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 is Christmas Eve when I was younger. We would go to my grandparents cozy log home in the woods and get together for food, music, presents and just being together. Ever year, “Santa” would magically show up with out presents and pass them out to all the kids. It was always so much fun that I still like Christmas Eve even more than Christmas.
When I was about four years old, I was (understandably) EXTREMELY excited about Christmas. I was just old enough that I could really anticipate the coming of that special day, and I absolutely could not wait for Christmas morning and the glorious present opening that would surely follow Santa’s visit.
So, naturally, I was so excited that I could hardly fall asleep on Christmas Eve. And when I did finally fall asleep… it wasn’t for long. I woke up again very, VERY early in the morning, tiptoed out to the Christmas tree in the living room, and proceeded to tear open EVERY PRESENT UNDER THE TREE. Every. Single. One. All my presents. All my little sister’s presents. All my parents’ presents. Truly, it was every bit as glorious as four-year-old me had imagined Christmas morning could be.
My parents found me, around four in the morning, sprawled out in the kitchen playing with the dancing Barbie toy that Santa had left for me. And, of course, they found the tree surrounded by the absolute carnage of a way-too-excited child who wasn’t really old enough to know about gift tags or the concept that all the gifts weren’t for her.
Of course, no subsequent Christmas could possibly rival that kind of childish hedonism.
Sitting around the tree with my family on Christmas Eve, reading “The Night Before Christmas” together. We have this illustrated version from the 50s that has different scenes from a house, each with (we insist) a hidden cat, which we always race to find, even though we’re all adults now!
Favorite holiday memory–opening one gift on Christmas Eve and spending all day deciding which one to open :)
My favorite memory was when my dad built us a swingset and managed to make it a surprise for Christmas morning. He is very handy, and loves working in the garden, so he told us he was building a grape arbor (I’m still not entirely sure what that is), and for some reason all of us kids believed him. We even found out recently that my older brother had been recruited to help the evening of Christmas Eve, still under the belief that he was helping my dad finish up the grape arbor. Come Christmas morning there was a big red bow on our new backyard swingset, and all of us were surprised that he had pulled it off, and that we hadn’t suspected sooner!
Every year we scramble from one set of grandparents house to the other and, for some reason, both sets of cousins were really into talent shows. So every Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would always have to prep for two shows in a day, but as the baby of both families, I’d usually get stuck with the grunt work. But it usually worked out in the end and I only ran away from the stage in shyness once!
My favorite holiday memory is baking raspberry thumbprint cookies with my mom and sister. Living on the West Coast, we’d pretend it was snowing as we sprinkled the powdered sugar on top. Its not necessarily a holiday cookie, but now its the only time we really make them and something I completely associate with the holidays!
My favorite winter holiday memory was the first time I saw snow in south Louisiana and it was right before Christmas. I was in my 20’s and felt like a kid. We’d just bought our Christmas tree and it had snow on it when we got in the house, a true novelty to me!
My son wanted a Sonic the Sega Geneis console. His godmother got him the gift and gave him to early since she was visiting out of town. He was so happy, he could even get the words out is his mouth. He shrieked and was screaming. I was just glad that I was able to capture that moment on video.
Growing up in Texas, we didn’t see snow very often. There was one winter that as we were coming out of the Christmas Eve service at church, it started to lightly snow. I remember my brothers and I talking about it being a Christmas miracle and wanting to hurry home to build a snowman. Granted, it ended up being no more than a foot tall, but it was such a great night.