Spending my days spending

The humble idea of this blog was to tell about the nice things we've found and to spread a word, in a positive fashion. I just noticed that I keep thinking to myself about the things we buy and buy and buy.

We are a rather wealthy family, 3 kids, both of us are working, we have a house and two cars. Of course we spend money. Not lavishly but we spend, anyway.

I guess I am starting a monologue here about the things we buy or consider buying. Please commment! I am CERTAIN that we are not the only family who spend money and like spending it. However, we are not stupid. We are rather green, I'd say.

Our two youngest kids have used only reusable nappies, washable diapers or cloth nappies, whatever term you like to use. Our favourite has always been FuzziBunz.


Aren't they just gorgeous? I read an excellent text on reusable nappies here: http://www.lovelyadvice.com/nappies.html and it made pretty clear that it is nonsense if people say that it is time-consuming to wash diapers. We've washed a bin of dirty cloth diapers every other day and it is by no means a pile as the amount equals to three bath towels. They dry in a matter of hours and are ready to use again. And believe me, these reusable and washable diapers are far better looking than the disposable paper diapers.

We have also used a lot of organic cotton clothing, the whole family, actually. They tend to stay better looking for longer periods of time. Of course they are slightly more expensive than regular cotton but they are of better quality. Finding eCotton or organic cotton at reasonable prices is not so uncommon these days, either.

Sure, we love Crocs, too, but I'll get to that a bit later on :-)

Keeping feet warm

Ok, this product is not a real geek product, and I actually think that probably the products I will list will most likely not all be geek products, at all. This one is for pure comfort!

When I was a child, I used to get a pair of felt slippers for christmas. They kept piling up as I wasn't an eager user of them in the early years. My grandmother's relatives had a farm in Central Finland, they had sheep and apparently they sold the wool to this felt factory and got boots and slippers, or something. But that changed. I stopped getting the slippers for christmas and I started to use them. I had enought of slippers to last something like 10 years but now I had to start buying my own.

Felt slippers? What are they? They are slippers or boots made of 100% wool. They are so sympathetic! They keep my feet warm inside and the boots are absolutely the best shoes to wear in the snow! " Felt slippers and boots are made of 100% pure wool, which is the only suitable material for this kind of production. Production is based to the felting possibility of wool fibre.", says the text on the website of the Huopaliike Lahtinen, one of the few felting factories in Europe.

The factory shop of the Huopaliike Lahtinen, located in Jämsä, Central Finland, is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Ok, that is relative. It is perhaps 10 kilometres from the main road, a nice setting of red country houses by a field. An angry dog barking in the yard makes you think that can this really be a shop where they actually welcome you. But it is. And the products are just lovely.





I got felt boots for my kids last winter and another pair of slippers for myself and my husband. When I was a kid all of the slippers and boots were just wool, nothing else but they've clearly made an "advanced enhanced" model as they now come with rubber soles, too. Great for taking the trip to the postbox or if you have slippery stairs. But I still prefer my original models, plain wool.

This lovely factory shop sells other things, too. I bought a pile of coasters which are made of felted wool cut into nice shapes: hearts, flowers, ginger breads... I put a pile of these onto the coffee table and regularly use one of them under my tea cup when watching TV in the winter. I also bought a bag of bits and pieces, felted wood for kids to be creative with. It cost next to nothing.

The felted boots and felted slippers that were really common when I was a kid have now become somewhat of a luxury item. Pretty retro, I think! (and it makes me feel so old...).

Where do the old vinyls go?

We have, my husband and I, a ton of old vinyl records, LP's. We are such people that we rarely throw things away. The records we have are just great! They represent everything that was good and bad with the 1980's and something strange also from the 1970's. You just cannot throw that kind of an amount of good memories..ehm... or just memories away.

And it would be a terrible expense to buy all those LPs in CD versions - most probably don't even exist in digital format. Or some, anyway.

But I saw a year ago or so this great innovation: USB Turntable that connects to my pc and converts my old vinyls into MP3's which I can then listen to on my iPod! Wonderful!

I haven't bought this one yet but I have done some initial research on the internet and I know that they actually are not that expensive, something like 150 euros.

Ha, I just notice that I have no intention of answering the question in the subject. I have absolutely no idea where the old vinyls actually go. Mine will stay on the shelf in our music room until they fall into pieces. Probably my grandchildren will have a funny time some day going through grandma's old things...

My goodness

I wouldn't like to describe myself as a person who only wants to wear or do trendy things. Actually, I prefer classic clothes that can be worn year in and year out and they always look good. Actually I kind of prefer luxury or designer items but only when they are really simple and classic. I'd hate to buy anything that wasn't good a year from now.

And when it comes to tech things, gadgets, I need to be the first. It a product has any kind of technology inside it, I am interested. No, I am not an engineer. NOPE. But I reeeeaaallly love tech things.

I will try to collect here things, phenomena, services and so on that **I** think are great! Maybe they are old news to you or you think that they are absolute crap but - to make myself clear - I think they are nice or funny or...quite necessary once I think of them really carefully.