What's In the Snow? Scavenger Hunt Event Wrap Up!

NOTE: I HAVE MOVED TO FLY TO FICTION

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I know, I know. We're long past that now. Sorry. But anyway! This wonderful event has sadly come to an end, at least for this year.

We had wonderful posts about holiday traditions, awesome winter-y books and food and crafts, and some fun stories. We had a bunch of really cool authors involved, and several bloggers got to feature authors, interview them, and ask them some seasonal questions (some of which were really creative!). I really hope you can find time to stop by each blogger's post at some point if you haven't. Everyone involved has been so great, and they all deserve a huge round of applause for all of their hard work and especially for their patience. (The schedule with updated links is below.)

We also had some really cool prizes up for grabs. Some winners have been notified (I promise I'll forward your information to the proper people ASAP), BUT there are still a bunch of giveaways going on! I'll embed the Rafflecopters below, so don't miss out!

And before we part, I just want to give a huge shout-out to four people/groups of people for making this the event that it is!

1) Bloggers--This event literally would not exist without your support, willingness to help, patience, dedication, and passion. This event has helped me meet so many wonderful bloggers, and it's been lovely to work with all of you. I look up to many of your blogs, and I wish you and your blogs continued success. If Cal and I put this together again next year, I sure hope you'll at least think about participating. Thank you!

2) Authors--Thank you for your kindness, patience, help and time. Before this event, I was always a little bit scared of emailing and talking to authors, but now I realize just how kind everyone is, whether they were participating or not. Thank you for making this event even better, and thank you for donating so many awesome prizes. It was so fun to read all the interviews and posts you were involved with. I hope that some of us can work together again next time/some other time!

3) Donors--You guys rock my socks. Thank you for donating a prize, no matter how large or small. Cal and I truly appreciate it.

4) Last but definitely not least, Cal--I am so glad that this event brought us together. I now have a new awesome friend. It's been so great to work with you on this little project of ours. Thank you for always being so patient with me, and thank you for handling things when I couldn't. This event would have been no where as big or awesome as it turned out to be if it weren't for you. Thanks for spreading the word and getting all of your blogging friends involved. Thank you for tolerating my email spam and forwarding messages. Thank you for just being such an amazing co-host and above all, friend. I really hope we can either do this next year or work on something similar sometime. Much love!

Now, without further ado, here's all the supplementary stuff!

Schedule:

December

15th--Read Books and Live Green; Reviews Abound (Intro Posts ONLY)

16th--The NerdHerd Reads; Musings of a Blogder

17th--The YA Book Butterfly

19th--Fiction Is the New Reality

20th--Book Loving Hippo; My Nook, Books, and More

21st--The Sarcastic Palm Tree

22nd--Icy Cold Reads

23rd--Reading Is My Treasure

27th--Tween 2 Teen Book Reviews

28th--Friction to Fiction

29th--In Italics

30th--My Nook, Books, and More

January

1st--Reviews Abound

2nd--The Lovely Grace

3rd--Lost In Ever After

4th--Just Another Teen Reading

5th--Forever Literary

6th--The Book Aviary

9th--The Bibliophilic Nerds

10th--Beauty and the Bookshelf

11th--The Bibliophilic Nerds

12th--Book Loving Hippo

13th--Read Books and Live Green

14th--Christiney Reads

15th--Reviews Abound; Read Books and Live Green (Wrap Up Posts ONLY)

Giveaways:

Rules:

Must be 13+ or have parent permission

Winners have 48 hours to respond to email or another winner will be chosen

Prizes are distributed on a first come, first serve basis

Mail items are US ONLY; eBooks are INT

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: There may also be some giveaways still running on certain blogs that Cal and I did not set up.

Again, thank you to everyone: participants, bloggers, authors, and Cal!

New Beginnings

Hey-o! Firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope 2014 is better for you than 2013 was, and I hope your holidays were lovely. :)

But moving right along, I have so BIG news. It's pretty exciting, really, even though most of you probably already know it.

I am moving have moved to another blog URL/another blog.

Yup, that's right! My motto thus far has been, "New Year, New Blog." It's quite exciting, as I mentioned. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons, despite how hard it sort of makes my (blogging) life. ;) All in all, I wanted a fresh new start, and I'm able to get that now. It's been a lot of work, but I'm really happy with it. If you go, you'll see that it looks fairly similar to this blog now, but I'm telling you, there will be differences. 

I think this is the right decision for me, and I just want to thank you all for sticking with me. My 6 month blogoversary is coming up soon, but I'm celebrating it there. The last post here will likely be the wrap up post for the What's In The Snow? event.

If you have any questions, concerns, thoughts, suggestions, etc, please comment below and let me know!

Before I go, don't think I forgot to announce the new blog name/URL.

My new blog name is: Fly to Fiction

Click here to be taken to the new blog.

What's in the Snow? Event Stop!

Hey everyone! So today is my stop of the What's in the Snow? event, and I'm so excited! But first, I do have to direct you to both my introduction page, as well as Cal's. On mine, you will also find the Rafflecopter for the 2nd BIG GIVEAWAY, with prizes ranging from a giftcard to a book to dinner with one of our featured authors! Thanks for checking out our event! (And sorry I'm posting this a tad later than I'd meant to.)

So! Let's talk about my holiday traditions. This ranges from Advent to Chinese New Year!

1. Advent

This is like the semi-holiday that nobody celebrates. If you don't know already, I'm Roman Catholic. Not devoutly so, but I'm pretty firm in my beliefs (which are very liberal--ask if you must; don't assume, please). That being said, while I don't really celebrate Advent in any special way, I wish I COULD, so this is what that would entail.

When most people think of Advent, they only think about Advent calendars. I mean, hey, they're cool, but that's not what Advent is all about. For those of you that don't know, Advent celebrates the weeks leading up to Christmas, spanning 4 Sundays. There's an Advent wreath with four candles, 3 purple and 1 pink. One candle is lit each Sunday (similar to the lighting of the menorah, but over a longer time span), with the pink one being lit the 3rd week.

 I won't go into the whole idea of Advent or how the readings work, but it's a celebrate nonetheless. If it were up to me, I'd have some form of an Advent wreath.

2. Christmas Eve/Christmas Day

Again, if it were up to me, I'd celebrate Christmas a little bit differently from how I actually do. But here's how I actually celebrate it.

First, of course, there's the tree. I don't have a picture of my tree from this year, so instead here's a picture of the tree at Rockefeller Center.

My family and I usually go into the city (NYC) and walk around 1) Times Square 2) Rockefeller Center 3) Radio City Music Hall, but this year I wasn't able to.

I also have a small nativity set put up under the tree, as well as stockings (one for me, one for my sister) set up on a cabinet in our house.

And every year, we spend one of the days at my godmother's house, where she cooks awesome Brazilian dishes and awesome desserts, and where we listen to nice Christmas music, laugh, talk, and have an overall good time. On the other day, we go to my sister's godparents house. Again, a nice big dinner and some nice Christmas music. This also means that we open gifts before Christmas (usually the 23rd, but it depends), with the exception of our gifts from Santa. ;)

3. New Year's Eve

First, let me clear this up. My school sucks and as long as January 2nd is a week day, we almost always start school again that day, which is why I'm not including New Year's Day in this (it usually involves doing homework last minute).

Being a New Yorker, I, of course, watch the ball drop every year. At home though, not in Times Square, although I do hope to do that once in my life! I usually watch the performances, switching between NBC, ABC, and CNN (mostly those channels). And of course, I count down, starting at 60, not just at 10 or 20. And then I drink a bit of sparkling apple cider! My favorite part is always seeing the other celebrations around the world after the one in New York. It's quite amazing, and it's always funny to know that some countries have been in the new year for over half a day while the rest of us in the US/Canada/parts of South America and the Caribbean wait to ring in the new year.

4. Chinese New Year

Now, this is the tough one for various reasons. Mostly that it varies every year, and that people celebrate Chinese New Year differently.

The main similarity between just about everyone that celebrates Chinese New Year is the giving (or receiving) of red envelopes.

Then there's all those Chinese superstitions. *mega sigh* These are just a few of them. (Sorry if they're wrong. I'm going off the top of my head, and I may be mixing things up.)

1. Can't wash your hair on the first day (it lasts for days, not just one day like in Western cultures)

2. Eat oranges and fish and noodles (don't cut them though!)

3. Wear new clothes!

4. Parents can't scold children.

5. If you cry on New Year's, you'll have a very bad year.

6. Clean BEFORE the New Year, not the day of.

7. When cleaning, you have to sweep a certain way (I want to say one way, but I'm not positive so)

8. Hang the character FU upside down.

9. Red. Just lots of red.

10. There are rules about which side of the family you eat with and when and a bunch of things you do on specific days in the New Year (I don't know because I don't have family here to do that with).

SO! That's a quick run-down of what I typically do for all these winter holidays! (Okay, the Chinese New Year one was a little lame because I don't do THAT much for it, so.) I hope it's an interesting post, especially since there's such a mix of culture.

Now, I'm sure you're looking for that pesky little clue so here you go:

Clue #14: A bird that can't fly and lives in a winter-y environment.

Giveaway

(Rules are listed in the Terms and Conditions on the Rafflecopter)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks again to everyone that's taken part in this event! Don't forget to keep