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 fave holiday memories have always been whenever we were all together as a family.
my favorite holiday memory is from last year when I told my parents that I was pregnant. I have a small family of 4 (parent and little sis) and the rest of my extended family lives out of the country and cannot afford to travel. So as a tiny close knit family of 4, adding one more to the group was a huge deal! My husband and I surprised my parents by making them open presents at the same time. One was a kids book and the other was a pair of baby shoes in the shape of tennis balls (dad plays tennis). The reaction of my parents and the tears to follow were incredibly memorable. After the big surprise my mom spent the next hour calling relatives and crying from excitement. This will always be one of my favorite memories :-)
My brothers and I would all sleep in the same room and then wake up early (suuuuper early) on Christmas morning. In order to preserve some sleep for my parents, we were allowed to open our stockings, which had snacks (usually both an orange and a chocolate orange) and toys (usually a tiny Lego kit and other small things), and play and talk and be excited for a few hours in the early morning. It was such a magical, in-between time, just for us kids.
Ah, such a good giveaway!!! My favorite holiday memory is really a mishmash of all the past Christmases before my dad passed away. For starters, my dad always said “we’re not getting a real tree this year.” and then my sister and I would whine and complain until we went to the tree farm to hunt down a real tree, which my dad meticulously draped in tinsel. Xmas morning, my sister and I would wake up running around the house like maniacs yelling “santa came!!!” and then my parents would slowly drag out the morning… having us bring them coffee, feed the pets, etc… driving us crazy. Finally we got to open presents, then we’d all OOOH and AAAH no matter what the gift was, even for the socks and slippers. Then, my dad would make his butterscotch pecan rolls with cream cheese frosting. After my sister and I moved out, we still carried on the exact same Christmas tradition. Dad would say we weren’t getting a real tree, then we’d say we weren’t coming home for Christmas unless they did. We did the running around like maniacs, the slow moving parents, the oohs and aahs and butterscotch rolls. It was really magical!!
My favorite holiday memories are of my Mum making all kinds of fudge and candies to give away to our neighbours and friends. Making sweet treats during the holidays is still one of my favorite things to do.
My favorite holiday memory, or should I say tradition, is a thing my family likes to call candy deal. My entire family gets together in a circle and has a candy trade. Yes, we are all adults, but it makes everything so much more interesting. It started as an innocent passing out of simple candies and then offering others to trade what you don’t want anymore. Over the years, since we have become older, there is now essentials included. We pass out tooth brushes, travel tissues, chips, snack packs, and of course there is still loads of candy. We fill up an entire grocery bag with these goodies, and then fight over who trades with who for what. Then we end the deal picking envelopes with about 10+ scratch off tickets, and scratch them off. It’s some of the most enjoyable times that I have had with my family over the years!
Favorite holiday memory — every year my siblings and I do an ornament “draft.” We take out all of the ornaments (a very eclectic assortment) and lay them out and pick one by one until we’ve chosen them all. Then we decorate our individual sides of the tree.
My favorite Christmas memories always involved my little brother, but one year when I was I believe eight and he was five always stands out. We went to see Santa as we did every year and told him what we wanted for Christmas. I told him I wanted glow in the dark Barbie shoes (because really, what ’90s baby doesn’t want something for their Barbie?) and my little brother asked for Cinderella’s castle. I remember wondering why that was what he wanted, looking back on it he may have wanted to go to Cinderella’s castle in Disneyworld. Christmas morning came and “Santa” brought me probably 100 pairs of Barbie shoes and glow in the dark paint so I could decorate them all myself. And my little brother got the most awesome Cinderella’s castle ever. It was all Polly Pocket sized, but it had all of the characters, Cinderella in rags and a ball gown, and a pumpkin was built into the wall that then opened up and had the carriage behind it. The entire castle opened to reveal a dance floor, and on the back side there was a smaller house with Cinderella’s kitchen. We both played with it for hours, and my little brother is still better at picking out gifts than I am.
While I have lots of fun childhood holiday memories, it’s the adult ones that I really cherish! Particularly the first year I hosted Christmas for all my friends. I made myself frantic trying to collect things for everyone’s stockings, make the perfect dinner/breakfast/snack platter/drink bar, find cozy linens and set up beds, and get the best playlist ready for board game night. I even made homemade eggnog. I was exhausted and frazzled by the time everyone arrived! But the memories of delicious food and happy friends was enough to make me do it year after year- I love the looks on everyone’s faces when they tuck in for a feast or are just napping on the couch!
No doubt my favorite holiday memory is baking overnight French toast covered in eggs and cream and pecans with my mom. It’s been a Christmas tradition for as long as I can remember!