Hello there!

I decided to start a blog today! And yes, I admit it, I got the idea when reading Girl Online by Zoe Sugg, where the protagonist keeps an anonymous blog. I'm about halfway through the book now and I totally love it! It's such a cute book, I definitely recommend it to all teenage girls!

So, you might be wondering who I am. I'm Mary, a 14-year-old girl from Finland. And let me tell you that Finland does not have polar bears walking around the streets and no one lives in igloos here (seriously, I've heard people say that!). Although we do get snow for about 4 months every year and like one week of actual summer... Except this year has been rather warm. Damn you, global warming!

I can't really say this is my my first ever blog, as I have started two/three blogs on Tumblr. The first one, with the URL merryweathertoday, was a pretty lame one I had for about a year. Then I kept a break from Tumblr and later started another blog, searching-for-dawn. Not as lame as the previous one. I blogged about a couple fandoms and humour stuff, and then after some time I decided to change blog styles and URL, and now I post hipster/indie pictures as dawwhn. But enough about that. I decided to start a proper blog blog, you know like all those lifestyle and fashion blogs etc. So here it is, The Sunflower Painting!

Why this name? Because I love painting, and my watercolour painting of sunflowers happens to be one of my favourite paintings I've done. And I also love sunflowers. They're not my favourite flowers though, I like dandelions more. People see dandelions as weeds, but I've never thought of them that way. I think they're pretty, and especially when dandelions are usually the first flowers of spring here where I live, it's really lovely to see the bright yellow petals bring colour to the outside world after months of grey and colourless winter.

But there might also be a bit more to the name I chose for this blog. When I'm at school and around people, I'm always the wallflower. And the word "wallflower" reminds me of a painting, just hanging there on the wall, observing everyone. I may be part of my group of friends, but I'm not really there. I'm almost always ignored and left out of the conversations and the inside jokes, and they only ever turn to me when they need help with homework or something. It's a bit sad, but now I'm do used to it I don't really care anymore. You know how you need to step a bit further away from a painting to see how it really looks like? Well it's kind of like that when you're a wallflower. I find it really interesting, and I'm sure I'll be writing on here about the perks of being a wallflower (and I'm so sorry, I haven't actually seen the movie or read the book! It feels like everyone's seen or read it, why am I so behind with everything?).

Anyway, have a nice day!

Xx,
Mary