Söpöilyä.

Last week we noticed a post of one of our friends - her photographer friend was coming to Wroclaw, and she was looking for clients. I had been thinking about taking some professional pictures already before as it's kinda affortable here.

So here the possibility was delivered right in front of our noses! Last Sunday we had the session in the Japanese garden. Weather was perfect and the photographer - oh, she is just lovely. Got us relaxed in front of the camera and had nice ideas. I don't have much where to compare to, but she was very good. I wish we could have her in our wedding too, but she lives in London...

As she is now on holiday, we were supposed to get the pictures in a month. But yesterday she suprised us by sending us one to relief the anxiety.

Picture by Ewa Slusarek

Can't wait to see the rest! :)

Decorating ideas.

After some serious future planning, I wanted to fall back to the wonderful world of weddings which is actually also future planning. So I was searching for some inspiration for table decorations.

As far as we now know, here the catering can also handle the table decorations, so it might be that instead of these do-it-yourself ideas we will have a ready "package" included in the catering price. But I hope we will still have few words to say about the style of the decorations.

For table numbers I was thinking something like this, but we will probably have max. 6 tables so I'm not sure if numbers will be needed.


100layercake.com

unitedwithlove.com

rusticweddingchic.com

lovemyweddings.blogspot.com

What comes to the decorations on the tables, I would prefer something simple, self-made looking and cute. And colours would of course be something like light pink, white, beige and then some spots of mint green. Like this:

ruffledblog.com

weddingsbylilly.com

marthastewartweddings.com

www.marthastewartweddings.com

 I don't know much about flowers but while searching for inspiration I have noticed that I really like peonies and roses. I was also thinking about making somekind of "pom-poms" myself. I found quite clear instructions here, in Finnish.

notonthehighstreet.com

I also tried to find nice idea for place cards, you know those ones with people's names in them, but so far I did not find anything very exciting. Maybe this?

collectivepearls.wordpress.com

Who has can-not-go-wrong macaron recipe? ;)

Truckloads of heavy thoughts.

Now that being diplomat's spouse is becoming more and more reality than one nice fairytale, I've spent time thinking about my future. How exiting, adventorous and unexpected it will be! But also uncertain, scary and even lonely. Recently I've every now and then tried remaind myself to maintain positive attitude. So I'm trying to stay positive, and think how amazing opportunity has been given to me to explore different cultures and countries, but still have some of the "home-country-security-feeling" that I would not have if I would  have to travel all by myself. I have been given an opportunity to experience different kinds of lifestyles and jobs. For someone very career-oriented this could be a nightmare; short-time jobs from different industries is not usually the easiest way to management position. But for someone like me who was already before lost searching her own place in the work field this is a perfect opportunity. And if there's no possibility to work, which might be the case in our future "home"countries, I can try volunteering, I can study or I can housewife. :D

But 'cos I'm a hard-core realistic, side effect of growing up in Finland, I have also thought about the not-so-ideal sides of the life as diplomat's (future) wife. Right now, here in our safe collective EU where I get to work, I have nothing to worry about. I am insured by the company where I'm working, and they pay my pension (will be interesting how I'll get that when I'm 65 75). But in our next destination, which will most likely be outside Europe, it might be difficult for me to get a job. In some coutries I will not even have permit to work. For some people (me) this might sound totally ok, and I already got a taste of housewife's life when I moved here, but in the long-run there is few things that might become issues. First thing is the career - in our world where experience is everything, it might not be the best asset on the labor market to have a CV full of gaps, or CV with 4 years of housewifing every now and then. Second thing is the insurance - who will cover my doctor's visits if I get run over by tuk-tuk in Thailand. Third thing is the pension - with what money will I live when I'm old and frail well, that's the question for all of us right now, eh?. Of course insurance and pension issues can be fixed with loads of money, but my cash flow will be most likely rather limited. And anyway, why I should pay much more than fellow EU citizens for those things that should be our privilege.

So unfortunately it seems that this kind of dream life has it's downsides too.

For some time now I was childishly thinking that I must be the only one "struggling" with these things. How wrong was I? Of course with thousends of diplomats, only from Europe, there is also thousands of spouses moving around the world with them. And apparently in some countries 50% of the spouses are from some other country than the diplomat. So I'm definetely not alone. Just today I found an interesting web page of European Union Foreign Affaires Spouses Partners Associations, more friendly EUFASA. There I found some answers to my questions, which unfortunately led to more questions. But at least I know I'm not alone. ;)

Ps. I'm terribly sorry about such long (and boring?) text, just had to get it out from my system.
Pps. There will probably be more this coming in future :P

And finally one positive thought, so it would not be so heavy:

theberry.com

"Pay attention to where you are going because without meaning you might get nowhere."*

About three weeks have gone since we got the list. You remember the list I told about before. The list from which we are supposed to choose the cities where we would like to live the next three or four years. Now we have 1,5 more weeks time to decide. Over four weeks is quite a lot of time for decision making, and we have not been actively thinking about it all the time. First week of course went by searching all kind of information from Internet I can't even imagine how would we make any decisions without! but after some time something called "informaatioähky" took over my brains and I concentrated more on the wedding planning. Now I've had long enough break to get interested about our future again...

www.skintnation.com

What I have noticed is that it is not that simple. I thought "yeah, easily there is at least 10 places where we wanna go". Well, yeah there sure is, and a lot more in the world. But it turned out to be a bit more complicated. First of all, we have to choose at least 12 places. Second, the places are categorized as A, B and C places, from A being easy-to-adapt to C being not-the-places-I-always-dreamt-of. Places like South-Sudan or Afghanistan. But also a bit more "friendly" places like Kuwait, Moscow or Addis Ababa. What I did not know, was that we have choose 4 places from each category. And with the C places it has been a bit trickier. Some of them I could not even move with my fiance. We've tried to look them from all different angles, safety being the most important. 

www.theitinerant.co.uk

When we first got the list there was some places I was sure I would wanna move. Then I did a bit research and these places turned out to be not so good ideas. Mostly because of some serious safety issues. Places like Venezuela, Mexico and Trinidad & Tobago. Our research has had opposite results too. We have been seriously thinking about Kazakhstan, Moscow and Kuwait, which were not on top of my mind.

www.flickriver.com

From the A and B lists it is much easier to find four places. But yesterday I started to think that some of the A places might be difficult, because they are very expensive. And what if I don't get a job right away. Will we have enough money to live in such places like Tokyo, Singapore or San Francisco?

www.8thingstodo.com

We will dedicate next weekend for the final decision making, but already now our C list seems quite clear. Kampala, Addis Ababa, Chengdu, Kuwait and Moscow are current choices, but we will most likely drop one out to reduce the chance to get C place. We will still have to look a bit more in the A and B places, but my favourites now without too much of research would be Taipei, Kanton, San Francisco, Tokyo if it would not be so damn expensive, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta. Quite many favourites, I hope we will get one of them. But I'm constantly trying to remind myself to be open to anything. Because it might as well be that we will move to Uganda. And I need to be prepared.

www.uchinatravel.com

*Quote by A.A. Milne

New theme colour love.

What kind of woman would be a woman who wouldn't change her mind? None-existent.

I have found a new love for the colour theme of the wedding already approved by the fiance ;).
The old inspiration was slightly different.

May I present - Noora <3 MINT

eastidahoweddings.com

burnettsboards.com

bridalmusings.com

Noora's travel guide: Dresden

Last weekend we met my parents in Dresden what happened to the sunday dinners in Espoo? :P They were spending their holiday in Prague, and asked if we could meet somewhere near. Everything is "so close" here, that it's easy and not too expensive to drive somewhere for a weekend. :) I've been in Prague already twice, and I have to say that so far it did not impress me much. Too much tourists and negative things related to tourism. So we decided to check some other destinations where it would be easy for us and my parents to come.

So we picked Dresden.

First time I was in Dresden was last year when we visited "the-world-famous" Christmas markets. Obviously it was a bit different now in summer.

The first things I noticed was that it was HOT and rather quiet. We were so lucky to have the super-heat-wave for two days of our sightseeing. Maybe that was the reason why the city seemed so quiet. Who would willingly do sightseeing in 37 degrees? :P

Dresden suprised me already on the first time. I've never really heard about Dresden before, I guess it's not very popular destination for Finnish tourists. I wonder why? They have everything that Prague has, except less tourists and less drunken British people. And less cheating. They have gorgeus old buildings, a river (ok maybe not the most beautiful one), traditional restaurants, cheap beer for Finnish people at least...

But most amazing are the buildings; the entire city center was destroyed in the II World War, and they managed to rebuilt it so nicely. Me and my parents were wondering why Finland was not rebuilt like it was before. Now we have country full of apartment buildings from 60's. Not pretty.

We did not really check the night life, but we ate well. On Saturday we went to Mongolian Bar; a restaurant I found in advance from internet. It is a combination of buffet and a la carte. Different menues included soup, sushi, buffet and dessert. In the buffet they had fresh vegetables, seafood, fish, meat and noodles, and the chefs prepared this with the sauce you chose. Nice idea. But definetely not fast-food.

Breakfast we had in our hotel, Motel One, which we've been sleeping in other cities too. I like their concept; affordable prices, small but shiny-new rooms, good location and nice breakfast buffet.

On Sunday after some walking and refreshing in a fountain :D we needed to get some lunch. With our heads melted by the sun, we managed to find a Mexican-Brazilian restaurant near our hotel. I was a bit sceptic about the restaurant, but I was proofed wrong. We all order salads as it was too hot to eat a steak. And the salads were excellent! :) But apparently the prices were scary to some people as we saw several groups leaving right after they had a look on the menu.

So final conclusion is that Dresden is worth visiting and I would go there again. Maybe next time we will hit the clubs. ;)

Keep calm, it's just wedding...

I'm a little bit worried that I will soon became what they call "bridezilla".

[Formed from blending of the words bride and Godzilla (Japanese movie monster). Used to describe a woman whose behavior becomes outrageously bad in the course of planning for her wedding. urbandictionary.com] 

I'm already stressing about the wedding. I've tried to convince myself that I should not stress at least not so early and that the planning is supposed to be fun, but...

Lately I've noticed (well it's nothing new) that I'm quite unpatient person. I want everything to happen right now :D Ok, I don't need us to get married tomorrow, I would just want everything to be ready NOW. I have already planned the dress, hair, make-up, invitations, decoration of the wedding place, the schedule... at least I have not tried to plan the menu yet. Not that I wouldn't like to. :P

Now that I think, I have not actually made anything yet, just planned in my head. And this is what probably causes the stress. I have so many plans, but I'm afraid that they cannot be fulfilled. Well, I guess they will not come true if I won't do something about it, right? :D

My new motto should be "do more, think less".

I have been reading some wedding blogs, not so many, but enough to get stressed about them. That's probably not the point, and originally I started reading them just to get some ideas. But now I've started to compare and I want better, bigger, cooler, more beautiful than they have. 

Sounds healthy, eh?

I've tried to ask the opinion of my handsome half, but still I have feeling that I'm telling what kind of colours we will have, what will be the schedule, what kind of cake I want, how the food should be, how will the invitations look like...But he is saying that he enjoys the planning with me, always such a gentleman :D

I'm not sure if this is normal in such early stage of planning? Please tell me it's normal?! How can i stop the monster growing inside me?! :D

someecards.com