Number Fifty-Three: Advent Calendar Blog Hop & GIVEAWAY with Balsam Hill

This is a sponsored post.

Welcome everyone!

If you are coming over from Just a Smidgen, don't you just love that blog? It's new to me and I have spent quite a bit of time pouring over Barbara's wonderful content.

Also, I'm so thrilled to be partnering with Balsam Hill again this holiday season! This year, I've paired with 23 other bloggers to share with you all why we love Christmas so very much. (Check out the full list of participants here.) I find Balsam Hill products to truly have a timeless quality that I just adore. In fact, when I started pulling out my Christmas decorations this year, my very first thing I grabbed was my Balsam Hill tabletop tree. You can see it on my dining room sideboard in my 2015 Holiday Home Tour here.

Countdown to Christmas

Today, I'm here to share with you what Christmas means to me. It isn't about gifts. Or about having an over the top festive house (although, I do my fair share of decorating and crafting this time of year). It's really about family and being around those that you are closest to and have an unbreakable bond with.

I have a lot of great memories of Christmas as a child. Just with me, my mom and my dad. We would string popcorn and cranberries to drape on our freshly cut tree and add lots and lots of tinsel. And we had this silver ball you would plug in and it would make a bird chirping noise. Did any of you have that? I loved that thing!

I also learned at a very young age to cherish this holiday. My very first Christmas memory was visiting my dad in the hospital when I was three. He had just had surgery for cancer. And I can remember bits of that holiday...being upset that Santa wouldn't find me because we were far from home, getting Donny and Marie Osmond dolls as my main gift, being cared for by lots of different family members and, of course, visiting my dad. Honestly, those memories are still kind of tough for me 37 years later, but it's part of my story. And part of the reason Christmas means family to me and a time to reflect and to be thankful and just to pause and enjoy the moment.

Now, I have two boys of my own and, I need to tell you all something that I find kind of hysterical, the person in my home that loves this Advent calendar the most is my soon to be 14 year old (his b-day is three days after Christmas). I find this so amusing because he was my child that completely blew the whistle on Santa in kindergarten. Can you imagine someone from the school stopping and questioning me as to what went on in my house because he didn't believe in Santa? What could I say? He is always been my one to overthink and question everything. Yet, there he has been, every morning, switching the numbers for me!

I'm also so super excited to announce that Balsam Hill is having a fantastic giveaway running from Dec. 1, at 9:00am PST until 12/25/2015. If you'd like a chance to win one of 25 gift cards worth $100 each just enter here.