Category: Chilly.

One more day before it gets cold again, yay

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Mostly grey and dull today, the sunrise that almost happened was really beautiful for a few seconds and then it was gone behind the clouds. I didn’t mind that much because it was at least over 0C (32F). We actually almost saw the sun one more time when there was a rip in the cloud cover.

Yesterday.
Today.
Lots of water yesterday
but less today.

I had to pick up a parcel today, the oat, sorghum and millet flour I ordered online this week since they didn’t order anything to the supermarket had arrived. I actually got the text message on Thursday but decided I could let it be until today. My phone has this thing of if I touch the screen in the wrong way (which I to be honest still doesn’t know how that works) the phone then put that message in the archives. I didn’t even know there was an archive for text messages. I had apparently done that with this message.

Worse in the forest though.

So there I stood in the store and couldn’t for my life remember what shipping company had been used 🙂 🙂 🙂 Thankfully no one else was there and the store owner did what she could to find the parcel anyway. It took well over 15 minutes but then she found it, it stood just by the door 🙂 🙂 🙂 I have now figured out how to find archived messages but I still need to know who the sender is, otherwise it’ll be gone for ever it seems 🙂 🙂 🙂

So I tried to use millet for the first time and I failed something spectacular 🙂 🙂 🙂 I found a recipe online, did exactly as it said but the dough was less thick that what it would be for a sponge cake?? I think, but it didn’t say so in the recipe, that this bread should have been thin but wide. I poured it in to a normal bread tin and that was so wrong. It collapsed already when I put it in the oven 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is edible though and millet has a sort of nut taste to it. I’ll either do the bread in a lower tin next time or I’ll find another recipe 🙂 🙂 I do think it’ll be really great to have now when I’ll have rice pasta and spaghetti sauce after I’m done here.

So I’ll wait with that last cup of tea for the day, I can have some after dinner instead. lots of snow has now melted away and there’s one more day before the colder weather arrives again so I hope most of what is left will melt away before it gets cold again.

Have a great day!

Finally, it is melting!

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It took its time but now we’ve finally had above 0C (32F) but the day began with mostly snow falling but also some rain. The roads have been rather bad and for once even worse in this village. My neighbour was going to take her children to pre school but had huge problems to even go up the small slope up to the village road. After that it was even worse, so she had to go back home again and can’t work tonight.

Our fox has survived the hunters so far 🙂

I walked up to my mailbox just a few minutes ago and if it doesn’t freeze too hard tonight it’ll be much better when I have to drive around noon tomorrow. I’ll go to a job interview so hold Your thumbs and cross Your fingers for good luck 🙂 Anyway, it had rained before we went out for our morning walk but it turned to snow when we were out. Instead of dry fluffy snow we now have what and slushy snow 🙂 I could get a grip when walking though so I think that was better 🙂

I can’t figure out if this is a track from a piglet or perhaps a small roe deer. I think it is a piglet.

Bot Alma and Malkolm behaved better than they have ever done I think. Well the only thing Malkolm does is to pull the leash because he wants to follow tracks as fast as he can but he does listen when I tell him to calm down, the majority of times 🙂 🙂 Alma is a different thing but today she stayed mostly quiet and also followed Malkolm to see what he thought was so interesting 🙂 So no aching shoulders on me today 🙂 Otherwise I haven’t done much. I baked some French rolls before we went out and I’ve realised that it’s the cheese that make any bread much better. I didn’t have any leftover cheese this time so the rolls sort of missed something 🙂 I also did some laundry just so I have some clean clothes tomorrow 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and I’ll have another of the rolls I baked because they’re always best the day they’re made 🙂

Have a great day!

Finally, it is getting less cold!

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It is slowly but steadily getting less cold now and that makes me smile. Thankfully we had clouds covering the sky during most parts of last night so it wasn’t as cold as they guessed it would be but to cold for me 🙂

So it almost felt warm when we went out for our morning walk today, only -11C (12,2F). No wind and a thick layer of clouds so the whole area sort of had a led grey hue to it.  The wild life had noticed the change towards less cold as well so today we saw lots of tracks in the snow. Mostly wild hogs but also deer, both Roe and red deer and also some moose tracks. The squirrels are to light to make any prints in the hard surface the snow now has (still powdery beneath the surface though) but the foxes were just enough heavy to make paw prints.

We did hear a few smaller birds tweeting close to the village but that was it, no Jays or Ravens made any sounds. A squirrel ran down a pine trunk on the back side of the tree but we could hear it and just had to follow the snow that fell from the surface while the squirrel ran downwards. It felt like walking in a world where only the vegetation was left. Well the whining from Alma sort of destroyed that feeling a bit but she was actually much more quiet than she normally is.

Tomorrow I’ll brush off all snow from the car and go to the supermarket. I really don’t have much left in the larder or the fridge 🙂 I also need seeds for the birds, some birds just don’t like peanuts, especially not those who only comes to the feeders when it’s too hard to find food in the forest like the Bullfinches. To be honest they are rare then to but it looks like both the House sparrow and the field sparrow prefers seeds before peanuts. 

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. If I hadn’t had dinner just an hour ago I woukld have made a couple of sandwiches because I made some French rolls yesterday that almost tasted like normal ones and as always I’ll never recreate them since I just mixed together what ever kind of flour I had. Perhaps one day I should write it all down 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

This must be the most sad looking Thuja in the world. The ground is dry and it never get any sunshine 🙂

I wish You all a good continuing of the new year!

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So it’s a new day and a new year. Back in the days that meant that one needed to remember to not write last years number when signing something, now days we tend to sign everything via apps and they already know what year it is 🙂 If we do need to sign by hand it most likely don’t happen for a while and by then we do remember what year it is 🙂

 

The new year has started with above 0C (32F) temperatures but also with both snow falling and showers of rain. Not a nice combination, especially when the rain mostly falls while being out on a walk with the dogs. Also the monsterkitten has managed to go outside when the snow has fallen just to be hit by showers of rain as soon as the door has been closed behind her, she’s not happy 🙂 🙂 🙂

 

The temperature will drop again and more snow will fall and we might get a lot of it, nothing compared to the area around a city called Gävle and further north, that area might get up to a yard of snow so who am I to complain about possibly getting eight inches of that white garbage 🙂 🙂 🙂 I am however pretty sure I will complain and complain a lot next Time I’ll have to use my car, the first snow will most likely start to melt while freezing towards the windshields. That layer will most likely be really thick before it is cold enough for the snow to just settle without melting. It’ll take forever (well quite some time) when I’ll try and get it all off from my car.

 

The box trap caught the mouse I could hear in the walls the other day, well I hope it’s the one anyway, so I trotted away to all the logs and let it out there. It will be protected from the snow, rain and winds if it decides to stay there. It is after all a wild animal who has lived its life outside my cottage so it should know what’s best for it. Then again I noticed lots of paw prints from a fox around the pile of logs so I might just be feeding it instead. Then again the red fox is a favourite animal of mine so I guess that’s a good excuse to let the mice out at that place.

 

I fell asleep at 10 pm yesterday and to my big surprise slept until eight am! Can’t remember when I slept that much before and the good thing is that I didn’t get an head ache, normally if I sleep for longer than usual my head aches like crazy until I’ve had a cup of coffee. I can’t take any pills since my stomach was destroyed (well destroyed sand really catastrophic but You know what I mean 🙂 So coffee and any soda/drink with lots of caffein is my saving when a head ache comes. Well I had a cup of coffee anyway just in case 🙂 🙂  I think I’ll skip the tea for once and just have a last cup of coffee for the day instead. New year new traditions perhaps 🙂

I have absolutely no idea why my photos show in this way 🙂 🙂 🙂

I wish You all a good continuing of the new year!

Sunny and cold.

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Sunny and cold weather is back again. I do like the sunshine of course but the cold temperatures could stay away. Well at least we can see all the stars at night when the sky is clear and we do see a lot of stars here. I would be able to see even more if I went out to the bog where there’s very little light pollution but being lost when walking at a huge bog when it is cold isn’t that funny 🙂 🙂 🙂 plus the risk of walking in to wild hogs or moose is a bit too big I think 🙂

The wind blew like crazy yesterday but like so often it didn’t reach the garden and we were quite protected in the forest when being out walking. They weren’t that lucky in the northern parts of this country where , from what they say on the news, three people died, lots of trees fell and even some roofs blew away. Norway was hit even worse but I don’t know how much damage happened there. Our storms are usually much more worse when our winters are warm so I guess we should be happy about it getting a bit colder again 🙂

Nothing much has happened here but I’ve had my old Peugeot standing outside my neighbours garage, it was supposed to be a spare part car for the Peugeot they already have. Well he didn’t take much but instead started to wonder about fixing it instead because the huge Volvo they have drinks petrol like an alcoholic on a bad day so today we wrote the papers so that he now is the owner of it 🙂 One less thing costing money that I don’t have to think about 🙂

Lately some scientists have warned about the Gulf Stream will get weaker and that it would mean the climate up here in Scandinavia would change towards the extreme during winters. Well it turns out that it isn’t happening. They’ve studied the force of it for thirty years now and if anything is happening it’s the opposite. The melting ice from the northern parts of Greenland seems to drop earlier and therefore instead strengthening it. Reporters from Swedish Television made a visit to those studying the Gulf Stream and they said that they haven’t noticed any weakness of the stream and since I do truly dislike winter I really enjoyed hearing that 🙂 🙂 🙂

I have the last cup of tea for the day right beside me. It would be nice to have a cookie or something with it so I might make myself a mug cake after this. I have lots of fresh ginger so I might have some in it. I was quite old when I first tried fresh ginger and was really surprised over how different it tastes. I don’t have any citrus fruit otherwise I would have put some of that in it.

Have a great day!

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Dark and grey again even though we almost could see the sun for a few seconds in the afternoon 🙂 We were supposed to have rain but it missed us. Perhaps a good thing because there’s so much water in the creek now that if we would get lots more it would overflow.

I could see a few ravens in the sky but no other bigger animals, they tend to stay where it is calm and today was nothing but. We did however see a big forest machine in the distance and the sound from it stressed Alma so much, she really doesn’t like strange sounds or any change what so ever. We managed to have a walk without her freaking out too much anyway 🙂

I realised how old I am now when I was on Reddit and looked at their different forums about aquariums. Back in the days when I was a kid I learned one way to have and keep an aquarium healthy and have never really changed my ways as it has worked well. Today having an aquarium is high tech! They fertilise the plants, use CO2 as well and they even use soil  and having soil in aquariums was something they always said was a big no no.

They also test for the, for me, most odd things like ammonium. Can’t remember that I ever had a problem with that, must smell horribly if that happens 🙂 🙂 I don’t however think necessarily were better back then but it sure was less complicated and less expensive 🙂 🙂 Anyway when I looked at those forums I started to remember all the old books I read until they broke and realised I don’t have any left and started to look on the net. So now I have two of those books I read and a third is on its way. These are of course old school because I’ll never start with any of that they do now days 🙂 🙂 The book that’s on its way is printed in 1938 so it’ll be interesting to see how things have changed since then 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. There’s absolutely nothing I want to watch on tv so I guess I’ll be reading those two books all evening long 🙂

Have a great day!

Saint Lucia’s day.

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Grey, dull and rain all day here.

We didn’t have an especially long morning walk today, we had walked perhaps half of what we usually do when I suddenly heard a shot not especially far from us. It wasn’t our hunters but in the castles grounds neighbouring to this area. Well even if they were outside where we usually walk I really didn’t want to get too close just in case those hunters weren’t sure where to shoot, so we turned back home again.

A male Bullfinch.

So today, December 13, is Saint Lucias day and even though it isn’t a holiday now days we celebrate her. Its origins here is from the 16th century when we still were a catholic country and that’s when it was a holiday as well. I don’t know how they celebrated back then but that it wasn’t the way we do now. One can say it’s a procession led by a Lucia, all in white wearing a crown with lit candlesticks (kids have electric candles of course) she is followed by maids, star boys and sometimes gnomes and almost always a Saint Stephen. I’m not sure how all these are bout together but that really doesn’t matter when it comes to traditions, does it 🙂 🙂

This procession then travels to different places to sing  Christmas songs, like in retirement homes, hospitals or work places. Schools usually have their own ones. I hated that because I was always forced to be Saint Stephen and had to sing solo for the entire school about Stephen the stable boy 🙂 🙂 🙂 The gnomes sing about gnomes and the Star boys sing other Christmas songs 🙂 (I’ll try and post a video at the end). Everyone looking at this have coffee and gingerbreads and a wheat bun called Lussekatter 🙂

This is also broadcasted on tv so the ones at home gets a chance to see it as well. The first written story about a white dressed Lucia was written down 1764 at a place called Horn in this region of Sweden. It was traditionally a feast day here so I guess it fitted to have the first Lucia procession here (It’s a bit of a story to how they celebrated this day here before Lucia took over but that’s for another day). She was dressed in white but instead of having burning candles on her head she had candlesticks in her hands and she also wore wings. The way we celebrate now is from the early 1900’s when it spread from this region to all of Sweden and to our neighbouring countries.

It is time for that last cup of tea that stands beside me 🙂 I woke up at 4 am and as soon as I did Alma came over to me and placed her chin on my head. I took that as a I must out now 🙂 She is much much better now but she still poops out the occasional peanut 🙂 🙂 🙂 Thankfully the farting has stopped so now the cottage have gone back to smelling like it usually does 🙂 🙂

There isn’t a specific Saint Stephen in this video or gnomes but I guess that pagan gnomes perhaps doesn’t fit in a church 🙂

Have a great day!

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If the weather two days ago was meh, yesterdays weather was meeeh and today we were back to meh again. Not a lot of variation but today we didn’t have to deal with misty rain. If we’re going to have rain just give us regular showers so we at least can put the right clothes on, misty rain eats its way through most clothes and it just makes us feel miserable 🙂

We walked down to the creek today, nothing special to say about that but both Alma and Malkolm behaved so well!! I’m not used to that so I’m starting to worry about both of them being sick 🙂 🙂 🙂 They did pull the leashes hard one time and I’m paying for that at the moment, my back every now and again hits me with a pain that feels something like my nerves being burned at both ends. Not so often thankfully but that makes it a bit worse since I never knows when it will hit 🙂 🙂 🙂

Every Christmas I buy myself a huge Quality Street tin bucket, 2.5 kg (5,5 pound) 🙂 It lasts for a very long time so I don’t gulp it down the same week, that I think would kill me 🙂 🙂 🙂 This year however that tin bucket is so expensive so I bought two smaller ones 0,55 kg (1 pound plus a bit more) because I will not stop my tradition to have my quality street bonbons 🙂 Anyhow, I did the math and if I had bought 4 I had almost got just as much as the big one but for less money. Well I’ll survive to have less, probably even better because that’s a lot of sugar and fat 🙂

Just before sitting down to write anything here I let the dogs out in to the garden. They just rounded the corner and both stopped and refused to go any further. They just stop there looking towards the fence. So I thought I better go and have a look what might be behind the fence but couldn’t see anything they were quick to go inside as well so I guess a wolf must have passed by. The only time they refuse to leave the entrance like that is when we have wolves around. I’m mostly annoyed by still not have seen any wolves myself, especially since plenty of the villagers have 🙂 🙂 It would be nice to have a photo on a wolf from a good distance 🙂 🙂

My cool cellar and it is time to harvest the tomatillos. I’m not quite sure what I think about them to be honest but I’ll still use them in my food 🙂

My Date plum tree (Diospyros lotus) is starting to grow way too early. It is good in one way because I have over watered it so the risk of it starting to rotten is much lower now.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. Yesterday I had it way too late and woke up in the middle of the night feeling that I had around ten seconds to reach the bathroom 🙂 🙂 I will not do the same mistake today so it’ll be an early last cup for the day.

Have a great day!

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A slow day, windy and cloudy and some drizzle in between. I did almost see the sun for a second though 🙂 Not especially cold but not close to be warmish either. Mostly a meh weather day with other words 🙂

So close to actually see the sun shine 🙂

Thankfully for me the only sport I like to follow, Biathlon, season has started so I could at least watch that for an hour or two. It’s too early to start the winter sowing for those plants that either need a cold period to germinate or a longer warm one for the same reason. This year I have seeds from two different bananas 🙂 Both will have a slim chance to flower and give edible fruits so why not try them 🙂 I also have seeds for two different passion fruits and since they tend to start growing quickly it’s way too early to sow them.

I have however slowly started to fill the new aquarium with water and today I moved three smaller plants from the bigger tank to the new one. They have plenty of time to grow big before any fish will live in the aquarium but it does look a little poor at the moment 🙂 🙂 At the moment I can only find an extension cord with only one socket so at the moment the filter is doing its job and later on I’ll have the light on instead. Without any fish in it there really is no use for a filter running. I can of course find the extension cord I know I have somewhere so I can have both on at the same time but I think You all now know that I will not find it when I look for it, it sort of must happen by chance if it ever will turn up again 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and after that I’ll most likely fall asleep in front of the tv 🙂

Have a great day!

I used my headlamp to be able to take this photo 🙂 The water looks a bit hazy so that’s why the filter is running instead of the light but I sort of like how it looks 🙂

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Mixed weather here today, anything from misty rain to drizzle and then showers but also a lot of sunshine and it was so nice to stand in it feeling the warmth from it. Tomorrow it’ll be 4C (39,2F) all day, both day and night but with no chance of seeing the sun they say.

There was almost no vegetation growing in the bog (except for the pines) when I moved here 25 years ago but long draughts have made sure that birches thrive.
The idea was that they weren’t allowed to keep the ditches so that the water level would rise but nature has another idea. So now when animals walk here I can’t see them, just hear them.

It was a joy to have our morning walk today, Alma behaved all the time and Malkolm pushed the leash much less, I guess the smell from what ever it was that the ravens ate made them more focused 🙂 🙂 🙂 This time of year the birds don’t make a lot of sounds, the occasional tweeting but they are so focused at finding food that they really don’t have the time to do other things. That makes it easier for us to hear other things, like wild hogs trying to move as quietly as possible .

We had lots of them around us today and as long as they keep trying to avoid us I don’t care about them 🙂 there were lots of ravens in the air and Great tits flew between the trees looking for insects hiding in the moss and lichens. No woodpeckers today though and oddly enough I didn’t hear any Jays arguing, normally those are the ones one mostly can hear 🙂

I also went to the supermarket today. I didn’t need especially much but came home with more than I had written down on my list 🙂 They did have whole chicken on sale so why not and I found this cereal that was supposed to taste like apple pie (and it was also gluten free) and I thought I really needed to try that one. Well it didn’t taste anything like apple pie and one could think that since it was made from oat that it possibly at least would taste like oatmeal cookies but no. So sit was like eating hard bread in a bowl of yogurt 🙂 🙂 🙂

Then I thought I should buy sand for the aquarium so I walked in top the pet store just beside. They now have a license to sell fish so they actually had a few aquariums with fish but they were so expensive that I doubt anyone will buy any fish from that place. I did eventually find aquarium sand but I couldn’t find how much it weighed but took it anyway, I would need around 10kg (22 pound) and it looked like that bag would way something like that. I did think that I must have lost a lot of muscle because it was so heavy. It was expensive too but since the fish was expensive I didn’t think much of it. Turns out that I bought a 20kg (44 pound) bag 🙂 🙂 so now I have around 22 pound of sand just standing in a corner 🙂 🙂 🙂

I think this might be the last leaf still hanging on in the entire area, it’s on my peach tree 🙂

I really should cut of this big branch on the apple tree but I like all the moss that’s growing on it 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea I think. Perhaps I should have some of that apple pie cereal as some kind of cookie 🙂 🙂 🙂 I can always pour some cinnamon over it all and pretend it’s a Christmas cookie 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

I guess he was hungry.

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So it is warmer but instead we got a wind that makes everything feel colder. The dogs and I have been in the forest mostly so we haven’t felt much of it to be honest. Nights can still be a bit chilly so the ground is frozen when we get out first thing in the morning.

I drove to the supermarket in Skara this morning, the big road was just fine but the smaller one just outside my village was a bit scary to drive on 🙂 I always do a test brake when I drive out on it now when it’s  cold in the morning and even though I have really good winter tires on the car still slid around as if it was drunk 🙂 🙂 So all the way to the big road I wished no hogs or deer would jump up on the road 🙂 🙂

We haven’t seen much of the sun except for when the clouds were so thin it shined through them. We walked down to the bog and out to my favourite island and walked in the forest there. I could hear one hunting dog bark in the distance , last time they were all over the bog. I couldn’t find a single track from wildlife oddly enough, not even from the wild hogs that I know are plenty out there. I guess the wind and generally cold weather made them stay in the thickets until they really needed to eat something.

Now when all the leafs have fallen down we can hear the traffic on the big road but out on that island it’s totally devoid of traffic sounds. Mostly because most of the trees there are spruces and they’re so thick that not even sounds go through. It is a nature reserve so no one has cut a tree there since I don’t know when. The thought is that when these trees have fallen more “natural” for this area trees will start to grow there instead. I guess the idea is nice but since 70 years back nothing than spruces have grown there there will also be lots of spruce seeds just waiting for a chance to grow up 🙂 🙂

Every time I see this old tree I start to think about the monsters in the movie Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children 🙂

There was a small Sparrow hawk sitting on the table in front of the bird feeder this morning just waiting to have a small bird as breakfast. Well the small birds were nowhere to be found oddly enough 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think it must have been a young male (because of the size, males are smaller) and that he hasn’t figured out that being seen by his food is not a good thing 🙂 🙂 Beautiful bird and even though I like the birds by the feeder I do hope this one will survive the winter.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then watch some tv if I can find anything that interests me, which I doubt.

Have a great day!

The photo was taken with my phone camera through a not so clean window 🙂

Nasty wind.

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I doubt the monster wanted the bird seeds 🙂

 

Less cold today but we’ve had a nasty, bitterly cold wind blowing almost all day so it has been rather unpleasant to be outdoors. It was totally calm on our morning walk though so that was nice. I think I might have a fever now, I woke up last night felling awfully hot but my bedroom is anything but and today I’ve had a slight fever and sneezed a lot all day. I’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself though but I do hope this isn’t the beginning of something worse like what my neighbours had last week.

Nothing special is happening here at the moment.  I have been thinking on Christmas decorations for some reason. I haven’t had a lot of that because cats and having rather big dogs that picked anything in their reach and chewed on them if they liked the taste 🙂 🙂 I do have a nice plastic Christmas tree and I’ve used it for two years but now I have a cat again 🙂 🙂 I do remember having a nativity set back in the days that I liked a lot but then one day I couldn’t find it, turns out my mother had given it away without asking me, quite common behaviour from her I’m sorry to say.

So I went online to see what they had there. Lots of different ones and they cost a fortune! Some I think I would be able to do better myself to be honest. I did find one I liked meant to be hanging on a wall I guess but it is oddly enough supposed to be filled with water?? Is it a kind of snow globe perhaps and every time one shakes it snow will fall down over the people? 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest, I have seen worse and I think that one would be the one working best because it would hang like a painting on the wall and the monster wouldn’t care about it. I’ll better check it once again 🙂

I took an extra look at it and no there’s no snow in it 🙂 🙂 🙂 It’s called a lantern with LED lights in it but why the water? Also rather expensive to be honest. Well I’ll keep on looking or perhaps I should try to make one myself even though making the humans and animals will be very tricky 🙂 🙂 I do of course have the advent candlestick I made from clay last year.  It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen but I did it myself, perhaps I should order some clay again and make the nativity set 🙂 🙂 I will at least have lots of fun making it 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then go out on the net to see whether I’ll buy some clay 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!