"I take thee, cream cheese...."

What a day! Today I got a 7 from my history essay. I’m sorry, but I just have to brag a little bit about it… It’s the top grade! And I never get good grades, trust me. I’m actually a pretty bad student. Even my parents were so happily surprised and pleased that they gave me 50 euros because of it :DD Yay! And another thing to be happy about will happen tomorrow. I end at 9:30. In the morning!! Life is good. I usually end somewhere around 4 P.M. so this is a very welcome variation of my Thursday’s schedule. To add to that we will plant flowers in this club me and Ansku have for little girls. Excited about that. I love flowers and the spring is coming :)

This week’s Monday I went to a youth center called 'Kulma', where I spend a great deal of my time. But the reason I went there now, was because they were organizing a girl’s night. I had been to one before and it had been awesome! All we did there was nails and gossip and eating. Now who wouldn’t love that?

This time we also did face masks and talked pretty intense stuff about what it’s like to be a woman/girl, the pros and cons of it etc. But I especially enjoyed the masks. We had something that was apparently meant to smell like chocolate and strawberries, but I think it just smelled like chocolate pudding. Close enough. Me and Ansku were the only ones to put it on. It felt really weird when it dried on your skin. Ansku looked just fine with it on, but I looked completely different. My God how people were laughing at my appearance. Someone said I look like a Latino man and another mentioned something about an overly make upped (is that even a word?) teenager. But I’ll let you decide on that one :D

Pauliina craving for the chocolate on Ansku's face

Me and Ansku 

So a Latino man....

...or a teenage girl with way too much make up on?

 

The food was also really good. Easter eggs, grapes, mozzarella (<3), Princess cake and of course my new favorite: baguette and cream cheese. Oh My God. Words CAN NOT explain. How haven’t I realized this heaven on earth before?? Ok, I admit, I may be exaggerating slightly, but so so so good! I went the next day to the shop to buy some straight after school. I could have gone with the same bus with this boy I really like a lot, but noooo cream cheese was calling out to me.

<3

I also really loved how the edges of the glasses had been made all sugary. Awesome

They had mud cake in addition to the Princess cake.

The last thing we did was nails. I had a hard time concentrating, so I didn’t do something as fancy as maybe the other girls but I was still pretty proud and happy with what I had in the end. I tried to use colours that I don’t really own myself (so pretty much everything else except different variations of pink). In the end I first put a layer of orange nail polish, then a kind of orangy red on the tip and finally I dotted with a white French manicure pen, a line were the two colours met. 

The red nails are mine and the other ones are Heli's

I had an amazing time. Thank you again, everyone who was there and who organized it!! It was awesome.

Just wanted to mention that I’ve been listening to Moomin music while I’ve been writing this. If you don’t know what the Moomins are, then shame upon you and go quickly google it! Recommend watching them, regardless of what age you are! The songs that play during the episodes are either sad or scary, beautiful, nostalgic, wistful, magical, give me shivers or make me cry. My childhood is rushing back... Thank you Ansku for reminding me.

The Age of the New Karen

I had such a great day last Saturday! I did so many new things. I woke up in the morning feeling all depressed and thinking that I’ll just do school work all day. I had planned to go to Kallio, a region located in Helsinki, to this flea market, but feeling so lazy I kind of decided not to. Until my my friend Ansku talked me into it. And I’m so glad she did! Not only did I get a ton of new awesome earrings, but I also did a lot of new things in Helsinki I had never done before!

The compulsory fashion blog's outfit picture :P Isn't Outi the sweetest?

I arrived at the flea market pretty late. My friends Ansku and Outi were already worn out, hungry and wanted to leave. Me and Outi really wanted to go eat somewhere in Helsinki, but Ansku, being raised more practical than us, said that the only place she would eat was her home, as that’s where the food would not only be good, but free too. Me and Outi still decided to eat out, even though Ansku wouldn’t join us. And Outi really wanted to go to this Thai restaurant in Kallio called Du Dii. So we went there. It was the first time I had Thai food in my life. And it was so worth the 7 euros. So good… I recommend it to everyone!

Outi was completely lame and didn't eat with chopsticks and still I was done before her!

Me enjoying chicken with some sweet'n'sour sauce. Mmmmm :)

After eating we went to the mall ‘Itäkeskus’ or like it’s nowadays: ‘Itis’.  I had never gone to that mall before. That was already the second new thing that day (!) The reason we went there, was the fact that I had pretty spontaneously decided to get second piercings in my ears. I’m so glad I did. Even though my mom thinks that is completely foolish of me as I apparently will regret them later (she doesn’t know yet that I actually did it...), but I doubt it. My mom’s anyway a really old-fashioned person.

Look at my second piercing! Isn't it awesome :D And this is an earring that I'm really glad I bought even though it was pretty expensive from a flea market...

The reason I decided to do it was because I needed an irreversible event in my life. Something that would change me, and the way I see myself. And I always thought that people with more than one piercing in their ear were really awesome and cool. I don’t really know what it was that set in motion this sudden need to change. But on Saturday I really felt that the “Age of the New Karen” was about to take place. The “New” Karen would be almost like the old one, with a few slight changes:

o   she has second piercings

o   does her hair everyday (people always asked the old one why she didn’t)

o   has a blog

o   is single and proud of it!!!1

To explain the last point I should probably tell you that I’m well-known for being a really romantic person. I lived for love and falling in it. The sad part was that no one ever seemed to fall in love with me, or even get a small crush. I also always complained about that. But now with the “Age of the New Karen” all that has and will stop. I will be a strong, independent woman who does not need men. That is the plan.

But yeah, hours later after eating and piercing my ears, me and Outi decided to follow Ansku and go to her house. On the way there, we saw one of the first signs of spring; pajunkissat. I don’t really know how to explain it. If I translate it straight to English it would be: willow’s cat. But thank God we have Wikipedia, which can hopefully do a better job at this than me:

"Pussy willow is a name given to many of the smaller species of the genus Salix (willows and sallows) when their furry catkins are young in early spring."

Seeing the pajunkissat made me so happy and excited! I felt just like I did when I was a little girl. In Finland it is and Easter tradition that on Palm Sunday children would decorated braches of willows that had pajunkissat on them with feathers and colourful stuff and go around the town in costumes, kind of like trick or treating, only replacing the trick part with exchanging a branch to some candy. We call it “virpominen”. God I haven’t done that in years! Maybe I should suggest it to Ansku and Outi :D

A picture of virpojat

Pajunkissat

 

And finally a small treat for you guys. I did my hair that day after a long time! And it was actually pretty simple to do:

1.   Put your hair up in a high ponytail.

2.   Braid the ponytail.

3.   Wrap it pretty loosely around itself and pin in place.

4.   Pull on it to make it looser.

picture of virpojat from: http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/artikkeli/Virpojat+liikkeell%C3%A4+t%C3%A4n%C3%A4%C3%A4n/1135234842805 thanks

So is it memorable?

Now when I finally decided to just do, start a blog, nothing just seems to come out. Starting one is harder than I imagined. I feel a bit like a scared little girl completely intimidated by all these criticizing people waiting for her to say something smart, touching, funny, impressive, and/or memorable. I guess I’ll have to start with something as lame as introducing myself.

So hello, I’m Karen. A girl, studying in Espoo in a lukio (I guess it’s something close to a high-school). I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a really long time now. Before I thought it would be too mainstream to do it and I thought that I’m too lazy to keep one. We’ll see if I was right. I promise I’ll try my best.

So what will this blog be about? Life, mostly mine. Life that a girl in Finland can experience after just turning eighteen. Haha, now I made it sound like, I’ll be telling everyone about the bar life of Helsinki or something :D I actually might if something awesome happens. No, seriously, there are a couple of things I feel that I’m good at. For example, doing my hair, or anybody’s to be exact. I love different kinds of braids and hairdos. I’m also good at crafting things, jewelry, knitting, clothes, accessories etc. And I enjoy baking. So you’ll be seeing a very girly variety of things. And yeah of course, my daily life. Let’s start with that…

P.S be warned, I’m not exactly famous for having the best grammar etc. So be prepared for A LOT of spelling mistakes :P