”You really have mixed tasks”My colleague said to me this week haha, that says quite a lot about what my week has looked like :)

One moment I am sitting on my knees and scrubbing floors like Cinderella, a call later I stand with a large wrench in my hand in front of a water pipe and hope, hope, hope that it will not start squirting out of the walls. Two seconds after that, I do a beautiful party makeup on a customer who is going to Christmas dinner with work!

Really fast pucks now :)

I have bought new PANTIES !!!
How does this fantastic news belong to my job (?) Do you think now haha. This with money, then - it really is not what drives me forward, had I been greedy and money-driven, I really would not have worked as I do as long as I did it if you say so :)

But when you are a young small business owner who has never had money, a sum means much more than the figure in the account - it means that I did something right and represents all the emotions and all the hard work that you have put in to be where you are today. Now it sounds like the amount in my account is super high, it really is not haha! Meen enough that last Friday I went and bought a Christmas present for myself ♥

I have had a company for 6 years now and it is only in the last 1.5 years that I have taken out a salary. That salary, in turn, went to keeping my childhood home when my mother passed away. Then house renovation on it + other big purchases that must be made when you are a homeowner, one day I paid 17000 for just firewood and property tax! Then the house bills for that month too, that was the savings account there :)

But now we live in a small, small cottage and the new year is soon here and I have no idea what 2019 will bring as my life really looks different now. I helped Annika to shop and then had an hour alone in town while she and Miska trained before we went home - and when I went there I felt that today is the day when I will treat myself to a new wardrobe!

It sounds banal but it has been a big thing for me, to spend money on a garment that only I see (and Miska hehe) but at the same time it is so lovely with nice, matching underwear! NOTE I am not talking luxury panties now but it became the usual "2 for 3" on Gina Tricot and Kappahl but I compare with my previous panty wardrobe which still includes snobby thongs that I bought when I went in the 6th.

Here is a conversation that started from my worn out pantry haha:

But as I said! This is the day! Now the day is finally here as I sit in a new bra, panties and even new socks and write about the past work week! And I have not saved a single ugly pair, everything old was thrown away! In addition to my lucky socks with owls on;)

Okay now I have to stop chatting about this, I have already written half a blog post and it's just about my new panties hahaha!

The new salon is ready to move in!
The big renovation stuff was finished already last week, but there were a few small things left to paint and also build a new cash register. Better to reuse old boxes and discs than to buy a brand new one :)

But now the cash register is in place, the whole room is spotlessly clean and tidy from construction dams and paint stains and now you just have to start carrying stuff there.

I am so impressed by Miska who made such a nice checkout counter !! He was not a bit handy when we met but then after 3 years with his own salon + moving house, there will be a lot of "learning by doing" and now he is almost a perfect carpenter in my eyes haha :)

Personally, I am responsible for all painting - a little more at my level;) No muscle required but a lot of patience!

I took some quick before and after pictures, it can certainly be fun for you to see, I thought!

The model is photographed after filling, there were a thousand holes and plugs in the walls before too!

Now there is more chalk white color on the walls (before it was more cream white) and the floors are painted in light gray. And then you glimpse the checkout counter in front of the front door :)

Under the window you will also see a reinforcing construction, where we will have product shelves and the store part later :) When you have a small room, you need to save on all floor space!

These pictures are taken from one of the treatment rooms which is behind me in the picture.

There are two treatment rooms in total and here you see before and after outside the other room. It was just a narrow layer before (and very worn floor as you can see) but now the wall has been moved so that it is a proper room!

I have not photographed inside the rooms, they are currently only two empty rooms with white, fresh walls and light gray floor :)

Then there is a small kitchen area and a nice bathroom with tiles and tiles in light gray as well. But right now we have a lot of tools and stuff in there so you can not see that haha.

Surely the cash register was fine? :) The middle part is a track panel where we will set up a shelf with brochures later. And behind there are a lot of drawers and storage space. We will also have a shelf behind with drawers and storage.

Small room requires smart storage;)

Yes! After I painted the last layer of lacquer paint on the top of the checkout counter, I got the spontaneous idea to sprinkle over glitter haha! Oh how nervous I was for Miska's reaction then, but he was very happy :)

We had actually intended to make all the light gray floors glittery, but after making a test board, we realized that it was not a good idea at all. Always important to test first haha!

There is a lot to carry to the salon, so every time you go there and fix something, you must not go empty-handed! Here I am with bags and gift cards to be unpacked at the checkout :)

Loppis & Blocket
You have no idea how much stuff we have collected during the 3 years we have had our large salon, 367 sqm and thousands of "good to have stuff" haha. When you have a large salon, you also have to fill it so that it does not look empty, so we have lots of furniture and stuff that we do not really need just to be nice.

But it has actually gone easier than I thought and almost everything we do not need is sold now! It's boring to sell nice, new stuff for trivia but better that it comes in handy than throwing away.

Our large dressing tables and some small furniture are left, but as long as the majority are gone, there is no panic because we still have the room until March 14 before we need to move :)

Speaking of selling stuff: We sold our hairdressing shampoo on Blocket and due to several small misunderstandings, Miska was not in place when he who was to pick it up came here with a trailer - and it was stuck in the floor with both glue, joints and screws and also in water pipes and drain pipes in the wall!

They agreed to go and have lunch for so long and then I had 40 minutes to get rid of the shampoo and all colleagues were fully booked with customers. The first step was to just get the shit off the floor, then I had to run to the new salon because our toolbox was there, then it was just to carefully unscrew the pipes and keep my fingers crossed that it would not start spraying water!

It was a stressful job and a tough job for the little clumsy me, but when the customers then came back and asked if I had gotten rid of it, I confidently replied "yes absolutely, it went quite easily" and felt so proud hahaha.

None of you who need a big white dressing table? They do not have to be just for makeup but a nice hall bench or something? We have two. They are specially made by a carpenter with a built-in lamp button and electrical outlet and only the plexiglass disc that is on top cost 1000 kroner so they are really lavish. The mirrors are not included, we will save them, but they are available to buy sminkspegel.se :)

800: - each or 1200: - for both! Email me at helena@creativemakeup.se!

Packed with customers before Christmas
I have also had a lot of customers who take the opportunity to be nice before Christmas and the whole salon has been fully booked this week, so fun! :)

Mostly I have received regular customers but I also did a party makeup on a customer who was going to Christmas dinner.

The cutest colleagues
Last Thursday before the first colleague went on Christmas vacation, Miska and Annika and I received a Christmas basket with goodies from all four makeup artists with a sweet card to ♥ I melt !!!

They are really the best employees, you wish you had more time during the day to stand and gossip and have fun because they are really so heavenly good and caring!

We'll be chopping in on this treat soon;)

It's really a bit odd weeks with moving and fixing, but it is not long now until everything is finished! Now we take some Christmas leave and gather energy, then we take new steps on the 27th and start moving into the new salon for real!

Wish everyone a brilliant 4th Advent today ♥ Hugs!

Oh week 50 has just passed, now it's close to 2019 corner! Exciting!

It will be a pretty short post this Sunday with just a few pictures, I have been sick this week (again, I know) and will now during the weekend therefore prioritize rest as much as possible. I can write the post in bed, but since I think it is stress-related (feels good mentally so you do not have to worry about it, only have a body that tells in time) so I think that rest means rest from everything that concerns that think about jobs too;)

Hospital again
Yeah I know, is that annoying? Fever and "sore throat" again! Sixth time in seven months. I'm starting to suspect that maybe it's not real sore throat I have but maybe herpes in the throat? I can hardly find any info on it though, but if it is due to a bad immune system, I will succeed in getting infected every time and I do not hang out with so many people. I have taken a sample two of the times and it has never shown a real sore throat either, although you can clearly see in the throat that it is not as it should be;)

But herpes is underlying all the time and cold sores occur with internal stress, so it sounds reasonable, right?

At least now I have bought L-Lysine which is an amino acid (protein) that is good if you have herpes, both preventively and when you have an outbreak. And vitamin C for that is good for the immune system. Because I did not manage to call the health center again, they still can not do much more because I do not want to operate on the tonsils, so then you have to be your own care staff;)

Sent this picture on snapchat haha! However, it is a bit of fun because the only things I take myself are vitamin C, probiotics (good bacteria) and L-Lysine. The rest is Miska's various training supplements etc. I do not really like taking supplements at all, I usually do it for a week then I forget about them. But now I have to be a little more careful and see if it helps.

I really do not want to get sick in January either, now it has been every month since June except September. Because in January I work from home and wait for childbirth and baby! Then I have to be healthy !! :)

The renovation is complete!
Pjuh! Now the new salon is basically completely ready to move in! We have moved a wall, plastered and repainted all the walls and also repainted the floor gray. It got so fresh!

Here sneaky feet Miska me when I paint haha. The dark part is as it looked before! It was nice too but quite worn after 4 years.

The only thing left is that I will paint a little more white on the moldings because when we pulled off the tape after painting the floor, it had crept up paint in some places so that it is not a completely straight edge everywhere.

Now we are going to build a checkout counter and wait for the paint on the floor to dry completely, you must not put heavy furniture there in a week, then just start moving things there! The whole floor is not painted for some of it is tile floor, so the cash register can be messed with even now before the floor dries :)

We have come a long way with the cash register as well, further than in this picture! Why buy an expensive cash register when we have a creative Miska who throws together his own?

The only thing he has bought are chest of drawers feet to get a little better height and a nice panel as the front (has not been set up yet in this picture), so mostly it is recycled! Economical and environmentally friendly!

The cash register consists of three old chests of drawers with drawers so that you have good storage behind, the middle part of the front (you can see it in the picture) is a track panel board (or whatever it's called) that you can put shelves on. Perfect for business cards and brochures!

You will see more pictures later!

A long-distance blog follower at the salon
Last Thursday we had a customer at the salon who lives in Karlstad but now studies in Stockholm and therefore took the opportunity to make nice lashes and eyebrows at my colleague Lisa :) We had time to chat a bit before her treatment and it was so much fun really!

She has been following the blog since I went to high school, it is like 5-6 years ago! Great bloggers / instagrammers will probably get used to this, but for me it always feels just as strange and incredibly honoring when you realize that there are people sitting on the other side of the screen and actually reading what you write.

It will be a bit double that, I see the statistics and notice in the webshop that it is worth continuing to spend time on the blog, so purely intellectually I know that people read. But still, it's hard emotionally to think that it is real people who click in here regularly haha. I have around 30,000 followers a month (ie user type, not page views) which is very small compared to big influencers but I myself think that there are a lot of people!

2 weeks in Järlåsa
This Tuesday it was 2 weeks since we moved home to Annika's guest house! Many people think it sounds strange, we have had companies together for 3 years and now the next step is to move together and have children like hahaha.

Many also wonder how Miska and I manage to move from a large villa to a small cottage, but on many levels we have more space here haha. I am the only one interested in beauty in the bathroom, for example, the whole bathroom cabinet and shower shelves are filled with only my stuff haha. Love it! So much space! And then we have clothes horses for our clothes in the attic so it's like a walk in closet compared to our cramped closet in the house too :)

Then many people think "how can you both work together and live together?" and there is the simple answer that if we have managed to run a company for 3 years then this is an easy match;) Me and Miska have never had problems both working and living together but it depends entirely on what kind of personalities you are . I could not have that with anyone but it must click for both people.

It will be a lot of homework too, that we each have a computer in our arms;) Miska works a lot with her new sunglasses company, Annika prepares routines and stuff for the Environmental Inspectorate (must renew now that we have a new room, very, very, very rules about it) and I, who have been busy with the renovation of the new premises, have to take over all the other work in the evenings instead.

This is a common sight! Just unpacked a new yoga ball (hence the ball and packaging on the floor) that we will have at the birth and then there is a computer job on each corner;)

Now I'll cure myself the rest of the day, hug you! ♥