What I Did On My Holiday

I thought I'd share a quick post-Christmas update. I'm home in Finland at the moment and it's such a luxury to not feel guilty about just lazing around over Christmas, as I already had my exams earlier this month. I definitely prefer December exams over January ones.

I'm still not over my mum's decision to switch to a plastic tree. I grew up with real trees in the house and will probably never learn to like the plastic variety.

I've probably eaten my entire weight in gingerbread. It's simply the best thing ever. And I'm sorry Brits, but you just don't do them like we do. At all.

Food, glorious food! We got a goodie bag from family friends and it included so many delicacies. Here's a little sample of my favourites. Snow almonds (chocolate covered almonds dusted with icing sugar) and cinnamon almonds (same, but dusted with cinnamon instead) are my absolute weakness around this time of year. We had the "toast" with cheese and fig jam the other night and they were divine. The tin of chocolates is shaped like a book and while I'm not big fan of coffee flavours, the cappuccino chocolates inside were tasty as well.

My mum likes to cover every surface in the house with candles and I have no complaints. The pine cone thing is a candle holder as well — though you can't see this in the photo (oops). It is essentially a glass dish that you can fill with seasonal decorations and has a "lid" with a row of tea lights.

Christmas is prime time for reading for pleasure (being a literature student, I generally don't have time to read for pleasure during term time — two novels a week and secondary reading is generally all I can manage). I've already finished Fangirl (which I devoured in less than a day and absolutely loved) and The Five People You Meet in Heaven (which I liked). I've started Beyond the Glass Slipper, which is a collection of lesser-known fairy tales, and I'm enjoying it so far. I got it as part of my Secret Santa gift from my flatmate who knows me so well (she also got me a Cath Kidston teapot and a red sparkly nail varnish). I'm writing my dissertation on fairy tales this coming semester so this sort of counts as research, right? The only downside is that these are the only books I took with me and I still have over a week left in Finland. A visit to my local library may happen tomorrow.

What have you got up to over the holidays?