Christmas Gift to You from SwedesPlease and Me

I have mentioned before I like the music blog SwedesPlease written by an American about Swedish music. They have a fun playlist you can download for free of Christmas music by indie Swedish bands like Hello, Saferide and The Hives.

Merry Christmas!

Snow Day

In the morning

Bare Tree in the Fog

For the love of trees dressed in snow

The church parking lot at school pick up time

Christmas at School

New fallen snow was piled high today all around town and set the mood to be extra special for the JulFest Christmas celebration at TheGirls school.

The bright and drifted snow in the early morning at school

The old Chicken coop turned play house covered in snow

The kids in Swede girls class wet felted the Tomtes on this nature table earlier in the week, and all took one home.

The advent calendar at school has black paper with windows that open to reveal tissue paper 'stained glass' cut outs of the nativity scene.

One of the trees outside was decorated with pepparkakor and apples hung from red ribbon

I missed the school day celebration, but they had a special vegetarian JulBord, or traditional Swedish Christmas buffet, with soy sausage, potatoes gratin, cabbages, and various pickles for lunch. They sang holiday songs and danced around a Christmas Tree. The teacher completed telling the story of The Nativity, which has been told in parts all week long.

SwedeGirl decorated Pepparkakor in Class

SwedeBaby got a decorated Pepparkakor as a gift from the teacher. They each got a little felted animal and some hand dipped candles as gifts from their teacher as well.

Once home, Swedegirl asked to write a letter to Santa. She drew a picture of the nativity, and intends to send it to Santa. In our not overly Christian home, it was nice to see her processing the story and making it as a gift for Santa!

Santa Lucia Day in Sweden

December 13th, Sweden celebrates the return on the light by honoring Santa Lucia.

This is our second Lucia in Sweden. Before the Julian calendar, solstice fell near the time Lucia is celebrated. The practice of having a young girl dress as Lucia is actually a newish way of observing the return of the light, but the idea of welcoming the sun's return amongst the darkest days of winter is older than anyone can say for sure.

We prepared by having Swededaddy, the Swede of the house, bake some gluten free pepparkakor cookies with the girls.

I made egg nog, my traditional American holiday drink, to sip as we baked.

SwedeGirl is a great baker, and even the little one enjoyed stamping out cookies with Swededaddy's help.

They came out very nice, ready for Lucia morning!

We celebrated Lucia on Sunday morning the 12th, so it would be on a slow unhurried weekend day instead of Monday. SwedeGirl set her alarm, got out of bed and arranged a plate of cookies, and dressed her self, and came singing into our room, waking us. We were amazed and honored to see Lucia! She had to take off her crown to show us, 'Mom, it's ME!!!!' Boy, she was good and fooled us, we thought Lucia had really come.

We took a drive to Farmor's-grandma's so Lucia could visit.

I am obsessed with photographing the sun, and there is no way I can capture how bright and white the light is when it shines over a field of snow, but I keep trying.

Lucia brought cookies, and Light

My cookie monsters think the best part of Lucia is the Pepparkakor!!

At Farmor's we found a picture of a Lucia Procession Swededaddy had painted as a child. So nice to see my girls being part of the tradition from his childhood!

On Lucia day, there was a event at school but the girls felt like staying home, and after a busy weekend I did not object, so they skipped the school Lucia. We planned to go to a church Lucia in the village church that night, and SwedeGirl decided that was enough for her.

Soft fluffy crystal snow flakes, the kind where you can really see all six sides fell as we entered the church, while the bells chimed.

The light from the street shone through the stained glass of the church window, making magical colors in the entryway

A nearby sign reminded us the church dates back to the 1500's

Lucia and her procession entered and sang their Songs

We returned home and it was still quite early. I had lamb stew with a holiday beer as part of the broth waiting for us, and had some ris gröt, glögg, and pepparkakor for desert. We put on some Christmas music and had a very cozy evening at home with a fire in the fire place, decorating the tree.

Happy Lucia, welcome the light!

Oh, Christmas Tree

The weekend brought sunshine and temperatures above freezing.

Which means it was slushy and wet when we headed out to get our Christmas tree!

We had been planning to go cut one in the forest, but found less motivation and energy than we planned for that day, so we went to a cut your own tree farm.

And had fun wandering amongst the trees.....

That all look a bit Charlie Brown, too me, as the Swedish Kungsgranar have these really sparse tops, which look too naked for me.

So we settled for a fundraiser tree from the grocery store parking lot to benefit the kids sports club, it was my type of tree, all full and nice on top!

JUST the right size!

Beautiful Morning

GingerBread House
Our Fairy Tale Perfect Housing

My girl has been asking me to make a gingerbread house, and our first one ever came out looking pretty good!

The girls had tons of fun making it....

And it was as easy as buying this 23 kronor box from Anna's, the maker of the best Swedish pepparkakor/ gingerbread cookies!

I was all for doing the gingerbread house but imagined it taking a day or more. When I saw this short cut of buying a prefab yummy house, and envisioned skipping the struggle of finding the perfect dough, and then perfect construction plan, I was happy to lay my money down. The house became an instantly do able project, all fun no hassle. I found my kit at Co Op Forum, but I hear these boxes are sold at IKEA USA. It has the building parts only- 4 walls, 2 roof slabs, and 4 pieces for a chimney.

We made our own icing and decorated it using naturally colored candy from our stash. Gel hearts, and the last of the Sunspire M and Ms from the USA trip.

The Royal Icing for cement was easy, just beat one egg white with 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, and 1/8 tsp of cream of tartar powder. Two of the house pieces were broken, and the cement icing glued it back together nicely.

We made sure we had an extra box of Anna's pepparkakor on hand for my tasty-tasters, who were ready to eat some gingerbread, even though they had to keep their hands off the building materials!

The mom had to assemble the house while the girls watched and munched cookies, but they got to put the candies on.

We thought we did alright for amateurs.

Around town, we have spied these gingerbread creations in the bakery window.

I hate marzipan, and red food coloring, but the marzipan tomtes are pretty cute.

And the cinnamon sticks used for logs are nice touches, too.