On a journey...

It is so good to be in Norway this time of year! It is lovely to sit here in the comfy, red sofa in my parents’ house (just to clarify: it is red all year round, we don’t have a “special” sofa we get out for Christmas, but it is nice that it is red this time of year). I am sipping a cup of PG Tips tea (we get the massive 500-teabag bags in the local shops run by immigrants, and they are very cheap!) and eating a julegeit (literal translation: “Christmas goat”. It’s a type of bread-roll shaped as a goat which is a little bit sweet) with our traditional brown cheese (it’s a slightly sweet cheese made from goat milk and it’s called “brown” cheese because it is brown in colour). We’ve started to put out our Christmas decorations, and now I am having a little break while I eat and write a little blog-update. My brothers have headed up to some woods close by where they will pick and chop the Christmas tree (and I won’t get into the whole ethical debate surrounding the use of real trees and c...

Today it’s been snowing! Everything is covered in white and when I walk there’s a nice crunch under my feet! The perfect day to make gløgg; a traditional, Norwegian Christmas drink made of (in a USA modified recipe) apple juice, grape juice, cinnamon stick, whole cloves, cardamom, raisins, and almonds. It was very nice! I am afraid I don’t have any photos of either, so I suppose it’ll have to be left to the imagination of each one of us to picture what it looks like.

Well, I didn’t quite manage a picture a day, but I won’t let a few days of not doing it deter me from moving forward in my little project. What’s a few days missed anyway? Today I baked. I started off baking Christmas cookies (to put in my very nice red plastic cookie tins with snowflakes on). At first I wanted to bake 4 kinds (in Norway you traditionally do 7 kinds of cookies for Christmas), but then I thought I’d do just one, and ended up baking two kinds and making the dough for a third which I’ll finish tomorrow. I made serinakaker and kokosmakroner (for those of you who know what they are). They turned out well! But the baking didn’t end there- I then realised that I had two bananas that were getting close to the end of their days, and so I decided to make some banana-bread muffins. And then I remembered that when I’d gone shopping yesterday I didn’t buy bagels because I wanted to bake wholemeal bread rolls, and so I make that too. They turned out really well! Light and tasty (I t...

I have made it to the fourth day of December and am still going strong in my little photo project- this is cool! Today I’ve spent the day at something called “Prophetic Hearing Intensive”. Basically I’d a 3- day conference about hearing God’s heart and voice. It’s so good. Today we did some practical stuff, but mainly listened to stories of how God speaks and changes lives! I feel very inspired! And the photo of today is of my lovely wooden fruit-bowl, which I bought at WalMart. I still get excited when I can go to this store/shop which I know so well from movies/films- it’s a good place to go shopping (I hope you detected the way I am being language sensitive by providing both the American and British English words). I think it’s so nice (the fruit bowl) and looks really good with colourful fruit in it.

Today my housemate took this picture of me sat on our very lovely and extremely comfy sofa in the lounge. One really good thing about this house is that it’s nice and warm. We keep the thermostat at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (I have no clue what that is in Celsius, but I am sure you can google it if you want to know). It’s been a good day today!

As I was strolling back from the Prayer Room to my house to check my email I was enjoying walking in the sunshine with a clear blue sky, yet not feeling cold even if the temperature is low. And that led me to appreciate comfy, warm, snugly clothes that keep me warm. Which made me think that today I could post a photo where I am all ready to face the cold (I did actually take this photo today, but it’s not totally authentic as I did put my warm clothes on just to take the photo which I used the automatic timer thingy on my camera for- I am quite impressed with myself that I managed to make it work). I have also included a photo of my improvised advent candlestick holder. More tomorrow…maybe.

I actually nicked this idea from a friend of mine who is in Madagascar (takk Kirsten Marie), and as a kind of advent calendar she was going to post a photo each day of December till Christmas. I thought this was a very good idea- and I am sure my friend Faith who did a photo every day for a whole year for her flickr project would agree with me that it’s not too big of a challenge to embark on. Knowing myself I might not actually finish it, but hey, it’s worth a try. And since I thought of it (or rather got the idea) today which is the 1st I can get started. So, here you go: a photo of yours truly in my lovely kitchen (I didn’t actually take the photo today, but I think that would be a bit ambitious). I think it’s kind of blurry so I need to take some time to figure out my nice, new camera which is supposed to work well (it has a lot of features so I get a tad confused using it). Today it’s been really cold!! Brrr. I got up several times to pace in the Prayer Room, just to get a bit wa...

Today I woke up to snow. It sounds idyllic, but when I went outside to walk to get the shuttle to church it wasn’t as pleasant as it sounds, as snow was accompanied by an icy wind. It was cold, and I wished I’d dressed warmer. However, what is good about it being cold and windy outside is that it is very cosy to be inside. At the moment I am sat on my very comfy sofa. I just baked a brownie and had a nice cup of Earl Grey tea with a piece of it. It was very nice if I can say so myself! Although the brownie was a tad sweet even if I did make it from scratch. Maybe it was the milk chocolate chocolate-chips I put in it. Oh well, I suppose it’s meant to be sweet. It is so nice to sit inside a nicely warmed house with my woolly slippers on and candles lit. In Norway we do advent candles and so have a candlestick-holder with four candles, and we light one candle each Sunday leading up to Christmas. And today is the first Sunday of advent. But I didn’t have a candlestick-holder, so I took a w...