1st Advent Preparations

 

 

The rest of the week since Monday has been rainy, and I have not been out for any more "long" walks. But I have still been "on my feet" quite a lot just pottering about at home...

Tuesday was Laundry Day, and between my turns to the laundry room I also visited my storage space in the basement to collect my Advent decorations. Some readers who have been following this blog for years may recall that I tend to put up my Christmas decorations gradually during December. For 1st Advent, I usually start with switching my kitchen curtains and some other textiles; plus replacing various window lamps around the flat with electric candle holders and stars. This year, because of my injured knee, I decided to abstain from the curtain project, and just keep the ones that I bought back in spring - but exchange the green ribbons for red ones. I did manage to get the window stars up in the kitchen + study without climbing - just using a long grabber.

Ever since I moved to my present flat (17 years ago) I've also been used to having one electric candle holder (each with 7 lights) in each window; which means four of them. I recalled that the one in my living room stopped working some time after NewYear last winter, though. I was hoping that a whole set of new lightbulbs might fix it - but it did not. And even worse: The kitchen one now turned out to have given up as well! 

As I'm no electrician, my skills don't go beyond switching light bulbs - so both those candle holders had to go back down to the storage room, at least for now. Pity, as both those are kind of special and my favourites... 

However... This was also my week for ordering stuff from the supermarket, and they also have quite a lot of Christmas things. So I added two new ones (standard size and design, and not very expensive) to my order. A red one for the kitchen (see the photo above), and a white one of the same model for the living room (below). They arrived with my groceries on Thursday, and thankfully turned out fully functional. A bit smaller than my old ones, but I'll no doubt get used to that. 

The candle holders in my study (above) and bedroom (below) are lower and bow-shaped.

 

 The orchid on the left has decided to spring some new flower buds in time for Advent.

This small nativity scene is simple and made of plastic - but it's been with me nearly all my life! It was given to me in my early childhood by two "old ladies" (as they appeared to me back then), cousins of my maternal grandmother. They worked in a gift shop and used to give me various ornaments for Christmases and birthdays, some of which I still have. And this one has ended up in my "1st Advent box". 

Let There Be Light

 

Yesterday (between turns to the laundry room) I collected my electric candlesticks and window stars from my storage room down in the basement; and today I set them all up in their usual places - one candlestick on each of my window sills, and in the kitchen and in my study also a hanging star. It's a tradition here in Sweden to put up these window lights for the first Advent Weekend. Back in my childhood we only had one electric candlestick (in the living room) and one paper star (in the kitchen). In my first own home(s) I too had only one of each; but have added to the "collection" over the years... The orange paper star in my kitchen is still of the same simple type as the one mum always put up back in my childhood, though. (The one in my study is a paper star too, but white with golden details.)

It felt like it took "half the day" for me to get this sorted today (including cleaning window sills, moving things around, unpacking the candlesticks, sorting out cords and timers, and checking/changing some lightbulbs etc). But in the afternoon I also managed to fit in a walk (before dark) to get my "overseas" (out-of-Europe) postcards posted. 

Outdoors it's been very novemberish this week - grey and "dark" even in the daytime, and quite a lot of rain too. None while I was out this afternoon, though. But it does feel like the right time to get some extra lights and candles up indoors now...

Let There Be Light

 

Monday afternoon walk

Wintry weather this week inspired me to get started with my Advent decorations a few days earlier than planned. (Looking at the dates, not really earlier than usual though, as Advent comes "late" this year, with the 4th Advent Sunday coinciding with Christmas Eve.)

Anyway, it struck me that I would have more time for decorating on Monday-Tuesday than I would have later in the week. So I started with the kitchen and bedroom yesterday; and continued with the living room and study today. 

Kitchen

 The kitchen is always the biggest project because there I also change the curtains.

Bedroom

Study

Living room

Balcony

Back in my childhood, as well as in my first flat back in my 20s, we/I just had one window star, in the kitchen (the same kind and colour of paper star as I still have in the kitchen), and one electric candlestick, in the living room. 

Ever since I moved into the flat where I live now, though (15 years ago), I've had the setup that I do now.  (Except that I've had to exchange one or two candlesticks over time. But this year - so far! - I did not even have to play "find the faulty light bulb" with any of them...)

Glad to have them all back up once again, to brighten up the December darkness.

(As usual, I will be adding my other Christmas things week by week until Christmas.)

 
In honour of the freshly fallen snow (so far only a very light layer) and outdoors temperatures now around -7°C (19°F), Barbie and Skipper have donned matching winter jackets + knitted hats (all made by my mum back in the 1960s). (Skipper only had summer shoes in her wardrobe, though, so I had to make her a pair of snowboots out of cotton pads and surgical paper tape...)

 

Today, just a short walk outdoors before lunch (photos from around 11:30 am).

Lights in the Dark

Starting on Thursday afternoon, and continuing on Friday, I've been putting up my decorations for the 1st Advent weekend:

Kitchen

Living room

Bedroom and Study

 Happy First Advent Sunday, everyone!

As usual, I'll be adding to the Christmas decorations gradually during December. Basically I always start with the candle holders and stars for 1st Advent, plus changing some textiles (kitchen curtains and table cloths/runners). Some angels may appear around St Lucy's day (13th Dec); while elves/gnomes and my little Christmas tree rarely come into the picture until much closer to Christmas Eve.

That Time of the Year

And suddenly we're past mid November, with only one more week to go to 1st Advent weekend... Looking out of my windows, all the trees are bare now, and it's getting dark early in the afternoon. (Sunset 3:45 pm.) The last few days there have also been chilly winds blowing, with temperatures close to freezing point in the mornings - and not much better during the day either. I'm thankful that I did manage to get my flu vaccination over with on Monday (see previous post) while it was still quite mild, and no wind. Queuing outdoors for 45 minutes later in the week would no doubt have been more of an ordeal!

I was still feeling tired for a couple of days afterwards, though; hard to say if side-effect of the vaccination or just "anyway". (Not exactly ill, just a bit "slow".) But yesterday, I decided it was a good day to change my kitchen curtains - as I always do around this time of year. Other decorations for Advent will wait until next weekend; but I always prefer to get the curtain job over with beforehand, choosing a day when I have the time, and feel up for it.

Today, I woke up to the news on the radio that the east coast of Sweden was having the first snow storm of the year - as much as 30-40 cm in some places.

Which told me it was also time to get on with the final "winter preparations" on my own balcony... So today I've covered my clematis (climbing on a trellis against the wall) with a layer of fibre cloth, and wrapped my strawberry boxes in old newspapers and shoved those under the bench - which was already covered with a plastic tarpaulin for winter. 

Seems I was just in time. Looking out the window tonight, I see we're now having a light snowfall going on here as well... Whether it will remain just light, or turn worse, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

For my own part, there's nowhere special I need to be tomorrow. Might be a good day to just stay in and get started on some Christmas correspondence...

3rd Advent Sunday and St Lucy's Day

 

Today is the 3rd Advent Sunday; and tomorrow (13th December) here in Sweden we celebrate "Lucia", or St Lucy's day. 

It's been another snowy week here. They say that we can expect milder weather and thaw during the week to come; but yesterday, we just had top-up of more snow... I went for a short walk in the old cemetery nearby, but decided against walking all the way into town. 

 

Instead, I stayed home in the afternoon, and did some more baking. 'Lucia buns' (saffron bread) this time... It's been a few years since I last made those. Sometimes I've made a loaf of saffron bread in my bread machine instead. But the last couple of times I tried that (last year + a couple of weeks ago), the result was not good. The dough rose too much, only to then collapse in the middle, and in the end the loaf turned out a weird shape with a hard crust, falling apart when cut... I decided it's probably time to junk that machine, and go back to the traditional way of baking!

 

I'm out of practice with the manual baking of these buns, though. Below is an image of what I was aiming for (with those on the left above)... Ah well. At least they turned out edible!

 

 

Today, I went for another snowy walk around the cemetery - for air, light and exercise.

 

In the afternoon, I watched a local Lucia/Christmas concert "live online" - from our biggest church downtown, courtesy of the local newspaper, on their website. (Cast from my tablet onto my TV screen.)

 

 

Recipes for Swedish saffron buns and gingerbread biscuits from sweden.se

Gingerbread Season

 

Yesterday was a good day for staying in and baking some Christmas gingerbread biscuits! (I'd prepared the dough in my food processor the day before.)

Do you bake these for Christmas? My recipe is one I came up with back in my youth, I think it was a mix between my mum's recipe and one from my first cookery book. Mum used to have ginger, cinnamon and clove in hers. In mine, I also have cardamom. (I love cardamom...)

There have been years in my life when I've not felt up to this kind of baking because of problems with neck-shoulder-arm. I'm happy I've been able to pick up the tradition again in more recent years. I've adjusted my recipe to only a third of the original, though. (In the past, I also used to have more friends over to share the calories...)

First Advent Sunday, First Snow, and First Amaryllis

 

In Sweden, the Christmas season starts with the first Advent Sunday, and that's also when most people start putting up decorations - especially candlesticks and window stars. December is a very dark month here, so the extra lights are welcome. 

I spent most of Friday putting up my window decorations, plus changing some table cloths and runners etc.

To the left in the collage above is the window in my study; to the right the living room.

On Saturday morning, somewhat to my surprise, I woke up to the first snowfall of the year.

I went out for a walk a bit later, but kept it very short. For one thing, it's tricky to know in some places if there is ice hidden under the freshly fallen snow or not... 

And when I woke up today, the first Amaryllis flower in the kitchen window had sprung open for 1st Advent Sunday.

Lighting the first Advent candle.

 

Happy Advent, everyone!

Turn On the Lights

 

The weekend before 1st Advent Sunday in my town is traditionally celebrated by officially turning on the Christmas lights in the city centre and park on Saturday afternoon. Last year I think they cancelled it (not the lights, but the public event) but this year it was announced to take place as usual, at 4 pm today. 

However, rain has been pouring down from dense grey skies all day today, and I did not feel tempted to go out. (The photo above is from another day, when they had just started getting various decorations up.) Actually today was such a dismal wet day that I chose to not set foot outdoors at all. It just didn't seem worth the trouble! (of getting wet etc)

So what to do for alternative exercise? I decided that if the town is turning on the Christmas lights, I might as well take on the job of changing my kitchen curtains - which I'll want done before putting up other decorations for 1st Advent anyway. 

If you've been following me for a few years, you'll know the drill by now... But I snapped a couple of new photos anyway - it's easier than looking up old ones!

The window star and electric candles won't come up until towards the end of next week, though. They're still in a box in my basement storage room. (The curtains, on the other hand, I keep in a chest in my living room, so I did not have to go down to the basement for those.)

Yesterday, the first Christmas card also dropped in! - from a penfriend in England, who is always early with hers:

 

I've got started with mine to be sent abroad as well - those going "overseas" will probably be posted some time next week. 

Meanwhile, below is a postcard of the latest fashion in Paris 108 winters ago - sent from my great-aunt Gerda to her brother Gustaf in November 1913, from the Capital of Fashion. (If you want to know more, visit my Sepia Saturday post on my blog Greetings from the Past.)

 

Baking Ginger Snaps

 

No Christmas without ginger snaps!
Today, and 60 years ago...

 

Baking a small batch of ginger snaps today made me think of these old photos in one of my  early photo albums. The year was 1960. I'm 5 years old here. Back in the spring or summer the same year, we (my parents and I) had moved from a flat in town to a house of our own in a village nearby. The kitchen was a galley kitchen with a dining alcove. Whether mum also made her own Christmas ginger snaps while we were still living in the flat, I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure she did it every year from then on. I have baked my own most years of my adult life as well. Not quite every year, though - for one thing, there have been years when I couldn't manage it because of neck/arm problems. But I've always missed it when I've not been able to do it. 

 

Blackout, Thanksgiving and Advent

 

 

While we don't celebrate the American Thanksgiving in Sweden, for some reason we have in later years still imported Black Friday - which this year turned into Black Week. (Whether in spite of or because of the corona virus may be debated; as at the same time, the government and the health authorities keep telling us to keep distance and stay away from shopping centers...)

For my own part, I was hit by another kind of blackout on Wednesday, when all of a sudden my cable TV/internet/phone quit working. I had been watching something on Play TV in the afternoon, without problem, but then when I tried to switch back to regular TV, everything just froze. I tried the standard trick of restarting things; but that did not help. I had a TV emergency number written down and called to check if there was a general problem. Nope, there wasn't. They arrived at the theory that the fault might be in the power adapter to my my cable box; which it was too late to do anything about that day. I then also realized that oops, if the fault was with the cable box, I also had no internet...

I survived, of course: after all, I still had electricity, and FM radio, and my mobile phone (but with limited data, as I use a cash card). I could even have watched films on DVD if I had wanted to, as the problem was not in the TV itself. Being without both TV and internet at the same time still made me feel oddly disconnected from the rest of the world, though! I don't think that's actually happened before, except perhaps during some power outage (which rarely last long in the city). Usually if I've had internet problems, that has not involved the TV channels; or vice versa.

I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get it fixed before the weekend, but luckily it got sorted out  the next day. They phoned in the early afternoon and said I could pick up a new power adapter at a place within walking distance from where I live. So I did; and when I got back home and plugged that in, all went smoothly back to normal. So... I had my own kind of Thanksgiving Thursday, celebrating being reconnected to the World again! 

I've also done my usual decorating for 1st Advent Sunday - even though Advent celebrations, like everything else, will be a bit different this year. As no congregations larger than 8 people are allowed at the moment, the usual live church services and concerts are cancelled. But, now being back online again, there will be various digital alternatives... (And with Blackout Wednesday fresh in memory, I might try to make use of that!)