It's more of a "start" to the end of the year memory but I love decorating - getting the Christmas tree, decorating it, bringing out all of the other holiday decorations!!

i love quality time spent with family... decorating the house, the tree, baking cookies, shopping for/wrapping/opening gifts... for some reason the holidays really slow everyone down to enjoy each other.

would love to send a my first holiday card out, especially if its designed by you!

My favorite holiday memory is how my mom and I always set time aside to have a thanksgiving dinner together just the two of us at some point around thanksgiving.

I love listening to my students sing Christmas carols. Some of the most innocent sounds in the world are youngsters singing about the birth of Christ.

My favorite holiday memory of recent time was hosting "Danish Christmas" with my boyfriend. It was amazing to learn the Christmas traditions he grew up with and to celebrate those together with our friends. We made Ebelskivers using his great-grandmother's recipe and egg nog from scratch - I still am getting compliments on the great cooking! I can't wait to host the party again this year and make it a tradition.

My favorite memory is eating homemade cookies at grandma's house, and her setting a limit of 6 cookies per grandkid! (And then always letting us have a few more!) She would never let us eat that many any other time of the year!

Every Christmas, my dad always took photos of my siblings and I at the top of the stairs. We weren't allowed to open presents until the coveted photo was taken. It has been fun to look back on the years and see how we've grown. Every year, I look forward to our new photo.

I love sitting by my fireplace with my fiance & cats :) And of course dinners with my huge & crazy family - great giveaway, thanks!
Courtney

Great giveaway! My favorite holiday memory is going over to my parents house and helping them bake all day for Thanksgiving! I always make the sweet potato casserole and they love it :)

My favorite end of the year holiday is Christmas. Not just Christmas day but from the day after Thanksgiving to a few days after Christmas Day. I love going with the family and picking out a christmas tree at the tree farm the day after Thanksgiving and decorating the house. I also love my families tradition cookie making night, yum! I also love going to church on Christmas Eve and celebrating the birth of Christ then we always go home and open ONE present and save the rest for Christmas Day. Then of course Christmas day the WHOLE family gets together and we spend it opening presents, making a fabulous dinner, and just hanging out and catching up. It's always a blast. We always have a few more Christmas get togethers after Christmas too with different sides of the family. There is just something about Christmas I LOVE :)

My favorite memory is putting up decorations the day after Thanksgiving. I used to do it with my parents, and now do it with my husband...after some early shopping of course! ;)

I love going out for walks in the cold and wet weather in the dark when you're the only person around (for some strange reason?) and everything is quiet and magical. I then love coming home to the gas fire and snuggling up nice and warm while all the bad weather is outside.

When I was little, my Grandma used to spoil me with gifts. But she made it a point to wrap every gift with a different bow design so that no two gifts looked alike. I remember looking at the tree knowing that she went to all that work just for me. (I was the only grandkid.) Now that she's gone, it's those kind of memories that keep my heart full during Christmas time.

What a wonderful giveaway! My favorite holiday memory has always been the fact that my dad made us kids wait upstairs in Christmas morning while he went downstairs, drank coffee, and got things "just so" for us. He then took copious photos of us in our Christmas PJ's before we were finally allowed downstairs to see what Santa brought. It was so hard to wait, but in building the suspense (and taking the time to get himself caffeinated- which I didn't appreciate the importance of until I got older) he made the memories so fun and so special!

Some of the most fun I had as a kid was watching Christmas movies and circle toys in the JCpenny & Fleet Farm catalogs...now I get to watch my little men do the same thing when the sunday paper comes. We sit in front of the fire place with coffee and hot cocoa and circle their wishes for what Santa is going to bring....it is great Fun and warm memories at the same time!!!

I love to open the boxes of Christmas decorations and see what I bought after Christmas last year on sale to use this year (it's like getting a gift!).

I love getting the christmas decorations out the day after Thanksgiving and putting the ornaments on as a family while listening to our first christmas music of the season!!

My favorite holiday experience was last year for New Years.. My fiance and I took a road trip to Northern California. On New Years eve we spent the entire day and night at Monterey Bay. The city had a huge event for the count down. The people, the music, and food was so awesome.. When midnight arrived, he gave me the most passionate kiss.. ;)

My favorite holiday memory was when I was younger. My family had this big book of Advent. In this big book where little books. Every night we would take one of the little books a read it as a family. It was a part of the Christmas story leading up to Christmas Day. After we were done reading that one little book we would place it on a small Christmas tree. We would do this all the way up until Christmas Eve, when we were finally at Christmas Eve, the largest book of them all when on top of the tree. We then drank hot cocoa and sang holiday music. A memory that I will never forget and hope to start this tradition with my family as well!

My favorite end of the year memory-
Ahh...Christmas time is too much fun for me- my family has over 20 traditions we do each year--home made egg nog, Christmas tea with the all the girls in our family, a baking day with my mom and sister, driving around with warm blankets and hot chocolate to look at Christmas lights, a Christmas movie with my family on Christmas Eve, sleeping by the tree the first night we get it, pajamas on Christmas Eve, a new ornament each year, mashed potato bar for dinner before the Christmas Eve service...there are so many things I love about this time.

And now it's my first year married and I get to start new traditions. But what I'm MOST excited about is decorating my house, putting up lights, and sending our FIRST Christmas card.

My favorite part of the holidays is how they've evolved through the years as the kids grow up. Decorating Christmas cookies as now become planning and cooking the Christmas meals together.

I have so many holiday memories that it is hard to pick a favorite! I love everything about the Christmas season -- the shopping, the decorations, the smells. Everything. If I had to pick just one memory, however, it would be opening presents with my family on Christmas eve. You see, as a child I was a little over-anxious for Christmas morning to roll around. So anxious, in fact, that I would wake up shortly after midnight, and run across the house to wake up my parents and beg them to come see what Santa had brought me. Finally fed up with the early morning waking, my parents decided to tell me that Santa had to come to our house early, and he would leave presents at my house on Christmas Eve. I can remember thinking how lucky I was to get my presents a day early! And do you know what else? I loved the Christmas eve gift opening so much that my parents and I still do it to this day!

Oh my gosh! My favorite end-of-the-year-holiday-memory is being able to eat Christmas cookies on Christmas morning while we opened presents from Santa! The entire rest of the year, breakfast cookies are definitely not allowed, but on Christmas morning, my mom always prepares a big brunch for the family and puts out a huge platter of Christmas cookies to snack from! Even though I'm not a youngster anymore, the idea of munching on mom's Christmas cookies in the a.m. still makes me feel giddy!

One of my best memories at Thanksgiving was a day that I had to work. I worked for a resturant and instead of throwing out the left over food, I went out back and fed the stray cats. The look in their eyes staring me down as they ate up the left over turkey will forever be ingrained in my mind. I know to most people holidays are times to make memories with your family but to me ANY animal on this earth is my family.

One of my best memories at Thanksgiving was a day that I had to work. I worked for a resturant and instead of throwing out the left over food, I went out back and fed the stray cats. The look in their eyes staring me down as they ate up the left over turkey will forever be ingrained in my mind. I know to most people holidays are times to make memories with your family but to me ANY animal on this earth is my family.

My favorite holiday memory is of when I was 8 and my sister was 10. My mother "forgot" to come home and my sister and I got up christmas morning. We were so hungry, and went to the refrigerator and found an old bottle of Cold Duck from a wedding, and some stale cinnimon roles. We walked down the road to my granny's house and asked my grandpa to open the bottle and sayed we were surprising our mom for breakfast.

we got back to the house, and me and my sister sat under the tree and ate cinammon rolls and champaine. To this day we carry on this tradition.

We enjoy our fabulous Thanksgiving dinner together and then Saturday we go cut down our Christmas tree, such a fun gathering to start off the holiday season!

I remember our parents being so excited for us to open our gifts one year that THEY woke the children up. My mother used to cook for days so that we'd have a large dinner, we'd start eating after gifts were opened.

My favorite thing to do during the holidays (besides spending time with my family!) is the cookie swap I do with my close friends, 2 dozen cookies,cocktails,yummy food and some MAJOR laughs!

My favorite holiday memory would have to be waking up at random times during the holidays to see blinking christmas lights around the windows of the house. I was a paranoid child and it was just so soothing for me.

That! And staying up all night on christmas eve, checking the stockings every 15 mins, listening to Christmas music on the radio and being giddy with my two sisters.

I love christmas!

Sara

I'd have to say, without a doubt, my favorite holiday memory is when my husband and I drove home to surprise my family. My dad had just gone through a rigorous cancer treatment and was weak and tired and couldn't make the trip to see us. So my sport of a husband dressed up as Santa knocked on the back door. My family was so happy and surprised! There were many tears that trip, and I'll never, ever forget it!

I've always been a die hard Santa fan. I believed in Santa until I was about 10 or so. I remember one Christmas Eve, as routine, my brother and I went to bed just before midnight. But we decided to sneak back down a few hours early...3am to be exact. We went down two stairs and heard some noise below. We thought it just had to be Santa talking it up, boy were we wrong. We continued down the stairs hoping to get a glimpse of St.Nick, and instead saw our parents wrapping our gifs as they sipped on egg nog. I guess there wasn't such a thing as Santa.

I've always been a die hard Santa fan. I believed in Santa until I was about 10 or so. I remember one Christmas Eve, as routine, my brother and I went to bed just before midnight. But we decided to sneak back down a few hours early...3am to be exact. We went down two stairs and heard some noise below. We thought it just had to be Santa talking it up, boy were we wrong. We continued down the stairs hoping to get a glimpse of St.Nick, and instead saw our parents wrapping our gifs as they sipped on egg nog. I guess there wasn't such a thing as Santa.

We would love to win this giveaway! Holiday Cards are sooo important for us because our family is spread out all over! And I am obsessed with ANYTHING monogrammed! This is a win win for us!

~Brooke Malko

I always remember the weekend after Christmas growing up. My parents, sisters and I piled into the car to cut down a tree and bring it home to decorate. We still try to continue the tradition when possible but there is something about the anticipation of the holiday ahead that is so wonderful!