Welcome to my blog!

Yesterday a super fun thing happened – I got a virtual visit from Aunt Peaches, one of my idols!

There are so many great things about blogging, and one of the best is getting to know new people. One other pretty great thing is when one of your idols notices your little blog and writes about it, and that’s just what happened yesterday! There was a lot of hollering and smiling in my kitchen (where I write at the moment), I can tell you that!

I try to remember that when I visit other people’s blogs – sometimes a linkback or a nice word to someone can really mean the world. And it doesn’t cost much – just a few seconds or minutes of my life when I read through someone’s text and write them a comment.

I am both a blogger and a blog reader, but yesterday I was pure fangirl!

I’ve written about Aunt Peaches on the blog before, lately when I made some hot glue gun hearts inspired by her. I just love love love her blog, and I love her blog persona! She has such an inspiring home, she does so many inspiring projects and she also thinks about what values she has and projects, and how she can be a positive influence in the world, just like I try to be.

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The best thing is when you find another blogger who also loves patterns, colours, crafting, not taking everything too seriously, and also loves to make the world a better place!

Anyways, thank you Peaches for your mention of me on your Facebook-page, and hopefully you will visit more in the future!

Recently I’ve been busy renovating parts of our house (my new craft room, yay!) and I haven’t had the time to really concentrate on my blog (or reading other people’s blogs) as much as I would like to, and one of the topics high up on my to do-list is to write an introduction to my blog.

I’ve been planning to do that since last summer, and now I got the spark to do just that. Sometimes a blog post just shows up through my keyboard, sometimes I have to think about it for ages. It is odd how the mind works!

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Anyways, the name of my blog is Tedags hos Tant Ninette, and it means Teatime at Aunt Ninette’s. I always drink a lot of tea (check out my teawall!) and I was thinking of a blog name and then I settled on a nickname that a relative called me when I was little. I’ve always had a fondness for granny/aunt things, and I have a name that’s really not associated with anything granny in Swedish, so I thought it would be funny to use that old nickname for a blog title. It would stand out and at the same time say a little bit about what my blog is about: I sit here drinking tea and thinking about things, and I like old things but with a new twist.

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The adresse to my blog is our old domain from when we lived in Denmark and I had a homepage which I updated with news about the kids for the relatives in Finland to see. Familjen Bahne means the Bahne family, and my family is also a bit of the focus for this blog. My family consists of me, my husband and our three children (ages 11, 8 and 7). Two of them are adopted from South Africa and one is made in a clinic in Denmark, as I love to say! I grew up in this little town called Pargas where we now live, but for almost 7 years we lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, until the kids got a bit too many for us to handle by ourselves and we bought this house over the Internet and moved back to Pargas.

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Our house really is our dream house! We walked past it many times during the years, and dreamed about what we would do with the house if it was our house. Then it happened to be for sale just when we were trying to find a house to live, so we bought it not having actually seen it other than walking past it and seeing the pictures my father took of it (he is a building expert so we felt we were in good hands when he okayed the house!).

The house is from the late 1800s and it was in need of a lot of repair when we bought it 6,5 years ago. We do almost everything ourselves, so this house is definitely our biggest DIY and upcycling project!

We recycle as much of the materials as we can and try to make the house both practical for a family of 5 and also in keeping with the whole aura of the house. A bit of the old, but with a new twist, like old materials and techniques, but new colours and patterns.

My blog is my refuge, where I get my energy for everything else in my life.

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Fotograf: Camilla Hynynen – we collaborated on a Craft Book with the same name as my blog. Check out her blog if you like beautiful pictures!

I am a feminist house wife by necessity and by choice – because of the kids’ traumatic backgrounds we need to have one parent staying home to take care of them, and we chose that to be me both of practical reasons and because it was a great fit for me.

I get to be the steady core in the kids’ life, and I also get to do the things I love most: gardening, crafting, blogging and saving money by doing a lots of things myself (like chopping wood and digging ditches and making my own wallpapers). My blog is also my remedy for procrastination. When I started blogging my projects had a tendency to sometimes take a loooong time to be finished, but the blog has definitely meant that I have a greater motivation to actually finish my projects!

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I mostly write in Swedish which is my mother tongue.

Finland has two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. Finland used to be a part of Sweden until about 200 years ago when we belonged to Russia for a while before gaining independence. Because of that there is a small Swedish speaking minority in Finland, and I belong to that minority.

I went to a Swedish school here in Pargas, I only had Swedish speaking friends when growing up, read the Swedish newspaper (i.e. a Finnish newspaper written in Swedish), went to a Swedish university in nearby Turku (or Åbo as the town is called in Swedish) and met my husband who also speaks Swedish and comes from an old German-Swedish family who have lived in this country for about 500 years. I learnt Finnish and English in School, and Danish when we lived in Denmark.

I sometimes try to also write this blog in English, but I usually get too self conscious and it takes too much energy, which is just stupid!

So now I’m going to try to write in English and just disregard my high standards for myself and English. After all, English isn’t my first language so I shouldn’t feel self conscious! I don’t do that when I try to write in Finnish (on other people’s blogs), because I have accepted that I don’t know Finnish enough and a way to learn it is to practice it, but somehow I have this idiotic idea that I have to write perfectly when I write in Swedish or English! Which is just a totally dumb idea. I’m by the way a psychologist (I also have a teaching degree and studied some economics while in Copenhagen), and I love to think about the psyche and how it works, and I also use this blog for that purpose! When I notice that I have hang ups about something I try to write about them and get rid of them that way.

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Thank you for visiting my blog, and hopefully you’ll visit again!

If you like to take a home tour of our home as it looked like a while ago (at the moment it’s a total mess while we’re renovating) you can find some pictures of different rooms on the right hand side. Click on the pictures to get to  the blog posts.

Most of my DIY:s are in the category DIY, but some are under Pyssel (crafts).

Please feel free to ask if it’s anything that is confounding. Google translate seems to sometimes have a bit of fun when translating my blog texts!

 

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7 kommentarer

  1. I looked through a lot of your posts yesterday when Aunt Peaches first mentioned you on Facebook, and was absolutely charmed by your creative use of materials and eye for color. I’m so happy to have been introduced to your blog and look forward to seeing what you post in the future. P.S. Your English is more than adequate. 🙂

  2. Vad roligt med en så genomgående sammanfattning av ditt liv för oss som nyligen hittat hit! Jag har läst ett par veckor men mycket av det du skrev nu hade jag inte fattat. Ser fram emot att se mer av ert drömhus, även jag när en husdröm även om den just nu är ganska avlägsen.

  3. I also found you through Peaches 🙂 And so very happy that I did! What a cozy little space you have here 🙂

  4. STOP IT ALREADY. I’m so thrilled we can have our own little mutual admiration society. You have such incredible ideas. And from what I can see — a gift for words — your English is better than most American bloggers — you are making us look bad. AND WHAT A BEAUTIFUL FAMILY!!!

    PS: Watch your hat. I’m coming for it.

  5. Thank you for the thorough introduction! I am also visiting via Aunt Peaches 🙂 and I agree — your English is fabulous!

  6. I am so delighted to have stumbled across your blog. I loved the story of your house ….. It secretly knowing that one day it would be yours while you patiently dreamt about it . It was a pleasure to find out about you and your little family and look forward to reading future posts.

  7. Jennifer Hodges

    Hello from Texas! I also found out about your blog via Aunt Peaches- I loves it! Your English is great!!

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