It’s the season for giving, and by giving, I mean hosting awesome giveaways with all sorts of great prizes and books! This time, we have Sarah Morgan‘s From Manhattan with Love series, plus a Kate Spade watch and earrings. Thanks to Harlequin for sponsoring!
The total prize pack retails for around $285.00 USD and includes:
– Champagne at midnight metro watch from Kate Spade
– Crystal square studs from Kate Spade
– 1 print copy of Sleepless In Manhattan by Sarah Morgan ( A | BN | K | G | AB )
– 1 print copy of Sunset in Central Park by Sarah Morgan ( A | BN | K | G | AB )
– 1 print copy of Miracle on 5th Ave by Sarah Morgan ( A | BN | K | G | AB )
Hopeless romantic Eva Jordan loves everything about Christmas. She might be spending the holidays alone this year, but when she’s given an opportunity to house-sit a spectacular penthouse on Fifth Avenue, she leaps at the chance. What better place to celebrate than in snow-kissed Manhattan? What she didn’t expect was to find the penthouse still occupied by its gorgeous—and mysterious—owner.
Bestselling crime writer Lucas Blade is having the nightmare before Christmas. With a deadline and the anniversary of his wife’s death looming, he’s isolated himself in his penthouse with only his grief for company. He wants no interruptions, no decorations and he certainly doesn’t appreciate being distracted by his beautiful, bubbly new housekeeper. But when the blizzard of the century leaves Eva snowbound in his apartment, Lucas starts to open up to the magic she brings…This Christmas, is Lucas finally ready to trust that happily-ever-afters do exist?
Standard disclaimers apply: I’m not being compensated for this giveaway except that I got to go shopping online which means I didn’t have to wear shoes or real pants. Void where prohibited. Open to US residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and have sunglasses on hand to combat the shine on those earrings. A watch in the hand is worth three books in the bush. That’s how it goes, right? It’s totally okay to have champagne on hand for celebrating or commiserating. Comments will close Monday 28 November 2016 around noon EST and winner announced same day.
To enter, leave a comment with your favorite holiday tradition! It could be as big as a beach trip every 4th of July or simply baking a particular type of cookie for Christmas.
Best of luck to everyone!
UPDATE: Our winner is Stephanie! Congratulations, Stephanie and keep an eye on your inbox! Thanks to everyone who commented and I hope you have a great holiday season!
Labor Day Weekend means a trip to the beach.
My favorite tradition is having pizza on Christmas Eve. My grandmother started the tradition in the 1980s with the practical thought that she would be cooking up a storm on Christmas. Might as well make it easy on the night before.
My favorite holiday tradition is making toffee with my family for christmas, and then rating it whike reading in front of a fire! Thanks for the giveaway!
My family’s long-held Christmas Eve tradition of settling down with platefuls of shortbread, fruitcake, and mini mincemeat pies, plus large glasses of liberally spiked (adults only) eggnog (except those of us who prefer the pure unadulterated whisky) to watch Fawlty Towers until everyone is too tired and/or tipsy to keep their eyes open.
Oddly, I’ve noticed that our Christmas morning activities are beginning later and later each year… Hmm.
Making my famous sweet potato casserole for my mother-in-law’s holiday gatherings. She loves it!
I love eating tamales for Christmas Eve!
My family’s long-standing Christmas Eve tradition is ordering Chinese food and watching Christmas Vacation.
Staying up til midnight after eating our epic feast on Christmas Eve to open our presents just hanging with family and watching nostalgic Christmas movies. And then lounging all day Christmas day in our PJs. (After sleeping in for a lovely amount of time)
Making Christmas cookies to give to family and friends.
I want to start a new tradition: Thanksgiving at the beach.
My favorite holiday tradition is spending every Labor Day with my 5 best friends from college. We have had this reunion for 35 years now!
When I was little, my parents would hide our dyed hard boiled eggs for us to find on Easter morning. They tended to always use the same hiding spots, which just added to the feeling of cherished ritual.
Going to the movies on Christmas day, after all the presents are opened and food is devoured.
My favorite tradition is hiding Easter eggs around the house and through the yard for the kids.
I always loved making Christmas cookies with my sons. We especially loved making sugar cookies in holiday shapes.
My favorite holiday tradition–Thanksgiving and Christmas–has always been cooking with my mom, especially her famous squash casserole. It’s seriously the best squash casserole in the universe. Coming home to Mom’s kitchen, doing the prep work, putting the meals and desserts together and talking, talking, talking with Mom–until I do that, it never feels like the holidays have really begun.
Except this year will be different. Mom passed away in March. This will be our first holiday season without her. So now we have to find a new normal, and it’s going to be hard as hell. But I’ll still be there, in her kitchen this week, carrying on tradition, making those old recipes, and hopefully feeling her presence.
My favorite tradition for Christmas is assembling a gingerbread house with my kids. The house is usually messy and the candy gets eaten off, but we love the struggle.
My favorite tradition is baking and decorating cookies with my kids on Christmas Eve then watching A Christmas Story.
My favorite tradition is going to the pumpkin patch to get our pumpkins for Halloween. We’ve done it every year since my son could walk. Even this year and he’s a senior in high school.
@Brandie: I’m so sorry for your loss, and that your upcoming holidays will be sad without her. Sending warmth and perfect baking. May her memory be a blessing.
Christmas music and decorating the day after Thanksgiving!
My favorite tradition is decorating my Christmas tree on Thanksgiving morning, while the Macy’s Day Parade is on TV.
My favorite tradition was all the Christmas cookies were put away until Christmas Eve after when we got back from the candlelight church service. Also we’d go to a tree farm and cut down our own tree.
Typically my immediate family goes to my extended family’s house for Christmas Eve every year. My parents are divorced and it’s my dad’s family, so my mom has been trying to get out of it for years. This year we’ve decided we aren’t going, so we’re actually coming up with ideas to start a new tradition. I’m really looking forward to it!
But other than that, we still totally do Santa at my house and I love baking my grandmother’s cheese crackers from her recipe, simple but amazing.
Macy’s parade MUST be on for the entirety of the morning while cooking thanksgiving dinner. MUST BE. Or there could possibly be rage quitting in the kitchen…
My favorite holiday tradition is making klejner (deep-fried Danish cookies).
I love listening to Christmas music from Thanksgiving onward.
Putting ornaments on the Christmas tree! It’s amazing how many memories they bring up.
My favorite tradition is decorating the Christmas tree with ornaments made through the years by family members.
Favorite holiday tradition: driving around town a few days before Christmas with my old friends looking at all the decorated houses! Never fails to get me excited for the most stressful time of the year 😉
We play the dice game at my parents’ house. Everyone brings a small gift, usually something funny, and then the fun begins. I have 8 nephews, 1 niece, 3 great nieces, and 3 great nephews. My nephews never had to do the shower dice games, so they find this the best fun ever. There is always one gift everyone fights over and when it turns out to be a nothing we all laugh like lunatics.
Girls Christmas shopping day.
I like that everyone in both sides of my family comes to my house for Christmas. Well, I don’t like all the work to get ready but I love that we are all together.
My favourite holiday tradition is celebrating my grandmother’s birthday on Dec 25. Until the blue laws relaxed in Toronto, that usually meant going to a nice hotel for dinner, but later became dinner on Spadina. This year she’ll be 101, and it’s been a rough year for her, so I think we’ll be taking it a bit easier and just bringing her brunch.
Otherwise: cookies, which go with every holiday except Passover, and for that one, I make chocolate toffee matzah instead.
Visiting a cold beachfront on New Year’s Day, growing up, this was my local beach and the ocean. Later on, it was a cityscape and the Great Lakes.
My favorite tradition would have to be Christmas Noche Buena which means Christmas Eve dinner usually held closer to midnight. We would have a traditional Filipino Christmas menu, lechon and everyone from the extended family. It used to be a bigger celebrarion when my grandmother was still alive but we have toned it down a little bit in the past few years.
Doing a Secret Santa gift exchange with my high school friends. This is our method of keeping in contact and getting together once a year.
We’ve been creating new traditions. My husband and I moved in together 2-1/2 years ago, and he has two children we have every other weekend. We’ve started celebrating our Christmas on Christmas Eve, then go to my parents’ that day for celebration (it’s also my Mom’s birthday). So Christmas day usually involves a lazy morning and the local Chinese buffet for lunch with just me and my husband.
I bake an epic amount of Christmas cookies (@40 varieties), then host a happy hour for friends to pick up cookies and connect before the holiday.
For most of my adult life, it’s just been my parents and me for Christmas, so we try to still do “kiddie” things like Christmas crackers and silly selfies in addition to making the special candies and recipes handed down from my great-grandmother. But my brother and his family have moved back to Texas this year, and I CAN’T WAIT to have little ones underfoot.