For a very very long time, I had been thinking about getting a Lagostina pressure cooker, now I finally bought one. I've heard some people recommend a 3 liter pressure cooker for a family of three, and a 5 liter cooker for a family of five. But I got a 7 liter one, even though there is only two of us. It's not only because we enjoy food a lot, or that it was a half price offer for the 7 liter version. There is a more important reason why I chose this size of pressure cooker.

I didn't hesitate when my friend offered to take me to the Pierre Hermé Fetish Party (in Japanese). I got very excited when they told us to try a lot of their new sweets. But everybody was so calm and well-behaved, so I told myself to relax and slow down. Still, in the end I tried almost all the sweets on the menu. Herme is still my favourite patisserie!

I thought the Aalto vase, designed by Alvar Aalto, doesn't really suit our style, but recently I bought one for our flat. Last year iittala produced many new items inspired by his original ideas to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Alvar Aalto's vase. Bit by bit, I bought some of them and now I have a small Aalto collection!

I found this piece of paper in a pile of magazines, it was wrapping paper for a Japanese sweet shop called Shiono (in Japanese) in Akasaka. I haven't been to Shiono since I bought Autumn sweets last year. At the shop they take quite a long time to wrap the sweets, but I don't mind waiting if I see how carefully they wrap each box. I just love their traditional old style wrapping paper, which seems kind of new too, and the coolest thing they do is printing the shop name in white on a white paper! I love it! Probably they make many cherry blossom related sweets by now, I should have a look.