Picnic, strawberries, dancing around the maypole, and a train ride with Lennakatten, a museum train near Uppsala.

June 6th is Sweden’s National Day. We celebrated by joining the picnic and National Day concert at Hagaparken.

Påskkäringar & påskgubbar (Easter witches). And one Easter bunny.

First we made lussebullar, saffron buns. We started off making those mainstream S-shaped buns (kuse) but quickly got bored with those and switched to making B-shaped buns (lussekatt), crossed S’s (julvagn) and other such traditional shapes. (The internets seem to have only one decent image of those shapes.) Then we got tired of those as well and branched out into more creative shapes: twists and braids and spirals of twists… and palm trees and swans and snails. And then we poked in lots of raisins in them all.

Later we baked gingerbread cookies. We have dozens of cookie cutters of all kinds of shapes, so the cookies ended up quite varied. Every year I start off making different kinds of cookies but then end up making mostly Christmas trees, hearts and pigs. They offer the best combination of efficient dough use (not much scrap dough left over between them), easy handling (unlike the reindeer and men with their long fiddly legs that break off), Christmas-themed imagery, and a good shape for later decorating.

Ingrid was making buns and cookies like a pro this year: rolling, kneading, shaping, decorating… Adrian liked playing with the bun dough and adding the raisins (and eating the raisins). Otherwise he wasn’t very interested.

(In Sweden it is traditional for everybody to stand up while singing Ja må hon leva, while the person whose birthday it is remains seated. Kids stand on their chairs.)

We only decorated a handful of eggs this year. Some we dyed with onion skins, others we painted with watercolours.

The black-and-white one at the front Ingrid made especially for her judo teacher Erik: it is, of course, Erik in his white judo suit and black belt. The idea was his and not ours but it is a fun egg nevertheless.

Having just gone through the receipts in my wallet for December, I note that I have bought 23 lussekatter at Pressbyrån during this Christmas season, for a total of 338 kronor.

(The one in the photo below was made by Ingrid and not bought at Pressbyrån.)

We have an eclectic tree with everything from delicate hand-made glass ornaments and Chinese cloisonné eggs, to giant paper crafts projects from preschool.

Ingrid is busy overseeing the opening of Christmas gifts.

Adrian couldn’t care less about the gifts but loves the raisins and gingerbread cookies.