My brother came for a Christmas visit.

We played board games (Robo Rally),

… made pasta together,

… and crafted mince pies.

Christmas Day may be behind us, but it’s still Christmas, and mince pies are a must-have.

Christmas presents. And Christmas food. Not many photos of things happening because I mostly forgot about my camera.

We used to put Christmas gifts out under the tree the night before, both for the festive feeling and for the kids to go and poke and shake and wonder who would be getting what. With a cat in the house, that is not an option. Shiny paper, dangly ribbons, chewable boxes? Temptations, temptations everywhere. Now we had the gifts hidden away until just before opening time, and when that arrived, we shut Nysse in the bedroom. Adrian was disappointed, but what can you do.

Devilled eggs are our go-to festive lunch food. This time we made them extra festive, with “holly” decorations made of pomegranate seeds and parsley leaves, based on an idea that Ingrid found on TikTok. Served with Eric’s vörtbröd, three kinds of pickled herring (blackcurrant; sesame and wasabi; sour cream and fish roe) and a beetroot salad.

Ingrid was the mind and hands behind the most decorative part of Christmas dinner as well – a Pavlova wreath. Three kinds of cheese with biscuits and marmalade for starters; Hasselback potatoes, black bean “meatballs”, cranberry sauce and brussel sprouts for the main course; Christmas pudding for those who like that kind of thing.

Twice during the cooking and food prep I was caught out by using what seemed like risk-free substitutes.

For the beetroot salad, I bought pre-cooked beets to save time, instead of boiling them at home. Chopped them up, mixed with all the other things and the sour cream dressing – and the salad came out white. For the record, beetroot salad is NOT supposed to be white but violently purple. I don’t know what they did with the pre-cooked beets – peeled them before cooking, maybe – but clearly they lost all their colour. Luckily we had a jar of pickled beets in the fridge, so I used those to top up the salad and give it some colour at least.

For the cranberry sauce, there were no fresh cranberries to be had anywhere, so I bought frozen ones. I suspect the fresh ones that used to be available around Christmastime may have been of the American variety (so maybe they weren’t even sold for Christmas but for Thanksgiving and then afterwards as long as stocks lasted), whereas the frozen ones are definitely of Swedish origin. And clearly they behave differently when cooked. The fresh ones were rich in pectin, so the sauce thickens after cooking and cooling. The frozen ones clearly aren’t, because the sauce remained as runny as anything and I had to thicken it with cornstarch. Tasted delicious, though.

Our baby cousin’s second birthday, and he got a magnetic construction toy that entertained guests of all ages.

Adrian was most proud of this pentagonal prism with inverted pyramid bottoms.

The Nordic Museum had posted an invitation today, on their 150th birthday, to share memories of this day, in words and pictures, for the future. I’m posting here the photos I submitted to their collection as well.

The morning was gray and windy, just a few degrees above freezing, but there were glimpses of sun breaking through as I got to Spånga station.

Normally during rush hour the trains here are supposed to go eight times an hour, but the company currently running the commuter train service hasn’t managed to deliver that for quite a while. At least you can generally count on a train once every fifteen minutes. The train this morning was quite crowded but not too horribly crammed full.

I got off the train at Stockholm Central and walked from there to the tretton37 office in the Waterfront building. On the way I stopped by Coop at the lower floor of the station to buy lunch, because I was all out of leftovers at home.

I got a small green smoothie for breakfast 29 kr and a bouillabaisse for 79 kr, for a total of 108 kr.

Many supermarkets have replaced most of their manned checkouts with self-checkout stations. I like it when I only have one or two things to pay for and can get it done quickly, but their occasional random checks really annoy me when they happen.

The entrances to the Waterfront are all automated doors, just like the entrance and exit to the train stations and the supermarket.

The office was relatively empty today. Even though it was almost 9 o’clock when I got there, almost all desks were still empty and I could choose whichever seat I liked.

I didn’t even think of photographs or much else around me during the day as I was working. Then I stood up at five-ish and realized the sun was going down already, glinting off the skyscrapers next to Hötorget.

This street, Klarabergsgatan, used to see a lot more traffic. It has now mostly been closed off for everyone except public transport, and the pavements have been widened.

The folks in the office were gearing up for a Halloween-themed after-work event, with people dressed up as anything from kings to bananas, and a monthly company meeting. I was out of social energy and went home, and will watch a recording of the meeting some other day.

A blip of the SL Access card to take the train home. Costs me 39 kr for a one-way trip. After the most recent price hike, a monthly card costs 970 kr so it is generally not worth it if I only go to the office twice a week.

I got a seat on the train back to Spånga so I could crochet on the way. Much better than randomly scrolling social media. This piece of lace has been my travel project for literally years. I’ve gotten tired of waiting for it, so now I’m working on it more frequently during meetings and such so that I can get it done.

One of the station entrance doors has been broken for the last few days, and for some reason the staff has elected to leave it in the closed position, rather than having it always open. All the people getting off the train clump up in front of the entrance.

On Spånga Torg, the second-hand ladies’ wear shop has filled their windows with warm coats. The florist’s show windows are an odd mixture of Halloween, and pink for breast cancer awareness month.

The first to do when I got home was to feed Nysse.

Then to feed the rest of the family. They would not like pellets from a tin. I made a meal from a Linas Matkasse meal kit – a vegetarian bibimbap.

Reduced the amounts of all chillies and such by a factor of three or four, and some of it was still super spicy. We didn’t manage to eat all the spicy cabbage salad.

After dinner, Ingrid disappeared to her room, while Adrian & Eric watched season 2 of Loki, accompanied by potato chips for Adrian and some leftover lemon merengue pie for Eric.

The Great Annual Measuring.

Adrian is over 160 cm.

Ingrid is still growing and has passed me in height.

Adrian and Eric made a birthday cake for Adrian’s birthday yesterday, using the same recipe as two years ago. It’s delicious, again, but also huge, again. If it gets made again, we’ll use no more than half the amount of frosting in the recipe.

PS: When we had eaten half the cake, I weighed the rest out of curiosity – and it was 1.5 kg, making the whole cake a whopping 3 kg. That’s a heck of a lot of cake.

Adrian’s one an only birthday present this year – which is also his Christmas gift – is a new gaming computer. Just like for Ingrid’s computer three years ago, Eric did all the choosing and ordering, and almost all the building and assembling. It went smoother than the building of Ingrid’s computer – by the end of the day, Adrian had a shiny, colourful new computer.

Adrian appears to have outgrown Legos. For now – it’s happened before, but then he became interested again.

We borrowed a large Lego set to build a model of the Taj Mahal, back in January. Adrian was engaged at first, but the build has languished for months. I’ve even tried to encourage him by pre-sorting the pieces, but even that didn’t help.

The completionist in me can’t tear down a half-finished build, so I took it over from him a few weeks ago. It was a good distraction while I was at my most worried about Nysse. Now I don’t need the distraction any more, and it’s not my favourite pastime, but I still want to finish it.

To make things more interesting, I’ve challenged myself to build ambidextrously. It’s interesting to see how naturally the right hand does the work while the left one stays still. I’m holding a tiny piece in my left hand, attaching it on top of a larger piece in my right hand – and unless I specifically focus on doing the opposite, it’s the right hand that moves the larger piece in place while the left hand stays passive, holding the little piece still and waiting for the right one to do the job.