I've had an aquarium for about five years now. I got really into fishkeeping then and got a 112L (~40 gallon) tank back then. There's been times when I've not been so interested in it, but I've always kept up with the maintenance and made sure my fish were healthy. Here's some pictures of my tank.

Current inhabitants are 4 albino corydoras, 3 peppered corydoras, 5 cardinal tetras and 8 flame tetras. Below is an older picture, after it I've lost 2 cardinals to a mystery disease.

And here are the newest addition, my beloved flame tetras. They are super greedy and mean and I am head over heels in love with them!

Do you guys have aquaria or have you planned on getting one? I want to hear!

There has been a huge lack of updates on this post - blame the Finnish summer for starting! I'm mostly on holiday (still a few exams left), and even though the weather has not been blessing us yet, to me summer has already started.

The reason for that is that I've already accomplished something that is almost vital for every Finn in the summer: getaway at the cottage! My hubby's grandparents had rented a nice cabin for some relatives since it was the granny's 70th birthday and so we headed to Eastern Finland for four days.

The weather was brilliantly sunny, but unfortunately horribly windy at the same time. We didn't let that bother us, especially because the wind kept most of the mosquitoes away! The cottage had a regular sauna inside, but also a smoke sauna near it. There is something magical about the atmosphere in a smoke sauna: the walls are blacked with the smoke from centuries past, the "löyly" (the heat wave you get when you throw water on the stove) so soft and mellow and not too aggresive smoke-scent lingering in the air. The effort to get this is rather big: you have to start warming the sauna at least 6 hours before it's ready. You block the vents so the smoke from the burning woods gets trapped inside and roasts the place. Then you open the vents so all the smoke gets out and burn more wood to get to the desired temperature. But the long effort results in long-lasting heat: the sauna was warm even on the next day!

Above are some buckets outside the sauna and below is another example of staying warm: a glass of quality cognac.

Finnish summer experience would be nothing without these two ingredients below: grilled sausage and beer. Finns eat humongous amounts of grilled sausages every summer, even to the level where they're jokingly called summer vegetables here. I'm not a fan of Finnish beer, since it's very watery, but this Czech beer is one of my favorites. 

There was no boring moments on that weekend: somebody was always ready to play football, throw some darts or whip up a round of poker. We even invented our own games, with the bets of running around the cottage, drinking, or having to go swimming after sauna. The birthday girl and her son cooked us amazing meals and my hubby heated the regular sauna every night to the perfect temperature.

But the most magical moment for me was when me and my hubby both couldn't get sleep so we stayed up till 5AM and talked about our past, future and dreams, watched the sun rise at 2AM and finally fell asleep on eachothers arms. That's some Finnish summer magic!

I'm wishing a splendid summer to all my readers!

In the end of April I visited Frankfurt for a weekend trip with my family. My cousin is working there now so she promised to be our guide! I love Germany and since I was 2 years old, we have visited the country at least once a year with my family. Here are some pictures from our recent trip.

In May Day (1.5.) it's traditional in some parts of Germany to do a Maiwanderung, meaning a May hike. I don't know the origin of the event, but in the present it mostly mean getting a bunch of drink with you and walking around the nature or city with your friends, drinking at the same time. In the Rhein-wineregion there's also a Weinwanderung held, in which local wineries offer taste offerings for the thousands of hikers. It was a rainy day and bit of a drive to the start point of the official Weinwanderung, so we did our own by walking a hiking route in a forest and some vineyards.

There was so many of these snail on the trail and it turned out we should've probably killed them instead of marveling them since they were Spanish slugs and eat pretty much everything in sight.

We we really hungry after the hike (which had ended in us practically rolling down a vineyard hill because the path we walked suddenly ended), so we visited a restaurant buried deep inside the forest and vineyards. It was next to a parking lot where a lot of hikers, including us, had left their cars, so the place was quite crowded. Despite that, the service was good and the beer even better! The star of the meal, although, was this salad I got. It was simply stated as a mixed salad with turkey strips on the menu but WOW, was it good! I'm not lying when I say it was the best salad I have ever eaten.

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The view from my cousin's balcony was a beautiful city view with some lovely, still light-green trees mixed with clean cars. This trip really charged my batteries and I can't wait to visit again soon!

After looking at that picture of the salad again, I'm really craving one now. Where have you had your best salad? Comment below!

That's it, I've officially lost all control. Yesterday I just wandered into a hardware/gardening store and left with yet another new plant! But I had planned buying it earlier, so it doesn't count, right? (It still does.)

On the way home

The plant exactly is peperomia deppeana. I already mentioned wanting it in the Houseplant-plans -post so I could plant it in the orchid terrarium, since it also requires airy soil and humidity like phalaenopsis does. So after getting peperomia home, I started to scape the terrarium!

I had a bit of orchid potting mix I got from my mom and it was basically mulch, leca and a bit of soil. I wanted some height differences to make it more interesting, so I dumped an empty egg carton there, next to the bowl full of water (to provide humidity). Then I covered the bottom in the potting mix. I also repotted the peperomia in a mix of regular potting soil and orchid potting mix. Hopefully it'll be airy enough! I left the plant in the plastic pot from and put it in the corner next to the egg carton.

Then begun the hardest part: mounting my miniature phalaenopsis. I got these pieces of bark from a forest near my parent's house, along with some moss. I removed the phal from the pot and cut some of the dried up roots. It had clearly been in the pot for quite long, since most of the roots were curled up in the bottom! Well, what else can you except from an IKEA plant... I was so scared of damaging the good roots that m hands shook the whole time. But I put some moss on the curve of the bark and then just adjusted the phal on top of it so that about half of it roots go to the other side and half to the other. Then I tied some yarn around it so it won't fall down when I lift it to the tank. All well so far!

The other stem of flowers had already dried up, the other one is still doing fine

I had some pieces of bark and moss left so I arranged them to the tank in a way that actually pleases me quite much! I still have to get a cover glass to trap the humidity more, but so far so good!

 What do you guys think? Have you made any kind of terrarium (succulent, cacti, orchid) lately?

Instead of just showing my plants as I promised, I'll do a whole flat tour! This is a 34 squaremeter student apartment me and my boyfriend rented last fall.

Here is the kitchen. We live in the first floor and the kitchen window is pointing straight towards the walk between the buildings, so we put a smaller lace-curtain on the window to get a bit more privacy. The main colors of the kitchen are white, green and brown and it's also the place where most of my plants are in:

Basil and a bit beaten down mint

Monstera deliciosa leaves, let's see if they root

My orchid terrarium in progress: some moss, wood and a miniature phalaenopsis

Here's the bedroom, the room where we spend most of our time. We have our laptops, game consoles, TV, books and weights here so the kitchen is mostly used only for cooking and eating (sometimes we even eat in the bedroom). The colors here are blue, white and gray. The dressers under the TV and consoles need a coat of white paint so they would fit in better, and that's actually my project for this summer.

Here's the newest addition to our plant family: a wonderful yucca palm! It's super cute and it fit perfectly on the shelf when I removed one of the shelves from it. The little ducks are vintage children toys that make a clicking noise when pressing the beak and they are the cutest things ever! We got them from our Frankfurt trip earlier this month.

I didn't photograph the mudroom and the bathroom now because in my opinion they are just not very interesting. Hope you enjoyed this post!

Hi again!

My obsession with aquaria and houseplants it's raising it's head in our flat. I got a 54l (12g) empty tank for free and my grandpa gave me his old aquarium light for that. After coming to the conclusion that turning it into a betta/shrimp tank would be a bad idea maintenance-wise, my plans settled for an orchid terrarium, with a miniature phalaenopsis and peperomia.

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Here is a phone-pic of the tank

I started to plan out getting houseplants to the rest of the apartment too. As you can see from the previous post, I already have an aloe vera (which, by the way, is suffering from something. I probably have to repot it.) and then I have a cowslip, which is probably never going to bloom again. Few weeks back I also started a small herb garden, currently with mint and basil.

But really wanted something bigger than those, something that immediately catches your eye and brings green and exotic style to the room. I settled on getting some kind of palm, probably a kentia palm or a parlour palm. I also clipped some leaves from my mom's monstera deliciosa (which is actually quite monsterous) so I can plant them in the near future.

I will post pictures when my plans take a step forward!

Earlier this year on our trip to IKEA I noticed this super cute aloe vera plant, hiding all alone between the other succulents and cacti. The dark green color with small white dots charmed me instantly and I knew I had to save that poor bastard before anyone else took it home with them. When I took a closer look at the plant at home, I noticed it already had three babies! A quick Google-search about repotting these tiny vera-babies turned out to be not-so-quick since info about aloe veras was pretty scarce. I gathered the information I found and here you go, 5 best tips on taking care of your aloe vera!

1. Don't overwater!

Aloe veras, like other succulents, are desert plants, so they handle drought and sun perfectly. This also makes them the perfect plants for kinds like me who remember to water their greens once a month! But desert plants don't take huge amounts of water that eagerly: it often turns them soggy and, if continued for a longer period, kills them. Good rule of thumb for watering aloes is once every two weeks. 

2. Wean your babies

Like I told earlier in the post, my aloe vera already had three babies with it the moment I bought it. These guys are extremely quick to reproduce, but it takes its toll. If the suckers get taller than 3 inches, they start sapping all their nutrients and energy from their mother. This makes its leaves grow horizontally, because it no longer has the energy to focus on it's own growth. To save your aloe from becoming a tired single mom with way too many kids, replant the babies before they reach 3 inches. Simply pull them our from the soil and stick to a new pot with wet soil. Don't water for two weeks, and voila, you have a bunch of new aloe veras growing!

Here you can see a tiny baby which I have not yet replanted.

3. Lay back on the fertilizer

Fertilizer can make your plants gloom, but aloes are not so fond of it. In the summer months, fertilizing them once a month is fine, but stop it completely in the winter months. There's not much fertilizers in the desert after all!

4. Sun, sun sun!

I feel like I'm repeating myself telling you that aloe veras are, you guessed it, desert plants. Therefore sun is vital for them. Indoor aloe veras love growing even in direct sunlight, but outdoors the best place for them might be for example under a tree, where some of the rays are blocked. For indoor plant, recommended windows for placement are the ones facing West or East.

5. All about the base

Aloe veras thrive in airy soil, so use cacti or succulent soil when planting them. Or, do like me, and mix normal potting soil with gravel or coarse sand. This will keep it nice and airy so your plant wont drown in all of the water! 

Hopefully this helped you guys out and good luck with your veras! Do you have any tips that you swear by? Please share them in the comments section!

- Heidi