One of my favorite times of year is the holiday season. Believe it or not, it’s right around the corner! As soon as those decorations start hitting the store shelves, I get all excited and start thinking about how I want to decorate my house.
That’s why I’m so excited to partner with Gold Peak Tea for their “Take Me Home” campaign. Gold Peak Tea believes that “home” is as much about a feeling as a place – it’s the taste that brings you home. This season, Gold Peak Tea is inviting people to share their feeling of home for the chance to win a trip and their own custom experience of home.
I remember how my family and I celebrated the holiday season during my childhood very vividly. Growing up, my mom was really festive with seasonal decor. She’s always been a fabulous decorator, and I’ve definitely been inspired by her style. Seriously, our house looked like the pages of Better Homes & Gardens. Now that I have a family of my own, I’m trying to live up to my mother’s talents (and failing miserably).
The holiday season is also important to me because I met my husband at a holiday party in Nashville. I remember going home to California and telling my family about this cute guy I met, and how I couldn’t wait to go back to Tennessee to see him again. That was 7 years ago, and now we’ve got two kids and a mortgage!
My husband is Hungarian, and it’s very important to him (and me) that we teach our children about his culture’s holiday traditions as well as mine. This means that the way I celebrated holidays growing up is not the same way as my children will. I’m fine with that, because it means creating our own memories. It means meshing two different upbringings into a brand new one. I do have some fond memories of my childhood during the holidays, thanks to my parents.
Besides the house being decked out with holiday decor inside, my dad would put lights up around the house outside. I would constantly ask him when he was going to hang the lights. As I got older, it became a team effort between him and me, and I really miss that.
My mom would cook amazing meals (in my house, that honor goes to my husband- lucky me!) for our holiday dinners, and she’d get out the seasonal dishes and napkins. We’d all work together to make our favorite holiday cookies, and I can still taste and smell them just by thinking about those times in the kitchen. Even though there were just five of us, our intimate holiday celebrations were always so wonderful. My brother, sister and I seemed to grow closer during the holidays, and to this day, we’re still the best of friends.
For me, this is what “home” means during the holidays. Great food, a beautifully decorated house, time spent with loved ones, and special traditions that I hold dear in my heart. “Home” is that place I go anytime I want to re-visit my childhood, and travel back to a time when the holidays were about magic and wonder, instead of responsibilities and dirty dishes.
Now’s your chance to share what “home” means to you during the holiday season. One lucky person will win a trip and have their experience of “home” brought to life.
Here’s how to enter:
Celebrate the feeling of home by sharing a photo and your story with Gold Peak Tea. Let Gold Peak know what “home” means to you. Contest runs through September 1st, 2016. Visit the Gold Peak website for official rules and to enter. Don’t forget to tag @GoldPeak and include #GoldPeak when you post your entry!
Be sure to also follow @GoldPeak on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
This post was sponsored by Gold Peak Tea.