Cashmere Finalists. Finameres. Cashalists. Cashfins?

First - 20, not 10, finalists. It is the holidays. We are in the midst of a crazy time. So many of you entered that I was floored, and so I doubled the finalist spots - I really did not expect more than ten or so entries. Also, I'm so sorry about being a few hours behind schedule, a crazy morning and a busy yesterday are to blame.

Here is what you do from here: If your name/comment is on the list, awesome. Please leave a comment, saying anything, this is just to make things simple and non-fussy and random, and that will be how we assign numbers - first comment (by a finalist) ON THIS POST is number one, second comment (by a finalist) is number two, on and on until we have all twenty numbers claimed. Then Random.org will throw up a number, and boom, there we go.

And thank you, for entering, for sharing - I laughed at so many, and there were more than a few that made me cry. I cannot thank you all enough for opening your holiday vaults. I hope that you make many more memories this year, and have the happiest of holidays yet. I wish I had forty-five sweaters to give away.

Finalists (in no particular order, picked because they made me feel, Grinch Style), their entries - with a few words about why I picked each entry, and honorable mentions after the cut.

FINALISTS! Emily #1, Emily #2, Priti, Lindsay, Stephanie, Katie, Ashlee, Heather in Ohio, Stef, Anna, Camilia, Laura, Steph, Kickpleat, Sara, Karen, Marianne, Betsy, April and Kelly M. Congratulations!

Emily #1: "My favorite holiday food moment is in White Christmas. Bing and Rosemary Clooney are sitting by a SWEET fireplace in the mountain ski lodge because neither can sleep. They make up a tray with...wait for it...liverwurst sandwiches and glasses of buttermilk to help them sleep but end up singing. A potentially gross moment turned into a sentimental ditty. nice." I agree, Emily, and that is why I'm a big fan of 'Ecoli: The 'Sizzler' Musical".

Emily #2: "Has to be my abject horror at the line "I mean you shouldn't mix fairy tales with liverwurst and buttermilk" in the movie White Christmas. I love that film, even did the sisters dance from it at my wedding, but that one line - presented late at night in the cafe - always freaks me out. Can you even imagine a meal more terrifying?! Cured liver deli meat and chunky milk...seriously." Emily, I'm going to send you a liverwurst sandwich and a thermos of buttermilk, through standard post. I bet it'll be real pretty when it gets to you. Fragrant.

Priti: "My favorite holiday food memory is when my friends and I created a holiday meal later on because we wouldn't be able to get together on the actual day. It was a ton of fun breaking out traditional recipes to celebrate afterwards, prolonging my favorite time of the year!" This is the first year where many of my friends can't make it home, and this idea hit me right in the center of my chest.

Lindsay: "My favorite food moment is at the very beginning ('Home Alone'), when Kevin gets into a fight over the pizza and gets relegated to the attic, and pisses and moans about his "stupid family"." WHO ATE ALL THE CHEESE PIZZA.

Stephanie: "I always look forward to the holidays so I can eat beef sausage with cheddar cheese as much as I want want all December long. Any other time of the year eating it just seems wrong." Yes. Yes. I feel the same way about so many things, but especially this combo. Same with apple cider, mint M&Ms, gingerbread. And studded tires.

Katie: "Every year on the day after Thanksgiving my aunt would sit down with my sister and I and make one ornate, perfect gingerbread house...She passed away in May 2004. When November 2004 rolled around my sister and I decided that we would still make a gingerbread house. As we pulled out the plastic reindeer and the working miniature street light we paused. My eyes brimmed with memory-filled tears and we looked at each other; remembering our beloved, recently departed aunt who loved those molasses-built houses so much." Well, and then I cried in front of strangers, reading this comment.

Ashlee: "My favorite holiday food moment was when grandma was sitting around cracking about 314 pounds of walnuts. At age 13, I took a small, post-shelled walnut, ate it, and she promptly said, "That's enough." Oh woe is the child of the depression!" Ashlee's Grandma is my paternal (RIP) Grandpa.

Heather in Ohio: "I love the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where they're all sitting around eating this dry, nasty, turkey and one of the characters has to dip the turkey in her glass of water to make it edible." Or it was just an early form of juicing.

Stef: "When I was little, we never ever fried anything ever and seldom *ate* things that were fried. But once a year, when Hanukkah rolled around, my mom would fire up the electric skillet and dump in an inch of oil, and fry fry fry enough latkes to last way more than eight nights...The house reeked of fried potatoes & onions for days afterwards, but as a kid I just assumed that's what the holidays smelled like." I wanted potatoes immediately after reading this.

Anna: "Oh man my favorite food related memory would have to be the first time I tried to make "candy" for my family and it turned out to be a huge, horrible disaster when I never really understood the part between soft ball and hard ball and somehow ended up turning the candy into nightmarish burnt sugar and cinnamon but my father still lovingly ate every single piece, until on one of the last bites, two of his fillings fell out and the pain was apparently overwhelming but he smiled through it until in the middle of the night he had to go to an emergency dentist. Now, about 15 years later, he still brings up the night of a thousand candy cane nightmares." The last line could be the title of a new movie from the creators of the SAW franchise.

Camilia: "My favorite holiday food memory would probably be holidays at my great-grandparent's house, with the whole kitchen and dining room area stuffed full of platters and trays, the smoked turkey that my great-uncle always brought, the four pies (pecan, pumpkin, apple and chocolate mousse), my great-grandmother's homemade divinity -- and everybody eating all evening long, well after the meal was officially over, balancing plates on their knees and talking into the night. They both died within the last couple of years, so I know we'll never have a meal like that again -- it just makes the memory more special." I could just picture this.

Laura: "Somehow, this one manages to cut through even my most viscous cynical tendencies: the scene in Little Women when Kirsten Dunst prances around the dining room waxing rhapsodic about an orange. "Oh, isn't is GLORIOUS?!" An orange. Bless her little heart...Then they pack up all that shit and give it to the Hummels." I laughed really hard, because that movie is one of my FAVORITE movies all time, and that Christmas morning breakfast scene both inflates and infuriates my heart. Sausages. Sausages. Passive-Agressive mentions of the Hummels, right as they're about to eat those sausages. Marmie. I'm talking to you. Clamp that platter down over the meat, girls.

Steph: "Favorite holiday food moment(s) are when my brother and I make horrifying leftovers sandwiches the morning after the big dinner. We pile as much as we can on French loaves and make the biggest, most hilarious mess ever. ah, I miss my brother." I would like to eat those sandwiches with you, Steph, and your brother. Send me one, we can have a sandwich swap.

Kickpleat: "http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLd7UfWxzY&feature=related (it starts at 1:50 minutes in). Rudy, do you like chicken noodle soup? Well, you're going to have it Rudy!" Well, and here we go, with a craving for double-helpings of Apple Strudel with Vanilla Sauce at 2 in the afternoon.

Sara: "My boyfriend and I had been dating for almost a year and we were about to spend our first Christmas together when I decided it would be completely brilliant and awesome to make homemade donuts for Christmas morning...(I) ended up burning the shit out of these donuts (which of course were chocolate, so you couldn't actually tell they had had the shit burned out of them). I so proudly presented them to my boyfriend, and even though the whole apartment reeked of burned oil and dough, he ate up a whole plate of them. A year later we were married, and I haven't made him eat donuts since." Sara, I bet they were delicious. In a special way.

Karen: "My favorite holiday food memory is from my childhood. The day after Christmas my mother and I would always eat leftover Christmas dinner at the dining room table with the good china. The meal was just as fancy as Christmas day but it was just us and more than once we ate in our pajamas. It made me feel so special. My memories of these meals are more vivid than the Christmas day with extended family." This needs to be an ABCFamily movie.

Marianne: "...the part in Home For The Holidays where the family is fighting and Robert Downey, Jr. drops the turkey carcass on the bitchy sister's head--it's unreal. The best freakout EVER ensues." Poultry hats are what this season is about.

Betsy: "I have to go with "We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup" from Elf, as he pours maple syrup over spaghetti." Aw, Buddy.

April: "one of my all time favorite desserts is a very simple chocolate pudding pie that my mom makes. she only makes it on thanksgiving and christmas and i think that's why i like the holidays so much. one of my cousins was visiting and i kept telling her about this pie all week long. how it was so good...so, as i'm anxiously bringing my piece back to my bedroom and excitedly telling my cousin that this is it, this is the moment you will experience euphoria at age 12, i put my plate on my bed, turn around, get distracted and... sit on it." Butt Pie is always the worst kind of pie.

Kelly M: "my first christmas away from my family, up in alaska, with my husband and my brother-in-law. the refridgerator breaks down. we store food on the front porch. the night before christmas, there was a huge snow storm. christmas morning my brother-in-law dives head first into a snowbank to find something for breakfast." This is great.

Done. And some honorable mentions that weren't specifically about holiday food or food in holiday movies, but lovely just the same:

Jessica: "my favorite winter moment...? well, it starts sad, with a walk in the snow, declarations of feelings and... well, not rejection but not (verbalized) reciprocation. and, it ends happy, with a walk in the snow, declared feelings and wuv, true wuv." WAY TO GO, JESSICA.

the projectivist: "this is my first Christmas as a single mum, so i'm kind of feeling my way! listening to everyone's stories, it seems to me those special Christmas memories are the ones that don't cost money or come from a store, they don't have batteries and the latest new-fangled gadgetry - the memories that stand out are the ones that just involve time. time slows, the lull of companionship and love for your family descends on you as you do something simple, like ice cookies or make snowflake decorations from paper doilies. the fact that you're not the best cookie-maker, that your icing is sort of lumpy or too runny or your snowflake is slightly wonky doesn't matter because you're creating a moment that will only sparkle more in your memory, as time goes on." And I wept.

Comments

[L.]

And we're done - thank you guys, I'm off to go use Random.org - Also, this comment is the 20th, and I'm using it as Emily (R&B Emily, according to her e-mail address)'s slot, as she hasn't reported back in yet. Thank you guys, Good luck! The numbers will be counted from the first comment left on up - so Lindsay is number one, etc.

[Stephanie]

Beef Sausage lovers of the world UNITE!

[jill]

oooh. cashmere. lovely...!

[Katie]

Gald you liked it. It means a lot to me.

[Sara]

Oh, man, my husband will be so thrilled his eating of shitty donuts was not in vain!

[Kelly M]

yea :D happy holidays!

[april]

butt pie is the worst kind of pie. not that i ate it or anything after i sat in it. ummm...

[Anna]

Oohhh exciting!! And, yes, some of my early cooking-adventures were very Saw-like. Overdone and no one wanted to see them unless it was in the pitch dark and they had someone there for moral support.

[priti]

Thanks! I hope you get to celebrate with your friends :)

[Betsy]

Yay!

[Laura]

Props for the generous Christmas-finalist spirit, but you just halved my chances! Guess I'll settle for acrylic this season.

I did love reading about everyone's holiday memories, though. Thanks!

[Marianne]

Excitement! I do love a good poultry hat.

[Steph]

Oh so excitinggggg :)

[Stef]

Hooray! Latkes for everyone!

[Ashlee]

Thanks! Keep the blogs (and cashmere) coming!! Brrr!

[kickpleat]

yay! i'm a finalist! i'm so friggin' excited that i'm so close to winning and swathing my bod in cashmere!!

[Camila]

what awesome stories!

[Heather in Ohio]

Yay! Now I want to get all of those lovely Christmas movies from the library and watch them all weekend long... but can you believe I've never seen "White Christmas"!? Maybe I'll put that on the top of my Netflix queue!

[Emily]

Lovely! This has brought a glint of humanity to my snot-filled sick day.

[lindsay]

said in the voice of Mr. Bean ala "Rat Race"

I HOPE I WEENNN!