We celebrate Advent in Sweden. Four Sundays before Christmas Eve we light a candle and meet with friends and family to celebrate with big cocktail parties or just coffee and cookies.
This candle holder has been with me and Rickard since we moved in together. I decorated it with ribbon one year and it’s sort of stayed on. Some years (like this year, I decorate it with moss and assorted bling. Other years I leave it empty.
The yarn bullfinches are a gift from my grandmother (I think).
The little white bowl is filled with Christmas-y spices (star anise, cinnamon stick, cloves and cardamom) and some little spruce branches.
I also try to light the date candle every day. It started out well yesterday morning, but today we forgot so I think we will save this one for evenings. I have fond memories of my grandmother forgetting this candle (it looked the same thirty years ago) in the mornings and burning it past the day’s date and then not being able to have it lit for a few days.
I finally got around to make spruce wreaths for my china cabinet this year. Isabel doesn’t like that they’re not even, but I like them because they are not even. I did notice a mild allergic reaction when I made them so I won’t be touching them too much. As long as I leave them hanging I can handle them just fine.
This is about how much I decorate before Lucia (Dec 13th). Everything else will have to wait until then. And the tree is brought in on the 23rd. (Although it looks like we won’t have a tree this year.) I also decided not to change the curtains by our dining table to the Christmas-y ones. They are brown and steal too much light from the room.
When the sun starts to set just after 3 pm you need to make sure to get as much light as you can possibly can into the room.
