Did you know that there is a gingerbread town, crowned as the largest in the world? This was something I was not aware of, until traveling to Norway. In the rainy town of Bergen, they hold Pepperkakebyen each year, which is the world’s largest gingerbread town, made by the local community. School children and adults alike come together to create houses, decorated boats, re-create famous buildings and more to ensure that their gingerbread town is the largest that can be found in the world.
This year, we have decided to do Blogmas once again! Blogmas is where you post every single day in the month of December. As we tend to post every single day anyway, we have decided to ensure that half of our posts (every other day) are Christmas or Winter themed. These posts will feel more wintery, starting with this one! Blogmas is a really interesting challenge, and we will be working hard to complete it. To start off Blogmas, we figured we’d do a winter-themed tag!
What is your favorite winter treat?
I really love Snowballs – those marshmallows, covered in chocolate and coconut, though they are around all year long, I seem to only ever remember them in the wintertime. Dann’s faorite winter treat is, hands down, stollen. As soon as he sees stollen in the shops, we start buying them up, for him to enjoy.
Each year, we make an effort to go to at least one lantern or light themed event. They pop up around the wintertime, showcasing the best versions of lights! This year, things were a little different, but we did end up finding a light event in our tier, with plenty of precautions, that we could go to! That event, as you probably have guessed, is Glow Wild at Wakehurst.
Upon entering Wakehurst, we followed the signs to the start of the walk. There were plenty of staff dotting around reminding people to wear masks, socially distance, and keep moving throughout the walk. Even though Glow Wild is an outdoor event, it’s one that does require masks, which is always nice. At the main start of the walk, there are a few little treat stalls – selling muffins, coffees, and hot chocolates. We didn’t purchase anything here, but joined the line to start the walk! After picking out a lantern to carry with us, we started along the trail.
[Ad- gifted product] When it comes to picking out a really good gift for somebody, sometimes it’s really not that easy to find something that’s truly perfect – do you focus in on something they need, do you get something that’s in line with their hobbies, or do you get something that’s a simple treat. This is where selection boxes, and the sort, really come in handy. Jupiter got me, earlier on in the year, the Beer Hawk Selection Box, which is a really great gift for beer lovers, and is also a really nice introduction into the Beer Box idea. When we saw the Beer Hawk Festive Cheers Selection Box on Moonpig, we ordered one!
I’ve not used Beer Hawk before, but it’s a website which – alongside making gift packages – sells everything from beer glasses through to full kegs of beer. This gift box, with its festive design, was clearly designed as a quick Christmas treat, and alongside the five beers that it contained also included a beer glass and a set of chocolate tokens. While I’ll get to the beers in a moment, I wanted to take a quick moment to point out how well organised the whole thing was. Inside the Beer Hawk Festive Cheers Selection Box, there were marked partitions for each of the seven things included, with rigid walling to separate them. It’s clear that a lot of care has gone into the packaging design, which is nice to see when talking about a company who ships glass and bottles as well as cans and more.
As an American living in England, I had never previously had or heard of Mince Pies. Despite beef being called ‘mince’ when it’s ground in the UK, Mince Pies do not contain any meat anymore and actually are a really lovely, sweet treat that’s super popular around the wintertime! Mince pies can be found in loads of stores – we have a ranking list of our favorites – but this year we decided to do some experimenting and try out own! We ended up loving a super fruity mince pie that we had made, and it was so easy and fun to do!
