Our traditional advent activities — Karen Hilmersson Photography

If you are stuck with ideas on what to do during advent time, I thought it would be a good idea to share what we traditionally do around Christmas time. it might give you some inspiration:

During advent, we always have an advent calendar. Most of the presents are sweet things but we also give activities to do together for example baking Christmas delicacies:They are mostly from Sweden as my kids are half Swedish. We do pepparkakor which are the Swedish gingerbread cookies. But we also make Lussebullar (Lucia buns, made for Santa Lucia, a celebration of light on the 13th of December). I did those with the healthier recipe from Green Kitchen stories. They are made with safran which is a spice Swedes love along with cinnamon. Those are warming spices, which they need in the long winters!We love to decorate the house with garlands, candles and of course dress the Christmas tree!There are certain smells that reminds me of Christmas. And one in particular I love: oranges with cloves in it. It's a must in our family comes the first day of advent:Also, in the advent calendar there would be presents such as long walks with hot chocolate and marshmallows and maybe theatre plays to go and watch together. Also, we love to go ice skating at some point. Of course, we also love having hot drinks indoors too!As for me, as I’m a big tea fan, I order a tea advent calendar from Sweden and there is a new organic tea to taste every day until Christmas and that’s just the perfect self care present I do to myself!Last but not least, we do family pictures together. This was the one of the outtakes from last year, I wonder what we will do this year?I hope this has given you some ideas. Let me know what your traditions are!