Holiday Cards with Minted + GIVEAWAY!!

We used Minted for our wedding invites! My favorite holiday tradition is just the people. Thefact of everyone I love being in the same place at the same time.

It’s a recent tradition, but since we’ve moved to Florida, we spend Christmas day at the beach. Then we have a big beef roast for dinner. I experiment with a different dessert each year, and we end the day with a bottle of St. Bernardus ABT 12.

making latkes for Chanukah with my whole family. my dad grates onions and potatoes by hand, my sisters and I mix the ingredients together and make little patties, and my mom fries them up. my sisters and I savor the little scraps of lone potato that my mom fetches out of the hot oil for us. such a fun tradition, even if my sisters and I are all in our mid/late 20s now.

My favorite holiday tradition is when my very musical and artsy relatives perform for the rest of the family!

i love having my family all together in the same house.

My favorite holiday tradition is just being in the kitchen helping my mom and brother. It’s a place where we all have the same end-goal, the same enjoyment of cooking for others, and even (literally) stepping on each other’s toes in our tiny kitchen is a joy.

We have too many but one of the best is having the neighbours over for supper, all of us wearing pyjamas and giving the kids matching pyjamas as presents! And for dessert, we have done this dessert three years in a row ; http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/winter-pudding-bombe/

Your cards are DARLING. This is an amazing giveaway! My favorite holiday tradition is making my family’s fried corn recipe every Thanksgiving!!

baking Christmas cookies with family!

My favorite tradition (from when I was a kid) is our day-after-Thanksgiving birthday celebration. My birthday is right after Thanksgiving, and my cousin’s birthday is in November as well, so my nana would always bring us all together for lasagna and celebrating the late fall babies. She would make the two of us our own sugar-bomb cakes (angel-food & ice cream, with a whipped cream frosting and m&m’s all over), and worked really hard to make sure that we didn’t feel left out with holiday-adjacent birthdays.

Omg, we have a kid this year, so I can’t wait to get all elbow deep in tradition building. (Though I know he won’t remember things for a few years, so we’ve got some time to tinker. I LOVED my dad reading The Night Before Christmas every Christmas Eve and insisted on it every year, even into adulthood. I just feel like it’s special time.

My favorite holiday tradition is baking and decorating our gingerbread house with my family! We just did it last night by the way!

Easy one: After our annual Chanukah party when all of the other guests have gone home, my dad and I will roast chestnuts over the still-warm coals in the fire. We’ll stay up late cracking them open and talking about the next year to come.

Sticky buns Christmas morning!…all of our traditions are food related (-;

My favorite holiday tradition is having everyone over on Christmas Day for a dinner and presents.

My favorite holiday tradition is eating my mom’s pumpkin pie 🙂

my favorite holiday tradition is thanksgiving at mom’s house and i get to cook everything and everyone else cleans up!

I love all the obvious things like getting a Christmas tree and decorating, listening to Christmas music 24/7 and watching the classics like A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CARROL. Love!!

New Pj’s for Christmas Eve!

My favorite holiday tradition is listening to my Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton Christmas record — full of classics and originals that have become classics in my world – I listened to it three times yesterday while decorating the house!

my favorite tradition is spending the entire day with my family-from the parade to the second or third helping at night. It’s also my dads birthday so it’s extra special around here.

My favorite holiday tradition is spending Christmas Eve with my immediate and extended family. We enjoy a big meal, open presents, stay up very late, and then tease the little kids that Santa won’t come until they are home and in bed. Everyone is so happy. It’s my favorite.

Beautiful cards! My favorite family tradition for the holidays is homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. We bake them while opening our stockings, then eat, then return for the gifts under the tree!

My favorite tradition is swearing that we will come up with a tradition this year… and then getting too busy. 🙂

Driving to the Christmas tree farm to cut our own tree on the day after Thanksgiving!

Every Christmas me, my siblings, and our families all sleepover at my parents house. After the kids go to bed we all head down to the basement and play beer pong… Some years it has been water pong, but still, so much fun!

Having a real tree in the house, forever and always.

One of my favorite traditions was chopping down and decorating our Christmas tree the day after thanksgiving with my brother and sister. We lived close to a tree farm and no matter the weather, went out to get our tree, put some Christmas music on, and decorated while snacking on thanksgiving leftovers!

Getting new pajamas on Christmas Eve 🙂

Just being together with all of our family is my favorite tradition!

my favorite family tradition is endlessly watching Albert Finney’s Scrooge. it’s a family favorite!

since we had our daughter, 4 years ago, we’ve been going as a family to cut down a christmas tree together. it’s the ONE thing we do the same every year!

Oh! We love Minted, too! And, it’s so much fun looking over old cards, isn’t it? My favorite holiday tradition is sitting around the fireplace on Christmas morning with my family and just being together, talking, catching up over coffee and a mid-morning box of chocolates :).

Thanksgiving morning cinnamon rolls!!

My favorite tradition: making Alton Brown’s eggnog recipe, getting slightly boozed up (we’re all grown up these days) and then riding around looking at Christmas lights. Note: driver does NOT partake ’til we get back home!

I love decorating our Christmas tree!!

I love decorating the house and especially the tree. It’s fun going through all of the decorations with my boys, and adding to our collection each year with their homemade things.

Listening to Christmas music on my drive back home.

Pajamas. It’s a tradition my grandparents started with my mom and her siblings, and one that I’m carrying on with my daughter now. Every Christmas Eve all the children get new PJs from Mom & Dad to wear to bed. There’s something so nice about looking forward to getting your fresh set of PJs every year (and it makes for particularly adorable photos on Christmas morning!)

It’s so hard to choose one…and now that my daughter is 2, the fun will really begin. My gramma always made something she called “poppyseed struedel,” and I taught myself from her recipe last year. She died this summer, so the process and result will be that much more meaningful.

My favorite holiday tradition is watching cheesy Christmas movies (think Hallmark & Lifetime TV movies) while wrapping presents.

My favorite would have to be the mandarin oranges that my mom always put in our stockings in addition to the usual stocking stuffers. It always made our stockings look ridiculously full!

My mom’s sister married my dad’s brother, so we always had our holiday celebrations on specific days–switching off for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve with my dad’s side, Christmas Day with my mom’s, etc. Christmas Eve is my favorite! My grandma made a giant pot of super simple potato soup, bought a honey-baked spiral cut ham, yeast rolls, and, oddly enough, a bucket of KFC. I am an Army beat, and my family continued this tradition when we were away from “home” for the holidays. My sister and I could unwrap our gift from Grandma and Granpa after eating our soup. We usually spent the rest of Christmas Eve playing card games or working on an intense puzzle.

My favorite holiday tradition is going to my grandparents church for the Christmas Eve candlelight service. It’s so peaceful and a wonderful way to celebrate the day.

I put together a powerpoint with photos from the family during the year. It’s really fun as my kids have gotten old enough to take lots of selfies on their own phones. I gather those pictures from their photo feeds that we may not have yet seen and compile them into one big slideshow. It’s so fun and cozy to watch and share memories together on Christmas Eve.

my favorite tradition is baking TONS of holiday cookies with my kids!

My favorite holiday tradition??

Our family make the craziest x-mas cards we usually do it all ourselves it would be so nice to have some help this year!
Last year this involved spraying painting the back of our house with “Santa bring toys here” and positioning our three kids in front of the “tag” with spray cans…the insert said, “Have you been naughty or nice?”
Jenna Meyer

Getting outdoors! Here in Southern California there’s no excuse not to spend the day hiking or at the beach, or both. And it always makes me smile to see others out doing the same thing.

Driving around to look at holiday lights!

My favorite holiday traditions (besides all the food) is we open our stockings on the morning of Christmas, while we are waiting for everyone to get up. My father does them every year and they are always stuffed with fun things even though we are all adults now!

It was always a rule that everyone had to eat breakfast before opening presents Christmas morning. Since I was old enough to crack an egg, I took it upon myself to make Christmas breakfast and it’s my favorite part of the day just sitting around the table eating and enjoying family time!

My family always watches It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve. It’s my favorite holiday movie.

My favorite tradition is my Mom’s lasagna on Christmas Eve. It’s not Christmas Eve without lasagna.

Grandma’s house (apartment) a few night before Christmas. It’s a smaller get together of some Aunts and cousins and it isn’t about the presents (which are usually small and simple) but about the time together and having fun. Our family is huge so this smaller gathering is something I always look forward to.

My favorite holiday traditions are my Mimi’s clam chowder on Christmas eve and watching the “A Christmas Story” Marathon on TBS. YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT!!

Baking Christmas cookies, from scratch, is my favorite tradition by far! We decorate our cookies with a yolk and food coloring “paint” and then add lots of SPRINKLES! It’s an all afternoon commitment and my kitchen is always a mess but it truly signifies Christmas to me.

On Christmas Eve my dad always reads The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore. This year is the first time I’ll be with my husband’s family for Christmas, but I got my own copy of the poem so I can keep the tradition alive.

Favorite holiday tradition is making a gingerbread house with my daughter.

My favorite holiday tradition is hot chocolate in my mom’s kitchen on Christmas morning before we all sit around the tree. The mugs have gotten smaller as my hands have grown but it tastes amazing every year…and now my son joins my sisters and me sitting at the kitchen counter.

decorating the tree is always my favorite – it’s so magical when the lights are on and all the ornaments are in place. I love admiring it with all the lights off! 🙂

Our favorite tradition is piling the presents into a big mountain (there are always at least 22 of us!) around the Christmas tree after all the kids go to bed and then the youngest kid gets to climb the mountain in the morning and then act as the “Elf” who delivers presents to everyone else lazing around 🙂

My favorite holiday tradition is watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation while drinking eggnog and decorating the tree.

Christmas morning quiche!! Nom.

we always have chocolate bread pudding on thanksgiving. one year my cousin had twins on thanksgiving and couldn’t come. we made her a batch and fedex’ed it.

It is hard to choose 1 tradition. But when I was little it was when my brother and I would have a sleep over and we would stay up all night listening for Santa. As of late, I love getting together with all of my cousins night before Thanksgiving and Christmas and baking for the family gathering the next day.

My favorite tradition is having prime rib on Christmas Eve with my family. It’s always an amazing feast!

As a family we spend two days in our jammies opening gifts, sitting by the fire, telling stories and laughing. Of course there are cinnamon rolls, mimosa’s and naps in between!

Your holiday cards are fantastic!

My favorite holiday tradition is putting out my shoes for St. Nicholas Day. At 26, I still manage to do it. In college, my mom would have my roommates put presents in my shoes, and now it’s my fiance! Some traditions are just too special to us to forget!

Decorating the Christmas tree. We always have a “picnic” dinner. Veggies & dip, cheese, sausage, crackers, popcorn, etc. Nothing like grazing for dinner, listening to Christmas music and decorating the tree to get you in the spirit!

Baked French toast (with strong coffee) in the morning!

ok first of all i want to say i’m digging coopers hair in the 2014 pic. secondly if i win i’m totally making a christmas card with my cat and finally, my favorite holiday tradition is christmas brunch my dad always makes: scrambled eggs mixed with equal parts of sausage and eggs. I’m not normally a big meat eater, but its not christmas until i have those eggs

My favorite family tradition is gathering over the table, eating yummy holiday food and enjoying each others company.

My favorite holiday traditions are the blog family gatherings both my mom and my dad’s side always habe for Christmas.

My favorite tradition is making latkes for Hannukah!

oh this years’ is adorable! I love it. Cooper is such a stud. I have been wanting to get some of their cards – they have the most beautiful designs. We are just starting traditions within our own family, but my family always does Christmas morning at my parents. My mom makes cocoa and coffee with baileys, i bring cinnamon rolls and we open gifts and then I make a second breakfast for everyone. We have a small family and it sounds typical but we don’t all often sit down together without anywhere else to be, unfortunately. I am really looking forward to it this year.

Starting December 1st we do 25 books of Christmas for my 2 + 5 1/2 year old, so much fun. We also each get new pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve, really I think this one is more for me. Great card, he is so dapper!

I love cutting a tree down and decorating it with family and friends. Once my house is decorated, it just feels like Christmas!:)

On Thanksgiving Day and Chrostmas Day, my Mom and I sneak down to the kitchen very early in the morning to make and bake cinnamon rolls. While they bake, we drink copious amounts of coffee and plan the cooking schedule for the day. As I teenager I was not so appreciative of this tradition, but now that I am adult I adore the extra alone time with my mother.

For brunch on Christmas Eve, we ALWAYS have stuffed croissant french toast and grapefruit. Even when schedules change and things get hectic, this is the one thing we’ve kept going, I love it. 🙂

My favorite holiday tradition is watching The Sound of Music while preparing our family feast, snacking on goodies and hearing the children play!

My husband go on a special date that call our “Christmas Spectacular, Spectacular!” I look forward to it all year.

decorating gingerbreadmen!

My boys are 11 & 8 this year and every year we unpack all our holiday decor and with that comes our favorite books and music to get us in the spirit. #1 fav music in our house is the one and only Mr. Bing Crosby. Fav reading traditions include The Mole Family Christmas and The Tall Book of Christmas. I grew up hearing all of these over and over during the holidays and it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them!

My favorite holiday tradition is done during Thanksgiving dinner. We all go around the table and say what we are thankful for before we dig into our dinners. :))

My favorite holiday tradition is that we don’t go anywhere. When my boyfriend (now fiance) and I first got together and knew we’d be together forever, we started making holiday traditions. We work hard to visit all of the family before and after Christmas. But Christmas day is family (yeah, we’re a family) day. We snuggle on the couch, eat cinnamon rolls, and watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
It is the happiest day of my whole year.

I have a lot of favorites! I think one of my top ones though is to watch the Muppets Christmas Carol with my mom the night of Thanksgiving.

Our family is still growing so we don’t our traditions tied down yet but we like simple things, grabbing hot chocolate and driving around to look at lights, reading of Jesus birth, watching the kids plays at church. Thanks!

When I lived at home my favorite holiday tradition was going to my Grandparents house Christmas morning and helping to make and then eating my grandma’s chocolate gravy. One of these days I need to make it myself. I miss it and them so much.

There is a church in our town that has an amazing holiday light display. There are tons of people and families all gathered and there is hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies. This has fast become my first ever adult holiday tradition with my family.

My favorite holiday tradition is making candy with my mom, cousins, and family friends!

Making ornaments – so much fun every time.

I would love to be included in this giveaway! I adore the cards on minted and have been ousting after a few, but haven’t made up my mind about what to order.

Hands down my favorite holiday tradition is baking cookies with my family! We always bake 6 or 7 types and then we pack up festive tins with a few of each kind and give them away to neighbors and family. We’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, and my Dad has kept a log of the different types of cookies we’ve made each year since the 80’s! It’s so fun to look back at what we baked when I was a kid. I’m 15 weeks pregnant right now and I cant WAIT to get the little nugget up on the counter and baking with us in the years to come!

Hiding the pickle ornament on the Christmas tree and watching he grandkids look for it. First one to find it gets a special gift!

Christmas eve dinner with all my mom’s family….its a sea food feast with lots of family and cheer!

Making cinnamon rolls on December 24th and delivering them to friends and family for their Christmas breakfast.

Seriously, could he be any cuter?! What a little hunk.
I love Christmas cards. Borderline obsession. The picture ones are just too fun. I mean don’t get me wrong, normal ones are good too, but cmon I wanna see the family!
My favorite Christmas tradition is crafts. Every year my dad and I pick a new craft to do for that season. We have a daddy daughter date and go to dinner and the craft store to get supplies. We throw on the Christmas music, light some candles, and go to work! It’s really fun to see the crafts from when I was just a little girl. So nostalgic 🙂

Merry Christmas!!! <3

Ps can I steal your handwriting? K thanks.

Emmet otters jug band Christmas & cookie swap on Christmas Eve! And eggnog with cheer of course 🙂

My favorite holiday tradition is making Peppermint Puff cookies. They involve rolling the dough balls in egg white and then sugar before baking which sounds odd but it gives them a lightly crispy shell on the outside and soft peppermint cookie on the inside. To top it all off, we press a Hershey kiss into the center of each for the last two minutes of baking so the chocolate is melty when they come out of the oven. I’ve been making these cookies each year for my family since 1985!

For YEARS my favorite tradition was making holiday meals with my grandma. She’s been gone for 5 years now and I’ve taken charge as head chef. I’ve got 7 pies to make this year for Thanksgiving! Can’t wait. I’d love to win this as my husband and I are determined to do a Christmas card this year! It would make another great tradition

Cooking the meal with the fam! We always put on music and are dancing around while making the meal – so fun!

Picking up our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving!

Gathering the whole family to light the first candle of Chanukah, eating loads of potato latkes with sour cream and jelly doughnuts. I Can’t wait.

My favorite holiday tradition is listening to the broadcast from King’s College Cambridge on Christmas Eve morning. My dad and I always listened to it together when I was growing up and now I call him just before the broadcast starts so we can listen to the first hymn together. 🙂

Anything and everything Thanksgiving related! The smells, the weather, the food and family. What more could I ask for?!

Christmas eve hanging the stockings!

One of my favorite things we do every Christmas is watch my mom’s favorite musical: Fiddler on the Roof. While this is probably a strange tradition (Tradition!) for a 100% Irish, Catholic family I’ve enjoyed it every year. Love your cards!

I love to start the holidays by getting our Christmas Tree right after Thanksgiving (which is also my birthday:) Then I get the Boney M holiday music going, put wreaths on the door and garlands around the fireplace! I love making it cozy even if we’ll never get real snow in southern california!

Our favorite tradition is watching “The Grinch” movie on Christmas Eve!

Even though we moved backed to Southern California 10 years ago, my husband and I try to keep our San Francisco New Year’s Eve Day tradition of Dungeness crab and doubled stuffed baked potatoes.

Bloody Mary’s with my family on Christmas morning!

Decorating the tree, hands down!We put on Christmas music, make hot chocolate and all decorate it together.

Watching A Christmas Story with my dad

We have all of our friends over the first weekend in December to help us decorate the tree. We make a traditional holiday meal and afterwards have all the great Christmas shows on for the kids while the adults sit outside by the fire.

appetizer bar all day on Christmas day.

Christmas was my Grandma’s favorite time of year. After she died, we were all too distraught to celebrate the usual Christmas traditions without her. So we made a decision to spend Christmas in her favorite place, Hawaii, with the only other gifts exchanged being a new bathing suit or sandals for the trip. We did this for a few years, but then as life usually goes, my brothers and sister and I got older, met our husbands and wives and moved all over the country. I fell in love with a man from Puerto Rico, and now every year around Christmas we plan a tropical escape from Ohio winter to his hometown in San Juan. It isn’t Hawaii, but the smell of the salty ocean, warm tropical air, and happy orchids that hang from trees and brightly colored Caribbean window sills remind me of her and we tell our own daughter stories about what a wonderful human being she was.

I love having cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast after opening presents!

Baking cookies with my young nieces is my favorite holiday tradition! I look forward to including my 10 month old so in the baking fun too!

After any holiday get together with family we always end the evening by playing a board or card game. Which always gets us laughing together so much.

I love the simmering crockpot filled with boozy apple cider and cinnamon sticks and citrus slices. We do it every year with our entire family, and in recent years, have included a second booze-less crockpot for the kids. I look forward to it every single year!

Hanging out with all my extended family and starting to decorate for Christmas! I love the whole holiday season!

Picking out a new ornament for my son. Every year we buy an ornament that is tied to something he was major into that year. This year’s ornament will be Curious George. I am keeping a list with little stories behind each ornament, which I will give to him some day, should he choose to use them on his family tree.

Oh oops… but my favorite Christmas tradition is opening up ONE present on Christmas Eve. Which is usually PJs! This is my first year as a married woman, so I’m excited to start new traditions with my husband. I’m just not sure what they are yet!

My family HAS to go the the local Lights in the Park… The season is not complete with out it!

My family doesn’t really have many traditions – we’re sort of a bread and butter group. Not to say we aren’t cultured, but… we don’t have too many things we do as a group aside from the standard eating and gift giving. I guess the one I can recall that we do every year is that we pile into the back of my dad’s truck the weekend before Christmas and go look at Christmas lights. Since it doesn’t get that cold in Florida, we can get by with a jacket and some blankets to fill the bed. There’s one particular neighborhood that gets all decked out at Christmas, and they collect donations for a local charity each year – I think they rotate the charity every 5 years. All of the families who come by drive really slow around the houses, admiring the hard work. Some of the houses are so intricate… snowglobes fill the yard, lights, blow-up santas, all the good stuff. After I turned 21, we started bringing a little nip of alcohol to keep us warm, and my dad drives the truck while the kids, my mom and the pup sit in the back. We didn’t do it last year… but I want to make sure we do it again this year. We’re all a little out of money due to crappy circumstances, so we’re focusing on the bonding experiences of Christmas, rather than the gifts.

Making Christmas cookies with my mom, from my grandmother’s old recipes.

Decorating the house with Elf on in the background and some boozy warm drinks on the mantle. Thanks for the chance to win. 🙂

A Christmas Eve party with family and friends where we all eat/drink too much and stay up too late!

Spending time eating tons of great, yummy food with my family!

Loving a new tradition in our house… mistletoe. I’m Jewish, my husband isn’t, and our 4-year-old mistakenly called it “Mazel Toe” and I haven’t corrected him :). It’s our multi-cultural excuse to smooch each other throughout the holiday season, and the natural stuff looks so pretty hanging in our front hall. Love spreading the holiday love!

My favorite holiday tradition is setting the table for our Christmas Eve dinner using these amazing Christmas tree plates that have been passed down from my grandmother.

Our talent show. The kids are great, but I love seeing the adults being so goofy (or taking it a little too seriously 😉

Watching White Chistmas while we put up the tree. My sisters and I would sing-a-long to “Snow, Snow, Snow.” It was always so funny to me that they sang about wanting to wash their hair in snow. OBVI these people were never the youngest & thus last in line to shower of 3 sisters! 😉

My favorite holiday tradition is to go to Solvang, CA the day after Thanksgiving with my mom to pick out decorations for the house and tree! Now that I am a grown up I am starting to collect all the Swedish decorations that my mom and Nana have all over their homes!

Christmas morning breakfast including scrambled eggs, bacon, cinnamon rolls and orange juice. This will always be my favorite holiday tradition!

My favorite holiday tradition is watching all the Friends’ episodes related to Thanksgiving the morning of Thanksgiving. The one with Brad Pitt is my favorite. Random in ridiculous I know but this was bred out of necessity when I was working at my dorm’s front desk one year and couldn’t be with my family. It has just stuck.

My favorite holiday tradtion is baking cookies boxes with my friends Melissa, Melanie and Carol. The four of us get together for 72 hours of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. We use 2 ovens, 3 kitchen aid mixers, and we bake between 1500-2000 cookies to give away to family and friends. We usually make 6 kinds of cookies and then we do chocolate pretzels! It’s crazy but it’s amazing!

My favorite tradition is our family’s Christmas Eve party. It’s changed over the years, from a huge black tie affair at my grandmother’s house to a more casual, just family (and those who aren’t technically family but might as well be) event these days, and there’s always room for improvisation, but the meal is almost always the same, and the special few hours spent together that night just means Christmas to me. It’s rare and special that we’re all together!

So hard to just pick one! Probably opening stockings. Even though we are “grown ups” my mom still makes us all stockings (and we do hers), and there are lots of amazing little finds in there to shows she knows us all really well! Santa sneaks some fun things in them too!

My favorite tradition is decorating the tree and listening to Christmas music!

My husband and I just got married last year and are still working on the whole merging of our families schedules and traditions. I’m trying to embrace it, so in that spirit I will say that all traditions are up in the air and I’m excited about forming some new ones that aren’t from his family or my family, but are for OUR family!

Caroling & Christmas cookies!!

I love looking at Christmas lights with my family!

Going to see the Nutcracker at SF Opera House

Right now my favorite tradition is going to my grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve and seeing all the little kids meet Santa. Now that I have my own daughter that will be 6 months old right at Christmas, I cannot wait to start that tradition with her! So exciting!

Thanks for the opportunity to win! This is an awesome giveaway!

hanging out with my niece is the best thing about the holidays for me … She brings the holidays alive for us all

I love having sausage souffle in the morning on Christmas Day. I’m also especially fond of celebrating with my husband on Christmas Eve before we head out to our families’ homes together.

I also don’t follow directions very well! Yikes. Favorite holiday tradition: watching The Family Stone and drinking all the things.

I love baking and sharing Christmas cookies and spiced nuts every year!

Every Christmas Eve my family watches “It’s A Wonderful Life” together. It’s a great way for us to remember what the holiday is really about and to appreciate what we have.

My absolute favorite holiday tradition is reading “The Night Before Christmas” before bed on Christmas Eve. My cousins and I range from 28 to 13, but we can almost always persuade my amazing Gran to read it to us like she did when we were tiny. 🙂

making homemade ravioli for christmas eve dinner!

We love to go pick out a fresh Christmas tree every year.

I was going to say opening presents but what I really love is giving away the presents I brought, not because I’m super nice or anything but because I’m dying from suspense to see if they like it so I want to get it out of the way right away so I can relax and enjoy my presents. = )

it is so hard to just choose one!! It’s my favorite time of year….but this year the thing I look forward to most is our tradition of the day after thanksgiving night….setting up and decorating the tree and giving our boys (3 and 1) their Christmas jammies and a new Christmas movie …..a family movie night all snuggled in together by the light of the tree

I love decorating the tree

drinking eggnog is pretty nice

Stockings on Christmas morning! It is so fun to unwrap the little, random gifts that my mom (ahem…Santa) thought to get everyone. Even though we are all adults in our family, I think this will always be one of our favorite traditions.

My favorite holiday tradition is starting a puzzle on Christmas Eve day and trying not to give up on it by New Year’s Eve day. ha!

My husband and I give each other hardcover books each Christmas to create our own home library.

Tough to pick just one! I lovelovelove Christmas time! We’re a blended family, so making sure we have traditions is important for all of us. Picking out our Christmas tree each year is probably my favorite!

our thanksgiving and Christmas meals are almost identical, but the one thing we never change is my grandmom’s cranberries – cook, puree, strain, cook again – they take forever, but we would never be without them 🙂

My favorite holiday tradition is leaving out milk and cookies for Santa, and carrots for the reindeer. That plate of crumbs in the morning makes me smile.

Christmas morning breakfast

I love the Holidays! It is so difficult to choose just one favorite tradition, but I would say just decorating with family. I’ve been overseas for the last few years and have not been able to be home, so I am excited to be back this year and experience these memories. Thanks for the opportunity!

My favorite holiday tradition is decorating the Christmas Tree, while listening to Christmas music and making yummy chocolate pie. Julie smartsavvymama@gmail.com

I love starting off Christmas morning right with orange juice (or mimosas), heart attack casserole (your typical delicious sausage, egg, and bread deliciousness), and opening stockings!

Deciding where and then taking the family photo (me, husband and our amazing Frenchie). I love sending cards!! This is such an awesome contest! Thanks!!

Sitting in front of the fireplace and eating homemade caramel corn!

Raclette on Christmas Eve.

Without a doubt, decorating the house and tree! And then coming home every night and turning on all the lights 🙂

Oh man, it’s hard to choose between Pierogi Day or brunch Christmas morning (my MIL makes the best brunch!). I’m not surprised they’re both food-related though. 😀

My favorite holiday tradition would have to be driving around Christmas evening with the family looking at everyone’s holiday decorations. Its a slow deliberate drive filled with commentary and awe.

I adore Thanksgiving the most, but a close second is using the Christmas tree as the only light source in the living room at night.

my favorite holiday tradition is watching A Christmas Story for 24 hours Christmas Eve into Christmas Day!

I always loved decorating the tree when I was a kid, and still do!

My husband and I watch Home Alone 1 &2 between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. We have done it every year for the past 12 years and it will continue to live on!

My favorite holiday tradition is holiday baking! I’m counting down the days till I can go home and bake with my fam.

There’s no holiday tradition that’s better than wrapping presents, drinking hot chocolate and listening to Christmas music!

Putting up the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving community dinner and watching “Elf” then “Christmas Vacation” while enjoying a good bottle of wine! Cant wait!!!

My fiance and I are still figuring out our what the holidays look like to us (decorations, food, etc.), but we did no- or low-cost gifts last year and we’re discussing making it a permanent tradition. We knew we’d be getting “stuff” from our parents and siblings, so we decided to focus on experiences and adventures. This year I’m going to create a coupon book of things to do in the DC area, with activities ranging from hikes to museums to restaurants we’ve talked about trying.

Every year since our kids were little we go with dear friends to a farm to cut down our Christmas trees. My favorite tradition is how much my daughter hates the tree I pick every year (we’ve disagreed since she was 5 and she’s now 14!) and simultaneously my friends’ son tries to figure out which one I love the most so he can claim it first! So many blessings!!

My family watches the National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation every year. I love that movie so much, not only because it’s funny, but because of the memories I associate with it.

Growing up, we would go to a Christmas tree farm and chop down our own tree. I always thought it was the coolest thing. Now, we make wontons as a family!

Looking forward to making new traditions starting this year since I just had twin boys this Halloween! But my current favorite tradition is with my family and my cousin’s family where we always watch a movie Christmas Day and go out for Chinese food after! 🙂

Your son is adorable! My favorite holiday tradition is to bake my granny’s ginger cookies.

My favorite tradition is putting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving. We make some of the same appetizers and treats every year and listen to Christmas music. It’s something I always look forward to.

My favorite tradition during the Christmas season is going to a decades-old theater to watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” followed by a dinner of wood-fired pizza and wine with my love. It’s the same year after year and it is absolutely wonderful!

Going to see santa at the Stanford shopping center. I grew up going and it’s fun to take my two year old now. I swear that santa is the real deal!

Baking cookies while listening to Christmas music.

The night before Thanksgiving my husband, I and our kids go out to eat for a nice family dinner. We put the kids to bed, open a bottle of wine and start cooking for the following day. We have been hosting Thanksgiving dinner since our daughter was born 8(!) years ago. I love the quiet kick off to the holiday season. This year there is the promise of snow and I couldn’t be more excited!

On Christmas Eve, after the kids have gone to bed, we do some extra decorating, enlisting all of our family members to put up more twinkle lights and hang snowflakes from the ceiling. It makes Christmas morning so magical!

One of my favorite holiday traditions is picking out new holiday books with my husband. We started a collection a few years ago and I look forward to adding to it every year.

Ahhh I love minted, i’ve used them for years for work stuff and personal – what a great giveaway! My favorite holiday tradition is decorating sugar cookies with friends/family while watching a Charlie Brown Christmas. 🙂 ps. Cooper looks adorable, loving that sweater!

Opening one present early on Christmas Eve. 🙂

I like baking cookies for friends.

My favorite holiday tradition is stringing cranberries for the tree with family.

Favorite holiday tradition before having kids: pie. All the pie, and then movies. Now, it is dinner with the fam, and then sweet, sweet extra sleep for baby and mama on my short break from teaching. We just bought our first house two weeks ago and I cannot wait to start some of our own holiday traditions!

Christmas Eve sitting on the couch with just the Christmas lights on, Nat King Cole playing and sipping hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps and topped with whipped cream. Can’t wait!!

We always make aebleskivers (Danish pancakes) on Christmas morning. And opening the stockings, of course.

I don’t think my family has traditions per se, but my favorite part of the holidays is just enjoying a delicious meal with those I love.

My favorite christmas tradition is sitting down, when christmas day is done, with a glass of wine. The tree on, the fire going, and a christmas movie on while we fall asleep on the couch. SO PUMPED!
Trish

Chinese food on Christmas Eve!

Christmas Day is TAMALE DAY! Need I say more? 😉

Going to see a movie together after we open presents and watch some basketball. 🙂

Cooking in the kitchen with my sister. Since our mom passed away 7 yrs ago, we have worked really hard to make new family memories and traditions. I think, though it has been hard at times, we’ve done a pretty great job!

I love baking holiday treats while listening to Bing Crosby-era Christmas music.

My favorite holiday tradition is making a gingerbread house with my daughter – who is grown now and lives tooo far away. 🙁

most of all, spending it with family! .. but breaking the wishbone with my sister has always been special to me 🙂

We always went to a movie on Christmas day as a family! And I also love opening Christmas/cards/letters – so much so that I reminded my husband NOT to open them, as I would get very upset!

Running the Buffalo Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning with my extended family while wearing absurd turkey hats and singing christmas carols the whole time. 5 miles to start the day makes all of the mashed potatoes consumed cause a little bit less of a shame hangover…

After decorating the tree, we have a picnic dinner in front of the tree and play board games in our pajamas.

My favorite Holiday Tradition is decorating the tree while listening to some old school Bing Crosby on the record player with Tom & Jerry’s in my Santa cup!

My grandmother’s tamales

My husband and I watch Elf while decorating for Christmas. I love that in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of Christmas it is something that we do together, just the two of us.

Growing up we always made tamales and haven’t done so since I was 15! Tis year will be the first year of my own tamale making tradition and I can’t wait!

Opening a new pair of pjs on Xmas eve 🙂

I’m a doctor and because I’m Jewish, my holiday tradition is being on call on Christmas so others can celebrate with their families. Then they get me back on the Jewish holidays! 🙂

Baking cookies from recipes that have been in my family for generations.

My favorite tradition is opening 1 gift on Christmas eve. It starts with a great dinner with an intimate group and then the excitement builds and everyone goes to bed in anticipation of what the morning will be.

It is also a favorite pass time for me to sneak back into the living room after everyone has gone to bed and look at the tree all lit up with all the gifts around it and just enjoy the quite and the magic of it all!

breaking up present opening with bagels and lox on christmas… a nod to our jewish side 😉

We do a family Christmas puzzle every year!

We always go to a Japanese Steakhouse on Christmas Eve to give us a break from the kitchen and then we drive around town looking at Christmas lights.

church, German food, Christmas story and one gift for the kids

PIES, all the pies. And watching White Christmas.

Sadly my favorite Thanksgiving tradition (going to my great uncle’s farm) ended this year when he sold the farm. But my favorite Christmas one is spending Boxing Day watching movies and building Legos before our next Christmas!

Watching The Night They Saved Christmas, a little-known and under-appreciated holiday movie that I’ve loved since I was 12.

Cutting down our own tree 🙂

One of my favorites is eating breakfast on Christmas morning with my family– Coffee cake, breakfast burritos, and Mimosas!

Going to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere is our tradition! We go with my sister and her family and make great memories with all the kiddos there !

my dad taking us to breakfast every year since we were little girls
On Christmas Eve morning. Still happens now that we have our own families!!

My favorite holiday tradition is wearing matching pj`s 🙂

Pie, definitely. And going to see a movie – we eat later so in recent years, my DH and I have snuck away for an early movie. We’re hosting this year, though, so I doubt that will happen. We’ll have to find a different day.

My family is Argentenian so weirdly we don’t have a lot of family traditions when it comes to holidays…we DO however ALWAYS get together with family! LOTS of it!! 🙂

going to see holiday lights!

Fondue dinner for Christmas Eve then we open gifts. Always a sparkling evening!

The cookies!! Making all the cookies. I’m excited to get my 3 year old in the mix. 🙂

Such a fabulous giveaway! One of my favorite traditions is to head downtown (we live in Seattle) and pack in a bunch of Christmas fun–highlights are the Teddy Bear room in the Fairmont Hotel, the amazing gingerbread creations at the Sheraton & one of the shopping centers that makes it “snow” every night! So magical.

My favorite thing every year is making Christmas cookies! We always make the same 4 kinds, with a wildcard to spice things up. I bring a tray to work and give them out to friends- it’s amazing how people will go crazy over homemade cookies!

My favorite Christmas tradition is decorating the tree while listening to Christmas songs and baking yummy pies! Julie smartsavvymama@gmail.com

A sunrise family hike with coffee (or hot cocoa for my daughter) in travel mugs. So peaceful and simple

Watching Home Alone!

Stockings and the Christmas Eve Service at church on Christmas Eve!

black Friday shopping!

Making Christmas cookies and decorating them with my kids. I love how they eat the cookies while they decorate them, making special ones for Santa.

My favorite holiday tradition has always been my family sharing the things they are thankful for as we eat dinner at Thanksgiving. It’s the only time of the year we all gather in one place, so I love hearing what everyone from my Mommom to the smallest cousin has to share.

Every Christmas Eve my parents would let my brothers and I open one Christmas present together – and it was always a Christmas book. Then, they would read that one, and the Night Before Christmas to us before bedtime. Now, we have this incredible collection of Christmas books that I hope to share with my kids someday.

My favorite holiday tradition is going with my whole family to chop down a fresh Christmas tree for my parents house. We always get the biggest tree on the tree farm, sometimes having to visit 3 or 4 farms before we find our perfect tree. It always kicks off the holiday season, and is always fun (even though it’s cold), because we end up wandering around the farms together, inevitably get separated and spend the rest of the day yelling “over here!” “Come look at this one!”. It’s one of my favorite days of the holiday season!

Watching cheesy old holiday movies with the whole family 🙂

My favorite tradition is spending long evenings with good wine and my family!

Baking Holiday Goodies 🙂

I love the holiday baking. I also love tearing up the bread for the Thanksgiving stuffing while watching the Macy’s parade.

I love the serenity of going to a Christmas Eve service with family and friends…singing Christmas hymns, lighting candles, and reflecting on the beautiful meaning of Christmas.

Watching the Thanksgiving or Christmas day parade with my family. Always made us happy seeing it together.

The decorations are my favorite part. I remember them from my grandmother and mother’s house and now my kids have memories with the same items.

Christmas brunch at Grammy’s (that’s me) house.

Baking and decorating holiday cookies!

Decorating the tree and remembering who/where each ornament came from… family heirlooms, vacations, inside jokes, creative minds. Each has a special memory and connection.

My new family of three (as of October) gets to spend Thanksgiving together “alone” making our own traditions. We’ll join the family next year, but in 2014 we are going to make it our own 🙂

Making my world famous dry turkey! 🙂

Playing “Drunk Dominos” with my family!

I like to make a big, fancy meal. Food is my love language, and it’s the way I show my family that I love them. Of course, the best part is eating all of that yummy food 🙂

Going out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve

As my kid says “Spending time with our big, hilarious, crazy family.”

Decorating our Christmas tree! My husband has been collecting ornaments his whole life it seems, so we have way too many ornaments to fit on the tree. Every year we choose different ones! (But some make the cut every year) 🙂

Hmm…I think my favorite holiday tradition is playing a gift game with friends on Christmas Eve, but my most delicious holiday tradition is baking cinnamon rolls Christmas morning!

Every year my aunt’s church, hosts a ladies tea. All the lady cousins (even the little ladies), get together for chatting and dinner at beautifully decorated tables. It’s something I have come to look forward to each year.

I love our family mug game. It is like white elephant but with handcrafted mugs. Steal one 3 times and it’s yours!