tired now after all the adventures and playing with his dalmatian friend. He went straight to his favourite place underneath the bed to rest. He opened only one eye when we suggested a last walk to him.



I'm gonna follow his example because even if tomorrow is still a holiday I have signed up for helping out with some agility competitions.

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Looking forward to Easter

Sunday night was indeed a thriller but now I guess there is nothing much more to do but to see what will happen now. Since there is three parties with a lot of votes perhaps they wont be able to agree on nothing and we'll have new elections soon. Or maybe not.

Right now I just wanna survive 2 more days of work and go to the country-side over Easter. I have a lot of ideas of things I wanna fix during spring but let's see if we find the energy and the time. At least we've cleaned the balcony for warmer days now :-)

Talking about warm they are actually predicting even +18 for sunday @ foreca.fi!

The Embarrassment of being a Finn today

I felt a little paranoid going to work today. Who of the people we meet on the street voted for the True Finns yesterday?


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Retrieving

This weekend we spent at the kennel doing retrieving training. It went quite ok with Faro we were just in the beginner's group so we didn't do anything super difficult, the most challenging is the fine line between making him excited but not too excited because then he will consider it only play and doesn't bring the dummy back to you. I was a bit disappointed we didn't train Faro with real birds during the weekend but we got a crow from them that is now in our freezer. During Easter we try that at the country side.

Yesterday I was training Faro but today Stefan trained him and I assisted another group training with crows. It wad quite interesting to follow the dogs working. I would have loved to see what Faro would have done in that situation.

I tried to take some pics of the dogs in our group but it was not that easy. Spot the dog:






Anyway Faro has worked well and deserved some ice cream afterwards.



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Chicken Heart

Apparently boiled chicken hearts is a good dog treat...I was not so sure when we cooked them but Faro was surely interested.






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Loving the plants

Was I happy to learn that the Peace Lily plant actually clean the air from environmental contaminants like benzene and formaldehyde. I think I started off with one Peace lily plant when I moved away from home and now we have 5. This one is blooming:



Also my beloved orchid should be good for cleaning the air. I think I might be getting some more flowers on it! I thought the three it had was gonna be it for this year.



I know we have already too many plants for our small flat but I have already a long list of plants I wanna get the day we have the space. Like Aloe Vera plant, Arecea, Dwarf Date Palm, Boston Ferns, Ficuses, Dracaenas and Ivys.

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Comfy

Cia challanged everyone to put a pic of their home clothes on their blogs. She puts on comfy clothes as soon as she is at home.

This was my office outfit today.



And very much like Cia I slip into the first comfy thing I find when I come home, usually for taking Faro out. If I don't need to take him out I might get into my pyjama straight away. The best days are the weekends when I never get dressed-in the winter it's possible as I can just put outdoor clothes on top of my pyjama when taking Faro out. In the summer it's more tricky though, people would look at you a bit strange.

This are the comfy clothes I found first today, Faro is already waiting "please take me out".



Outside was lovely spring weather today. I was gonna say that the golf was "almost green" until I realized that people in more southern countries might piss themselves laughing because there is still snow....



Faro enjoying the sun.



Pyjama outfit when back home.



And yammi omelette Stefan cooked:

The Difficulty of Communicating

Sometimes Stefan and I use these silly expressions and pronounce English words like they were Spanish. Just in Case has become "justincase" ( J pronounced like H), wallet="ualeta", leash="licha", otherwise="odevise" and ice cream "i-ze-crema".

Yesterday I noticed though that this is a baad habit when i asked our dinner guest: "Quieres más "i-ce-crema"?, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Voih, the embarrassment! I blame it all on Stefan.

Anti-Allergy

Today I bought Stefan some pills of nettle and MSM powder (methyl sulphonyle methane) since I read that these can help against asthma and allergy. In the spring his allergy usually is the worst when the birch starts blooming so I thought it's worth trying and he was also ok with the idea of course.



Let's see if it helps! It's not that nice to see someone struggling with breathing so I really hope this can help but if not we just have to stick with the asthma medicine the doctor gave him.

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Fast Eaters

I think it might be quite a Finnish thing to eat very fast. This vary of course from person to person but anyway, I know that I eat way faster than Stefan. Especially if I am hungry, he always tells me to " remember to breath". Which is good because it is acctully not a good nor healthy habit. But then he might eat faster too if he didn't speak so much during dinner ;)

Faro also skipped a bit of chewing today when we gave him a dog bone the shape of a rose.









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Back to Normal

Stefan is back home again all safe. Faro was of course super happy but he also showed with a few barks that he didn't approve of him being away for so long.

I am also happy he is back, it is nice to speak to someone else than the dog, he's probably bored of my voice already. Also I'm happy my week as single dog-parent is over so we can share the walks again even if I was superhappy having Faro as company while Stefan was away.



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Start of the Weekend

We just came back from an agility workshop with Faro. I was very happy with him as he did the swing well in the end, even if he has been scared of it. Let's hope he got good memories from it now. Faro went straight to bed as soon as we got home and so will I- two hours of agility is pretty intense.

And tomorrow Stefan is back already, the week has gone by quite quick but we have also kept ourselves busy.

Let's see if Stefan will be surprised by how much snow has melted since he left. Today in the dogpark you could really see how deep the layer of snow has been when it has started to melt.












We better clean a bit tomorrow before Stefan gets home as it feels there is sand in the whole flat. During this time even if you dry Faro after a walk there is still sand on his damp paws and when they dry the sand falls off in the sofa and everywhere else he goes. I think I've come to the conclusion that the sand is actually more annoying than the hair that falls off him now when he is getting his summer fur.

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Woooosh

We got soaked today with Faro on our walks-it's been raining and raining. The good thing though is that it seems the snow is melting rapidly. Our small waterfall in the park close to our house looked like this today. Wooosssh, it sounded.







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Dog Happiness

Yesterday I let Faro loose for a bit in the golf. He was happy chasing the birds and afterwards he sat down to take in the view.






Sometimes when we take him to new places where he can run loose you can almost see him thinking "WOW! There's a place this big where I can run free" and he sets off with such speed he almost stumble over himself. This is a pic from when we took him to the dog forest last week.


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Voting

So far we have been fine, Faro and I, alone at home. We had a long walk today to Munkkivuori so I could go vote, the pre-voting for the Parliament elections started today.

I cannot say I have been worried about how any elections will end up before, but this time it doesn't feel quite ok all the demonstrations and writings against Swedish speaking and foreigners in this country during the pre-election period. Suddenly I have the insight that the political climate might not be the same after these elections and this might have an impact on things I've taken for granted.

So for supporting tolerance and openness I'll post this song that some Finnish-Swedish artists made in "We are the World"-spirit:




Vår tid, Vårt land means Our time, Our country. The Finnish national anthem is actually called "Vårt land, Vårt land" and the original text was written in Swedish by a Swedish speaking Finn, Johan Ludvig Runeberg. I wonder if the Finnish speakers ever reflect over this when they sing the translated version.

Anyway, please vote smart and please do vote (if you are a Finnish citizen that is). Pre-voting period from today until 12th April and the voting day is 17th April.

More Sugar

You might remember this post.

Today we had this is the office:



Seems Teneriffe is the top holiday destination for family with kids at our work this year :-)

Location:Poutamäentie,Helsinki,Finland

Manchester Trip

So we went to Manchester because I won two plane tickets and a stay in a hotel for 2 nights. However when we arrived in the hotel they didn't have our reservation. After some calls we found out that the reservation had been canceled but we they didn't know by whom. Great. So as the hotel we were supposed to stay in was fully booked they recommended a hostel just around the corner.

This was our first night, not exactly what we had expected...we hadn't either brought towels as we had thought we were gonna stay at a hotel.

In the end we spent only a night there as they were full the next day as well and the girl in the reception recommended us a hotel 30 min walk away. I quote: "it's a nice walk by the river with some nice restaurants".

This was our walk and the nice river:



The nicest thing we saw during the walk was the smirnoff ice blueberrry add:



Quite soon we also realized that the hotel was not in the center but in another part of the town completely.



Luckily in the end it turned out we were staying where BBC is gonna move their offices from London, the whole area was new but there was not much people around which was a bit spooky.


Our
and we had a nice view and could even see the football stadium so Stefan was happy.


When we were finally settled in the hotel we could start enjoying the town.

We had dinner in an Italian restaurant where they insisted I took a rose

Nice scenery:



We met up with these nice girls that I knew from my Erasmus time in Italy in the Manchester University area, I can't believe it's 6 years ago! It felt just like yesterday.

Saturday night we spent having some nice publife beside the canal:


Sunday we spent in the area around our hotel just walking and looking at some shops. We were both quite tired from all the walking around on satyrday.

Stefan left today again for Germany on a business trip so now it's me and the dog for until Saturday. Let's see how we'll manage :-)