Kimchi Mamas

As promised....Giveaway results.

But first, what did Weeny Beeny sell?

A lot of you were right!  It's a Candy shop. I think they do specialize in jelly beans but they have a whole bunch of other candies too and it's selft serve, kind of like our Sweet Factories.  I snapped these shots at the Lotte World Weeny Beeny store.

Onto the winners!  I really wished we had a doll for everyone.  But since we can't, the following winners were chosen at random:

For the doll with the green top and red skirt:  Amy Bringham

For the doll with the yellow top and pink skirt:  Kat

Thanks for participating and Thank you for reading Kimchi Mamas!

Giveaway!

The Holiday Season is upon us and we, the Kimchi Mamas, are caught up in the Spirit of Giving!  I was out the other day doing some Christmas shopping at a Korean Toy store when I came upon these pretty Hanbok dressed Fashion Mimi dolls (the equivalent of B.arbie dolls here in Korea.)

These two are especially for YOU, our readers!  We will be picking two lucky winners from the comments section below and I will be sending them off personally all the way from the motherland.  How do you get yourself one of these beautiful dolls?  Just comment in the section below what you think this store (sign pictured below) in Korea might be selling:

You will be entered to win a doll just by commenting whether your answer is right or wrong.  Two winners will be chosen randomly from the comments left in exactly one week, on 12/6/11.  The answer to what the store actually sells and the winners will be announced on the 7th.  Happy guessing!

New Year Dumplings...and a Giveaway!

New Year preparations have already started in my neck of the woods.  Yesterday, we all headed over to my parents' house to make mandoo.  We don't have a set recipe for what goes into our dumplings, but there is pork, beef, extra-firm tofu, sprouts, kimchi, green onion, garlic, salt, and pepper.

This year, my youngest was able to participate!  We put her in charge of making the flatter version we use for fried mandoo:

And here is my dad, our resident mandoo-making expert, showing his patented technique for making the plumper kind used in soup:

On New Year's morning, the kids will dress up in their hanboks and bow to their grandparents, saying, "새해 복 많이 받으세요!"  Then they'll receive some money and some blessings, then we will all chow down on the dumplings we made!

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To ring in the new year, we're giving out presents!  One of my fellow Kimchi Mamas has a couple brand-new hanboks she'd like to give away to our readers!  They are gorgeous and have really hip colors and styling, so hip in fact, it's hard to find hanboks like these in the States.  

There will be two winners, one for the little Kimchi Babies (size 2, suitable for first birthdays and hopefully a year or two afterwards):

girl

or

boy

...and one for the slightly older Kimchi Kids (size 6...suitable for ages 4-8, depending on how tall they are):

girl

or

boy

(Just to reiterate, there will be one size 2 winner and one size 6 winner, and they will choose the gender they want.)

Enter by submitting a comment below with one of your family's New Year traditions, along with your preferred gender and size.  We will close off comments on January 14th, select a random winner from each size category, and ship the hanboks out in time for Lunar New Year!  Good luck!

Happy Children's Day (and A Give-Away to Celebrate!)

And, to commemorate the Korean holiday of Children's Day a.k.a. 어린이날 (Uh-ree-nee-nal), here are a few of my hopes and wishes for my daughter ...

May you always be curious about the world around you, finding beauty in even the smallest things, perpetually learning, constantly growing...

May you embrace life and live it fully, whether you're hugging trees, dancing to a mix CD, or creating art in all its various forms.

May you become stronger with every hardship, more compassionate with every heartache, more forgiving with every disappointment.

May you find the courage to speak your mind and to hold firmly to your principles, yet always seeking the way of peace and respectful dialog even in the midst of conflict.

May you know love and joy in their deepest forms, and may you give love and joy as much as and whenever possible.

May you write your own role in the story you find yourself in, wherever you may go and whatever you may do.

And, most of all, may you always know how much and how fiercely your mama loves you...

[...Cue your favorite version of Forever Young here...]

(Continue Reading here...)

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Book Giveaway

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Hatchette Book Group is offering five lucky Kimchi Mamas readers FIVE books written by APAs. They are:

1.       Free Food for Millionaires By Min Jin Lee

2.       Trail of Crumbs By Kim Sunée 

3.       The Fortune Cookie Chronicles By Jennifer Lee

4.       Transparency By Frances Hwang

5.       Strangers from a Different Shore By Ronald Takaki

Awesome, right?

For a chance to win, leave a comment telling us about your favorite book by an APA author before May 31. One entry per person. Winners will be chosen randomly on June 1. Apologies to our international readers, but this contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.

Contest: Kimchi Parent Moment

May 8th, Parents Day in Korea, is coming up. 

According to Wikipedia, "In the Republic of Korea, Parents' Day (어버이 날) is celebrated on May 8. Usually, one gives a carnation with presents to his/her parents and/or sings the Parents' Day song."

Yellow paper carnation.  I remember painstakingly perfecting two carnations in art class at school.  My clumsy fingers would be slathered with glue, catching delicately thin tissue paper on finger tips, bits tearing here and there...the end results were never good enough.  Each layer would be somewhat lopsided, the green wire stem dirtied from my glue-paper smeared fingers, my lower lip bitten from concentration, I was so desperate to present my parents with at least half decent paper carnations to make up for the lack of obviously prodigious talents.

My parents are not perfect parents.  Hell, last time I spoke with my dad was almost 20 years ago.

Yet, in my memory, I have an image of them both proudly clipping the dirty disproportionate yellow paper carnations to their equally disproportionately wide shirt collars (hey, it was the 70's). 

In honor of that memory, I would like to offer up a $50 CafePress gift certificate (to purchase wonderful Kimchi Mamas stuff) to one winner of Kimchi Parent Moment contest.  If there's a tie, I might split it into two $25 gift certificates.