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!
I used to always get up extra early on Christmas morning so I could beat my little brothers and see their faces when they first saw all the presents.
This isn’t necessarily a “good” memory, but now that I’m older, it’s become a funny one.
Right before the Thanksgiving that I was five and my brother was nearly three, my mother left my dad and moved in with her parents . My dad worked nights, and we loved our grandparents, so it didn’t seem that strange to us at the time. We didn’t see my father until he came to visit on Christmas Eve. In an attempt not to draw things out, or have to be in the same room for too much longer ever again, they decided that Christmas was the best day to let us know that they would be getting a divorce. I started to cry, and when my parents tried to comfort me, I yelled, “NOW I’LL NEVER GO TO COLLEGE.”
I did.
My favorite Christmas memory is the three of us kids on the stairs waiting for Mom to get the camera. We weren’t allowed down to the tree until she took the picture. She always had to go find the camera and get set up while we waited impatiently! We could see the presents under the tree, but we couldn’t get down to them. Every one of those pictures cut off at least one of our heads. We do not have a single “stairs picture” from Christmas where all three of us are whole. We go back through the old photos and laugh. She made us do this picture until we were in our 20’s and come home from college. We finally convinced her we were old enough to just get a picture around the tree. Now we finally have all heads accounted for!
My favorite winter memory is making Christmas cookies with my mother. On Christmas eve we would leave a big pile of cookies for Santa with some carrots for the reindeer. It’s something I can’t wait to do with my children one day :)
My favorite holiday memory is baking cookies with my grandma. She liked to make thin sugar cookies and decorate them with sprinkles. Every year I try to roll them thinner and thinner, as a personal challenge to see how thin I can go. Now that she is older, I am baking them on my own but she comes over to watch and sometimes does the sprinkling.
My mom makes this odd savory french toast-ish casserole only on Christmas morning. It’s called Christmas Ho-Ho (that’s even the title on her recipe card), and it’s made with crustless white bread, milk, eggs, cheddar cheese, S&P, and I think ground mustard? I love it so much, haven’t had it in years, and it’s probably the thing I’m most looking forward to this year since we’re actually spending Christmas in my home town for once.
If have to say this year is my favorite holiday tradition! Both my brother and I have graduated, so we told my parents to forgo buying us Christmas presents so we can go somewhere fun as a family. We found a cool lodge up in northern Minnesota where we can ski, snowmobile, stock up on board games and good food and have a great time. I’m so excited!! Not to mention the snowman marshmallows are absolutely on my list to make over break! Happy Holidays!!
Going to my boyfriend’s Italian Christmas Eve each year – his family puts out a full table of the seven fish, as is done traditionally, and it’s just so jolly and warm.
Pizza hut and driving around to look at holiday lights on Xmas eve.
I think one of my sillier holiday memories is when I was 7 and asked for a basketball hoop. My parents somehow brought it inside and under the tree and its sheer size and weght had me convinced that it was Santa. There were many happy free throws under it later (never mind that my Dad managed to installed it himself).