SUMMER DAYS AND SMOOTHIES

Yoga and light breakfast in the morning, loved this banana fig smoothie mmm!

HAVE A TASTE:
Soak 3-4 figs over night
Throw them to the blender with
a banana
blueberries
honey
real vanilla
mint leaves
oat milk
Drink it slooooowly <3

= The most important can be found from within

Anssi painting at our yoga studio Pihasali - taking it to the next level booom!
Summer we'll be doing some renewing and open the doors again around August.
I'll keep you guys updated!
xxx

GREEN SUNDAY

A good big bowl of buckthorn porridge with berries, raisins, muesli and a bit of turmeric -
berry power to get the day started! 

First some gardening in our plantage in Viikki, ecological living area.

Then collecting nettle for cooking.

Crazy amounts of it, just in the backyard! 

Full bag of nettle leaves, super food of Finland.

Food, sleep and later on sauna and swimming in the pool. Sundays are the BEST!
Hope you had a good one too! x

PINEAPPLE COCONUT SMOOTHIE

Loved this one. Found the recipe here.

Throw in some...
pineapple chunks
apple
banana
real vanilla powder
coconut milk

Drink and say mmmmmmm.

MADARA BLOGGER CHALLENGE - LET'S GO TO LATVIA!

Some years ago I started to pay more attention to the daily cosmetics I was using. Mainly because I had been suffering from major migraine attacks and decided to change my living habits and diet to see if they would make any difference - which they of course did! When I was eating clean, organic food it started to become clearer to me that I didn't want to have any extra chemicals from other sources like cosmetics. First natural thing was to cut off the parfymes - I've always suffered from most of the strong chemical fragrances but now I ditched all my parfymes to the bin. Especially after reading a research where I learned that the patent right of the fragrance actually allows the cosmetic companies to add more chemicals to the parfymes and NOT mention about them in the list of substances... This would then of course go with other cosmetic products too! It freaked me out and there out from the garbage door went my parfyme bottles!

Slowly I've changed the content of my make-up bag even it still has some oldies left like Lancome mascara which I've used ever since I started to wear make-up. But the biggest difference has been that I've changed the face cleansing and moisturizing products mainly to MADARA Cosmetics. My first touch to the brand was when I found their deodorant to be perfect for me. For the face I had tried couple other cosmetic brands over the years but they didn't seem to work with my type of skin. Usually the face was moisturized from the surface but soon got dry again or left a greasy feeling in the skin. Now that I've used MADARA cleansing foam and different face creams I feel that my skin is feeling so much better than with the other brands. I feel that the effect is deeper than in the surface and more long lasting. Also you don't need to use big amounts of the product to have the wanted effect so I don't mind putting little more money to a product that is effecting, ecological and long lasting! 

When I got invitation from Sugar Helsinki to participate in a blogger challenge for MADARA I was naturally excited! I didn't know what we were supposed to do but felt that I wanted to be part of this. Not only because I like creative challenges but also because I admire the story of the brand, how the young Latvian girls started MADARA out of their own ambition and need for organic cosmetics and now after six years they are internationally known ecological cosmetic brand! Very inspiring don't you think!

MADARA means a special type of flower in Latvia, one with a sweet fragrance and is very suitable for the brand as they use mainly local raw materials to make their products. To celebrate a special cooperation with a Finnish company Nordic Koivu we were asked to think on two ingredients from the Finnish nature that could fit our favorite MADARA products and then produce a short video testimonial of it. So here's the videos and all the bloggers guesses! Mine was inspired by my morning porridge - oat and raspberry:

NOW HERE'S THE DEAL LISTEN UP DEARS!


If you comment to this post, like it in Facebook here and share it, me and one of you readers in Finland can win a trip to the motherland of MADARA, Latvia! Wouldn't it be nice? YES! The trip will take place 5.-6.7 which would definately work with my summer plans and I'd love to share it with some of you peeps! Unfortunately this Inspiration challenge concerns only Finnish readers but if you want to help me to get a short visit to the Baltic, comment and like! ACT FAST, SPREAD THE WORD AND LET'S GO!

Here's some pics from the PR event that took place in Annala which I'd visited the previous day for the seedling market. I was happy to go back there, it's a beautiful place!

Natcos and Sugar Helsinki representing!

Natural Finnish birch sap drink.

MADARA's founder Lotte Tisenkopfa-Iltnere giving very inspirational presentation.

Challenge is on - are you in? 

UPDATE! Me captured with Lotte's lovely sister Paula Tisenkopfa, MADARA's export marketing and sales manager. They are both very charming and inspirational young women. More pics here!

SPROUTING AND GARDENING

So happy to watch these sunflower babies growing! ... and then eat them mwahahaa!

Seedling cucumbers and zucchini for our small plantage in Viikki.

Occupy Hallway!

I hope our land will be fertile and give us big harvest in the end!

Worms, wihii!

When you get to eat food you've watched growing - it's the best. Nom nom!

"There's also other growth than economic"

ANNALA SEEDLING MARKET

I've been growing some seedlings for the summer to plant at our small city plantage in Viikki. I also wanted to have some greenies at my balcony so went to have a look at the seedling market here in Helsinki last week. It was packed with people! Obviously city gardening has become more popular these years and it's not anymore a grandma thing but younger adults city hobby. Go green!

Walked back home with my new favorite shoes from Keep,  from bElles - Baskets for Elles

VAPPU MAY 1ST

Party at a friends backyard the night before. They'd made it look so nice!

Mayday brunch at my place - homemade organic food and some wine.

Meri singing with the cuteness.

Pete's Mayday tattoo

SuperOnni super tired after the party. It was a good day!
xxx

FAKE CAKE IN THE BLOGSPHERE

We got visited and written about by many blog writers, some even from Denmark yipee! If you wanna read or look more pics, click

ME!
or MEEEE!
or maybe ME
and then after that ME!

Here's our Danish visitors video made of The Restaurant Day - our cafe isn't unfortunatelly shown in the video but Cathrine's words are making us believe that the day was successfull:

"Mix a yoga studio, a girl that makes incredible tasty raw-food desserts and an upcoming local artist. Blend in sponsored furniture, dresses and plants. Stir and add friendly hosts, relaxed guests, a good atmosphere and pretty signs. Turn up the heat, take off your shoes and enjoy the dim lightning – Then you have the perfect pop up restaurant. Visiting this place made you wish it was open every day."

Picture from Tomoland.dk

TOMO at Restaurant Day in Helsinki from box1948 on Vimeo.

DAY BEFORE RESTAURANT DAY

It's going to be GOOOOOOOOD! FAKE CAKE raw food cafe here - hope to see you there too!

Raw fresh ingredients.

Delicious carrots for the cakes!

Virve, Joonas and Jutta - the mad hat cake makers

Raisins and nuts

Preparings at Pihasali - this room is still a secret!

Smaller studio room in Pihasali got new face with Plantagen's plants and some interiors.

Chaga-liquorise-cinnamon-ginger tea for tomorrow to keep us warm!

RAW POWER

Finland is going to vote for the next president this Sunday and it's been interesting to follow the wave of support that Pekka Haavisto has gotten from "ordinary people" to celebrities. I'm so happy and excited to see that these kind of guerilla marketing, action in the streets, is happening in Finland too! Very good and beautiful idea!



This weekend will be full of excitement! First our FAKE CAKE raw food cafe for the Restaurant Day and then  the elections on Sunday. Today Jutta started with some small treats and tomorrow we will put our hands on cakes! All the preparations, like soaking the dried fruits and nuts, have been done today so we can start, put full non-heat on and start making the cakes! Raw girl power!