Every year we all try to visit the Scandinavian festival. I love shopping for Christmas decor items. I love telling my children stories of what it was like at Christmas time in my Swedish family. They always laugh at my stories. When my grandfather came here from Uppsala he spoke 5 languages but English wasn’t one of them, so he learned English by reading the funny pages in the newspaper. I would love to visit Sweden some day and see where my grandfather came from.

I have Swedish and German in me. On the Swedish side we would have huge tables filled with what I call snack foods, but my family called them Smorgasbords. Trays of meats, cheeses, veggies, Rye crisp crackers, pickled herring and just all kinds of finger foods that we would eat through Christmas eve along with turkey, potatoes and ham. Then the next day which was Christmas Day we would always have a huge Swedish omelet we would cover with cheese and bake.

I was in charge of the tree and cookies. I would make all kinds of dough ornaments to hang on our tree. Then on Christmas eve when we were all celebrating someone would be so drunk and somehow, don’t even ask me how, they would be around the tree and just stumble and the tree would tumble over. Every year, Christmas wasn’t officially Christmas until that tree fell over. Of course I would get upset when I saw my salt dough ornaments broken but I knew I could make new ones and I did enjoy making them so it wasn’t all bad.

Oh, and my family played some Swedish group that sang a song about going nuts at Christmas and other Swedish folk art music. It was that song about going nuts that would get everyone singing along with it. Now that I think about it, that was also around the time the tree would usually fall over when someone got too close to it.

So anyway, just a little history on some of my family traditions from long ago. This was 70/80’s when I was a kid. Now when we all go to the Scandinavian festival it takes me back to those days.

This year the festival was much bigger then the last one we went to.

They had tables filled with all kinds of baked goods.

Products from Sweden.

I loved this table. A lady walked up to me and started telling me about how her friend who is a mathematician paints all these little boxes. They were so cute and it was also sweet how proud that woman was of her friend’s art pieces.

I wanted some straw ornaments and found some at one table that was very busy. The whole place was busy. The woman at the table looked like a neighbor from our old block on the street over where my brother-in-law lives now. He bought our old home and now along with my mother-in-law living in another home down the street, it is like that show Everybody loves Raymond. I ended up buying a little straw angel and a straw goat. I have two trees up every year and one holds all my Swedish ornaments and the other holds all my little vintage wooden ornaments.

These sweaters were beautiful.

I loved this red one, sorry the photo is so fuzzy. It was so crowded in there and I tried to get a shot real quick but had to move to let people in to the table area. These items were flying off the shelves in some areas. Scandinavian items must be trending right now.

This was my favorite table. There were two women running it and I think they are sisters. I recognize them from the Lutheran church, which is where the festival is held every year.

I found most of my items at this table.I picked up one item and was excited about it because I thought it was so cute. I had an idea for it, to display in a center piece with lots of pine tree branches around it.

I remember picking it up and saying out loud “This is so cute, look at it” and the woman behind me started laughing along with my daughter. Then the woman behind me asked “What is it?” and I looked at it again and said “ I don’t know” and shrugging my shoulders added “But it’s wooden and I think it’s cute, so I am buying it” There was a lot of detail work with the carved piece and for $2 that wasn’t a bad price.

When I got home I showed my husband my “Cute” purchase and when I said that he started laughing so hard and said “Only a viking would think a weapon was cute.”

I gave him a quizzing look and said “What…no way! This isn’t a weapon.” and then took a closer look at it in a different way. It was sharp on both ends.

“ Well, I don’t think any vampires will be stopping by our house.” my husband said while eyeing my cute little grandpa gnome. The gnomes really remind me of that old Shirley Temple movie Hedi. I have written about this before. Although now that I had my reading glasses on and was taking a closer look, this little hand carved wooden gnome looked very angry, not a Swedish grandpa I would like to be around. But I still didn’t think of it as a weapon, so my answer back to my husband’s remark about vampires being afraid to come in was…

“Oh, yeah, because of all the garlic in the house.” .

My husband being Italian loves his garlic. That was my dig back at him. Just teasing each other about our nationalities.

So here are just a few of my purchases from the festival. I had a lot of fun shopping at this one. There were lots of hand made items and vintage Swedish decor. I bought some wooden vikings. Vintage Swedish paper chains. A wooden log cabin house puzzle.An assortment of ornaments. The viking vampire slayer, if anyone knows what it really is please let me know. A paper angel ornament. A Santa and a gnome. Oh and some baked items too. Whoops forgot one more thing…a little angel chime. I will try to share a photo of that later, it involves a little tea lite candle and it spins…you know what I am talking about. I just forgot to take photos of a few things. I went home with a big bag of pretty Christmas decorations.

Happy shopping adventures everyone.

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