November has been dark and dreary, but I held out. Sometimes I hew to tradition. No Christmas lights or decorations, no gingerbread, no lussebullar before advent. Now, though, advent is here and we can finally put up advent lights everywhere, indoors and outdoors.

These coloured, patterned ones are my favourites.

The cloud of spangles in the background is a string of outdoor lights that we hang on our thuja tree. The first time we did it, Eric could reach nearly all the way to the top and the lights covered most of the tree. Now more than ten years later the tree is twice as tall and the lights are like a little apron on the tree.