Summer is coming!

I hope you all have had wonderful time when summer is getting more close.

We had our first picnic outside, Raph went to canoe with the guys,it was for one friends bachelor party.
They are getting married in June. They asked me to take some wedding pictures, but I don't know,
I really suck at taking photos of people, and no experience of wedding photography at all...

We had our trip to Vendée, we spent 3days there, plus 2days for the driving. It's really far away from us, the google maps tells 8hour driving but it's more when you are traveling with camping car and need to have pauses.

We visited different harbours, at the sea when it was low tide to see the seashells and Raph's dad even eat the seastuff directly from the rocks! Pretty fresh.

We visited also the beach, it was super cold there.

One day I tried to make american pancakes, it was fun and so tasty with vanilla ice cream and liquid sugar from Finland.

It doesn't look as tasty as it was :P

Have a nice week!

Mother's day

My mom is 3000kilometers away, in Finland. They were visiting my grandma with the rest of the family, I got to talk with them today in phone. It's rare as they don't live in same cities and I cannot even call from my phone international calls.

Kiitos äiti.

Thank you mom.

Rakastan sinua.

I love you.

Annika.

Ps. my name is Sini Annika, my parents like to call me Annika. or Annikakka, like my sister does.. kakka means poop. nice. But, Annika means favour or grace. Hope I'm not poop for ever ;)

Sunday night, we went to see french movie called  "Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adêle Blanc-Sec".

I was hoping something more from the film, because a) it was french, b) it was from Luc Besson

but I was bit disapointed, I didn't like of the character of Adèle, the rest was nice. I'm getting more ease with the french movies, with the understanding everything without any texts. I found just really annoying the habit here to dub everything, so I avoid to see english films in the theater. It sounds just so fake. So we watch almost all movies at home. Anyway, back to the movie.. The mummy part and the flying creature was bit badly made, the rest of the images were really nice. I like Paris much. I wish we'll have time this summer visit again, there is so much to see that one weekend is never enough.

After the movie we went to Quick. I know, it's not at all good idea, but we were little bit hungry, and it was just there in front of us.

I have still 3 days work, and then we will travel to Vendee, it makes more than 8hours in car. We will go with the camping car, all together with the R's family, sister and one cousin's son. All us in the one car, 6 persons.

We will be in Vendee 5 days, we should be back on monday night. It's for a family gathering, a picnic. I haven't seen this side of the family yet, so it's exciting. I need to load also the batteries for the camera.

Take care of your families and happy mother's day to all moms!

Hiking and camping plans

This summer, we got everything for perfect camping and outdoor weekends: a car, we have perfect 2 seconds tent from Quechua, you can just throw the tent in the air and it opens up, no need to build tents anymore! R got a picnic table with chairs as a birthday gift this year, even I like of the picnic way too, sitting on the ground, my back doesn't like it. At least not too long.

Did you know, in France you are not allowed to camp in nature? I don't understand this.You are almost forced to be in campsites, what are ridiculously expencive at summertime. Or camp in forest, and be sure not to be waken up by police who wants you to move in 10 minutes and gives a ticket. This happend to us last summer, luckily we got only 10 euros as a reminder that it's not allowed to do that, but the ticket (or fine) can be much more expencive too. Packing your stuff in 10minutes is not fun, when you are standing there in your pyjamas, just woken up and don't even realise what happends. That's why the 2 seconds tent is great too, it can be packed faster too.

I don't like campsites, only good thing in these are that you can take shower. Last summer, we camped 2 nights wildly and 2 nights in campsite, the last night in middle of forest was so calm, I slept the best ever there, comparing to the campsite with noisy neighbours.

We are planning to make hike at Gorges du Toulourenc in Veaux, Vaucluse.it's just 1 hour driving away from home.
I found other interesting places too where would be really interesting to visit, La cascade du Tombereau (waterfalls) near Bras, Chutes de Caramy near Carcès (1h40 drive) and Vallon Sourn between Correns and Châteauvert, all located in the departement of Var. All these can be found in the website of Pays de la Provence Verte,also in english.

I need to make some list of what needs for hiking and camping, I'm waiting for Aura's special camping post if she has time to make one someday :)Everytime, when we go camping, I either forget something or didn't even think I would need something special, and then I'm missing a hat or sun screen in the heat and get badly burned, over heated and lack of water. Or cuts.. or awfully itching allergic reaction in my legs, like last summer when we made few hours walk just at midday..

ouch.

from this path..

But the place was still really nice, even in the half way of the walk, I needed to stop and really rest for a while.. I was all white, about to faint and throw up - I got bad heatstroke. I was the only one without hat too. This year I wont forget that! I think I did even drink quite much, but still not enough. I need to take some juice with sugar with me next time.. and avoid the midday's sun! Any tips?

ps. My weekend is one day short, I worked saturday even it was special holiday. Now just staying home with aching mucles.. ouch.

Trying the vegetarian foods

We are thinking of trying to eat more vegetarian foods at home, when possible, actually it was R's idea to do it. Soon our pile of meat is finished in the freezer, we will continue with vegetarian food and sometimes fish included to our daily food. I don't like red meat at all and now even white meat like chicken (I don't eat duck or others either) is starting to taste too bad.

Now what I need is really good recipes,I will be searching from internet and books, trying to cook everything myself or R will cook too, like have done so far too. I'm dreaming of the own garden, but living in the center of a village isn't a place to grow anything. Specially under the hot sun of southern France.

For our luck, in the corner street they opened a store for local products, : fruits and vegetables, wines and cheeses. Some fruits will be of course from more far away, such as oranges, but these are all bio products.

It's not that much expencive as the grocery store inside the walls, so we prefer to do half of the shopping there. Fresh tasty local tomatoes and salads. I bought this coeur de boeuf tomato from the store, so beautiful. Later at summer there will be also black tomatoes. And I am planning to fill our fridge and freezer with strawberries, I saw in some store that there is 1kg with 3euros, I'm thinking ahead for the winter, so we could have strawberries to eat then too.

With 13euros I got pile of tomatos, potatos,feves,califlour,beetroots,spring onions,radish,salad,carrots,eggplant and zucchinis. Quite good deal :)

Today I cooked carrot-potato "steaks" all vegetarian, it was really good! We had that with salad, it was enough and no need to cook rice or pasta.  We ate everything so quickly that I didn't have time to take picture.

One of the things I need to try is Seitan, if I find the right ingrediens for that. And second, different lenses.

Rainy weather continues with wind, I don't feel like going out. It's my second free day from this week, tomorrow I have to go back to work. I will work until saturday, it's a 8.5 and some holiday. I took it as a work day, so I'm paid little bit extra.

My mom is having a birthday soon, 15.5 and mother's day is this year 9.5 in Finland. I'm missing both days, but I got some gift to her, from Nature et Découvertes - nature shop. I'm just thinking should I give this at summer when i'm going to visit there, as the post package would cost around 15euros.. with my salary, it's much.

Mom at the Linnanmäki-park few years ago

I'm having holidays in Finland about in 7 weeks! I need to start creating lists, what I want to do and taste there, buy and bring back to France too. I will be traveling back with my parents, by car, so need to think of the weight limits.
Also my friend is a hairdresser, I have been asking from her if she could do my hair while i'm visiting, in my mind I want "surf hair" little bit wavy and messy, but not cutting lenght away. It has been a long way to grow my hair until that these are touching my shoulders, so I dont want these to be taken away.. And I need to let it grow for few years still. I know that I should appreciat my hair as it is, straight, but it's hard. I just love wavy hair.. but I'm too lazy to do it everyday by myself. My hair is typical finnish hair, really straight and really thin and slippery glass hair.
When I have had curls in my hair, it lasts long and I like these, just sometimes made the mistake to take the curls in too short hair and then looked like a granny.

Oh and I will see Naku in 7weeks too! My heart aches when I know I can't ever have that dog here.. nor any other animals. It's breaking my heart day by day.. Naku Sikiitta Enza ( wow what a name, we kids had nice time to choose this) Naku means Naked, Sikiitta comes from the Chiquita bananas, and Enza is an apple brand! This year she will be already 13 years old. Little gray bearded granny <3

rainy week

I read from the forecast that this week will be gray and rainy.We already had whole weekend bad weather,I want to see already sun and feel the warm breeze.. Go to the beach, have hikes at nature and take loads of pictures!

1st of May

Last night before R finished the work, I made surprise for him

with sima drinks, tippaleipä and balloons

we made little celebration of the finnish Wappu.

Tippaleipä is made little bit like churros, fried in oil. Instead making long churros,

tippaleipä is made to be a brain looking piece.Mine didnt look like the ones made at the bakeries,

but i'm glad these were delicious!

Today is quite gray weather, I need to make some shopping for food

and then we'll off to the rehearsal of the coming music festival at july.

Tomorrow hopefully is sunny again, would be the first day at the beach!