Hey guys!

As I'm sure you've all realised by now, Christmas is fast approaching. That means presents. I already did a christmas gift guide, which you can find here, but to be honest, it's equally as hard to know what to answer when people ask you what you want for christmas.

My friends and I don't really give each other a bunch of presents, and I'm not actually asking for any of these (mostly because the shipping is expensive to Norway), but here are some things that I would really love to receive:

Nothing cheers me up quite like a good book, although I do find it quite hard to make time for it during the school year. I definitely read the most during the summer, but Christmas time is a close second. Can anything really beat cuddling up in the sofa under a blanket, reading you favourite book with a hot chocolate in hand?

I have a list of favourite books (which you can find here), and they all make me so happy. However, there is something very special about having a book specific to christmas, or that give you that very special christmas feeling. In this blogpost I thought I'd show you what my three very favourite books around christmas-time are.

The first and main one is of course Let It Snow, by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle. It consists of three short stories that intertwine. They're humorous and cosy, and just generally happy. I can read it over and over, and although it's not necessarily a challenging read it's the kind of book that just leaves you very happy and grateful. I would definitely reccommend it, and it is the number one book that gets me in the holiday mood.

Another book, which was featured on my Top Ten Favourite Books of All Time, is Dash and Lily's Book of Dares. It's written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, and is about two characters who get to know each other through a hidden notebook when they're both  lonely in New York City during Christmas. It reminds me of The Perks of Being a Wallflower but just a lot more christmassy (there we are again with that word). It's a really entertaining and funny book, and definitely makes you want a cute holiday romance.

The next one aren't directly christmas related, but still definitely cheers me up and puts me in a holiday mood. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is probably my number one favourite book of all time. There's something about this one in particular that really makes me want to cuddle up and read it with my cousin, which also brings back so many happy memories.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and let me know what you thought! Do you like any of these books? What are some of you favourite books?

Also, I don't do this very often, but I'd love for you to check out my bloglovin, if you'd like to stay updated with my blogposts. I really appreciate it.

Hey guys!

Sorry I've been a bit absent recently, but December will make up for it! I'll be blogging every other day until Christmas Day, with only Christmas related posts! I hope you're as excited as I am for this.

Today I figured I'd start you off with something to make you laugh. As some of you may know if you're a regular reader, I live in Norway (more about that here), and we have some very strange christmas traditions. As my family is English, we don't really follow many of these, but they still crack me up when my friends tell me about them.

Not my photo

A little disclaimer - I don't know whether these are celebrated other places or whether they're originally Norwegian, but I know they're celebrated regularly in Norway, so I figured I'd share.

1. The first one might shock you if you're not used to it, but we actually celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve. It's a regular work day for adults, and presents are unwrapped late in the evening, after dinner. The origin of this is actually that Jesus was (apparently) born during the night between the 24th and 25th of December, and so the date celebrated varies from country to country.

Not my photo

2. Lille julaften, the name we have for the 23rd (which directly translates to little christmas eve) is also celebrated strangely. This is the day where your entire family sits around the table wearing 'nisseluer' and drawn-on freckles and cheeks covered in blush, eating porridge made of rice. It sounds disgusting, but it actually really nice. You'd sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon, and then have a dollop of butter in the middle, which melts and tasted really nice with the cinnamon. In the porridge we also hide an almond which has been peeled, and the person who gets this wins marsipan in the shape of a pig. I suppose this is quite similar to looking for the penny in christmas pudding.

Not my photo

3. We all have the advent calendars full of chocolate, but here there's one that every family has hanging in their window. On the 30th of November every year, each family is supposed to prick 24 dried carnations into an orange, and pull out one every day until we've reached christmas eve. It's quite disgusting actually, as the orange obviously goes out of date, and so they always end up being thrown away within the first week.