Hi guys! It’s Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve is the main day of celebration here in Sweden, so I am feeling very full and very spoiled at the moment. I want to wish you all, celebrating or not, a very happy Christmas and a great end of the year! It’s been an intense blogging-month, and I don’t really have much to say tonight. So, I’m just gonna show you guys some photos of food: Christmas breakfast. So tasty! I almost never…
Last night I did my last bit of Christmas baking, and made some delicious ginger cookies. They’ve been my “thing” to bring to X-mas at my parents’ place for the last number of years. Don’t they look tasty? Not very neat, but tasty. You can check out the recipe over here if you want! Today I’m finishing the last cleaning and wrapping, and then tonight it’s off to my parents’ place to decorate the tree! I can’t believe how fast…
I have had a busy day, and have a few things left on my to-do list before bed, so tonight I will just share another Christmas song with you. Mer Jul by Adolphson & Falk is one of the two must-be-played-on-Xmas songs I mentioned the other day. It’s about wanting more Christmas! More! I kind of agree, tbh. It’s pretty humorous, but less snarky than Juligen. Enjoy!
This year I decided to add something new to my usual Christmas baking repertoire: candy cane/mint macarons. I baked macarons for the first time a few weeks back and have been wanting to do it again, so I thought a Christmassy flavor would make sense. It went so-so… I mean, the mint filling with crushed candy canes in it was pretty dang delicious. But I had some trouble with the actual macarons and several of them ended up both too…
Can you believe it’s already the 20th? It’s been such a quick month! Weird… Last night I finally remembered to hang some baubles in my tiny Christmas tree, or rather Christmas branch. They had to cut down a tree at my folks’ house in the countryside, so mom brought little bits of it back home to be little tiny Christmas trees, and I got one. It turned out pretty cute, I think! I few years ago, the same year I…
At my house (well, my parents’ house) there are two Christmas songs that were, and really still are, an absolute given on Christmas. One of these are Juligen by Just D. The title is a play off of the traditional Christmas song Nu Är Det Jul Igen (Nu it’s Christmas again), and is a very snarky, humorous song that samples both the abovementioned traditional song and audio bits from various Christmas-related media. You can hear it below. I considered translating the lyrics for…
It’s almost Christmas! How did it go this fast? In the last days before the holiday itself, everyone seems to be running around in a hurry to get everything ready. With that in mind, I have an appropriate word for you today: Julstök is a bit difficult to translate. If you search on google, it’ll tell you the English translation is “Christmas preperations”, but I don’t feel like that catches the nuance of it. As we have seen before jul means Christmas. Stök, however,…
As you may or may not know, pepparkakor (gingerbread cookies), are a Swedish Christmas classic. I was a bit late this year, and only baked last week. But at least I have enough now to last until Christmas, and have some left for the mini-Christmas I have planned with friends on Boxing Day. There’s just something about home-baked pepparkakor. The store bought ones are never as good. If you’re interested in trying to make some yourself, I posted the recipe the…
Today I had my last day at the office for a few weeks. I had some vacation days to use. I’ll have to keep an eye on my work email during that time, but I won’t really be working. I also won’t be studying. It’ll be the first time in years I go through the holiday season without a looming deadline, and it really feels like I’m now on jullov, which is my word for you today: So, jullov means Christmas hols or Christmas leave, really. Jul means…
I’m a bit tired this evening, and have an early morning tomorrow, so I thought I’d just share a Christmas song I like. It’s one of my favorites. Originally a poem by Viktor Rydberg, Gläns Över Sjö och Strand is a fairly traditional but beautiful account of the birth of Jesus and the star of Bethlehem. The title means, roughly “Gleam over lake and beach“. If I wasn’t so dang tired, I’d attempt to translate the lyrics but they’re a bit too…