Choc-choc-choc!

We had our first chocolate tasting event last Friday. Finland's best chocolatier (well, I think so anyway;) Petri Sirén brought the the mysterious world of luxury chocolates to our..our lips, I suppose! Nothing like starting off the weekend by sampling hand-made chocolates.


Maybe I should make a separate label for these chocolate posts, as there seem to be quite a few of them already :D But I'm sure you understand, it's not common to be able to provide hand-made chocolates..it's a little bit of luxury and I believe it deserves to be acknowledged! As Petri said, it's difficult to find high-quality chocolate in Finland.

ps. We have a nice selection of chocolates at the cafe now, including: milk chocolate banana (my new favorite..well, it's sharing first place with raspberry), orange, coconut and lime, raspberry, mint, hazel nut... :P~~

Happy Valentines Day!

Feeling Good

Today I visited Stupido Shop and picked up some new albums to play at the cafe. I'm a newbie when it comes to jazz so I relied on the expertise of the Stupido guy and came home with some Nina Simone and St Germain.


I would love to play Edith Piaf (among other artists) when at work, but her CDs didn't cross my path this time. What would you like to listen to when sitting at our cafe?

A Wild Week

I've been busy and unable to focus on writing the past week. Adjusting has been quite overwhelming and it'll probably take a few more weeks before life as a "cafe co-owner" begins to feel normal.

A lot is happening. We've been open now twice on Saturdays and served a luxury plate of assorted goodies incl. Blue Stilton, Brie, Serrano ham, goats milk Gouda, spiced cream cheese, olives, black cherry and orange marmalade, sun dried ("half dried") tomatoes, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, herbs, a healthy smoothie drink, an espresso based coffee drink and as much "granny coffee" as you can handle.. We figured there's not much point in eating out for a Saturday breakfast/brunch/evening snack if the food served is something that you could easily find in your own fridge, and this is the result. What do you think? :)

We've also booked several private events, have a few of our own events coming up (incl. chocolate tasting and a sewing club), appeared in the February issue of Trendi magazine (lil text with a few pics towards the end of the mag, will try to get a scan once I get my own copy), and a little baby girl was Christened at the cafe a week ago!

Reinforcements have also arrived! Two wonderful women have stepped in to help us with daily tasks at the cafe and I could not be more relieved or happier to have them with us.

Also, my dad saw the cafe for the first time since last summer (when it was still a pile of paint cans and loads of renovation tools). He's not much of a talker but he did say it looked different, so I'll take that as a compliment ;)

A Working Lady

We had a few boxes of things across the street at a friend's little workroom, which I went to pick up this evening. While I was picking up more boxes to carry across the street my friend (male) said "it's nice to see a woman working"....! :D

I just got home from the cafe. I got to sleep in today and only had to start work at 10am - yet I've still managed to put in a 14hour day of work. Generally I spend all my time and days at the café with only a few exceptions.

Tomorrow I'll be there from 8am until about 4pm, because I'll leave early to go to a birthday party in Turku :P Yet I will also be taking a night bus back so that I can help out on Sunday when we have a Christening at the cafe. Cutesies!

Tomorrow, or technically today (Saturday), we'll be serving breakfast from 11am until 7pm, come enjoy! :)

A Happy Monkey

I've been busy, but I've been loving it. Katja just told me, if I'm tired I can go home and rest but why go home when I can sit down and update our blog in our lovely cafe? My home is, unfortunately, just not decorated as cozily as my "offce": there's not candle light, no jazz, no murmur of people chatting.

I'm happy to say, for the first time in my life, that I'd rather be at work than go home!

And this gives Katja the perfect opportunity to hop off to the paint store to pick up some gray paint, there's a spot below our antique cash register, which is still paintless! ;)

Now, chocolate news! Our chocolatier restocked our chocolate shelf with raspberry, nut, mint and white chocolate with passion fruit filling..! And we're having a chocolate tasting here on the 13th of February which will include dinner, coffee or tea and of course a wonderful range of chocolates that you will get to sample, so send me a message if you're interested to hear more.

Right now one of our regulars is showing us aprons she's sewn, and they're gorgeous and we hope to have them here for sale when Spring enters our café and little leaves appear on the branches of our ceiling!

Uuh, writing here is challenging because I keep getting caught up in conversations, this is why this post is a bit all over the place, hope you're keeping up! But if you're not, then no worries, I have to stop writing to go feed myself before I go play with my friends from Jolly Dragon. Thank you for reading! I'm a happy monkey! ^_^

A quick update..

Did I promise to update the blog? Oops. The last two weeks have been busy.

The first week was busy but nothing spectacular happened. The second week we re-opened and I spent most of my time there. Morning till night. I have completely fallen behind all of my blog reading and writing.

But I do feel like I'm in the right place. I really enjoying being a cafe entrepreneur! All the hours and all the work really don't bother me because it's our own business, our own thing.

Despite spending all of my time working, it doesn't even feel like I've fallen out of touch with my friends either. That's the wonderful thing about working at a public place, friends (and even your mother's cousins!) can drop by and say hello to you during your work day. I'm sure I'd feel a bit different if I'd been spending all my time these few weeks setting up and working at say.. an accountants office? Or a dark room? ;) And of course I'm meeting new people all the time as well. We've had some friendly customers this past week!

I would like to encourage all of my friends to stop by and visit me!

Tomorrow will be a busy day, will meet Katja at 8am to prepare for the week to come. Just FYI, our opening hours will be 11-19, Tuesday to Saturday! And already next week we will have re-enforcements: Essi will be helping out. yay!

More to come!