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 family only puts up our Christmas tree on the 23rd. The grownups (13 and up) put up and decerate it at night, and the next morning the kids wake up to a tree brought by the “pixies”. When I was ten my siblings and I woke up to a small scrawny tree that was not even a proper pine tree, but a stinky ceder. Little did we know that my dad had gone out to by a tree that day and had found that they were literally all sold out. That evening he had to go out in the dark and cut down a tree, ceder was the only option on our property! All us kids complained that the “pixies” had let us down and dramtically held out noises when we walked passed it. But now that I know the whole story, it my favorite tree
I decided on a whim to move to Australia s few days after college. I had a big party and said bye to all my people here. then I flew on Christmas Eve and when I got to Australia, Santa was wearing a bathing suit and sunnies. I made a few friends that day and we just celebrated being young and in such an awesome place. it was a great memory!
My favorite holiday memory really happens every year. Its putting up the christmas tree with my mom and sister. We put on music, make a fun cocktail or grab a beer, and start decorating. Its always a lot of work but feels great in the end to spend time with them and see the beautiful tree in the end :)
My birthday is on Christmas Day, so it’s always an extra special day for me. And I get to share the day with my sister-in-law, who is also a Christmas baby!
My favorite holiday memory goes back to being so young that I couldn’t read but found myself reading aloud a very much improvised letter that Santa had sent to me going over my past grievances of the year such as Santa apologizing that I was sick, ect.
My favorite holiday memory was about 5 years ago when I found an old VHS recording of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I remembered loving that movie as a kid so my family decided to sit down and watch it. It was a little scratchy the whole time and when we got to the part of the movie where the abominable snowman attacks the reindeer and Yukon Cornelius falls off the cliff…it just wasn’t there! I thought it was a mistake in the tape (it was on VHS after all) so I rewound and tried again. At that point my parents informed me that, no actually it wasn’t there. I was so scared of that part of the movie as a little kid that they purposefully didn’t record it. We laughed about the things that scare us when we are little and I really appreciated what my parents did for us kids. Even if it meant forever not watching an important scene in a movie.
My favorite memory was when I had my first holiday chocolate from those Whitman’s Sampler boxes, all for me! I used to guess which were the delicious chocolates with the caramel fillings, and the terrible ones with the dehydrated coconut. I may have been less than 50/50 on it, but it was still good fun!
I have so many Christmas memories that it is impossible to choose a favorite. You see, I am a mother of six, and grandmother of seventeen beautiful children. We have been able to spend every Christmas Eve together. To an outsider it seems chaotic and loud but it is heavenly music to my ears.
Singing, laughing, dancing and playing together is our favorite way to spend the holidays.
Our numbers increase each year with new babies, new spouses, and often some friends, both new and old. We are a family. I couldn’t ask for more. I am so very blessed and grateful.
One of my favorite holiday memories was when I was a little girl on Christmas Eve. I’m the youngest of three, and my older sisters (one four years older and the other seven years older than me) have always been careful to nurture my youthful naiveté. So we were all sitting around watching ABC Family’s usual holiday movie marathon on the couches, when one of them made some sort of comment along the lines of “I can’t believe some kids still think Santa exists,” and the other agreed. I, being the little sneak that I was (and understanding that Santa didn’t exist), responded with utter shock and surprise. “What do you mean Santa doesn’t exist?” I said in my most convincing I-am-such-a-confused-and-let-down-little-girl voice. They made panicked eye contact with each other and tried to drop the topic as quickly as possible. To keep up the act, I set out a plate and glass of milk for Santa, too.
The very next morning, I found the plate was empty (besides some carefully arranged crumbs), the glass was empty, and a little note was left beside it. The handwriting was obviously one of my sister’s, but I’ll never forget how much concern, love, and patience they had for me and for keeping my idea of Santa alive. My parents weren’t around much while we were growing up, but I’ve never felt anything less than loved during the holidays.
My grandma’s holiday cookies! She would spend weeks making tons of different cookies and then package them up into tins to give to her friends and family. Each tin was slightly different and had so many wonderful cookies. You could feel her love for cooking, holidays, and the ones she loved.