Summer holiday

I had a very nice and relaxing holiday in Finland. It consisted mainly from countryside walks, Midsummer celebrations, garden work and spending time with the family. The nature was at its most beautiful with plenty of wild flowers blooming. The only downside were again the several insects that were out to get you. The nights were quite bright, but there were also a few spectacular sunsets that we got to experience.

I have collected some photos here to show to you. I hope you like them. You can find my food related souvenirs in this post.

Holiday in Finland

Here are a few photos from my countryside holiday at home. It was really hot throughout, so I actually didn't go to that many places. I would have preferred to have a few more walks, but it just wasn't possible in that weather. It's a shame for the plants and animals that it's this dry, but let's hope that they will get some rain soon. It seems to be a good year for butterflies though, which is nice.

Holiday in Finland

I finally had time to sort out my holiday photos and select a few to show you from my recent family visit to Finland. I didn’t do much else than to see my family, and the holiday as a whole was very relaxing with only a few schedules.

Already from the plane I could see how different England and Finland looked from the air at this time of the year. England was already all green and crops growing on the fields, whilst Finland was quite grey and had brown unsown ground. In the spring the difference is quite noticeable, as Finland's spring is starting so much later.

The weather kept changing a lot while I was there. It was snowing on several days, so that the ground was actually white. It was quite chilly for late April and early May, but sometimes the weather is like that over there around this time of the year. I found it great, as I so rarely get to visit my home in the winter, and find snow fascinating (especially these days when I rarely get to see it). I wish my partner would have been with me this time to experience the exotic late spring snow. However it was not all gloomy winter weather, we had a couple of nice and warm days as well.

I ate quite a lot during the holiday, but have no food photos to show. I guess I was too busy eating rather than taking photos. I experimented with the new Finnish protein products again, like the pulled oats, fryable cottage cheese and broad bean protein. My mum and I cooked quite a few meals with those, but I think that the best were probably the broad bean protein burgers with root vegetable bread. They also made nice travel food for me. Another interesting item was this beetroot pasta. I already posted the same “maggot” looking pasta as the carrot version during a previous visit, and I had to buy these too. They were tasty and actually had a hint of beetroot flavour in them. We had them with pulled oats in a tomato sauce.

So here are some photos from my trip with the ever changing weather conditions in the Finnish countryside. I hope you enjoy.

Souvenirs from Finland and presents

Here is a little post of some of my Christmas presents and things that I brought back from Finland to England. This post is once again full of Moomins and hedgehogs, which seems to be quite the trend for me now. But I just love all those cute items. The holiday feels like far away now, but at least I have these things around me.

I absolutely fell in love with the new seasonal Moomin mug series with a snow horse and a pitiful but lovable dog character called Surku, Sorry-oo. I got the mug a bowl from my mum for Christmas, and bought the Surku and Ancestor spoons and mini mugs in the Moomin Shop at the Helsinki Airport on our way back. I also bought a winterly Moomin tin. 

My mum got me this quirky recycled hook made from an old baking utensil. How do you think that my mini cups look hanging in there? This may not be the final installation yet.

I bought the hedgehog baubles before Christmas, but also got a lot of hedgehog themed items from my partner, like a set of four coasters, a keyring and a hedgehog and hoglet sewing kit.

I of course brought some Finnish food items with me, like oat crackers, filled chocolates with endearing artwork on the box, tooth friendly blueberry pastilles and cranberry salt received from my mum. 

There were many other items in my bag as well that I didn't have time to photograph anymore. It was quite a good bounty, which eventually arrived, even though our hold luggage got delayed by a day.

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog