Christmas decorating

With the man out of the house I had planned to do some tidying up and decorating for Christmas. I have this far managed to do some minor cleaning and half the decorating. The house does not look tidy but perhaps a bit more Christmasy. Here are some very bad pictures of the decorations I have managed.

R:s homemade electric advent-candle holder. Each light can be lit separately each advent so that you can kind of keep track of the time ahead. Candlesticks with four candles are extremely common here in Sweden as an advent-Christmas decoration. I have one like that as well but I have yet not placed it so there is no picture of it.

A Christmas buck, I do not know its significance but I assume it is some remnant from the days of paganism. They are equally common Christmas decorations in Sweden.

Instead doing more cleaning and decorating (the first being a need) I instead chose to make 'ice chocolate'. It is common during the Christmas season here in Sweden along with 'knäck' which is a kind of toffee often with pieces of almond mixed in the toffee. I try to eat less sugar so I leave that until Christmas Eve of so if I have any. Anyway, ice chocolate is very easy to make it is basícally chocolate and coconut oil. If you have 200 g of chocolate you use 100 g of coconut oil so you can start with any amount of chocolate and match that with half the amount of coconut oil. You melt the oil and let the pieces of chocolate melt in the oil. Then you put them in tiny metal tin (wikipedia) and put them in the freezer or outside for them to set. I use high quality coconut oil so I store them in the refrigerator so that they do not melt but if you use a lower quality they will stay hard even in room temperature. I made two versions today, one with orange peel and one with rum, sometimes tradition can need a new twist. I have a picture of mine but my computer does not seem to want to upload it so I might try later but the picture at wikipedia really says it all.