Rainy Day Reads

Music Bills - Lunchmoney Lewis Locked Away - R.City Marvin Gaye - Charlie Puth feat. Meghan Trainor Jackie and Wilson - Hozier Photograph - Ed Sheeran ´74-´75 - The Connells  Strip No More - Lukas Graham Books Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein We Were Liars - e. lockhart A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle In the Shadow of the Banyan - Vaddey Ratner Legend - Marie Lu The Amazing Book Is Not on Fire - Dan Howell and Phil Lester Blue Lily, Lily Blue - Maggie Stiefvater Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn Cress - Marisse Meyer Random Korres Body Lotion - this is a really good brand, it’s suitable for vegans and has almost all natural ingredients. And it absorbs into your skin really quickly, so you don’t have to wait too long, before you put your clothes on (a major factor when it comes to your shower routine in winter time!) Crunchy Nuts - a gluten free snack of peanuts encased in crunchy salsa-spice....

I approach Christmas shopping like a military attack. It’s all about having a plan! Depending on how late you leave it, the shops will be full of panicky, stressed out people trying to decide what the perfect gift for their loved ones will be, and the queues will be snaking along for seemingly miles. Meanwhile it’s cold outside, so you are wearing all your stylish winter clothes, which means you are sweltering in the overheated, overcrowded shop. So you want to spend as little time as possible inside the shops. It’s all about getting in, getting what you need and getting out again as quickly as possible.   This is where a plan comes in! Don’’t be afraid to make a specified list of what you want to buy for whom and how much you want to spend. The list is your friend when it comes to Christmas shopping. It will make sure you don’t forget anything and it will help you stick to your budget. It’s easy to accidentally overspend, because you haven’t really thought of what you want to...

Being grown up my mom doesn’t make my advent calendar anymore. So I decided to make one for myself. Both to keep up my Christmas spirit and as a little treat for myself when the days get dark and dreary.   So I bought some envelopes in a fitting size. I am doing the 24 day calendar so the treats/gifts will be smaller, mostly inexpensive ones. If you want to, you can do the Sunday advent calendar and spend more on those 4 gifts.  I also bought some stickers with the numbers 1-24, since my handwriting is not too decorative. Then I just numbered all the envelopes and started filling them up. Most of it will probably be chocolate, but there are also some inexpensive face masks in there, along with some nail polish, gift cards for smallish amounts, chapstick, small size body lotions and other stuff I happened upon during Christmas shopping.  You can really customize it for the person it’s for. If they are into drawing buy pens, paper, crayons etc. If they ...

I actually don’t know if this is a tradition anywhere else, but in Denmark we make advent wreaths with candles. There are four candles, and each Advent Sunday one more candle is lit, until all four of them are burning. Now the first Advent Sunday was actually this Sunday, the 29th of November. But you still have plenty of time to make and enjoy an advent wreath.   Usually the wreath would be made of pine and decorated with purple ribbons, but these days you can have all sorts of wreaths. Some that aren’t even wreaths as such.  In the spirit of getting myself in the Christmas mood I decided to make my own wreath. I am not very crafty and I don’t have a good eye for interior design and matching stuff, so I thought this might have been a bit of a disaster. But it actually turned out okay, and was very easy. It probably took me five minutes to make, once I had gathered all the bits  and pieces for it.  I used:  A metal tray Four glass jars (I just...

In the past few years I have felt very jaded when it comes to Christmas. I just have not been enjoying it like I used to do. I think it probably has something to do with growing up. Instead of being a kid with no responsibilities having Christmas served up on a platter by your parents, now I have to make Christmas for myself. Obviously I still celebrate with my family, but it’s just not quite the same.   The shops are also starting to get out their Christmas things earlier and earlier, and when you start getting Christmas-cheer thrown at you from the middle of October what little Christmas spirit I have just burns out, before it even gets to December 1st.  I always think that I don’t really care about it, but then I still get a little sad, that I don’t really get in the Christmas spirit. So this year I have decided to try Blogmas as a way of almost forcing myself to get into Christmas again! This will make me have to decorate, get some sort of tree and an advent cale...