Our Christmas in pictures

Two days before Christmas I finally finished wrapping the last Christmas presents. Wrapping presents always seem to take five times longer than I imagine it will take.

This year we were blessed with a beautiful white Christmas in Toronto. Our whole neighborhood transformed into a winter wonderland a couple of days before Christmas and on Christmas Eve we got another snow storm. Yey, I love snow! :)

Christmas at our house is a mix of three different cultures. We mix together Jamaican, Finnish and Canadian Christmas traditions. I'm the Finnish-Swedish person in the house so my contribution is ginger bread cookies. Home baked? Absolutely not! Ikea's gingerbread cookies taste great, which means I don't need to bake my own. :)

One of our family traditions is to have Jamaican Black Cake for dessert on Christmas Eve every year. It's super tasty!

We open all our Christmas gifts after dinner on Christmas Eve according to Finnish tradition. On Christmas Day morning we open whatever Santa got for us in our stockings.

Christmas Day afternoon is my favorite time of the season when you can enjoy your gifts and eat endless amounts of chocolate while you hang out with the family in your pyjamas.

On the second day of Christmas we went and got some hot chocolate and took a walk around the neighborhood.

It's always so much fun to look at all the different Christmas decorations in the neighborhood. Here we have Rudolf with his red nose at the front.

God With Us

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed God? Maybe you found yourself in some kind of trouble, or felt lonely, or just had one of those days where the only thing you could say was, “God help me.”


This Christmas, Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. from Vous Church in Miami, Florida reminds us of the greatest news of the Christmas story - God is with us. There’s not a moment that passes where God is not present with each and every one of us, even when we don’t notice Him. The story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew chapter 1 assure us that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. By believing that Jesus is God and recognizing His presence with us, we can experience the power of the Holy Spirit this Christmas, and in every season of our lives.

It's Officially Winter

Hej Mamma, Paul & I went shopping and decided to buy you a "small" Christmas ornament. "Go big or go home", they say. In North America we have BIG Christmas ornaments.

We also bought you six of these big red & white balls that are meant for outdoor use. You can hang them in the apple tree or somewhere else in the yard. Now all you need to do is come visit us in Canada so that you can bring your Christmas ornaments home. :)

Today we had our first snow storm in Toronto and during the weekend I got my first cold. It's officially winter! I guess the upside of having a cold is that I keep all the tea companies in business. I drink 3 cups of Echinacea tea per day to fight off the cold. Well, pretty much all I drink is tea since I can't have coffee at the moment. It's torture for a coffee-lover like me but milk and a cold is a bad combination, and I refuse to drink my coffee black! I'm grateful that I got a cold now, because last year I was sick all throughout Christmas. I believe that this cold will be long gone once Christmas comes.

Our home has been transformed into a gingerbread factory.

During the weekend we celebrated Second Advent. I can't believe that it's less than two full weeks left until Christmas!

Is it just me or does time start to go a lot faster after you turn 30?? I feel like it wasn't long ago that we took a drive to Cobourg Beach and now we have 12 cm of snow in our yard! Time sure doesn't stand still, we better make the most of each moment!

When Christmas is Hard and Discouraging

The Holiday Season brings a lot of joy for some people and a lot of difficulties for others. If you're feeling down and discouraged about something going on in your life, this vlog is for you.

A Day of Rest

I like to start my rest day with blueberry pancakes and coffee.

After breakfast I have some more coffee and read my daily devotion in "A Fresh Infusion of Joy" by Sheila Walsh. I skip reading the newspaper on my rest day because I don't want the day to be ruined by stories about murders and other tragedies. It's enough to read about the bad news in the world six days of the week.

Two things I enjoy doing on my rest day is reading a book and watching a couple of episodes of one of my favorite TV shows.

This time of the year I enjoy being at home on my rest day so that I can enjoy all the Christmas decorations. I enjoy the music from my snow globe that I bought last year.

After it gets dark outside I like to get a Peppermint Hot Chocolate from Tim Horton's and walk around the neighborhood enjoying everyone's Christmas lights.

During a busy time of year like Christmas it can be tempting to skip taking time to rest in between all the work and chores. This year my life was busy even before the Christmas season arrived so I would never have time for rest unless I decided to plan it into my weekly schedule. Sometimes when we are entering a busy but exciting season in our lives it can be tempting to skip taking time to rest all together. I remember when my husband and I were planning our wedding five years ago, it was a very busy but exciting time in our lives. One of the best tips I got was to take one weekend per month off from all wedding planning and just enjoy each other. During the months leading up to the wedding there were a lot of things to do and if we hadn’t taken the time to “just be” it would have been a very stressful season.

The joy goes out the door when we get too stressed and too tired in life. Our human bodies and minds were not built to work at top speed for long periods of time. Life is filled with important responsibilities but I think that with a little planning we can make time for both responsibilities, rest and joyful moments in life.

I love Christmas and I don’t want to kill the joy by hurrying through the whole season. I find that starting the preparations for Christmas early (at the end of November) helps me keep a slower pace and enjoy the season. I also like to do things a little bit differently every year, if it’s a year when I have a lot of time on my hands I can enjoy some extras like baking a gingerbread house. If it’s a year when our family is busier I will choose to buy my gingerbread, lussebullar and Jamaican Christmas cake at the store instead. This year I’m not baking a single thing for Christmas, I love that I can buy everything I need in the store in Toronto, everything from gingerbread to eggnog. Next year our lives will highly likely be less busy and then I will enjoy baking a gingerbread house together with my kids.

Decorating for Christmas

This week I've been having an unintentional social media fast, in other words our internet haven't been working properly all week long. When the internet isn't working you realize how dependent you are on it, it's a little scary how much I need it. I need the internet to stay in touch with my family in Finland and for another one million reasons. Today we still don't have any internet connection at home so I decided to head to Starbucks and blog at the same time as I have my coffee. I really appreciate free Wifi on days like these.

The fun part of the week was getting to start decorating the house for Christmas. It's finally the month of December so this week I've put up most of our Christmas decorations. Next week I will decorate the Christmas tree. We usually have a real tree but this year we bought one in plastic. Our tree is white and I'm so excited to get to put it up and decorate it in silver, gold and white. Last weekend our kids decorated some gingerbread for us that tasted great and looked beautiful. Today we will decorate some more gingerbread and enjoy some Swedish glogg and lussebullar. I love the Christmas season! :)

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

I've been hoping for a white Christmas with snow but this year it will be a warm Christmas Eve. They are promising sunshine and +13 degrees Celsius in Toronto on Thursday. I will just have to settle for enjoying the snowfall in my snow globe instead this year. I wish you all a joyful Christmas!

Embrace the change in your life

Change is never easy. And it is rarely painless. But it is inevitable. We all go through different times and seasons that require us to change. Some changes we hope for, and other change we reluctantly go through. But often as Christians, we pray that God would change our situations, rather than praying for a change within ourselves. This Christmas, Pastor Steven shows us through the Christmas story how God takes us through change, and the promise that remains the same no matter the season we are in.

The Science of Self-love

If you want to buy a Christmas present for yourself this year I recommend the book: "I Heart Me: The Science of Self-love" by David R. Hamilton. We exist to love and be loved. The sooner we learn to love ourselves the sooner we will be able to experience life fully. Do yourself (and those around you) a favor by investing in this book.

David R. Hamilton explains in the book how our lack of self-love has a tendency to sabotage our lives in many little subtle ways. Hamilton also presents many exercises in the book that will help us increase our level of self-worth and our well-being. As our self-worth increases we will be able to make stronger and more real connections with other people as a result of that.

Christmas Shopping

On Saturday my husband and I decided to go Christmas shopping in Toronto. I'm only buying one present per person this year so I thought it would be quite easy to get my shopping done this year. I had a plan: eat dinner first (to fill up on energy), then do the shopping. The problem was I ate way too much for dinner and finished it off with a bowl of ice cream for dessert. After dinner I was tired from eating a huge meal and walked through the mall like a zombie.

When we were finally done with all the shopping I felt like a dead fish and decided to rest on one of the benches in the mall. As I was sitting there, probably looking like I had just finished a marathon race, I wondered to myself how other people are able to buy so many gifts for each person without crashing. It turns out I have no endurance at all when it comes to shopping.

The positive side of the Christmas shopping experience was that all the staff at the mall were super helpful and joyful. I never interacted with even one person on staff that didn't give me great service. I don't know how they do it, I don't think I could keep a smile on my face throughout a 10 hour shift at the mall. These people have definitely got a gift for serving people, their help made the day a lot less stressful than it could have been otherwise.

Our kind of Christmas

Christmas at our house is becoming more and more multicultural every year as new people are added to the family. This year we are celebrating a Jamaican-Finnish-Swedish-Canadian Christmas. We make a Canadian dinner at Christmas Eve and then we have Jamaican blackcake for dessert. We celebrate Advent every Sunday in December with Swedish glögg and gingerbread. Thank God for Ikea by the way, living abroad as a Scandinavian gets so much easier when you can pick up all the holiday foods you need at Ikea.

When we were celebrating our first Christmas in the new house I had big plans to make homemade gingerbread and Finnish Christmas foods, then the ice storm hit Toronto and none of that happened. One thing I love about living in North America is that you can buy almost anything ready-made if you are in a hurry, it makes life a lot easier.

The End of a Season

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today it's December 1st and as one season ends the next one begins. I decided to put together some pictures from some of my favorite moments from the fall. I like to take the time to sit down and look through the pictures on my camera every now and then, it helps me feel tankful for everything I have in my life right now. We need to keep our focus on what's next in life but sometimes it's good to stop and think about what we already have.

This fall I got the chance to do a lot of fun things. The beginning of September was very warm so I enjoyed taking morning walks along the beach and spent my weekends down by the marina. During the beginning of fall I also had energy to bake homemade cupcakes that I could enjoy. In October my husband and I decided to take the ferry boat out to the Toronto Islands which created a nice fall memory (minus the attack of the bees, that is).

I also got the chance to take part in a Women's Connect group at church this fall where I met many wonderful and brave women. We had a lot of fun together as we did the "Stuck" Small Group Bible Study by Jennie Allen. During Canadian Thanksgiving in October I got to enjoy great food and beautiful fall weather. Enjoying a Pumpkin Spice Latte in good company at the local coffee shop is also one of my favorite things to do during fall. The month of November is the less fun part of fall if you ask me, but during the days without rain I enjoyed taking walks along the beach. The week after Halloween all the Christmas decorations were up all around the city and it was time to start getting ready for a new season. They say it will be a warm winter this year but I'm still hoping for a white Christmas!