OUR FAMILY CHRISTMAS BOOK

We're getting nearer and nearer Christmas! I've spent the past week knocked out by the flu, so feel like I already have a lot of Christmas activities to catch up on. Good thing I finished buying all my Christmas presents in November! While I'm getting my Christmas crafts organized, I thought I'd share this little memory book I started a couple years ago.

In 2014 and 2015 I made whole albums dedicated to the month of December, inspired by the December Daily concept. In 2016 however, I started making albums for the whole year (here's 2016 and here's 2017--2018 is almost done!), so making a 2016 December album felt a bit redundant. I love the idea of documenting Christmas traditions though, so I decided to make a separate Christmas album inspired by this post that I came across years ago.

Finding an album I actually liked proved to be more difficult than I'd thought. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of options out there, and the ones I could find were a bit dated and just not quite what I had in mind. So I thought about DIYing it. I thought about just having a project life-style album and adding to that each year. I even thought about getting a book printed with pages ready to fill in. Eventually I settled on getting an album with blank pages and pockets. The blank pages are obviously for journaling, and in the pockets I'll keep Christmas cards. I love that this gives me a lot of freedom for doing whatever I want. I'm sure my tastes will change over the years, and I'll have years where I'm feeling super creative and years where I just want to make a couple of notes, and either way it'll be so special to look back on. If I want to write a ginormous essay detailing everything one year, I can do that. If I just want to fill the pages with photos one year, I can do that too. The book I ended up with is one of these personalized books from here.

I decided to backtrack and start in in 2015. This was the year we got married, so it seemed like a bit of a natural starting point. I insist on taking a Christmas family protrait every year, and I love seeing how our family is growing! This is already such a special album to bring out each year, and I'm already so excited to be adding on the 2018 pages. To be continued!

KNITTED CHRISTMAS BAUBLES

I was a little late with decorating my Christmas tree this year. I say late, but that’s only because I basically like to decorate either on the first of December or the first Sunday of advent, and this year I waited over a week. So I suppose decorating it the first week of December isn’t really all that late. My mom commented that my tree was still looking pretty bare though, so I'm still in the process of adding to it. I don't have a whole lot of Christmas decorations here yet though, so I decided to knit myself a few Christmas baubles as well. I love the traditional Scandinavian look of these, and took my inspiration from Arne and Carlos and traditional Norwegian knitting patterns, like the Marius sweater and the Selbu mittens. How's your Christmas tree decorating going?

GINGERBREAD ADVENT CALENDAR

Never too old for an advent calendar, right? I usually get the chocolate ones, but I'm usually not the biggest fan of the chocolate so this year I decided to make my own with gingerbread. Have you got your advent calendar ready?

All you need for this is a branch, some gingerbread, some twine or string to tie the cookies with. I chose a pretty sturdy branch I found int he woods near my house, and then used a saw to get it down to the right length. I used this recipe to bake the cookies, and then made the holes with a toothpick before putting them in the oven. Let the countdown to Christmas begin!

DIY ADVENT CANDLES

It is almost December! And as it's the first Sunday of advent this weekend, I thought I'd get my advent candles ready. As I don't have an advent candle holder I decided to make my own (any excuse for a bit of DIY!) . I got my inspiration from Bolig Pluss, this interior design magazine I subscribe to (the old fashioned way, by post!), and since I pretty much already had all the things I needed at home anyway, I decided I'd try to make something similar.

To make these advent candles, I used four candles, four jars (in different sizes), white tack, some twine and a few pine twigs from my garden. I used white tack to attach the candles to the jars, and decorated them by tying a bit of twine around it and shoving in a couple twigs. Done. My kitchen table looks so much more festive already! Can't wait to light the first candle on Sunday!

PEPPERKAKER RECIPE

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So I wasn't actually planning on starting my Christmas baking until next weekend. I mean, it's still November, and I like to hold off on the Christmas stuff until at least December. But then, you kinda have to start early if you want everything to be finished in time, and I've already started a few Christmas projects on the sly anyway. So with that logic, I started my Christmas baking this weekend with a batch of gingerbread, or pepperkaker in Norwegian.

Historically in Norway, the tradition is to bake seven kinds of cookies for Christmas to have ready for visitors. I doubt I'll actually end up baking seven kinds, but mainly because I'm pretty sure I'd end up with way more cookies than necessary and I'd probably end up eating them all myself, which is not as good of an idea as it might sound. I do however plan on also making kakemen and krumkaker, and I might even try to make some smultringer. We'll see what I end up having time to make!

This is my favorite gingerbread recipe. It calls for leaving the dough over night, so I like to prepare the dough before I go to bed, and then do my stamping and baking the next day. It'll give you a good sized batch, though if you're planning on making a gingerbread house as well then you might need to double up. Last year I only ended up with about 20 cookies after making my house, and that might sound like enough, but it was less than half a jar of cookies which pretty much all myseriously disappeared after I had my brother over for a visit. Gingerbread is pretty popular in my family, so another batch was an absolute necessity. 

Pepperkake (gingerbread) recipe:

2 eggs
350 g butter

350 g sugar

200 ml golden syrup

2 tablespoons ground clove

2 tablespoons ground ginger

2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons baking soda

700 g flour

Directions: Melt butter, sugar, syrup and the spices in a medium pan. Stir continuously, and take it off once it starts to boil. It'll smell amazing but I don't recommend dipping your finger in to taste as it'll be very hot! Leave it in the fridge to cool for about an hour. Once it's cool, mix in the eggs, and then the flour using a mixer. Once it's all incorporated, put the dough in a cold place and leave it over night.

The next day, roll the dough out on a floured surface, and stamp out your cookies. I like to roll them out so they're about half a cm thick so they don't end up being too thin and crispy. Bake at 150 degrees Celsius on the middle shelf, for about 7 minutes until the cookies start to brown. Decorate with icing if you wish, or just dig in! Try not to finish them before Christmas, though.

CROCHET STARS

Yay, another crochet project! Today I have been playing around with crocheting five pointed stars and thought I'd share the pattern I've ended up with. These are super quick to make, and perfect for the season. They'd look great as a Christmas ornament hanging on your tree, or as a garland, or as my friend just pointed out on my instagram, as a mobile! Or could you imagine how cute it'd be with a bunch of these all joined up as a giant starry blanket? Clearly, the possibilities are more or less endless. Get crocheting!

Directions: I used a size 3.5 mm needle for this, but I'm sure pretty much any size would work. Start off with six chains to form a foundation ring. On this ring, chain three, and then add fourteen treble crochet stitches to form the inner circle of the star. Then for each of the five star points, follow the steps below.


Step 1: Chain eight stitches, and double crochet a stitch into the sixth stitch from the circle (i.e. two from the hook). Try to make your eight chains a bit loose, so that you wont end up with squinty star points because one side is tighter and shorter than the other. Step 2: Do a half treble crochet stitch into the fifth stitch on the chain from the circle. Step 3: Do two treble crochet stitches in the fourth and third stitch from the circle. Step 4: Do two double treble crochet stitches in the second and first stitches in the chain from the circle.

And that's your star point done! Attach it three stitches from where you started it, and repeat for the remaining four star points. Secure your thread and you're done!

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW! AND SOME EDIBLE CHRISTMAS IDEAS

It started snowing yesterday! I've been in a super Christmassy mood ever since. Snow makes me so excited. Jumping-in-front-of-the-window and staring-with-my-mouth-open excited! I'm not sure I'll ever grow out of it. And since it's now finally the December, I've been told it is officially socially acceptable to have your Christmas decorations up. This also makes me very excited. I'm not gonna lie though, mine have already been up for a couple of days. I'm pretty sure I try to wait til the 1st of December every year, and I'm pretty sure I fail every year. This year, since I'm at my parents' house, I used the excuse that since it's a lot bigger than what I'm used to I'd probably be better off starting early.

I have also started with the Christmas presents. I'm not as intense as some people who were finished with all their Christmas shopping already halfway through November (seriously Kerry, how organized are you!), but seeing as I'm trying to make as many of my presents as possible this year, I needed a somewhat early start. I've pretty much been getting lost in all the different gift guides out there, like the ones on Everything Etsy, or Meet me at Mike's, or all the ideas floating around Pinterest. I've been knitting up a storm too, after being inspired by ideas from Pickles and the Purl bee, to name a few.

I'm also planning on giving out edible gifts this year though, so thought I'd be an idea to do a round up of those. I'm a fan of giving edible gifts to people who might usually be a bit difficult to get gifts for, and I like recipes for things that keep a while, and can be cut into bite-size pieces and stored in a jar. Fudge, caramels, truffles, even sauces--what's not to love? These are a few I've got bookmarked and plan on testing out:


Soft, chewy caramels from The Kitchn
Sweet and spicy peanut brittle from A Beautiful Mess
Chocolate nutella and sea salt fudge from Tasty Kitchen
Apple cider caramels from Smitten Kitchen
Chocolate mint truffles from BBC Good Food
Dark chocolate Earl Grey fudge sauce from Hummingbird On High
Salted caramel sauce from Brown Eyed Baker
Hokey Pokey (Honeycomb) from Nigella
Hazelnut and dark chocolate meringues from Posted Cake Crumbs
Chocolate hazelnut spread from Bon Appetit
Almond date truffles from Sprouted Kitchen
Peanut butter fudge from Sophie Dalh on BBC Food

...and that's probably a good place to stop before I start drooling everywhere. To the kitchen!