It’s giveaway time! It’s a massive one guys and I’m pretty excited! For the past week or so I’ve been featuring recipes using Staub, Shun, Cuttingboard.com, Finex, and Kitchen Aid and now’s the time to finally bundle everything up and give it all away. Well, not literally, because you’re actually going to win new items, so there’s no real bundling, just figurative bundling.
win this staub!
I hope you’ve been following along – so far I’ve made Slow Braised Japanese Chashu Pork, Mini Puff Pastry Roses, Caramel Corn and Rice Krispie Mix, and Mint Snowman Marshmallows, but with these giveaway items you can make pretty much anything, which is perfect for the holiday season.
win this shun knife and cuttingboard.com boo’s block!
I love food – as I’m sure you know – and one of my favorite Christmas memories is of me, my brother, and Christmas chocolates. As little kids, come the first of December, we would get chocolate advent calendars. I still see them around now: those thin cardboard drugstore boxes featuring a Christmas picture with tiny numbered windows and chocolates hiding behind them. My brother and I lived for that moment at the end of the day when we got to pry open the cardboard for our long awaited treat. Our eager fingers would melt the chocolate ever so slightly as we tried to eat our chocolates as slowly as possible.
win this finex cast iron pan!
One year, we got it in our heads that we didn’t want to wait. We snuck our calendars down to the basement – it was cold and dark down there and I didn’t like it but my brother convinced me it was the best place to hide – and ate every single chocolate. We ate the entire month of December. And the thing is, we did it in a gentle, artful way where we could close back the windows so that at a casual glance, you couldn’t tell that the calendar was ravaged.
win this kitchen aid!
Maybe it was the sugar-high making us crazy, but we totally thought we got away with it. That is, until it was time for our nightly ritual with our parents. Needless to say, there was no chocolate treat that night. Or the next night, or the next. But, it was okay, because come Christmas morning, there were still presents under the tree. Apparently, our chocolate binge didn’t leave us on Santa’s naughty list, which was a huge relief, because, presents.
These days I’m more into giving than receiving so I couldn’t resist putting together this giveaway for you! I wish I could send everyone a Christmas present but since I can’t, I thought I’d do the next best thing and giveaway some of my favorite things. So, let me know your favorite holiday memory and maybe you’ll be the lucky reader who wins! Good luck!
Giveaway: I’ve teamed up with some of my favorite brands to do a massive giveaway. One lucky reader will win:
Staub 4 Quart Round Cocotte
Shun 6-inch Dual Core Utility Knife
Cuttingboard.com Boos Block Walnut 20×15 Cutting Board
Finex 10-inch Cast Iron Pan
Kitchen Aid Artisan Design Series 5-Quart Stand Mixer w/Glass Bowl in Pearl Silver
To enter: Leave a comment on the blog with your favorite winter holiday memory. I want to hear ALL the details! I’ll randomly choose a winner and notify them through email. Open to US residents only. (Sorry international friends, only American companies agreed to this one!) If you’d like some extra entries use the widget below to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Contest ends December 21st at 12pm PST. Good luck!
The giveaway is closed! I’ll be announcing the winner in the next week or so after reading through all of the comments. Thank you everyone who entered! There are some beautiful memories here!
Update: Congrats Chelsea, you won! Look for an email from me shortly!
My favorite holiday memory was being surprised by a Nintendo gaming system when I was a little kid.
My favorite holiday memory was spending it in Tokyo while I was studying abroad there. Getting to experience the holidays in a different country is something I’ll never forget. I hope one day I will be able to go back and share the experience with my kids.
My favorite memory is that first glimpse of the glowing tree and presents early on Christmas morning. My younger brother and I would always sneak out the earliest and admire the sight, waiting anxiously.
My favorite holiday memory was from Christmas in 2000. I was only 6 at the time, but that was the year I got the best present ever, but one that I never, ever really wanted. That year my sister kept asking for a pony, but seeing as that would have been ridiculous for our family, my parents got us got us a dog. I had been “attacked” by a couple dogs prior to this and was terrified of them because of that. My parents knew this but they also thought that the best way to get over this fear was to get me a dog and they were so right. I am absolutely obsessed with dogs now and my dog, Maddy, was the kindest, gentlest, funniest, sweetest dog there ever was. She passed away this past June and so this year will be my first Christmas without her in 14 years, but she will forever be the best present ever and my favorite holiday memory.
When we were little, my parents would make my siblings and I wait upstairs on Christmas morning until they had showered, dressed, and made coffee. The wait was practically unbearable for the four of us and we would sit at the top of the stairs so that we were as close to Christmas morning as we could possibly be without getting into trouble. As we waited, inevitably one of us would creep down a few stairs to peek through the banister at the Christmas tree to make sure there were presents waiting. At the time it seemed like torture, but now I look back fondly at the four of us kids huddled together on the landing, speculating about what our presents would be, and desperately waiting for the moment we could run down the stairs and start the day.
Every year my church has a Christmas Ornament Exchange Party and usually it is at my house. Everybody comes and there’s sweets and snacks at music! Also the grown ups are supposed to bring a handmade wrapped ornament to exchange. So two years ago a college student came with a unusually heavy ornament. And when someone opened it up for the exchange it was a rock with ribbon on it! Everybody thought it was super funny and the next year he brought a this huge pine one with ribbon for an ornament!
My favorite memory of Christmas is making chocolate crinkle cookies with my mom and sister. We did it every year!
My favorite holiday memory is the year my parents put the Christmas tree in plain view from my bedroom. I thought to myself days in advance about how awesome it would be to see all the presents Santa brought first!! Before my sister and my brother!! I kept this thought myself thinking if I told anybody they would move the tree back to the original spot, where you had to go all the way downstairs and turn off the alarm system which was totally against the rules! I woke up Christmas morning around 5am, my excitement never let me see in. I ran out of my room to see the tree, first. A huge bed sheet was hung from the ceiling to the floor that said “Merry Christmas Jazzi!! I hope you weren’t planning on seeing the presents first!! Love, Mom and Dad”. I was shocked, I laughed so hard and layed back in bed until I was allowed to go downstairs with everyone else.
Merry Christmas!!
My fave winter holiday memory is going out to cut down our Christmas tree with my family and my best friend when I was 9 years old. My Dad was busy cutting down the tree while me and my bud were goofing off on top of a dirt hill nearby. Suddenly, I tumbled down the hill in a roar of laughter, causing me to pee right through my pants. And I’m talking 90’s stirrup pants. Of course this made us laugh even harder. And now I laugh even HARDER when I think of how I couldn’t just go clean up because we had taken a canoe ride across a lake to get this tree and would have to take that whole ride back in sticky cold stirrup pants.
My favorite memory from Christmas is that when I was younger, my family would always go to my aunt’s house in Seattle, and it would just be my parents, my sister and I, my aunt, and my grandpa. We would either have a big Christmas turkey dinner or just order Chinese food in, but I will always remember getting to hang out with my grandpa and talking to him about school and laughing and eating pistachios. There were presents too, of course, but that wasn’t the most important part, even as a child. We also always went to the huge Asian market, and bought fortune cookies to munch on later. We would always drive home late, and I would fall asleep in the car while we drove on the freeway in the rain.This tradition went on my whole life, up until when my grandpa passed away.