My Favourite Christmas Commercial

I think it's the comparative simplicity that makes me like it so much. It's one person whistling, like they don't have anyone to celebrate with, but they're still happy.

And the behind the scenes video

Jólakötturinn

I am tired and have nothing funny or interesting to post. Here's a link to a evil christmas kitty.

Starbucks Cups Drawings

I not a huge fan of Starbucks. I usually prefer local coffee houses, especially when they have extensive sugar-free options. Sugar sometimes gives me terrible migraines.  But there IS something very alluring about their red holiday cups, something that says to me, "Christmas is here!"

In keeping with our hobby of drawing on our daily coffee cups, we drew on our Starbucks cups.

                               

 Greg drew me some flying santa kitties, um... pooping snowflakes

I drew him a Krampus eating the logo

Desperate Passage

Last year I was having dinner with a few friends and one of them made a Donnor Party joke. "Table for three, we were ten but we got hungry waiting." The other friend had never heard of the Donnor Party. I used that as an excuse to look it up on Wikipedia, and an hour later finished reading the entire page. It's a very engrossing article, almost heartbreaking. I had a very clear picture of the families and their troubles crossing the mountains. I had to read more, so I bought the Kindle version of Desperate Passage. The Donnors were trapped in the snow over Christmas in 1846.  It's an oddly "christmassy" story.  Families spent more time together than they wanted to.  There was a lot of snow and fir trees.  A few even had tiny Christmas feasts (of beef and vegetables, not other things.) I read it again this year, and as horrible as it sounds, I enjoyed it just as much. Something about reading how other people suffered through the winter, in roughly the same part of the country, helps me to better appreciate the plentiful food, and colorful lights we have today.

Bender On A Rampage

Every christmas the last three years I've used my Bender toy to make christmas pictures. I love 'em.

 Stealing presents (2013)

 Menacing a gingerbread family (2014)

Glaring at the unflinching gingerbread family (2014)

Cuddling with his booze buddy (2015)

Checking out what's in the other stocking (2015)

Losing his hold on the booze (2015)

"Crap" (2015)

Fattigman Cookies

Tonight we went over to Greg's mom's house and made Fattigman cookies. "Fattigman" apparently means "Poor man" in Norwegian. Their family recipe is Top Secret, so here's a close approximation. And you'll need a special Fattigman cutter, like this one.

Cutting out the cookies.

Folded cookies waiting to be fried.

Greg's sister frying the cookies. No one else was trusted not to burn them. 

(Although Greg likes them a little burnt)

Fried Fattigman.

A few of them with powdered sugar.

Christmas Feet

I'm not sure when it started, but at some point I started associating christmas with painting my toenails. Every year I buy a few "christmasy" colors and wait until december to try them out. 

I'm sure everyone desperately wants to see my finished toes, so here they are

The color came out very blood-like, so I added glitter. Now they still look bloody, but cheerfully so.

We also have christmas socks. One set for Greg,

And one for me...

Enjoying himself

Eating a Snowbaby

I'm excited to wear these to Greg's family's house on the 25th. We'll see if anybody notices.

House Decorating

Tonight we watched Love Actually, decorated the house, and had cookies and cream milkshakes.

 Mistletoe above the bedroom door. 

 Our D&D minis.

Our tiny christmas tree

Rudolph hanging out on the lampshade (it's a led light bulb, no heat or fire risk)

Our sparse bulletin board

Rare Exports

 Tonight we watched Rare Exports (2010) 

A very entertaining, and disconcerting, "Christmas Horror" film.

It's based on the short films by Jalmari Helander, Rare Exports(2003) 

and 

Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions (2005) 

Both links take you the videos on Vimeo

It took a bit of digging to find any of the source material for the legend. It isn't mentioned on the  Rare Exports wiki page, although the Joulupukki page does mention the movie. The two pages with the most information are the Joulupukki and Yule Goat pages. Both of which made me think of Krampus, who has his own movie coming out on Friday. We'll probably have to wait till next Tuesday (economy ticket day) to see it, but I'm excited.

Gingerbread House