Friday, December 30, 2011

Uh oh!



We're about to start a new year! There are so many friends I should have had time to see this year, so many things I should have done. Now I'm running out of time!
Where did all these days go? Why did 2011 just fly past and never stop for a moment?





Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all a blessed Christmas, and hope it will be a joyful holiday for you all.
We've started the the day out in the woods - on a bright, sunny morning.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Bad hair day


Well, the truth is: Every day is another bad hair day for my sons ;-) Every morning all the beautiful curls are like felted wool.

Tons of water, a special brush and patience is what it takes to fix it in the morning.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Knitting

People who know me, know I like to knit. But I only knit in periods. Sometimes I'm very fast, and sometimes things takes forever to finish. This took for ever. But now they are all done, and will be given away to two adorable little personalities.

Four Sundays preparing

We have been preparing for Christmas, preparing for the little king to come. The very last candle of advent is lit. Let all the four of them shine brightly!


I can't show you everything we've done so far. Some are secrets.

But we decorated our ginger bread church. The powdered sugar icing wasn't half as successful as I had hoped, it was all liquid - I didn't have enough powder. But the kids were happy anyway :)
The snow is coconut powder. It doesn't look to bad after all.







Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Saint Lucy's day

Well, we are not catholics nor are we obsessed with saints and stuff. But this day has been celebrated here in Norway for a while, and it is quite pleasant on one of these dark winter days in December, with the little kids carrying candles (mostly electric "candles") and singing.
The family activity for today was baking the traditional St. Lucy's buns. They are saffron-scented  sweet buns in funny shapes.


This fall, my little daughter has had her hear in cornrows for months. It certainly doesn't look all that good all the time, so I have to refresh it every now and then. Here are two pics - one from the fuzzy two weeks braids, and one from the neatly refreshed cornrows. And this time we went for new colors on the elastics too :-)





Sunday, December 11, 2011

Advent


Christmas is approaching! Three candles are lit and time goes by doing family activities. I'm used to Norwegian advent candle songs, but this one is beautiful too!

A candle is burning, flames warm and bright,
a candle of hope in December's dark night.
While angels sing blessing from heaven's starry sky,
our hearts we prepare now for Jesus is nigh.

A Candle is burning, a candle of peace,          
a candle to signal that conflict must cease:          
for Jesus is coming to show us the way;          
a message of peace humbly laid in the hay.

A candle is burning, a candle of joy.          
A candle to welcome brave Mary's new boy.          
Our hearts fill with wonder, and eyes light and glow          
as joy brightens winter like sunshine on snow.




And we've been cross country skiing  in the Winter Wonderland today!




Saturday, December 10, 2011

King winter has arrived!

 The hours of daylight are few but oh so beautiful! Here are a couple of photos from outside my office yesterday.


Last weekend I forgot the second Sunday of advent photo. Here we are.


Our manger scene that sits next to the TV. I'm quite proud of this one - it's hand made from Madagascar :-)

And as I wrote in my last post, on December 5th we made some snowflakes. The result was good, and I love them hanging there. They're fluttering due to the heat from the heater below.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

We go on with our advent calendar :)

4th of December the family activity was going to the movie theater.
December 5th we were making paper snowflakes and decorating one of our windows. I'll show you a pic once I've downloaded it.
6th of December was a disaster - on the note it said we were going to make snow lanterns. But little did we know the night before, that the snow was becoming too cold and not wet enough to make the snowballs needed for the lanterns. So we ended up searching the web for stuff the kids like to watch as a compensation for promises we failed to keep.
December 7th was the day where the boys were invited to a birthday party and mom was working all afternoon. There was no time for family activities, so we figured maybe that should be the day for a gift. So it was.
8th of December - that's today. We knew we were going to be sort of busy today and that there were going to be other people around too. So today was the day for making frozen bananas and eat them covered in chocolate. Yum!


Saturday, December 3, 2011

I probably told you the same a year ago ;-)

I love advent!

I love all the smells that remind me of my childhood and of course of Christmas.
I love to do with my kids what I used to do when I was little.
I love to make new traditions that are ours, that my kids hopefully will continue with their kids.
I love the way we've found a solution for the advent calendar. I so much want my kids to count their blessing as a count down for Christmas, not their things. This month shouldn't be all about getting another little gift.
I'm sure our kids know we love them more than anything despite not getting presents until Christmas Eve.
So how do we solve this challenge when our kids already have one of these cloth calendars with twenty four rings on them each?

Every day there is a rolled paper note for each of them hanging on their calendars. The note says something about what kind of activity the family is doing together today.

December 1st: We're finding our wooden manger scene and putting it in a nice spot. (Now it sits next to the TV ;-)  )

December 2nd: Treasure hunt. They looked around the house for ten clues to find the treasure hidden in the laundry room. The treasure was the dinner ingredients and we made the dinner together.

December 3rd: Baking ginger breads. And so we did :)