Aug
27

Happy thoughts

by Sofia   -   in Good things for kids  Interior design  Shopping

How was your weekend? Ours was spot on lovely. Mr Espresso was closing down the island house for winter. Which in itself is always a little sad and as we have been renovating the house a little the past few years we had to close it a little earlier this year as there is yet some remodelling going on. But it will pay in the end, I know that. Anyhow on Friday as I had the day off ( I was working on Saturday instead) I started my day at my friends new house with an after gym breakfast. Such a quaint area she moved to. Love it! After school & home work the girls and I headed to Espoo ( the lovely suburbs) as Cotton Candy had some dance performances there at a mall with her new dance group. We had such a good time and went for sushi and some shopping afterwards. As I don´t drive a car and we live right in the centre of Helsinki we don´t end up at malls or mega super markets too often. So we were super excited all three of us. The metro from Helsinki centre right in to the mall took about 20 minutes. We may very well go again just for fun! I even found a pretty new table cloth ( at Eurokangas if you like it too and just 10€/m).

On Saturday the girls got to hang out with my mom & dad as I had to work. And I´m just saying that it was quite nice to be home alone for a night. I poured myself a glass of rosé wine ( we had an opened bottle in the fridge from almost two weeks ago but it was fine) and rented a movie from Apple tv that no one else in my family would like to watch. Then I even got to read in bed!

On Sunday we had two little girls for a playdate. Bubble Gum´s bestie moved to another school for the first two grades so we try to organise playdate for them frequently. They both love to play with dolls, Barbies etc. so they are always off to their dream world the second they start playing. Cotton Candy and her friends made bread rolls for lunch ( I made the sweet potato ginger soup) and chocolate fudge milkshakes for dessert. So everyone was having fun and I just let them make a huge mess for once. It gave me time to sneak in to our bedroom to drink a cappuccino & to write this post for you. If you want to see photos of the playdate table setting etc. you can find it all in my Instagram stories ( table settings).

For some more frivolous happy thoughts. I love the new console I got for my birthday from Bukowski´s antique auctions. Is it not lovely. I hope it finds an even better spot in the new home. It really looks even better with flowers on it. And it would need a mirror or a painting behind it but that will need to wait for the new place too.

Aug
20

DIY crew neck sweaters

by Sofia   -   in DIY projects  Good things for kids

Well not quite the sweaters themselves but we tuned some basic sweaters with letters for the girls to personalise them a little. They turned out so nicely they got a lot of lovely comments on Instagram so I though I would share the easy tutorial. I bought the very basic pastel crew necks here. And the Liberty print monograms I have bought from Liberty of London whilst visiting there, but you can probably find cute monogram letters from any fabric store. Then it´s as easy as ironing the patch on as you probably already guessed. My kind of tutorial that is. The sweatshirts were so inexpensive that after they are small I might just cut the letters out and re-use them.

Have a great day!

Lattemamma

Aug
16

Teddy oatmeal cookies

by Sofia   -   in Cooking  DIY projects  Good things for kids

My sweet Cotton Candy was so lovely ( it happens sometimes that they surprise you with being extra sweet and thoughtful). She was browsing through Pinterest for crafting and baking ideas and saw a tutorial for teddy bear cookies. ” Mama I must make these for Bubble Gum for her first day of school, she would love them!”. As you may well know her little sister is a teddy bear lover. And a must is a must. Who am I to tell her no. So I helped her bake them the night before and they turned out so cute ( I even shot a video tutorial for her own use and we had so much fun). Her sister had them waiting for her after her first day of school. Although they were presented in the morning so she knew she had something cute and cozy waiting for her at home. I thought they were so adorable you may also want to make them. Ours did not turn out quite as firm and small as the ones in the original recipe so I thought it´s probably a good idea to cool the dough before baking and perhaps even again after the cookies are made in to teddies before they go to the oven. Also we flattened the ears and the nose a little. I would perhaps not flatten the nose at all. It looks funny when raw but while it´s baking it flattens enough naturally. Regardless of our little mistakes they turned out so cute and delicious. But these would definitely be yummy also made from a healthier oatmeal cookie recipe ( I think we will try this recipe next, it would be great for a breakfast cookie to grab on the go too). This one was very sweet ( and buttery) but delicious. We used chocolate chips as the eyes and the tip of the nose, not m&m´s as the recipe calls for but I think next time I´ll try this with a healthier recipe and with raisins as the eyes and nose. The how to and recipe is from here.