THAT window - because it's a tradition!

So, there it is, same as every year - and always something new.
I love it! Such a great tradition. Read more here!

Those days in between

Christmas is more or less over, although there is still a certain holiday slacker atmosphere about our days, and now we are frantically Googling hors d'oeuvres recipes, as we are going to our usual everybody-bring-a-course dinnerparty on New Years Eve.

Yesterday I took a different route grocery shopping than my usual one, and remembered one thing I had completely forgotten: my friends down the road with the snowflake window - how did it look this year? Unbelievably, as they live about a five minute walk from us, I hadn't been down that end of the main street in our neighborhood all December.

But there it was, pretty as always!

(Readers of this blog will know that I have posted this window several times before. Every year, early in the Christmas season, my frinds have a party, where everyone is asked to cut white tissue paper snow flakes, while drinking glögg and eating sweets. They don't stop until the window is full, and I LOVE that window. Some years they jazz it up with a few red flakes, and last year - I think it was? - the flakes were square. But it always snows in Stine and Erik's dining room window!)

Hellig Tre Konger / Epiphany / Twelfth Night - and goodbye tree!

Today is the very very last day of christmas - Epiphany or Twelfth Night - and in Denmark we mostly remember this date because it is, traditionally, the last day you are allowed to enjoy your christmas tinsel. On January 6th it has to go! I guess lots of people get rid of it much sooner, and we too put away most of the elves and advent candlesticks and such, but I tend to stick with the tree - if we have one - to about this day. We always buy one just a few days before Christmas Eve, and christmas trees are ridiculously expensive if you life in a big city in Denmark (and cost next to nothing if you live in the countryside) so I cannot bring myself to throw it away. Plus, of course, it looks festive.

This is what ours looked like about three days ago....

It got stuck in a strange and messy corner this year, and does its very best to cover up our semi stowed away CD collection. 

Yesterday it got to the turning point of its lush looking greenness - it just kinda lost all of its needles at once, so today it just looks sad and creepy. I de-tinselled it this morning, and when my son is back from kindergarten, he gets to see it thrown over the balcony all of four stories down! Mustn't miss that.

Thank you ALL for following my blog this December, there were visitors from the most exotic places, from Egypt to Japan, hope you will check it out again. I just started on Pinterest, so you can find me there as well. Not much happening there yet, I have to say, but it will grow, I'm guessing.

The very last christmassy thing I will do this time is to show you this years edition of My Favourite Window!

I have shown you this window the two previous seasons - see the one from 2011, and see the one from 2012 - and this year my friends down the street, came up with yet another twist on their beautiful annual holiday paper snowflake window.

And it looks lovely again this year. With this I will wish you all a Happy New Year!

My favourite window

Late yesterday afternoon I took my small camera with me out jogging, in order to document
if my favourite window in the local neighbourhood has gone into christmas mode. I have been
following it patiently, but missed it the last week or so - but I was not dissapointed yesterday.

And I love that they have added red and purple this year, that looks great, usually it's all white.
Really grainy and poor photos, but daylight is almost non existant here in Cph at the moment.

So, as I wrote last year, they do this every year - and it is a seasonal installation that gets completely refreshed every year, so you must imagine that all these exquisite tissue flakes simply gets scrubbed
down some time after New Year in a frenzy of window cleaning.
I like that, somehow. It adds to the elegance of the whole thing.

And since I had my camera with me, I tried to take some evening pictures of all the lights in the
windows - all the stars and fairylights people put up, here in the gloomy Scandinavian winter.
It proved almost impossible, with the small camera, and they got really blurry. But I kind of decided
that I liked that, since it was the greyest of foggy days, so I exaggerated a bit and ended up with these....

They captured the day perfectly.

Flaky - part three

Just a few blocks from here, some of my friends live.
And every year at christmas, they have this fine tradition: on one of the early weekends in the season
they get together and make paper flakes for this fantastic themed window. Every year it is the same -
and, of course, every year it is different!
So here it is - Stine and Eriks delicate tissue paper snowflake extravaganza!
To me, it is one of the more important local signs of christmas - and I keep an eager eye out for the
flakes from late november / early december - and if I think they are the least bit late, I will send them impatient emails.

It took me a while to do this post, as this window is so hard to show properly in a photograph....
Originally I wanted to take a picture at night, but that proved impossible, as reflections of the street
lights were all you could see. But I hope you get just hint of the fragile prettiness here....