Crocheted beauty

 I am the guardian of this family christening gown.

My Mom crocheted it while she was pregnant with my brother.

It has 30 year old baby spit-up stains on it :)

It has been used by four boys and four girls.

Brothers and sisters.

Mothers and sons.

Cousins.

Second cousins.

After this weekend also mothers and daughters.

Ninth baby in the family will wear this.

My god daughter's daughter.

I do need to make new linings.

I found holes in the blue one.

And try a new stain remover.

Let's go see the sights!

On a London double decker bus :)

This is one of my very first toys, my Dad had to go to London for a couple months when I was a few months old. This is what he brought back.

Over the decades, two of the peg people have gotten lost.

I love this bus.

Have you saved your favorite toy?

Random family pictures

I came across a box of old photos today I had set aside, and forgotten all about.
I found some great shots.

My Grandma, uncle and dad.
Hats and sunglasses.


Oh the size of those tulips!


My grandma, dad, uncle and granddad in the front row.
I have no clue who the people in the back row are...


Snacktime on the road.


This is the front steps of my house.
My great-grandma, uncle, grandma and dad.
This must be right after the house was built in 1952.


Rug washing time :)


The way the car is packed.. so great.


My great-grandma's house.


I love this shot of my grandparents....


oh my..giggles.. my dad's pants..


OK, I have noooo idea what kind of a fish dance they are doing... hehehee...


I did a double-take with this one.. my uncle as a kid looks so much like my cousin did 20 years ago..
It's a cool pic of how the yard looked back then..


On a road trip.


happy sigh.

Styling sisters

This photo.
Amazing dramatic sense from my Grandma.
She's second from the right there.

She could be in Vogue with that pose :)
I wish I knew who the other ladies are...

My great-aunt Maire.
I think this is from the late 40's?
After the war anyway..


Just look at these two sisters... love the hats.



Let's skip to the mid 70's, shall we?
The four sisters dancing together.. this is such a fun pic.
Elsa, Elvi, Irja (facing the other way) and Maire.


Irja and my Grandma in Spain.

Old photos like these make me smile.

Dear photograph....

Gosh you were a cute kid ;)
Stylish too... heh...


...sigh...

I wish you three sisters would still be sitting in my garden chatting away.

I miss you.

Visit Dear Photograph for more memories.. very emotional... and lovely.

The other grands

I looked at this photo for a long time and still couldn't figure out who these kids were.
Until I ran across a photo of my grandmother Eva (mother's mom) as a young woman... something about the eyes... I took this photo back into my hands and sure enough, that's her second from left.
I can only assume that the others are her siblings. She had 15 siblings.
Yes. Sixteen kids altogether.

It is all so very scandalous.

My great-grandmother was quite a character.
She fell in love very young, but her parents forbade her to marry her sweetheart. She decided to bring as much shame on them as she could....

You see... every one of those 16 children had a different father.

Whichever salesman or gypsy stopped in town, she was there with open arms.. or should I say legs..

Her children never knew who their father was, as she was not telling.
Deliciously scandalous.
I love black sheep.


That's Eva on the right during WW2.


A really rare photo of the whole family: Eva, Paavo, my mom on the left and her two little brothers. I only wish the photographer would have gotten a little closer.

I like this photo of my grandpa Paavo, he was a carpenter.

I always remember him working on something.

Paavo died in 1979 and Eva in 1997.

I wish I had more photos of them...

On second thought I sthink I still have couple of my mom's actual photo albums downstairs somewhere... you might see some more.

Some time.

Heh.

The former owners of my house...

...aka my grandparents :)


My grandpa Jorma looks quite dashing in his wartime uniform, don't you think?


Judging from my dad, I'd say this one of him and his mom (Elvi) was taken in the early 1950's.
Such a happy photo.


That's where our patio still is :)
Those summer dresses are the bomb.


Apparently my grandma really liked housecoats...

I wonder what happened here? Last frame on the film maybe?
Definately the 60's... just a few years before my grandpa died. He died in 1969, just two months after I was born. Young too.. only in his 50's. I really wish I could have known him. From what I've learnt from him by reading my grandparents wartime correspondence (yes, I own such treasures), we would have gotten along fabulously. My grandma was one of the pillars of my life, always there, whenever.

I really like this picture.

Looking at it, I'm trying to figure out which spot in the yard it is... which of those birches are still standing...

The four sisters

Last Saturday Petra and I sat down to do something we've been meaning to do for quite a while: go through the giant boxes filled with my Mom's photos. Took us five hours...

The main reason was to find all the baby pics of my brother :) Once those were earthed up we came to the conclusion that little Julia does indeed have her daddy's ears and nose.
But that's a nother matter.

So, if you don't mind, for the rest of the week, I'll take you down memory lane.

I'll start with the four sisters.
There were also two brothers but I never knew them. One died in WW2 and the other when I was just 2.
We'll stick with the sisters.
My grandmother and her sisters.

This is my grandma Elvi as a wee little one. Niina looked just like her as a baby.
The girl standing is Elsa, the oldest, and the one with those lovely curls is Maire.
The boy is either Olavi or Niilo... I'm thinking Olavi...
Dates to 1919.


My great grandparents with my grandma.


This is one of my favorite photos because it has has all four girls.
Taken sometime in the 1930's.
Maire, Elsa, Elvi and the youngest Irja.


This one's from the 60's.
Elvi, Elsa and Maire.


And then we get to the sweet 70's. Looking at these photos I think people had to be colorblind...
The sad thing is that wallpaper like this is all the rage now.
That's our livingroom... very ummm... brown.
My grandma looks quite snazzy.

Elsa is holding the cigarette, I only now remembered that she smoked.


Elsa and Irja.
Elsa died in 1979, and this is how I remember her.
Whenever we'd go visit her she'd have anise candy for the kids.
I can't stand anise these days...


This is how I remember Irja, Maire and Elvi.
They were all very close and visited often.
Sitting in our garden, possibly for Elvi's nameday.
Shoes neatly in a row :)

Christmas Eve mornings I remember best. We'd pack ourselves in the car with bundles of presents and holiday flowers. My great aunts all lived in the same town a 40 minute drive away. We'd stop at all three, have coffee and goodies. Most years we'd stop at a few of their childrens' houses too.. It took hours, but was my favorite part of Christmas Eve.

Irja died in 1995, we were expecting her for Saara's christening that day. Bittersweet day that one.
My grandma died in 2001 when Niina was just a baby.
And Maire died 2003 or 2004.
Both Elvi and Maire suffered from Alzheimers disease in their last years.

I'll leave you with one of the funniest photos I found.
So we can end with a smile.
My grandma sitting in the garden swing in her quilted housecoat, stripy socks and sandals.

I quite like the lace ruffles, hehe..

Treasures

As I took the newspaper to my mom this morning, I found her going through some old photo albums. Now I LOVE old photos. The older, the better. These albums once belonged to my great aunt, my grandmother's big sister.

That's her on the left, she must be about 18 in this photo.

I'm not sure I had ever even heard of her before.
But I looked through these albums with a smile on my face.

This is a woman who never married, a true life spinster.
I have a album with four pages of pictures of her gentleman friends.
*grin*
I think I would have liked her.
This was all happening in the 1920's and 1930's.
When it was customary for people to go to a studio to get their portraits taken.
All very serious business.

Aren't they handsome?
My only problem is that the photos are glued down. And I mean GLUED. With some 1950's rubber cement I think. STUCK FOR GOOD.
Does anyone know of a product that might help?

I also found these photos of my grandparents, my mom's parents, Eeva and Paavo.

In other news. We were all supposed to go to a 8th birthday party today, but instead only Mika and Saara went (I made the host promise to pack me a slice of cake... she was making a chocolate cake with mint sweets on top..aaahhh). Last night Niina woke up with ahigh fever. This morning it measured at 38,7C/101,6F. Poor baby. It came down with some medicine, but she's napping on the couch as I'm typing this, so I know she's sick. Hopefully it'll clear fast.