STILL LIFE SERIES 2

GARDEN FLOWERS IN JUNE

I'm totally in love with these beauties. The scents, the way they look, how they show their nature. I planted a lot of anemones in spring and finally I have one blooming and you can find it from this arrangement. So happy about it. This is second post of my summer still life series. I will make flower arrangements from the flowers and plants in our garden. 

On Wednesday I will travel to Gotland. My dream comes true and I will take part in Dietlind Wolf's workshop. I love her work. She is THE stylist I've been following and I just can't wait to meet her and be her student. This is something I have waited for so long. If you don't know her work, please go and see it - right now ;) 

I will be posting IG pics from the workshop. You will find me @kreettakreetta

Have a lovely week! 

xoxo 

Kreetta

STILL LIFE SERIES 1

GARDEN FLOWERS IN MAY

Flowers are in my heart more deeply. 

I love all the things they are and what they give to us. Yesterday when I walked in our garden and smelled the scent of lilacs I felt I need to photograph all these beauties before they are gone. This is how I decided to make my summer series: still life series. 

Have a lovely beginning of the week!

xo

Kreetta

SWEET PERFECT BLUEBERRY

GLUTEN AND DAIRY FREE BLUEBERRY CAKE

In my dreams we live in such climate that there are fresh berries and fruits all year round. Well we don't. But at least we have few weeks berry season and for example we can go to forest and pick some blueberries. This year there are a lot of them. They are very healthy and the taste is perfect. We want to save a lot of blueberries in freezer to enjoy their taste during  dark winter mornings.

This cake is totally gluten and dairy free. The izing on the cake is made of coconut cream and icing sugar. I wrote recipes for you but if you have read any of my recipes, you know I make things a bit more about than exact. Of course baking is much more precise combared to cooking.


SPONGE CAKE BASE

3 eggs
1 dl sugar (plentiful) 
1 dl potato starch
almost 1 tsp baking powder

Whip the eggs and sugar until the dough is fluffy and light. Add carefully dry ingredients. Bake in oven in 225 C degreees about 12-18 min. You can use baking sheet paper that it is very easy to remove the ready cake base from the baking dish.

MERINGUE

2 egg white
1 dl sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp plain vinegar
1 tsp potato starch

Whip egg whites and sugar until they are stiff and glossy. Mix other ingredients carefully. Spread meringue dough on the baking sheet paper in shape you want. Bake in 120-100 C degrees about 1 hour. Baking time depends on how thick the meringue is. I had very thin so the time was about 1 hour. If you want to leave your meringue soft inside it means less baking time. Why I use potato starch and vinegar is because the meringue will not be too hard and it will split nicely with spoon.

SUGAR IZING

Ingredients are coconut cream and izing sugar. It depends on how much you need it but I begun with 1/2 dl coconut cream and started adding the izing sugar until the mix was nicely firm.

SOYA CREAM

I used almost ready soya cream from the shop. It takes only few minutes to whip the cream. I added some sugar and vanilla extract to achieve nicer taste.

BUILDING A CAKE

I moist the cake base with water. Cake will be too sweet if you use juice etc. But maybe a drop or two of rosewater won't do any harm. 

I used soya cream and fresh blueberries inside the cake. I decorated the cake with coconut izing sugar mix. If you want to have really sweet cake you can use the mix more inside the cake. I put the meringue top on the cake. Finally I decorated the cake with fresh blueberries and lemon balm leaves. I put the cake to fridge expecially because of the sugar izing. Give a bit time to the cake that it will have more balanced taste. 

I already miss the summer and all the fresh fruits, vegetables, berries you can have then. That's why I've been planning to make some preservation in old-fashioned way. I'll get back to it later this autumn.

xoxo

Kreetta

COOLING WATERMELON CAKES

TINY CAKES FOR SUMMER PARTY

We love cakes! Today we celebrate Lab Noon's birthday party with having a link party. Congrats Lab Noon! There might be best cake ever! You can find all the other great celebrating food blogs in the end of this post. There is also a giveaway in Lab Noon's blog.

But now I want to tell you about my cake! I love summer and I love to enjoy summer days as much as possible in the garden. Summer is so short here in Scandinavia that you really have to try enjoy every bit of it. So it is a very good idea to have a nice garden party. Parties are always something that you need to work a little bit. If you have garden party then you really have to decide what works there for example on a very warm summer day. 

And yes, I have the coolest - the coolest ever - cake for you. Cute tiny watermelon cake. It is fresh and delicious and very simple to make. It's almost only a watermelon you need.

TINY WATERMELON CAKES

watermelon

fresh berries

mint or lemon balm

cream (i used coconut cream but you can choose your favorite cream)
 

other things like vanilla extract, rose water, candy, chocolate, fruits you want to use in decorating the tiny cakes.

HOW-TO

Find a glass that has straight edges or other enough sharp cylinder shaped item. You can also use professional cutters, then cutting is really easy. I had a bit decorated glass but it worked just fine. You just have to be a bit careful.

Cut the watermelon. Cut it for the height you want your tiny cake to be. After that you can push the glass to the watermelon. After you have made a circle there, you can also use knife to cut the watermelon. But with glass you get nice round shaped ones that are pretty as they are. You can do it quite slowly that the piece of watermelon doesn't stuck in the glass. I have to admit it was quite fun :) You really should not use design glass like this but you get nice pic though, haha! The glass is by Iittala and the designer is Oiva Toikka. He is now 84 years old. Very famous designer in Finland.

Why I used the glass because it was just right size with my tiny ceramic cake holders. I have made them from paper clay. I've been waiting a chance to use them as a photo prop and now I could. When I was making them in ceramic course people were a bit amused by them. "Where do you use them?" they asked me. They said they liked them but couldn't imagine the purpose. Can you? You can use them with small cakes, pastries like macarones and muffins. You can also have your ring and earrings there on your nightstand ;) As you see very useful.

As we are talking about watermelon we know how wet it is, so when you are cutting the cakes, you can dry them a bit with paper towel. Save them in cool place before serving. 

Don't they look adorable? There are possibilites to take this idea even more further. You can also have a DIY cake garden party. Everybody can decorate their own cakes or maybe even make the whole thing. That would be great fun! 

So let's have a party! This post is one of Lab Noon's virtual birthday party. There are several nice recipes for you to enjoy. So please go through the links below and find your favorite cake!

LAB NOON'S VIRTUAL BIRTHDAY PARTY LINK LOVE

Lab Noon

Twigg Studios 

Hortus Cuisine

Foodistan 

Cocinayletras 

Celeste Cucina 

Foolproof Living 

mykitchenkiosk 

My daily sourdough bread  

Gourmet Project 

La Panificatrice Folle

Rustica Retro  

Vermilion Roots 
Persian Foodie

 

You can also win very nice giveaway by leaving a comment on Lab Noon's post. Shipping is only available in Europe.

What do you think - are you going to make some watermelon cakes? You can always make a one big if you aren't a friend of tiny little things...

xoxo

Kreetta

IN THE EVENING LIGHT

Midsummer Night - Floral Wreath

Night with light. Night with magic. If you put 7 different kind of flowers under your pillow on midsummer night, you will see a dream where you meet your husband to be.

For those who already have a husband...or not...can make a floral wreath and look pretty and feel like a magical flower princess. Definitely people around you will notice you.

We will enjoy the moment of light. Even though this year here in Finland it has even snowed in some part of north Finland. Ah, midsummer. We took a cruising tour in lake Inarijärvi. A bit grey and cold but who can complain, it's summer and we have vacation.

xo
Kreetta

Wedding guest

Perfect summer wedding day at Kerimäki. We witnessed sun, rain, thunder and mellow summer evening with bright night. Birds were so in love that every one of them were singing. We sang too.

Dressed up in our best we gathered with smile in our heart. The wedding couple was so gorgeous filled with happiness.

We were in coutryside with our high heels and sparkling shoes.

It was quite hilarious.

We love dancing. Band was playing wedding waltz and some tango too. Lady singer sang like a bird. Wow, what dance steps we took. Husbands sat when we started samba.

I will remember this evening and I'm quite sure quite many of us do too. Time flew too quickly and suddenly it was very early morning when we were walking to our accommodation.

Bright nights. Midsummer is coming soon - sun doesn't go down at all.

We slept well and woke up next morning to have a great breakfast at Ollila in Kerimäki. They have so beautiful old plants in house and outside too. There lives a real green thumb. You can find there old plants like this one - 40 years old. Same as me. A blurry one. Hmm.

xo
Kreetta

With Friends

Sunny and warm weekend with friends next to the sea. A lot of eating, laughing, riding, talking and of course sauna and dipping to the sea. Not so much sleeping. 5 women seeing each other after a long time. I recommend.

Pie recipe by my mother-in-law. Gluten free onion bacon pie. Thank you for Päivi who made it. Tomatoes, rucola and avocado was great on top of it.Yummy.

Sunset.

Pretty Pippi Longstocking horse. We had a great day by riding and after that we went swimming. It was quite hot day. Our riding teacher was also very good.

Next to the beach there were a small sweet cottage with lovely retro furniture. We all remembered these couches from our childhood. We had white one. I just love that old stool too.

Ice cream, yes please.

Local beer and donuts. Good combination?

After dinner we ate rasberry, red currant pavlova without cream. On top of it there were edible Ground-ivy and peppermint with some dried lavender. I found this old black and white cake doily from antique shop. It must be from 1920-1930, I think. They are for special occasion and this weekend was definitely one of those.

She's getting married in next month. Then we will have a party! Thank you girls!

xo

Kreetta

The First Summer Day

Finally it came. The first summer day. We celebrated it with grilling of course and eating ice cream. I was also at Raku workshop yesterday, made some small bowls and other things. It was so relaxing once again with clay. 

This morning I decided that I have to clean up a little bit this our chaos. You can see a bit of it in my fb.

My little seeds are also growing in my DIY greenhouse. You can see it in my instagram. 

I wish you sunny and creative Sunday! I will have one more cup of coffee and try to get inspired by cleaning. It's hard I admit, haha.

xo

Kreetta

Party Party - Summer Summer

Summer is the best time to celebrate different kind of things. I've been in few parties already and there are more to come and in between them a summer trip and then again party party. Can I complain? No. Do I enjoy myself? Yes. I hope you have also great time where ever you are and when ever you have your holiday. I'll go offline for the rest of the July.

But there might still be some updates in the facebook on my blog page. I like you to go and visit there. Or go to see how I'm doing in Pinterest. If you have time. I also would be so so happy if you can like my Gretchen Gretchen blog page in facebook...but only if you do. 

If you have some ideas or thoughts about my blog what you like the most please tell me...because in autumn I will make some decisions about the content of my blog. Thank you for your precious feedback!  I'm really really happy that you read my blog. I'm making and writing things that are close to my heart but it is always lovely to hear your point of views too. Have a wonderful summer days and see you!

xoxo

Kreetta

This Is My Garden

sage and tarragon

mysterious plant - i don't know the name

red currant

different kind of salads, parsley, marigold and spinach

thyme and bloody dock

broad bean

chili

tomato

strawberry and oregano

I decided to photograph my plants a little bit. The plan was to show you what I've been doing. Nothing big or nothing special. But one plan for this summer I have. I wish I don't have to buy salad from the grocery. I wish I can use only salad from my garden. We'll see how my wish come true! Do you have a garden? What you have planted there? What kind of garden is your dream garden?

My dream garden is green, rich and full of flavors, scents and colors. There are beautiful flowers like Helleborus, Hydrangea, Poppies, different kind of old roses, Clematis, Columbine flower, Peonies and different kind of herbs and vegetables. It's a place where I can work and rest when ever I want to.

xo
Kreetta

Be my guest - Kaunista kesäpäivää!

It's time to take a summer holiday trip. We'll be traveling for two weeks in Europe by train and then some traveling in our home country Finland. Can't wait to tell you about these and show pictures! And can't wait for all those beautiful places in Poland and Germany. 

I want to thank you for being my guest and I want to say I'm really happy that you are here. When autumn comes I'll start many DIY and art projects and those I will bring here. And there are so many talented and interesting people who are worth to write about. I bring them also here to you because as they do inspire me - I hope they inspire you too. The most important thing is that this blog is about inspiration - I will try my best to make it to be so. 

And now my friend, it is time to enjoy your summer! I made a small video for you. I shot it in our garden. Be my guest!

Love,

Gretchen

PS. I want to give a big Thank You for learning from the best.

   https://vimeo.com/44888825http://decor8blog.com/