Whew! 4 down and 2 to go!! :o)
The Winner of Week 4 of the Secret Santa Giveaway is
Tatterjill
Please Tatterjill will you email me your address, my email is on my profile page, or you can message me through Etsy!
Thanks!
Last week's entries were a lot of fun! Lots of good discussions!! If you missed, you should go back check some of the comments and their replies. :o)
Last week, I told you to prepare to share a favorite holiday tradition!
So, please do so now to enter your name in the pot again.
I have absolutely no preference on what holiday you choose. Maybe, you have an interesting Valentine's Day tradition, or St. Patrick's Day.
My favorite holiday is Christmas. I like to celebrate all month long! My birthday is just before Christmas, so it has always been my favorite time of the year. :o)
I may not reply to your comments as faithfully as last week. This week is finals week so that' s taking a lot of my time.
Also, I need another week to think about my favorite holiday tradition... so I won't share mine now. :o)
Livi was able to be in the parade this year! I thought it was really nice that they let her ride since I still haven't been able to pay for the lessons. (But I've almost got it, so that's good.)
I have a special coupon for you all!
FREESHIPPING
Today (Friday), Tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday!!
Thanks everyone!
Because of my job I have to work all holidays...my sister does too. So we have our family Christmas in July because that is the only time we can get everyone together. We have the big dinner and all the family with us. People think we are crazy when I tell them I won't be at work on some weekend in July because we are having Christmas dinner :)
ReplyDeleteHmmm for the past twenty years Nick and I follow the custom of going to bed early on New Years Eve!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'd have to say my favorite holiday memories are decorating cookies. My great-grandma on my dad's side had the absolute best sugar cookie recipe. When my mom married into the family, she realized it was important for others to learn the recipe before Great-Grandma died, so she asked her to write it down. Well, then my mom tried to make the recipe as written, and it was awful, nothing like Great-Grandma's. (Obviously, this is what I have been told; I wasn't born yet.) So she then asked to watch Great-Grandma make the cookies and wrote down exactly what she did-- apparently, it bore very little resemblance to the written recipe. It turned out that Great-Grandma had originally gotten the recipe from a magazine, and that's what she gave my mom, but she may not have realized just how much she had altered it. Luckily, Mom was able to find out how to make the cookies right, and they are now a part of family tradition.
ReplyDeleteGreat-Grandma made them year-round, just using a round cookie cutter and white sugar to top them. But they are kind of a hassle to make, so my mom only does them for holidays and other special occasions. She'll make some for Christmas, maybe some for Easter, or maybe some if the whole family is getting together. She uses seasonal cookie cutter shapes, and decorates them with colored sugar or frosting, and maybe some sprinkles. When I was a kid I always got to do the decorating. I mostly stuck with the colors Mom asked me to use-- green for the trees, red for the bells, white for the stars-- but she always let me do one or two in whatever crazy colors I wanted.
I have the recipe now, but I haven't yet managed to make them come out quite right. I'm sure it's mostly a matter of practice, but I think also partly because I live at a much higher altitude than Great-Grandma did. I've made a few alterations to the recipe to compensate for altitude; they helped, but the cookies still aren't perfect. My mom says I need to roll the dough thinner, so I'll give that a try if I have time to make any this year.
I like decorating the tree. We always hang an "angel band" and the "Christ was born for this" ornament with a nail hanging on it. Please enter my name for Week 5. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteMy family doesn't have any holiday traditions =( The closest we ever got was going to see the nutcracker on Christmas eve. Does that count? Please count me in!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite holiday is Christmas. There is just something about the atmosphere, the lights, the carols, etc. I always try to share my love for this holiday, but a lot of ppl seems to be getting feed up with the commercialization of this holiday, which is too bad.
ReplyDeleteAt Thanksgiving, we listen to Arlo Guthrie sing Alice's Restaurant while I cook the meal. It never fails to please us.
ReplyDeleteI guess we have the most traditions at Christmas. As we were growing up (in our 30's now), we would put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. My mom would take each of us (there are 3 of us) and would make a special snack every year with each of us for a buffet we would put up while setting up the tree. She would make fudge with me (I'm the oldest), rice crispy treats with my sister and chex mix with my brother. We would have cheese ball and beef stick from Hickory Farms and make a punch out of grape juice and 7UP. Christmas music would play (usually the Carpenters and the Chipmunks) and we would have a lovely time getting the tree set up and decorated. It was always sweet too seeing Dad kiss Mom under the mistletoe and patting her on the behind. She'd always blush and smack him and tell him to quit. :-) Good times.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any favorite holiday memories at all, Christmas now is just vernon and I spending Christmas Day with my mother, now she's in a home it won't be the same, and Boxing Day we drive to Oxford to see Vernon's dad.
ReplyDeleteI like to stay up New Year's Eve to see out the old year and hopefully the new year will be better just an improvement will do next year.
I hope your exams go well.
Livi looks gorgeous in her outfit
Margaret
Every Holiday brings it's own set menu and goodies. I love to bake and someone has to eat those goodies! My husband helps. Easter would be my favorite since the treats are all slovak, my side of the family. Please count me in again.
ReplyDeleteI like various activities and no one thing that is the same every year. I like to go to Christmas eve and New Years eve services at church, watch holiday parades on T.V. and eat special meals we do not make the rest of the year. We almost always get together with family and/or friends. Since our children are grown and not always able to be with us our holidays are different, yet still very enjoyable and special. Karen in OR
ReplyDeleteJess, We don't have many holiday traditions, but I guess I'd have to say that for the last ... oh 10 years at least, I have been handmaking our Christmas cards. I wonder .... since it's Dec 10 today should I be worried that I haven't started them yet!!!
ReplyDeleteAt my parents house we always have Scandinavian food on christmas eve. My parents met in Norway although they're both British so both have a love of Norwegian food. Rommegrot is hard work to make from scratch so we only have it on christmas eve. Its a sourcream porridge (made using flour and cream) which we serve with cinnamon , melted butter and raspberry juice. We also have norwegian-style waffles. Mum used to get stuck by the cooker cooking the waffles in a traditional iron waffle iron but now I have an electric waffle iron that I take up with me so that we can use both to make the waffles twice as fast.
ReplyDeleteWe also have Surkål which is sort of a Norwegian Sauerkraut but we have that as part of christmas dinner. That's cabbage, caraway seeds, butter and flour and then flavoured with some vinegar.
The last few years we have cheated a bit because last time we had a family holiday in Norway we discovered Rommegrot packet mix which is a lot lot easier to make and I've now found a place in the UK to get it from.
We used to have a sort of cake called Mor Monsen on christmas day morning but now that Dad has diabetes and we don't have Mum to do the baking we've cut back on some of the sweet stuff. Mum had years of practice at fitting in all the cooking for christmas - without her its a lot harder so we have dropped one or two things. We still use the task list that she wrote for us when she was in hospital during her last christmas.
I love the Christmas season the most, my older daughter was born on the 22nd and came home Christmas eve...she was the greatest gift I have ever received. I love to decorate with poinsettias, greenery, and candles...and I begin the day after Thanksgiving and keep most of it (the trees usually go earlier ~ I have 4 in the house, they crowd things up a bit after a while, don't mind them for the 1st month or so though) up until Candlemas day (February 2 ~ much more fun to my mind than the groundhog tradition) when I light all of my candles one last evening and take down everything the next day. We have many traditions throughout the Christmas season...things we bake that our families baked when we were kids, places we go like the zoo lights and the riverwalk lighting, advent calendars and wreaths, setting up the nativity, making ornaments together, etc. My daughter's Birthday I try to keep a bit separate, we like to dress up and go to tea at the Carriage House restaurant on the grounds of a local mansion (now a museum) and then go tour the house (the Rosemont) which they have all decorated for Christmas at this time of year...then we go ride the boats on the riverwalk in the evening as they usually have them running for the Christmas season that close to Christmas, unless it is unbearably cold.
ReplyDeleteFun! I will be thinking of your daughter on my birthday since it will be her birthday as well :o)
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