Christmas Is Only 25 Days Away

  

Hello!

Sorry for not making many post lately. I have been super tired. It is way too dark and cold in Finland, and I miss the sun. It feels like that I have no energy left after a busy day at work. Plus it doesn't help that I have been bit sick once again. Anyway, I don't want to be whiny, just wanted to give an update what's going on.

The only good thing about this time of the year is that Christmas is coming soon (*yey*). First Advent is already this weekend. Time flies!

Too bad many Finns are really weird about putting up xmas lights and decorations this early. They wait until just few days before Christmas Eve. I love how Americans start their Christmas season from Thanksgiving. That way you have more time to enjoy the decorations as well as feel festive longer.

I already lit up multicolored Christmas lights in the kitchen. I like them because they are LED, so they are really bright! It's nice to eat breakfast in the morning and look at the pretty lights. As soon as I have time and energy, I'm going to put up more lights as well as decorate a little plastic xmas tree that we have. It's just that all the decorations are down in the basement in a storage unit, and it is a pain in the butt to carry them up to our apartment (*giggle*).

Before I'm going to worry about the decorations, I need to get my xmas cards done quickly. I want to save money by sending the cards in 2nd class but to do so, I have to mail them by December 7th. That is already next week! Since we have a lot of friends and relatives, we need a lot of cards and stamps. So, getting xmas cards ready&mailed in the Riittalicious household, is a massive project.

At first I thought I would make my own handmade cards (*like I usually do*). Since I have to make a lot of them, the card has to be easy to duplicate. I played with some ideas but I just couldn't come up with anything that I liked. I ended up ordering our xmas cards online this year but I still managed to make it look like Riittalicious (*wink*). You'll see in the end of this post what I mean. Before that I have few pictures of ideas that I was thinking about using for our cards but then ended up not using them. Feel free to be inspired and borrow the ideas if you like.

Cute old fashioned pictures that I found online. I was thinking about printing and gluing them on card stock paper like I did for Halloween cards.

Pictures of Jinx put into Christmas themed frames that are made with an app on my phone. I also was planning to print these out and make into cards.

Pictures of Scott and Jinx in cute frames made in to cards

 Picture collage of us printed and made into cards.

As you might have noticed I like to use pictures of ourselves a lot. I don't use them because I'm full of myself but I use them just because we do live far away from some of our friends and relatives and we don't get to see each other as often as we would liked to. By sending pictures of us (*and pictures of Finland*), I get to share a little part of our life with everyone at least once a year.

So, since I didn't feel like printing, cutting and gluing anything, I ordered our Christmas cards online this year. I used a photo service at Ifolor to make a normal post card size card from our own pictures. I added my own xmas greeting and I was done within minutes. The mail man delivered the cards to our mail box and now I'm left with writing the addresses (*by the way, why do people move all the time. It is pain to keep up with everyone's new addresses*) and getting enough stamps for them.

I want to keep our xmas cards somewhat secret, and that's why you only get to see a peak of them along with my address book and pen. The big red envelope in the picture is provided by the Finnish postal service. You can put all your domestic xmas cards in it and mail it already in November. The postal service will open it in December and then deliver the cards  before Christmas. Very handy for people who like to take care of the task of sending xmas cards as soon as possible.

But that's all about my xmas cards. Next I just have to get all the decorations up in the apartment as well as start preparing for baking gingerbread cookies (*yummy*).

By the way, do you like my new scarf? My friend Klaara brought it for me from Egypt. I have been wearing it almost every day. It is huge, warm and colorful. I love it!! It cheers me up.

Thanks Klaara and Happy end of the week to my other darlings!