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La belle Paris

Hi guys!

Last weekend I visited my cousin in Paris for a long weekend. We had time to catch up, enjoy the spring weather (when it wasn't raining...), stroll on the streets of Paris and consume lots of wine. The highlight of the trip was a visit to our childhood dream place; Disneyland ;)! What a great weekend! I took lots of photos and filmed as well, so below you can see the result...

I don't know why the video quality got so bad when I uploaded it :s..

Sneak peek to our new flat

Hi guys!

We moved to a new flat a while back and had our housewarming party a week ago. Before the party I quickly filmed a video so that you guys can have a look as well. I added couple of party images as well, what a good party it was ;)! Ben and I prepared some party snacks, like pizza, guacamole, tzatsiki with veggies and so on, but the icing on the cake was Taija's brownies!

Nothing beats good food with good company

Hi guys!

My computer hasn't been working for a while but now it's ok again (as long as I don't shut it down...) so here's an update what's been happening. Based on the pics it seems that my life has been very much about food lately. You cannot blame me, I do have an excellent kitchen for cooking.

Siri and I had a little movie night for which we prepared chicken wings, cucumbers & carrots with tzatziki and sweet potato chips. The making of sweet potato chips is a form of art itself. If you try them out, make sure not to do the following mistakes we did:

- Do not put anything else in the oven than the chips

- Do not pile them on the tray. They shouldn't touch each other

- Do not use baking paper. Its too "greasy"

- Do not think you can make them without checking out a recipe first ;D

After fixing all our errors they turned out to be good though ;)

I tried the same zucchini-garlic-parmesan cheese topping for the sweet potatoes as I did a while back for pasta. I wrote about it here. I also made guacamole...twice. And ate it with every meal from breakfast to my evening snack... For my guacamole I use:

- 2 avocados

- 1 onion

- 2 garlic cloves

- 1/2 chili

- 1 tomato
- the juice of 1/2 lemon

- some fresh coriander and basil

- few drops of Tabasco (for me more cause I've gained spiciness resistance lately...)

And GOSH it's good!

Taija, Sanna and me also organised "chocolate-making get-together". We wanted to try to make healthy raw chocolate. It was super easy!

Here's how we did it:

- Melt 2 dl of coconut oil on a plate over a boiling water (just see what Sanna and Taija are doing in the pic below :D)

- Add 2 dl of 100% cocoa powder. Let it melt as well.

- Add 3 tablespoons of agave syrup and 1 spoon of honey to sweeten. (This is up to you... do as sweet or non-sweet as you want!)

- Mix and pour on a tray, add nuts or dried fruits and pop it in the freezer for half an hour

- YummYummMumsMumsOmmommmOmmmmmm

....We did some salad as well!!

My 10k challenge is going goooood! I can see some results already. I'm down to 6000 swings, 4000 more to go! Tomorrow we have our housewarming party. I try to take pics, but let's be honest here; i'll probably forget :P.

Have a great weekend!

Aerial yoga, flour-free pizza, shopping and the itchy Berliners at gym.....

Hi guys!

Hope you had a lovely weekend! Mine started with going crazy at Lush buying lots and lots of different kinds of bath melts, bath bombs and bubble bars...we have a bathtub now you see. I have to say that the people working at Lush are always super nice! They know a lot about all the products and they are very helpful. In the evening I watched Gravity with Ben. I wasn't too impressed. I think it would have been much better in 3D.

On Saturday Ben headed to his grandparents place to meet his relatives so I began my "single weekend". I tried Aerial yoga which was super fun! If you live in Berlin, you can try it out at Kulturbrauerei at Jangada for 15 €. It's worth every penny! After this I headed to Ku'ddam (shopping area) to look for a spring coat. If you have checked out my Fashiolista profile lately, you'll know what kind of coat I'm hunting for. Didn't find a coat, but I got few shirts and socks ;D. The hunt will continue... In the evening I wanted to try to cook a flour-free pizza base. The base was made out of cauliflower and even though it doesn't taste like a classic pizza it was very good and great alternative for the real thing :). See the recipe in English here and in Finnish here.

Aerial yoga looks something like this...stole the pic from here, sorry about that :p

This is the kind of Spring coat I'm hunting...These are from By Malene Birger, Topshop, Ganni

The yummy flour-free, vegan, organic pizza ;)

On Sunday I treated myself with a massive breakfast before I headed to gym to complete one fourth of my 10000 kettlebell swings. Feelin like a supawomääääään! Now, today (again) I witnessed some strange behavior at the gym at the ladies sauna. Why are some women there so itchy!? There's women scratching their private parts like there's no tomorrow. Excuse me. Note that I am slightly exaggerating, but still. There's other weird behavior happening as well but I'll save you from that and won't go into details. Sorry for sharing this info with you guys but I'm just slightly annoyed 'cause there I am, drinking my water in the sauna and I get told off because of that...When I ask: "Why I cannot drink here?" the answer is: "Because you're not allowed to". Scratching yourself in public shouldn't be allowed to! Peace.

10K

Hi guys!

The topic of this post doesn't refer to 10 kilos I've lost or 10 000 € pay rise I've received (unfortunately). It refers to a challenge that I'm doing at the moment. I've took a couple of hours with a personal trainer at my gym and as a result for the next five weeks I'm going to gym 4 times a week, doing 500 reps of swings each time with a kettlebell to finally achieve my goal of 10 000 reps. Now, you might ask why... To strengthen my core and to lose few centimeters along the way...hopefully. I'm 1000 reps down now. 9000 to go. Damn. Anybody out there who has done the same challenge?

This is how a swing should look like. In the last picture the woman looks happy, but don't be fooled - it's probably not her 500th swing...

Swings aren't the only thing I've done lately (YET). I was sick but at least I learned how to make origami hearts. I also attempted doing a dinosaur but that just didn't work out. Must be the fever. We also moved! I love it here, we have now much more space. I'll film a video later on ;). I've been also cooking and baking much more since we now have enough space for it. The stuff I bake doesn't fully support my healthy new years resolutions but to keep it all in balance me and Siri did our very first carafe of green juice! I was also supporting Finland in the Olympics ice hockey (we won bronze!).

The pasta pic below...you have to try the recipe! It's with zucchini-garlic-chili-parmesan sauce. Super easy and super tasty! The recipe is here.

"Found from the phone -pics"

In case you wanna try to make your own origami Tyrannosaurus Rex ;).....

Somebody's been crafty again...

Hi guys!

Hope you had a great weekend! Mine was really good, it's been so sunny and warm (c'mon + 10 degrees is just 5 degrees away from (Finnish) summer) lately in Berlin that I've got this energy boost to do stuff! Also "abs2014" -project (with my Finnish friends) and "bitches for fitness" -project (with Siri) have kept me busy and turned me into a regular at my gym, haha. I hope that this motivation sticks. Possibly forever. Oh please do so. If anyone has healthy vegetarian recipes, please share! I'm starting to run out of ideas.

I finally finished my little project that I've been doing for a while...that involves me ripping pictures out of magazines whenever I stumble upon a nice looking one. I wanted to put together a "dream map". It sounds very lame and childish and it kind of is but it's so fun to make and it keeps me focused on whatever I want to achieve. This time my map included healthy lifestyle, getting fit, getting pro at yoga, planning a longer backpacking trip and doing my masters in fashion marketing or similar. Doing my master's will come at some point but for now I'm a bit too comfortable here in Berlin and in my current job to go anywhere ;).

By the way...is there any stationery lovers out there or am I alone with my obsession? I have successfully led "no-spending-on-things-you-don't-need" life since new years UNTIL...until I was casually walking home with Ben from Kochhaus* when I saw something irresistible, an Asian stationery shop! Has it always been there? Was it even real life? Asian stationery shop, Santokki, in the middle of Pappellallee and you know what that means! So cute things you wanna rip them apart!!

*Kochhaus guys, if you live in Germany and have occasional Martha Stewart moments in the kitchen but mostly you're just lazy like me, this is made for you. They have tables around with the recipe and the exact amounts of ingredients you'll need. You pick the dish that looks the most delicious, pick up the ingredients and go home to cook. Great way to impress your friends.