Girl's night out

Because of the extreme cold, I spend most of last week confined to my apartment. That was fine for a while, but when Saturday came around I felt as if I needed to get out if only to avoid cabin fever. I started by checking out what Restaurant Day had to offer, and when it got dark I headed out to a bar to meet friends. We spent hours talking, laughing and drinking wine. Lots of wine.

 

Sunday, in turn, was spent suffering from a wine-induced hangover, feeling old. I was originally planning to make poached eggs and salad for dinner, but when I woke up salad greens were pretty much the furthest thing from my mind. In a stroke of genius, the salad ingredients were then put to use in the form of breakfast (fried eggs and bacon) and dinner (fries and the best burger ever). We used this brilliant recipe for chili-lime ketchup to give the burger a little extra zest, and the result was just perfect. Definitely beats any burger you could get from the local fast-food joints.

(I suspect the secret to a good burger lies in using fatty meat and fresh ingredients, but I am still going to claim it was all due to our cooking prowess.)

The perfect beginning to a Saturday

It's time for Restaurant Day once again, and since I skipped the previous one I figured I might as well check out a pop-up restaurant or two today. (I ended up sticking with one, because that was more than enough in -20°C, thank you very much.)

Because I absolutely love Mexican food, we decided to brave the cold and headed to ¡Viva Mexico!, an outdoor taqueria opened by students of Turku University.

The boyfriend was not impressed with my food photography.

What be both were impressed with, though, was the size of the burritos. I was barely able to finish mine, so the portions were more than reasonable considering the price. The chili verde was spicy and excellent, and worked really well with the rice inside the burrito. I was freezing when we got to ¡Viva Mexico!, but by the time I had the taqueria's burrito in my hands I was feeling pleasantly warm (and by the time I finished eating it my belly was pleasantly full). 

Can't wait to see what the people in my city come up with for the next Restaurant Day!

Christmas present

I know, I know, it's February already – but humor me, will you? Because I have a lot of Christmas presents and shopping to talk about, especially now that it's finally light enough to get decent pictures.

After scouring the shops and the web for Christmas presents for my boyfriend, I ended up finding an excellent watch by Guess (in silver) that both him and I were very happy with. In fact, I ended up liking it so much that once I spotted a rose gold version of the watch on ASOS, I asked for it to be my present.

And it's been in frequent use ever since.

I normally never wear gold (or anything by Guess), but I find rose gold to be a tad more wearable than regular, yellow gold. It certainly seems to work paired with the rest of my jewelry arsenal, which is all silver. And it makes for awesome arm parties, à la the Man Repeller. 

Now if only this watch could teach me to actually be on time...

Good news

I don't know whether I'm weirdly late with discovering this, but since the blogosphere seems to have been mum about this development, I might as well share the information with you. Last night, while browsing online shops, I found myself rubbing my eyes in disbelief upon seeing this:

So, not only is J.Crew suddenly shipping to Finland (and Europe in general), but they are offering flat-rate shipping! I realize this might not be as terribly exciting for some of you as it is for me, but just think about it this way (and imagine me giving you a pointed look) : maybe Madewell will be next.

Regardless, I think this is pretty awesome. Especially considering I've recently taken a strong liking to silk shirts. And, you know, pretty shirts in general. In fact, I wouldn't mind giving any of these beauties (the shirts, not the models, though I suspect the boyfriend wouldn't mind that either) a home:

Teatime

I got plenty of Christmas presents this year (and I'll get back to those later), but the best present I could have possibly asked for was the one I least expected. One of my best friends suddenly returned home after four years of studies in Australia, and it's been great to have her back.

The last few weeks have been filled with girl's nights and girl talk – and man, how I've missed this! It's great to have our little posse back together again, and fun to have someone I can talk to about clothes and fashion (at least without having them roll their eyes at me).

Much time has been spent giggling in cafes, and hopefully the rest of this spring will be spent in much the same manner.

During one of our visits to Café Art last weekend I tried to combat my soy latte obsession with japanese tea, but ugh – too sweet! Staying away from amacha from now on. Regular green tea is clearly the way to go.

Aubin & Wills, Spring 2012

Aubin & Wills is one of those slightly obscure British brands whose name I recognize, but know little beyond that. I ordered a nice, basic grey cardigan from their webshop last fall, but dismissed the rest of their collection as too boring, too preppy and too A.P.C.

So imagine my surprise when I came across this spring shoot for Aubin & Wills, which (while still admittedly a bit preppy) epitomizes pretty much exactly how I want to look this spring. Clean-cut, soft and relaxed. And I guess it doesn't hurt that the model for this photoshoot is the lovely Irina Lăzăreanu.

Enjoy! I'm off to vote at the presidential elections.

Compulsory holiday update

Christmas passed really quickly this year, which is part of the reason I haven't gotten around to posting these pictures earlier.

I spent most of the holidays with my family, and because I was so busy helping out in the kitchen I even managed to avoid the customary weight gain. Most of that can probably be chalked up to me not being a huge fan of traditional Christmas food, but keeping busy also definitely helped prevent me from stuffing my face with chocolate. My hat goes off to my mother though: just helping with menial tasks resulted in me being completely exhausted, so I can only imagine the effort that goes into banging out dinner for eight people.

I received a surprise present from my mother in the form of a pretty bouquet of tulips, and now I've developed an obsession with keeping cut flowers at home. This winter has been so dark and grey that I've found myself wishing for spring earlier than ever, and fresh flowers seem to alleviate my lethargy a bit. (But only a bit. Not enough to actually get me started on my thesis.)

I've also tried to combat my laziness by drinking lots of green tea, but during the last few weeks I seem to have switched to soy lattes. The green tea was probably a better idea, as drinking coffee makes me so hyperactive it's difficult to focus (especially on thesis writing. Do you sense a pattern here?). But there's nothing like waking up to the smell of coffee in the morning, especially if you can shamelessly take advantage of your boyfriend by sleeping in while he makes you a fresh cup.