Gift-aways! We all like us a little gift-away, don’t we? And it will come, I promise. But first I have a bone to pick about Christmas. I mean, there’s something to be said about Christmas, isn’t there? Well, that is aside from the fact that… is it weird that shops are pushing out their Christmas stuff before September? Yeah, it’s crazy isn’t it that two seconds after promoting sun-drenched summer vacations, they’re blowing out faux snow and dangling baubles.
But I digress. The thing to be said about Christmas is that it’s only fun if you get to eat good food and receive awesome presents. Period.
As a child growing up in tropical Queensland, our Christmases were often marked by a stupidly humid Christmas eve, followed by a raging thunderstorm on Christmas Day, followed by a gloriously sunny Boxing Day. No joke, this happened year after year, for decades. Come Boxing Day, the kids would be all irritated from being cooped up all of the day before and so my dad would put on a BBQ, “throw some shrimp on the barbie” as they would say. Except my dad threw crabs and chilli-rays on the barbie, because he’s cool like that.
I pretty much had the food side of Christmas sorted, but the presents were a bit lacking. Now here’s when I hope my aunties don’t actually read this blog but seriously? Giving a 7 year old a new towel just ain’t gonna cut it. Looking back, I don’t think I ever got any really cool Christmas presents. My parents are uber practical and Christmas presents would be like… new bedsheets, although having said that, I do still love my Smurf bedsheets
I guess I’ve grown to not expect anything cool for Christmas so imagine my delight when Hotel Chocolat contacted me and asked if I’d like an early Christmas present that was neither practical nor boring. They wanted to give me chocolate, and HELLZ YES was just about all I could bring myself to say.
At some point last week, I arrived home to a box of Hotel Chocolat’s signature dark collection, a stunning array of beautiful chocolates as much a pleasure to my eyes as they would be to my taste buds.
This particular collection comes dabbled with alcohol (some without, some with a little, some which made me woozy with one bite) and flavoured with delights like pistachio, chilli, orange and ooh aah salted caramel.
After sampling just about one of every piece of chocolate in that gargantuan box, I decided that the dark chocolate with pistachio is by far my favourite…
The signature collection is part of Hotel Chocolat’s Christmas line-up, one of a seriously huge range of new products and packages they’ve unleashed on the unsuspecting public, including fun Christmas gifts, advent calendars and stocking fillers.
You can also check out their online catalogue here. Be warned though, drooling may ensue, and honestly? I want to order the whole catalogue.
Anyway, enough plug plug plug. Where is this gift-away, you ask? Well here it is!
Hotel Chocolat, in conjuction with moi, have decided that Christmas is going to come early for one of you, my lovely readers. And what better way to start celebrating than to win a surprise Christmas treat from Hotel Chocolat? AND! In addition, I’ve decided that I’m going to throw in a little something for you, from me. I don’t know what yet, I haven’t gone shopping. But I will!
And how does one win this very cool early Christmas present? I’m giving you five different ways to enter, so there’s no excuse!
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Good luck!
* Entries close GMT midnight 30 September 2010. A winner will be selected using random.org. Anyone from anywhere can enter this competition.