Rumar with Open Arms

Chocolate cake baked with jam from our own cherries, my mother's Kentucky cake, buns and the vege soup with archipelago bread, that was on the menu... A week ago we opened our doors and welcomed everyone to Café Cecilia and to learn about traditional way of renovating houses. The best were the visitors! Eager renovators, curious city-people, friends from the island, foreigners wondering if we really live like this.

August who built our house in early 1870s and his wife Cecilia

Our home is usually full of children, books, news papers, dogs on the floor but for this one day we wanted to show our shiny side...

We had gathered magazines, articles and books from our home library to study

The most lovely china

Paints and brushes we like to use

The main living-room, now a painter's work shop

Veranda waiting for the eager readers

In the new sauna-laundry cottage still log and some of the windows waiting

Linen, putty, old-fashioned nails...

Next year again.. This was fun!

Café Cecilia made me glad today!

Our first pop-up café ever was today! And we had such a great fun - both prepairing for the day and opening our home for people who popped in for a Sunday coffee and cake.

The whole family and grand-parents helped with the preparations and bakings and the closer we got the pop-day the more there were new ideas popping.

Some we had time to try out and some will have to wait for the next pop-up.

The bakings succeeded splendidly - even if our muffins became too healthy: we had forgotten the butter from the dought...

Luckily they didn't look too healthy!

The Italian chocolate cake, torta di ciaccolato is our favourite and the queen of every big celebration in our family.

The Kisses are baked according to an old recipe and are dopped in melted butter and sugar.

It was lovely to meet new people and have time to chat with old friends, and of course, tell about the house and Cecilia...

        Thank you for your visit - we had a great day!

Popping up wishes...

The time flies this spring and it is already June. We have been working outdoors ploughing, planting and planning... 

Pellas II has got a new shiny tar coat and is waiting for a good day to start summer-sailing.

We have been planting potatoes, tomatoes and new flower-beds - oh, I just remember the poor lilac I have forgotten under the bushes, tomorrow, I promise.. - and working with the vegetable-land to fill our cellar and our plates with salads, carrots, onions, beetroots, parsnips and other goodies.

And notice: no scaffolding in the front side..

And planning! We decided to try how it would feel to have a café, so just for one day,
a pop-up café Cecilia is born next Sunday - Welcome all! We got so excited when noticing the add of a pop-up-day in Parainen in the local news paper and wanted to arrange something on our island, too.

So we had our first planning meeting testing the products and enjoying one of the first warm days in the garden.

"Cecilia" because she is one of the strong women from the history of this house full of strong women today, the wife of August who built the main building in 1870, and an interesting figure otherwise, too.

We are hoping for a good weather so that we can enjoy our cakes and cups of coffee under the old apple-tree. Now we have ahead of us few busy days of baking and prepairing... Wish us luck!