Today, Beth and I exchanged Christmas gifts because she is going away for the holidays starting on Wednesday. She got me a fantastic gift. She's just great like that. I really like Sweden as a country. I like their generally liberal attitude toward healthcare and education, as well as several other cultural traits. I've been eyeing a grad school in Stockholm pretty heavily. So what does Beth get me? 

The gift of Sweden.


She ordered these three candies off of the internet. Oh lord am I happy with this present. She was even so nice as to annotate the packages to tell me what they are.

First up is Ahlgren's Bilar.



Beth wrote that this was "Sweden's Most Popular Car". It comes in 3 delightful flavours, raspberry, lemon, and orange, but I can't tell the difference between them . If my Swedish is as not-terrible as I hope it is, I'm pretty sure that bilar means car. They're cute. And taste nice. They just all taste the same. Kind of marshmallow-y. 

Next up is Cloetta's Polly. From what I gather this was some kind of collaboration with Ahlgren. These have a milk chocolate outside, and then this foamy marshmallow-thing going on inside. It tastes really familiar but I can't put my finger on what it is.



Finally, there is the Marabou Schweizer Not, which is "Swiss nut". It tastes like a toblerone and they are really great. I'm a fan. I might need to obtain more of these.



She ordered these things off of the internet, and I signed for the package and handed it over to her later and never put together that the package from Sweden might have been things for me. What a great surprise, although I am feeling a little dense.

Oh. And her gift wrapping? Superb.



In today's advent calendar window, I found this itsy bitsy High Beam. I like that it isn't a liquid, but more of a cream/liquid. It also blends out to a subtle sheen so you don't get that weird white line on your face. I already use this and there's nothing wrong with having a little bit more.