Christmas / Start of The Season

Good morning!

As I already mentioned Christmas on my Awesome leggings-post, this is the real start of the Christmas season. This weekend I lit my first xmas lights on our kitchen window. To tell you a secret, those lights are there all year around. I just call them appropriately according to the event, for example "Riitta's birthday lights" or "4th of July lights". All occasions and events need mood enhancing lighting (*wink*).

Then we have been drinking "glögi" which means mulled wine in English. It is a very common xmas time drink in Europe. It is usually made with red wine that is heated and seasoned with spiced like cinnamon, vanilla, gloves and nutmeg. Non-alcoholic glögi can be bought ready-made or prepared with fruit juices instead of wine. We have been drinking the store bought non-alcoholic one. We heat up glögi in the microwave and add few raisins and sliced almonds in it. I'm not sure if people in other countries add raisins/almonds but in Finland it is very common.

This weekend I also used my set of xmas mugs and plates that I bought from Target long time ago. I absolutely love them! I like the blues, greens and silver on them. In Finland all the xmas mugs/plates are always red or green, I don't like them. I'm super scared that one of the mugs or plates break. Target hasn't sold this style xmas mugs/plates after the year I got these. I have no idea why I didn't buy more of these when they were on sale. My friends already know that they won't get to use this set, especially if I know that they are clumsy. I couldn't bare to be mad at them for breaking my precious plate. So, I usually use these just for special quiet moments to have a nice warm cup of glögi. Yes, I know I'm being weird.

To go with the glögi, I bought ginger bread cookies. That is "pipari" in Finnish. I will bake my own ginger bread cookies closer to Christmas because they taste way better than the store bought ones. But for now we will eat the ones from the store. Ginger bread cookies are a Finnish tradition around xmas time. In the USA there were some ginger bread cookies but it is not like in Finland. Here the ginger bread cookie baking is an event that everybody awaits for. The ones with baking skills make their own dough and the ones less skilled or very busy persons buy their dough from the store. Kids are excited to get to bake with their moms and also eat the dough. Many adults eat too much dough too and then suffer from a belly ache (*certainly not me, ha ha ha*).

I also started making Christmas cards. I know it is early but if I want to mail my cards to around the world in 2nd class to save money, I have to mail them by December 2nd. Time flies around this time of the year and I know a lot of people, so I better start now. Plus I really like crafts anyway. I don't always make all the cards, I do buy some of the cards. It all depends on my mood of craft making and how much time I have. This year it is looking pretty good. I tried out this cute idea to make a snowman out of buttons. Those are super easy to put together with just some buttons, card board, double stick tape and markers. I was able to find white buttons from a second hand store that had tons of buttons. They had already separated each button color to its own bin, so it was really easy to pick the ones I wanted. Then I also made few 3D cards from store bought pictures.

Today I will finish up couple more cards and then Jinx needs a long walk. It is cloudy and windy outside, the temperature is 2C/36F. It hasn't snowed yet but I'm thinking it will snow soon because usually we already have had snow by now. I'm ok as long as we get a little snow for Christmas, no need to have it any sooner. Otherwise I have to start walking to work instead of biking.

Have a great Sunday!