November on my mind

As the name of the blog suggest I really have been doing makeup by candlelight this month. Truth be told, I have candles all year around but there's something very special about early dark mornings and evenings all snuggled up in front of the fireplace with a hot chocolate. For me November is usually a bit of a non month - it just adds another 30 days until it's time for Christmas, but this year it's been different and very busy. We started the month with celebrating Him Indoors' birthday and talk about the pressure being on, since Him Indoors had organised so many wonderful things for me in October, but we had a great relaxing day and an excellent meal at the end of it as well.

In fact it seems like a lot of November has been focused on food - a week or so ago we attended a sushi making course, which was super fun. Our instructor was a Japanese chef who gave us some background history about sushi - which buy the way doesn't mean raw fish, it means vinegared rice, and also taught us about different kinds of sushi and the regional differences in Japan. Since we are massive sushi lovers it was really interesting to learn a bit more about the traditional way of eating it and making it, and I now completely understand why it takes years to become a proper sushi chef. In our case I think we were fast tracked, since it only took about 2 hrs before we started making sushi: thin tuna rolls (Maki), thick rolls (Futomaki) and inside out California rolls, and at the end of the course we actually had some decent looking pieces with us home for a late night snack. We had so much fun and are now obsessing about coming up with new creative sushi fillings e.g. pear, walnut and blue cheese, or how about a British classic - a chip, brown sauce and some cheese? Naaaaah, I think I'll stick with the more traditional.

I've also started all the preparations for Christmas; the house has been decorated, all we need is a Christmas tree (real of course), I'm all set to celebrate first of advent tomorrow in a traditional Swedish way, I've made lists of Christmas presents to buy, decided on what food we're going to eat and what I need to buy. My Christmas leggings with penguins and reindeer are all laid out with my Christmas socks and jumper (can you tell that I REALLY LOVE Christmas) and overall I feel quite well prepared as we go into December and I can't wait to open no 1 of my Ciaté mini nail polish calendar tomorrow morning. So bring it on December - I'm ready for you!