Loblaws Holiday Giveaway!

When my friends at Hill and Knowlton asked me if I’d be interested in sponsoring a Loblaws / President’s Choice holiday giveaway, I was torn. I have a very intense relationship with Loblaws, even though I’m pretty sure Loblaws doesn’t even know I exist. (Seems alarmingly like most of my high school relationships, now that I think of it.)

See, on the one hand, I love Loblaws. I shop there or at the Independent across the street every single week, and I love their stuff. I especially love the Insider’s Report, and I’m absurdly and perhaps unhealthily excited when new products come out. On the other hand, Loblaws does occasionally make me so crazy that I want to divorce them and run away with Sobey’s. On the other other hand, you know I love Hill and Knowlton and the fun projects they bring to us. And when I accepted their offer of a bunch of new products from the Insiders Report based on a caveat that we could also put together a giveaway for you guys, they didn’t blink an eye. Really, I got on board this bloggy giveaway as much because of H&K as because of Loblaws.

So I knew I would be getting a big box of samples to try, and I knew we’d set up a giveaway for you to share in the bounty. What I did not expect was this:

I mean, that’s a REALLY big box. And do you know what was inside? I so love this! They had individually wrapped and labeled 25 packages with the numbers one through 25. The box arrived on December 1st. Yes, they mailed me a giant grocery advent calendar full of President’s Choice products from the Holiday Insider’s Report. How awesome is that?

The boys were beside themselves with excitement at this amazing box of presents, and had a great time lining them all up in numerical order. (Lookit me go, presents + free food + teaching opportunity! What fun!) Then they opened up package number one, which was a bottle of PC Mulled Cider (I looked, but couldn’t find a link. Another thing that makes me squirrelly about PC – the search engine is questionable at best). The boys don’t really like pop, but they asked for a sample of this with dinner and both agreed it was a sparkly twist on plain old cider.

The December 2 package contained a shiny (ooo, shiny!) new PC Cake Server. I’m not sure if I can be patient enough to keep opening just one package per day when I know there are some really yummy treats in there, but so far we’re having a lot of fun with this.

(As you’ll see in the background of the photographs, we’re in the middle of transitioning from carpet to laminate, and finding a place to put 25 23 individually-wrapped grocery items is proving to be a lot more of a challenge than it might have posed on an ordinary week, since everything from the living room and dining room has been moved elsewhere in the house, including my overstuffed and oversized love seat and sofa taking up the entire kitchen. Currently, most of the treats from Loblaws are stacked in the front hall closet!)

So while this has been an unexpectedly delightful bloggy event (can we pause again to say how much I love H&K?) on my part, it gets better! Our friends at H&K have put together an amazing gift basket that one of you lucky bloggy peeps will win just in time for holiday entertaining season. (Or, the holiday “go away, it’s MINE, get yer own!” season, depending on how it rolls at your place.)

The gift basket is loaded with some of the best items for the PC Holiday Insiders Report, with holiday entertaining in mind.

The gift basket includes:

• PC Mulled Apple
• PC Raspberry Martini Mocktail
• PC Chocolate Egg Nog
• PC Mini (6”) holiday crackers
• Belgian chocolate cookie tin
• PC gingerbread bites
• PC Scottish Shortbread
• PC Apple Pecan Gourmet Topper
• PC Holiday Chocolate Figurines

And lookit how they packaged it all up in a reuseable PC Green Bin tote for you. Awesome, eh? So here’s the details:

The contest is open from now through noon on Monday, December 7, 2009. There are three ways you can earn a ballot to enter this contest:

1. Leave a comment below and tell me one treat you look forward to during the holiday season. Grandma’s shortbread? Your special-recipe stuffing? Swiss Chalet’s Festive Special? What taste tells you it’s holiday time?
2. Write about the contest on your blog, linking to this post, and come back and leave me a comment with the URL to let me know about it.
3. Tweet the contest on twitter using hashtag #PC_Holiday and linking to this blog post, and leave me a comment with a link to your status update. (You can create a direct link to your Twitter update by clicking on the time of the update and saving that link.) You can use tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/ye6ayq2

The fine print: this contest is open to Canadian residents only. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries. The winner will be announced the afternoon or evening of December 7, 2009. You must be willing to share your mailing address with me, and I will share it with Hill and Knowlton Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

You can buy President’s Choice products at Loblaws, Independent, Extra Foods, No Frills, Superstore, Fortinos, ValuMart, Zehrs, Maxi, Provigo, SaveEasy and Dominion — here’s an online store locator!

Thanks to Loblaws and Hill and Knowlton for another fun giveaway. Good luck to all!

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