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 winter memory is taking spray bottles and filling them with food coloring and water and going outside to paint the snow!
My favorite holiday memory is attending mass with my family. My brothers and I would get dressed up, eat tons of food at church, and we would always receive small gifts. We didn’t have much money growing up so it was a real treat for us to eat so well and receive a gift for Christmas.
So many great memories. Christmas was so much fun when we were growing up and it was less chaotic and more traditional and low-key in comparison to the frenzy these days. I loved trimming the tree and throwing those messy icicles all over it. I never had the patience to do them singly. And the great food. Homemade ambrosia with fresh coconut added and spending time with relatives who weren’t seen often enough. And the beloved TV shows and movies. We didn’t have 500 stations but we appreciated the opportunity as a family to sit around the one TV and share the time and pleasure. Great memories
I remember my late brother-in-law out in the dark and the cold of a Minnesota Christmas morning, making reindeer tracks in the snow for his son to find.
does thanksgiving count? november is winter, right? i don’t celebrate christmas but thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and this year’s thanksgiving was the BEST. my boyfriend and i went back to arizona from the east coast for almost two weeks – it’s the one time of year we go home, and split time between his family in tucson and our family in phoenix. this year, on our first full day in arizona, we spent the late afternoon driving into the desert to a gorgeous look-out spot in the mountains, where he proposed to me as the sun was setting. it was lovely and intimate and very much us, complete with a few near mishaps that make us laugh now (driving west through windy, no shoulder mountain desert roads into the setting sun without sunglasses, being asked to leave the best lookout spot on the mountain because another person was there planning a surprise proposal, etc.). the best part was being able to celebrate in person with our families before heading back east. it was perfect.
thanks for the amazing giveaway and happy holidays!!
We always hosted an annual Christmas party with all of our closest family friends.
The adults would talk loooong into the night while the kids played party games and watched movies…oh, such simple, happy holidays!
My favoirte holiday memory is when my nephew gave my son (who was just 2 at the time) a vntage replca popcorn machine. My son opened it up and then was so excited we tore into the packaging and plugged it in and got popcorn flying everywhere. The smile and look on my son and everyone else watching the excitement was just fantastic!
Coming home for the holidays from college is probably my favorite memory. Just the feeling of being back in the house that you grew up in, sleeping in your old bed, eating familiar dishes and seeing your loved ones after months away. It wasn’t about the gifts received, it was just being together again as a family.
Now, many years later, I really cherish those times. With a family of my own and my siblings with theirs, getting everyone together is very hard since we live so far apart. But, when we are able to get together, new memories are made.
My favorite holiday memory is the day I learned that Santa wasn’t real, because it was so funny. I was-and still am to be honest-a HUGE Santa lover. Santa was real and no one could convince me otherwise (shout out to my older sibling for helping keep this dream alive for so long) and we did the whole nine yards. Cookies and milk, food for the reindeer, a note, NASA’s santa tracker…we went all out. I was hella old when I found out–like 15-16–which may be embarrassing but whatever. That one fateful Christmas little 15 year old me was lying in bed trying to fall asleep as quickly as possible (Santa wouldn’t come if you were awake, duh) when I was dying of thirst. It hadn’t been too long since we went to bed so I figured I could run downstairs, grab some water, and zip back up into bed for the Big Guy rolled through. I snuck downstairs as quietly as I could and heard my parents talking (my first thought was that they were talking to Santa). I heard them trying to set up the gifts (we never wrapped Santa’s presents) and my mom dropped one of them on her foot. She screamed shit and my dad died laughing. I ran back up to my room and was momentarily sad before I started laughing because that was just the perfect way to find out the truth. But too this day, by siblings and I still roll out all the stops for Old Saint Nick, even if my parents are just going to end up pouring the milk down the sink anyway.
Getaway holiday in Yountville, CA. Holiday lights, nearly empty hotel spa so management gave us a complimentary upgrade in room with some extras. Crisp day and crispier night, fell in love all over again. Wonderful places to eat, perfect wines to choose from, shopping, venturing roadsides, blue skies. That was the warmest in my hearts holiday and continue as a tradition every year.