A Sweet White Christmas.

Well, actually it's not that white, but compared to those too many days (WEEKS!) without snow it really is White here. Though you can still see every stick and stone and even the lawn in our cortyard.. But we have some snow here in South Finland, that's the point!

And about the sweetness. Chocolate. We fortunate people have got maybe few KGs that stuff around here! All kind of chocolate. I made a list, take a look.

Caramel covered with milk chocolate
Hzelnut and almond praline covered with milk chocolate
Hazelnut-almond praline with nuts covered with milk chocolate
Praline covered with milk chocolate
Hazelnut paste with Brazilian nuts covered with white chocolate
Unstoned cherry in liquid cherry cream
Hazelnut-almond filling covered with white chocolate
Orange fondant cream covered in dark chocolate
Liquid fondant with pineapple flavour covered with plain chocolate
Ganache with orange liqueur covered with dark chocolate
Plain chocolate cup filled with rum mousse
Marzipan in dark chocolate topped with a walnut
Praline
Liquid strawberry cream filling covered with milk chocolate
Toffee covered with milk chocolate
Orange crunch filling covered with milk chocolate
Vanilla fudge covered with milk chocolate
Coconut toffee filling covered with milk chocolate
Milk chocolate block
Caramel swirlcovered with milk chocolate
Marzipan with croquante covered with milk chocolate
Coffee marzipan overed with milk chocolate
Tripple hazelnut covered with milk chocolate
Marzipan with walnut covered with milk chocolate
Milk chocolate cone
Marzipan with pistachio nut covered with milk chocolate
Nougat
Geisha made by Fazer
And so on

Wow. Isn't that something? And you can't even eat that much! Unfair. Luckily I don't like all the sorts, so it's not that unfair :) In fact I've decided (maybe that's quite strong word in this case.. let's say I've got a steady intention) to take a break (a long one) from eating chocolate and all the candies. And salty liquorice – you can’t call that candy, right?

Okay, that’s about it. Let’s get back to this Christmas. I’m gonna tell few more things of my Christmas.

Hurry. Certain condition before Christmas. Well, I’m always in some kind of hurry. But in December there is so much more to do during few weeks than usually. This year I decided to not panic – success, yay! Why on earth do I always put so much pressure on myself!? And every once in awhile I notice that it doesn’t make any sense to put on all the pressures- But when I go around the next corner, I forget it again.. How stupid can a person be?!

Christmas cards. I think this is one of the main reasons for the great hurry. Sometimes in summer time I've almost been able to get a good grip of the back of my neck and have almost get the card project started. But then this crazy idea jumps into my head: I'll save this till November, just to make sure that I've got some preparations to make for Christmas! Wow, how logical.. But. I was faithful to my 'Don't panic'-program: I developed some photos of me enough early to get them mailed right on time as Christmas cards!

Holiday. Hurry comes to its end. There’s no hurry at all when the Christmas holiday begins. One of the best things in holidays. I’m spending my Christmas holiday at my parents’ and so does one of my brothers too. Spending time together contains for example board games and movies – just hanging together. Somehow it’s hard when you’ve got used to live alone, but on the other hand I value our time together Very much!

Christmas Carols. All the prettiest, of course.

Candles and Christmas lights. Light to the darkness!

Declaration of The Christmas Peace. Declared from Finland’s Turku. We don’t have a TV, so we listen that through our radio at 12 o’clock on the 24th of December.

Tomorrow, God willing,is the graceful celebration of the birth of our Lord and Saviour;
and thus is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all, by advising devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully,
because he who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas by any illegal or improper behaviour shall under aggravating circumstances be guilty and punished according to what the law and statutes prescribe for each and every offence separately.
Finally, a joyous Christmas feast is wished to all inhabitants of the city.

Church. Christmas Eve Devotional. Usually at 10 pm in our local church, but this year we went to neighbour village cause few friends of ours were singing and playing strings and organ there.

Christmas Evangelium. The story of the first Christmas. Traditionally kids present that story as a play in Christmas Parties in schools. So did our little first-graders. They were soooo cute! Young one Mary holding babydoll Jesus. Coeval Joseph holding her hand. And too little angels with their sparkling wings as a huge angelic choir. Awww.

Food. Lots of food. Traditional Finnish Christmas Menu. We eat Christmas food so much that we get fed up with it for a year and then we start all over again.

Christmas tree. Back in the day when my brothers and I were little, the decoration operation of the Christmas tree took a loooong while. We set the decorations on the tree in turns, one by one. Except those ones we had four pieces, one for all of us. The whole operation has become a lot simpler and shorter, cause only willing to do that in addition to me is my little brother.

Presents. This year I was not supposed to get like any presents at all, but as usual I got quite a lot of them. But that’s allright :) A paper guillotine was one of my favourites! And a web-cam and a microphone, yay! Well, presents are actually part of the famous hurry too. I mean those ones I'm gonna give.. But my program was successful even here! I think I should try this again sometime!

Crib. Every Christmas we set a little Christmas crib with few figures: Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus, one shepherd and lots of lambs.

Jesus. He’s the main reason why we celebrate Christmas. Well, yes I know that Jesus wasn’t actually born on the 25th of December and Christmas used to be a pagan celebration, but still for me Christmas is The Birthday of my Saviour King Jesus!