My long wait finally paid of! It snowed today, and the snow didn't melt right away. I really like snow as it makes everything look prettier, cleaner and lighter. Plus Christmas lights and candles create a different style of a feeling when there is snow to be seen. Naturally, I had to go out and take some pictures. I would have been mad at myself for not doing so. haha.
Some of our outdoor Christmas lights :)
Snow makes me happier because the autumn can be very gloomy and kinda boring after the beauty of the fall colors and autumn leaves has disappeared. I don't let the darkness to bore or depress me, because the Christmas-waiting season can begin as early as you self decide. That's why I always start to put up Christmas lights (autumn or dark period lights, however, you want to call them) rather soon. Next you can see some of our indoor lights, which was an advice of a dear pen pal of mine.
These are cool as they work with batteries, but look like real candles!
I also have some sad news - the Finnish post is on a strike, so letters may be delayed a lot, because there's not a specific date for this strike to end. I hope it won't be a long one!
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!
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.
