Today Stockholm reminded me of a lot of things I had forgotten. Mainly how incredibly beautiful parts of it are, and that some of those parts are just a five minute walk from my house. I've got a plan, or a project, not only for my apartment, but also for me this summer. Most of that plan involves long walks along the water, sucking out the essence of the short warm season we've got up here. This morning I took the first long walk, and it was quite inspirational.
I saw a lot of flowers, and trees, and plants. And bumblebees. Very idyllic indeed. The idyll was interrupted on a regular basis though, when people with way too little, or just the wrong clothes were jogging past. Why can't people just get clothes that look normal and fit them, in general, but particularly when they're out running? All the more reason for me to look at the surroundings. Picture above is a detail from a small Indian poster my brother gave me a few years ago. I was on a rose hunt in my apartment earlier, inspired of all the nature I saw outside.
Here's a close-up on a very cute apron from Coctail, one of my all time favorite stores in Stockholm, on Skånegatan. There was a time when it was one of few things that had a real therapeutic effect on me. Just going into the store, being immediately surrounded by fairylights, plastic roses, mexican candy skulls, rubber neon lizards, handpainted enamel plates, and other wonderfully tacky and equally beautiful kitsch in mostly very strong colours, well it just lifted my spirit from whatever hole it had sunk into. We've all got our comfort zones, mine is kitsch heaven. I guess that's why I surround myself with a lot of it in my home, cos they help to keep me in a good mood.
After quite a few years of adding up to a fair amount of colourful kitschy items carefully placed around my place (soon to be our place as soon as my husband gets here of course), I've actually reached a point when enough's enough. A point I don't really see being reached when it comes to my vintage dress collection. Anyway, this is a tote bag a friend of mine got me after having admired hers so much. I just love it!
Especially in the morning it's important to wake up properly, and pretty red and pink plastic placemats can help a little bit. These are from Åhléns. I get new placemats quite regularly, it's such an easy and rather cheap way of giving your kitchen a mini-make-over.
I gave my kitchen a more complete make-over maybe 6 years ago, except that it didn't involve any painting. It started with me buying two extra chairs at IKEA, cos I only had two, and they were turquoise. Back then most of my kitchen was green, and not the kind of green that really went well with turquoise, so I started to exchange most things during a period of time. The two chairs I had from the start, were given to me from a friend of a friend who was moving, and I wanted to change the seats. So once again I went to Coctail and found this lovely Chinese rose and peonese fabric for the chairs.
Some time later Indiska had this supercute pillow case, and needless to say I just had to have it. I've said it before, and I'll repeat myself: I've got a serious thing for the combination of red, pink and turquoise, especially when it involves roses and peoneses.
If I remember correctly, this lovely vintage rose tin was a find from my hometown some summers ago. There's a flea market down in the harbour sometimes, and I found this and an amazing book I need to look for in the basement and share here. It's really quite incredible, you have to believe me until you can see for yourselves.
More Chinese roses and peoneses on a little box that I keep old photographs in. I've been meaning to sort them out for ages now, both picking out the good ones and putting them in albums, and throwing out the bad ones, and there are quite a lot of them. It would also be fun to scan a bunch of them, now that everything must be so digital all the time. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course. But for now the photos will stay safe in the box for a while longer.
Finally another buy from Indiska, a plastic tray that I've mounted on the wall. It's a bit weird that a lot of the Chinese looking things I've got come from Indiska (meaning Indian in Swedish), don't you think? Well I don't mind where they come from really, as long as they make me smile around my house, giving me injections of very much needed colour and kitschy therapy.
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