perfect winter day

As I stirred out of my enjoyable night’s sleep, I noticed a nice white glow coming from my windows. Could it be?!? I jumped up, ran to the windows, and peaked through my curtains (like the child that I am) and was so excited to see that the ground covered in white and huge flakes falling from the sky. It’s officially winter, and I finally feel like I’m truly living 200km south of the artic circle!!

view from my window this morning!

I was in such a good mood (which was nice, Friday was a very frustrating, wake up on the wrong side of the bed, kind of day! Hence…no entry. Everything that annoyed me was minimal, and I didn’t even see the point in writing about it) I wanted to take advantage of my insanely wonderful mood, so I scrubbed, and I mean SCRUBBED my apartment clean…and may have sang some Christmas songs and danced around once or twice :)

After the random cleaning/organizing spree, I headed up to school to practice…camera in hand…

Just outside of my building

cute houses

View from my practice room! It felt so cozy :)

Walk home...EVERYTHING was covered and beautiful

After practicing, I was excited to get back home. I have been looking forward to this evening all week. Since I’ve been complaining about the lack of pumpkin flavored food, Lou and I decided to take action. We saw pumpkins in the grocery store, and found a few recipes online. Tonight was the night to try to make a pumpkin pie from scratch!

Lou making the crust

I gutted the pumpkin slices, cleaned the seeds to roast, then we put the slices in the oven to soften

pumpkin puree. yum. yum.

mixing in the ingredients: puree, 3 eggs, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and icecream. yes, icecream...it works instead of condensed milk!

baking!

doesn't look perfect, but it tasted fantastic!!! It was fun to enjoy it with Emma, Thomas, Lou and Anna...none of them had ever had it before! I was one happy American.

Now, it's time for bed..we had a huge dinner, pie, and glögg (a traditional Swedish wintery drink. It's kind of like a hot wine. Really good!!!) We played Skip-Bo (card game) and enjoyed each other's company in a beautiful, warm and cozy home. This was the PERFECT winter day...snow, music, good friends, and pie :)