Godt Nytår

We are off to a New Year's party but I just wanted to drop in and say Godt Nytår and Happy New Year to you! I hope that 2013 will bring you happiness, new adventures, and the best memories. 

Lots of love from Copenhagen! 

Our Christmas

After three days of food, family, and traditions, Christmas has come to an end. We started the celebrations on the 24th with going to a service at the boyfriend's family's local church and then driving into the countryside to have dinner at his aunt and uncle's house. We had what I think most other Danish families had for their Christmas dinner that night - duck, caramelized potatoes, red cabbage, and risalamande for dessert. Singing and dancing around the Christmas tree is also a tradition here so we sang a few carols and walked around the lit up tree before everyone opened their presents.

The 25th and 26th of December is called First Christmas Day and Second Christmas Day and we spent those two days at Christmas lunches with the boyfriend's dad's side of the family, and then his mom's side of the family. The lunches are an all day affair and we ate and drank from the early afternoon until dinnertime. We had a great time at both lunches and it is always nice to see the boyfriend's cousins, aunts, and uncles and get to know them a bit better as we don't see most of them very often.

This has been my second Christmas in Denmark and I must say that I quite like them as there are more traditions and rituals here in terms of what is eaten every year, singing around the tree, and meeting with relatives on specific days. This Christmas season has all been really lovely and as I don't know where I'll be living after the summer, we'll see where we'll be spending Christmas in 2013!

*All the photos are from the boyfriend's mom, T.

And That's A Wrap!

We have survived three days of Christmas celebrating and eating! The boyfriend went into work really early today to finish some things off before a deadline this morning and then we met up for brunch. I'll be back with a post on our Christmas, but for now, how bad do you want to have a sip of the mint hot chocolate we had earlier today? The hot chocolates at Kalaset are the best in Copenhagen!

Now we are shifting gears from Christmas to New Year's! We will be attending a party at our friends' apartment and we are in charge of desserts so there will be a lot of baking going on Sunday and Monday! How was your Christmas? What are your plans for New Year's? 

Dear You,

We are celebrating Christmas here in Copenhagen today so I just wanted to say...

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends and that you have a great time celebrating this lovely holiday!

Med Kærlig Hilsen,

Karen

Christmas Cozy

A cozy Saturday afternoon with friends, gløgg, and sweets.

Christmas is celebrated on the 24th here so there's less than 2 days til Christmas for us! We're just running a few more errands tomorrow before settling in for a lot of eating and celebrating early next week! Happy (almost Christmas) Weekend!

This Week's Flowers

We invited the boyfriend's parents over for coffee on Sunday and his mom brought us two new orchid plants. I had never seen this type of orchids before but I sure do like how many blooms they have! This species of orchid is called "dendrobium nobile".

My parents have had orchid plants and it always seemed like they were really hard to take care of. Over the last two years I've had a few orchid plants. I water them maybe once a week or every two weeks and try to put them in a warm spot. Since orchid plants are extremely inexpensive here in Copenhagen, if one dies, I'm not heartbroken. I am however, super excited and giddy when I a new bud develops and it actually survives and blooms!

On the side, I've bought a few hyacinths now for Christmas as they are super popular here right now but I seem to be killing them all. I bought some last week and the leaves have turned all yellow! (Which is why they do not get photographed and displayed on here!) What am I doing wrong? Do you keep plants or flowers at home? What's your favorite?

This Year's Gift Wrap Style

I love wrapping gifts. l o v e it. It's so much fun for me. As I mentioned awhile back, I got a few rolls of wrapping paper from Bungalow during their flea market sale at the end of September and I finally got to use them. The boyfriend and I joined up with his brother to purchase gifts for their parents so we bought a few things for them from their wish list. The boyfriend and I also bought each other two gifts and we're still working on finding the last part of his brother's gift.

Last year, I wrapped and decorated each gift separately but this year, I went for the stacked look. So we piled the two or sometimes three gifts for each person on top of each other and held everything together with two strands of white paper ribbon and one strand of turquoise twine. To top it off, we used either a brown paper tag or a Bungalow heart gift tag depending on the wrapping paper used on the top gift. I also placed two white feathers through the knot on the bow and a sparkly little apple decoration, these were just some craft items I had lying around and thought it would add a different texture and a little bit of sparkle to the gifts.

Here are some of my gift wrapping essentials:

Scissors
Wrapping paper (I love the simple white or tan/brown kraft paper look)
Tissue paper (use if the gift can be seen through the wrapping paper)
Ribbon (I like to use multiple strands and mix different types)
Tape (preferably washi/mt tape!)
Gift tags
Extra little decorations (feathers, buttons, paper flowers, etc.)

Do you like wrapping and decorating gifts? What sort of materials do you like to use? If you have some  gift wrapping ideas or tips, send them my way! Happy gifting this Christmas season!

Happy Thursday

Some random thoughts for you today!



First of all, today is Luciadag/Saint Lucia Day. Also known as the official lussekatter eating day! So you bet I took a few of those little saffron buns out from the freezer for a sweet little treat tonight! You can read more about Lucia here and watch the really sweet video above of some Danish children celebrating Lucia at school.

Secondly, I've been wanting to write about this for awhile. As I mentioned before, we were at the spa at the local swimming pool on my brithday. At the spa, there is a room with massage chairs and people can sign up for a time slot to use a chair. So the boyfriend and I go up to put our names down for the next available time and I see that someone put down "Gurlie" ahead of us. And I turned to the boyfriend and said something like "Do you think that girl is trying to be all cute and stuff by nicknaming herself Gurlie? And usually we would usually spell it like Girlie, not Gurlie". Anyways, little did I know that Gurlie is a real Danish name!

Thirdly, I took part in a cookie exchange that appears in the holiday issue of A Subtle Revelry's seasonal online magazine as well as on their blog. Tina from Traveling Mama invited me to take part in the exchange with a few other bloggers living in Copenhagen and we had a lovely afternoon snacking on some delicious cookies. The holiday issue came out a few weeks ago but I keep forgetting to mention it here. The story starts on page 71 and it includes my go-to recipe for chewy oatmeal raisin cookies so do check it out for some great cookie recipes and holiday ideas!

And lastly, I really want to wrap presents. Now that I think about it, I should have applied to be a Christmas gift wrapper at one of the department stores here or something (although I have no idea where I would have gone to apply for something like that). The boyfriend's Christmas presents have been bought and wrapped so now I'm bugging him to start buying gifts for his family so I can get wrapping! Oh, and for a little secret about me. I like to always say things are a gift at the registers here so that the sales assistants will wrap the things I buy whether they are for myself or for someone else. I just like to see how they wrap it and what sort of paper and ribbon they use. But most of the time, okay I mean all the time, I unwrap them at home and do it again with my own papers and ribbons! Last year we wrapped gifts in white, green and blue paper and used a mix of Bungalow gift tags and cheaper ones from Søstrene Grene. We topped them off with either red twine, black ribbons, and a mix of other black, white and silver ribbons. Although there was some continuity last year, we are much more coordinated this year! I'll be back with some photos of this years wrapped gifts real soon, I promise!

Happy Thursday!

Snow, Marzipan & Lussekatter

It has been below 0 in Copenhagen for over a week now and there was a bit of a snowstorm here on Sunday and I don't think it has completely stopped snowing since then. We did some Christmas shopping and met up with our friend for coffee at Democratic on Saturday. I picked up a little chocolate covered marzipan from the girls handing them out at Illum and I won a little gift! I never win anything so it was fun and now I have a little Lego thing to build. Since it was snowing pretty much all day Sunday, we stayed in except for venturing out for a hot chocolate and some groceries. We also baked some lussekatter in the afternoon because the boyfriend and I just love them so much and we finished the day off with the original Miracle on 34th Street. 

Happy Monday!

Colorful Cubes

I was given some small wooden cubes this week and I thought about what I could do with them. Initially I thought I could make little stamps, but as I thought about it some more, I thought I could make a little set of alphabet blocks, and then I came across this Etsy post on colorful cubes and I was sold.

This is a really simple craft project. You just need some wooden cubes in whatever size you'd like, some acrylic paint, a paintbrush, and some masking tape. Stick a piece of tape diagonally across one side of the cube. Put on 2 coats of paint and let dry. Remove tape and repeat the two steps if you would like to paint the other side of surface, if not, that's it!

I like the bright colors and it is a fun whimsical thing to leave out on the coffee table and play with. I am planning on putting letters on the opposite side of the cube as well so I can still have a little set of alphabet blocks. I love simple projects and I find crafting and little projects like this are really relaxing.

The boyfriend and I were out doing some Christmas shopping today but a snowstorm is supposed to hit Copenhagen tomorrow so we'll probably stay in most of the day. Sounds like it might be a good day to stay in and make some lussekatter and watch some movies! We've also been eating like 10 clementines a day, we're sort of addicted (there are some really good deals for clementines at Torvehallerne, that's where we've been going for them)! Happy Weekend!

Advent Sunday's

Advent was never a really big deal for us in my family. We maybe had a chocolate calendar every now and then but that was about it. Last year, the boyfriend's mom bought us presents to open on the four Sunday's leading up to Christmas day. The boyfriend and I also had the calendar candles where we would burn off a little bit each day until Christmas. Since I made the advent wreath this year, we decided to not get a calendar candle, although now I'm wishing we hadn't skipped it!

Rather than preparing something for the 24 days leading up to Christmas, we decided to do something special for the advent Sunday's. The boyfriend and I get to open little presents from each other the four Sunday's. As we are trading little gifts, I thought making a advent calendar gift bag would be practical as it would store the gifts we have prepared. This advent calendar bag is ridiculously easy. I just bought a large paper gift bag and used white craft paint to paint the numbers on. I wanted the numbers to get bigger closer to Christmas day so I gradually increased the size of the numbers with each row. And there you have it! My 5 minute advent calendar! We're also watching a Christmas movie every Sunday night until Christmas. We started with Elf this past Sunday and we're open to suggestions for other holiday movies! 

The first present I got from the boyfriend this week were some gold scissors that I've been wanting from Hay for a very long time now. I like weird things, I know! But I love the scissors and am looking forward to using it! 

Do you celebrate advent? I would love to hear what some of your Christmas traditions are! 

24

I tend to forget how old I am. Each year seems to go by so quick these days that I've found myself telling people that for example I am 22, when really I am 23. And well, since it was my birthday this last Saturday, I know for sure that I am 24 now. But ask me again in a few months and I'll be like "I'm 23, oh wait, what year is it? Ah! No, actually I'm 24".

One of my best birthdays was the year I turned 20 while I was on exchange in Hong Kong. I invited my closest friends to our favorite Mexican place for dinner and that was it. I didn't have a big party or anything, but it was just super special because I had made some amazing friends in a few short months and we were living in a really awesome city having the best time together.

This year definitely makes the list of best birthdays. I was sick half of last week but by Friday morning I was feeling a lot better and baked the whole day to prepare for a cozy little party. I invited some friends I've made through the boyfriend and one of my good friends from my master's program came as well.  It wasn't very many people but it was just super nice and hyggeligt. I decorated with some white paper roses and some white crepe paper garlands. For the party I made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate peppermint frosting (substitute peppermint extract for vanilla extract from this recipe), chocolate chunk cookies, lemon almond meringues, and some danish snowballs. The boyfriend and I set up a little bar in the kitchen for people to mix their own mojitos and gin tonics or whatever they could come up with what we had on hand. All our friends were super thoughtful as well and got me some really wonderful gifts. I now have many (many, many!) cupcake liners, a cupcake/dessert stand, some delicious hot chocolate sticks, and some new perfume. I really liked having only a handful of guests as then everyone could talk to one another within the group instead of having 3 or 4 different groups split up in different parts of the apartment. And as not all of the guests are friends with each other, it was nice to have everyone get to know one another.

My birthday was on Saturday, December 1st. And most of the day was just spent with the boyfriend. It was a super relaxing day with just the two of us. First, he surprised me with a new camera for my birthday present. He knew that my old Lumix had a few scratches on the lenses which were really noticeable on some of the pictures I took so he got me a new Canon Ixus! He also wrapped my present in some of my favorite paper from Bungalow. He's pretty wonderful. And then on Saturday morning, I thought it would be really nice to go to the kurbad/spa at the local swimming pool. As I was still coughing and had a sore throat and what not, I thought going to the steam room would help with my congestion. We spent a few hours at the kurbad and used everything from the dead sea pool to the eucalyptus steam room to their winter sun lamps. We went out for lunch after the pool and then spent the afternoon doing some painting at the ceramic studio in our area. We were working on some Christmas presents so I don't think I can put up any pictures of that yet! The boyfriend's work was throwing a big party later that night so we had sushi take out for dinner and spent the early part of the evening getting ready for the party. The boyfriend's work party was held mostly for their 10 year birthday but also for Christmas. Some of Denmark's socialites were there as well and I got to see the former princess, now the Countess, again for the second time in the last few weeks (she was also at the boyfriend's graduation ceremony a few weeks ago. I want to speak Danish like her one day!). It was a great party and it was a lot of fun to dress up and go out in the city.

I had a really awesome birthday weekend and I'm really looking forward to this year of being 24! A big, big, big thank you to my friends all around the world who thought of me on my birthday! The messages, cards, and presents from everyone is so incredibly sweet and reminds me of how great and amazing my friends are!

Last Week's Flowers

The boyfriend brought home some roses on Wednesday night when I was battling a little flu. Love the vibrant color it brings into our little apartment.

I'll be back this week with posts on my birthday, my friend M visiting, and advent. I've had a really awesome weekend and I hope yours has been lovely as well!