Blog's Future and Postcards (video)

It's time for a video again. Hope you like listening to it. :)

P.S. The video was filmed on Monday (Jan 11th), but I had such a problematic time uploading it and I'm so annoyed of the worsening quality during the uploading process. So, I had to upload it to Youtube and yeah, I hope it works now.

Where Did December Go?

Snow makes me happy!

Happy New Year to all of my dear readers! I wish you can memorize 2015 with happy thoughts and believe in the new year being as amazing if not better. However, if your previous year wasn't what you had hoped for, remember that 2016 is a new year - a year full of new experiences, new friends and amazing moments to be remembered forever. 

Vanaja Church while singing Christmas carols

I celebrated the change of the year very calmly at home with my mom. It was a different New Year's Eve because it was the first time (that I can remember) that we stayed at home. Every other time we have celebrated at my granny's in Hamina, but this time we couldn't go due to my work shift. That didn't matter too much because we were able to start the cross-country skiing season by skiing 10 km. Afterwards, we watched some fireworks and took a sauna ''to wash the previous year away'' as my grandpa used to say. 

New Year's wasn't the only difference in my December, which meant the month passing by extremely fast. The beginning of the month was spent focusing on my studies, visiting family friend's places and starting with the Christmas season work. After the autumn semester ended (Yay.), I had some more time to focus on meeting friends, to pay more attention to socializing and prepare for Christmas. Unfortunately, I couldn't evaluate so much time for correspondence, however, now I'm happy to say that I have only three letters waiting for to be replied; from Ilona (Latvia), Almante (Lithuania) and Christine (Austria). I'm sorry for the terrible delays, but I'm also happy of being able to catch up a bit with the letters. 

Christmas was celebrated with the dearest people in my life. It followed a similar pattern as previous years, therefore, I'll show my Christmas through pictures. Thank you for all the pretty postcards - I'm fond of postcards and Christmas, so they are more than welcome. 

The grave yard of Ahvenisto - lighting up a candle for the passed away relatives.

 HAPPY 2016!! 

Christmas Preparations

On the previous Sunday (December 6th), we celebrated the Independence Day of Finland. For me that day is always pretty similar as mom and I have created a tradition of baking Christmas cookies & tarts and watching the President's Independence Day Reception on TV. It's also traditional to light up two blue&white candles exactly at 6 pm. 

Baking Christmas cookies.

My Christmas tarts look a bit different this year.

I have been preparing for Christmas and getting myself on a great Christmas mood by: 

1. Making some Christmas cards

2. Admiring a house that is famous for its Christmas lights (in Janakkala, Finland)

3. Staying fond of Christmas lights and other decorations 

4. Being optimistic about getting snow for the Christmas Eve 

This pic was taken before the snow melted away in November

5. Listening to a Christmas Radio Channel, which can be found by clicking: 

JOULURADIO

Have great Christmas preparations!!

Before Christmas

So much time has passed since I last updated this blog. I haven't had any mood for writing any blog posts, because I've been in Finland and when being in Greece I spend so much time in front of a computer screen.

About two weeks ago I arrived to Finland through Istanbul. I flew with Turkish Airlines, and it became my favourite airlines. The service was great, the food was good and I was able to watch a movie of my choice. When the plane was finally in Finland, I was happy. Nothing beats the feeling of being at home!

It snowed on 13th :)

The first days of being at home I spent decorating our home for Christmas, because my mom had done basically nothing - oh well, she had changed the curtains. haha. I also baked some ginger breads and other bakeries for Christmas. Of course, I also had to make some Christmas cards for relatives.

I spent lots of time meeting the people that mean the most to me. After arriving to Finland I have had more people to talk with face-to-face, so I haven't felt the need to chat on FB or other social media so much; not that there would have been many people sending msgs to me. It's kinda funny how I received so much more msgs when I was in Greece compared to the situation now. However, I'm thankful for the people, who chatted with me back in October & November.

I spent some days with my dad at his place and also met my grandma twice. It was great to spend time with all of them. On 21st we all went to granny's place for Xmas dinner, which was great. Before it mom and I went singing Christmas carols at the church, which I hadn't done for the past few years.

I managed to write a few letters and take some pics as well, but most of the time I've been excited for Christmas. It's my favourite celebration, so I'm happy! I hope you are having fantastic holidays, too, no matter if you celebrate Christmas or not!

Christmas Calendar

A Christmas Calendar - An Advent Calendar 

for the Finns ''Joulukalenteri'' 

A Christmas Calendar is not a new phenomenon, it was brought to Finland by Tessi Fazer, who saw it in Sweden. The first Finnish Christmas Calendar was produced in 1947. The idea is to open one window every day starting from the December 1st and ending on the Christmas Eve (24th). 

In Finland we have many kind of calendars; paper, chocolate, candy, toy, etc. This year I was thinking of bringing a Christmas Calendar to my blog. I think it would have been a fabulous idea even though I wasn't sure how I would have conducted it. I still decided not to do it as it might lower my motivation towards this blog. Instead, I will post things when I feel like doing so, and I'm sure the post are becoming more Christmas-y all time time. 

Let's start with a song 'Walking in the Air', which features a TV show called 'The Snowman'. I have watched this show every Christmas Eve morning as long as I can remember - it's a part of my Christmas celebration. 

A Bit of Christmas Shopping

Like I have mentioned a few times I'm a Christmas person. It's my favourite time of the year, and it's something that I'm always looking forward to! This year I have been on a Christmas mood much earlier than before, well I started thinking of Christmas maybe two weeks earlier than last year. Because of being in Greece I have had much more time to think of it, so this year's Christmas Eve should be well-planned before hand. This, however, doesn't mean everything would go as planned!

This week I decided to go to IKEA, to see if Christmas had arrived there finally. When stepping out from the bus I decided to head towards a grocery store first. I went there to see if it had a different selection than other grocery stores have. It sure was different and bigger - now I know, where to go buy eatable souvenirs to bring home. haha. Next step was Jumbo, which I had visited twice before. I was sure there wouldn't be anything new, but luckily I was wrong. From there I bought Christmas stickers, three cute decorations for a Christmas tree (definitely need to go find a Xmas tree from granny's forest in December!!) and Christmas lights. I was so over-joyed when I saw such nice, simple and cheap Christmas lights. I just had to buy them and so I did!

What comes to IKEA, it was nice to walk through the store again and check out all the 'rooms'. It was nice to notice the rooms had started to look a bit Christmas-y. The actual Christmas section was a bit disappointing. It was small and there wasn't anything interesting enough to buy. Well, maybe the fact that I can go to IKEA in Finland and buy the stuff from there had something to do with me not finding anything, and also the fact that I already had Christmas lights. However, I bought this Swedish Festive Drink, just to try it out. I'm not sure if I like it or not, which is kinda disturbing!

 The countdown to Christmas shall continue with Christmas lights!

Christmas Check-up

This is from a random store that actually was selling
Christmas-y lights. They just aren't really my type. :(

Last week I made my 2nd trip to Ikea and the stores around it. I didn't have that much time to explore all the stores, so I actually went only to Ikea and Jumbo. My aim was to look for Christmas lights, or anything else related to Christmas. haha.

Ikea was disappointing because they didn't have anything Christmas-y! They had just started to built the Christmas section, which seemed to be rather small, to my eyes anyways. I guess, I will need to go there for a third time, probably in November. From my point of view, two months before Christmas Eve, stores should have their Christmas sections ready already! I mean - only less than two months till Christmas!

However, I really liked Jumbo. They had expanded their Christmas section from my last visit. I found some lovely things there; some for myself and some as Christmas presents for others. Not to ruin the surprise, I won't show pictures of anything that will be a present. Enjoy the Christmas feeling!

The pillow cases are going to our living room!

Ending the post with a nice Christmas song called 'Tulkoon joulu'.

Waiting for the Christmas Spirid

People, who know me, also know that I'm a Christmas-person. My interest in Christmas usually makes people around me a bit annoyed, or at least they laugh at me a lot. I don't mind about that, Christmas is my favourite time of the year and that's why I plan on being happy about it getting closer day by day.

Some may say it's way too early to think about Christmas in October, but to be honest I have started thinking about it a lot earlier. For a few days there has been a countdown to Christmas Eve (Dec. 24th) on my blog, because that's when Christmas is celebrated in Finland. And I can say I'm pretty proud of the snowflake effect on my blog - I'm not a very technical person, so I'm quite glad it actually works. haha.

Here in Thessaloniki, I have been trying to search for any Christmas-related things. I have been very unsuccessful with this search. I have read on many Finnish blogs, how they have visited IKEA to see their Christmas sections, which annoys me because here IKEA had zero Christmas related things for sale. heh. I still found a store called 'Jumbo' which had some Christmas things for sale already.

I'm hoping to find Christmas lights for my studio apartment and soon. This time of the year doesn't feel the same without Christmas lights, because if I was at home, I would have had these lights in my room since the beginning of October. The other things that I'm trying to find are Christmas cards. It would be interesting to send Greek cards for my pen pals this year, it would be something different than normally. I can't wait for the Christmas sales to start in Greece - hope it happens soon!

For the past week I have also listened to some (or many!) Christmas songs. Here is one of my favourite Finnish Christmas songs; 'Varpunen Jouluaamuna' sang by Suvi Teräsniska.

Have a nice wait till Christmas!