Julpynt (Christmas Decorating)

So the season for me has officially begun. I went and looked at couple cute shops around Skane and I have made plans on how to celebrate the season with festive yet tasteful Jultide decorations. It's so much fun for me to mix ideas from both American and Swedish traditions.

I learned from my husband that during Christmas time in Sweden many people eat and display Clementine oranges. Traditionally Swedes decorate the Clementines with cloves, but since we both hate cloves I opted to do something similar with cute, cheap red and white ribbon.

Thanksgiving: The American Family Tradition

Today is the first Thanksgiving in my whole life I have spent without my family. Usually I spend the day driving back and forth between events on my mother's side and my father's side(the glamorous life of a child of divorced parents). But today I sit alone in my little house across the world from my home country and my familiar treasured traditions. I feel a little lonely and sad but end up spending most of my energy thinking about all the things in my life that I am thankful for.
The picture above is a photograph of my Great-Great Grandmother's family that was emailed to me by a distant relative I have never met. In this new world of advanced technology we Americans are able to connect and transfer information about common heritage in a way that was never possible before. All I had to do was sign up for a trial membership with Ancestry.com, plug in the little I knew about my Grandparents and Great-Grandparents and a whole forgotten world was at my finger tips.
I found it kind of wonderful that on the first Thanksgiving Day I spent without my close family, I was given glance through a window to another time, and to another family that I am a part of.

Life in Grayscale

I have taken many photos of Sweden in many different types of weather, but the picture above shows the reality of life outdoors during most of the fall and winter in Sweden. Knowing that about the weather it's easy to see why interiors in Sweden are so important. We spend a lot more time indoors.

All the Little Red Houses

As the sun creeps down I do my best to capture these few moments between the light of day and the growing shadows of the evening hours. I take photos of charming red houses while the people that live in them watch me from inside. They think I am crazy, and I think they are probably right.

How to Stay Connected with Family from Across the World

Last weekend my brother became an official Fireman (that's him to my right) and it seemed like I was the only in the family that was not able to go. I was actually kind of dreading seeing the photos from the occasion because I knew it would make me sad I was not there. I was not prepared for the fact that my little sister (the breathtaking blonde in the red dress) had made a cardboard cutout of me and from the photos you see here, I actually made it and had a great time!

From the photos I see that I attended the whole ceremony as well as enjoyed dinner and drinks (even margaritas) late in to the night.....

Here's my Dad, my Brother the Fireman, my too cute for words Sister and me in between them where I belong. I was laughing so hard looking at these I almost forgot about how sad I was that I couldn't be there.

With great modern communications these days, living across the World from your family does not mean the same thing it did even a couple of years ago. I can Skype and email my family members and I can get an instant response back. The other great thing about this situation has been teaching my Grandmothers how to use these technologies and seeing their faces light up when they can see and talk to me in my new house in a country they have barely even heard of. They have done pretty well with all of these virtual chats, but from the look on my Grandma's face in this photo my "presence" at this weekend’s event may have been too much.......