The New Year is Underway GIVEAWAY

The last few years we have made Christmas presents for our family and friends.  It is something that I enjoy doing and something that I think about and plan for the entire year.  I am already starting to look up ideas for next year, just in case I find something that will be exceptionally time consuming or takes time to come together.  I also always make extra because I don't ever want to be empty handed.  I love to give gifts. 

This year we had to cut back, mostly because I am pretty sure that I single handedly keep my local post office in business.  I have a closet (and closet real estate is a very limited in our apartment) that has boxes of all sizes and shapes, as well as a few flat rate shipping boxes, that way they are ready to go whenever I need to mail something.  Since I am far from most of my loved ones, the USPS is my lifeline for giving.  Luckily since we've moved, the post office down the street doesn't know all that it missed out on this year since I have drastically cut back on my shipping.  This was very difficult for me, and so I think I'm having package sending withdrawals.  I am just itching to send something out. Now that Christmas is over, the New Year is underway and there are still various things taking up space on my kitchen counter, I am giving away the handmade items that have yet to find a home.   

So I have a GIVEAWAY of the homemade presents that we gave this year.  The handmade-with-love-in-our-kitchen items that may be in this giveaway:

• D'Amaretti Biscotti
• Candy Cane Biscotti with White Chocolate
• Shaving Soap
• Green Tea Body Butter
• Bath Salts/Salt Scrub
• Lip Balm
• Friendship Tea

There will be TWO lucky winners!

To enter this Giveaway, please comment on this post with a way for me to contact you (email, Facebook, etc).  I will draw the winner out of a hat (literally) next Monday, the 16th- MLK day.   Then I will contact the winners and mail your packages out next week.

Good Luck! 

I Actually Won Something!

I am so excited!  I went to check my email before I hopped in the shower for work and there in my inbox was the subject "you won the snack bags from Homemade Mothering!"  Yay!  I had almost forgot that I had entered Homemade Mothering's Contest.  I have seen many reviews on reusable snack bags, but couldn't convince Munchkie's Daddy that they were worth the price.  I think that FREE Itzy Ritzy bags might help.  I am getting two free bags, and I get to choose my three favorite patterns. 
 I can't wait for them to come and although my comment that helped me win the bags was  

My daughter’s favorite thing to say now is “take it us” and she will hold whatever it is up to her cheek. This would be perfect for me to say, if it can fit in the bag, it can come with us. Whether it’s her sunglasses, a random Melissa and Doug pretend food, small book, crayon or anything else she decides to love at that moment.

 I think it will also be used frequently in Munchkie's lunches to daycare.  We tend to use a lot of ziploc bags to daycare because the foods I send are mostly finger foods.  These will be great to replace ziploc bags.

I am so excited and so thankful to Homemade Mothering for a contest that I actually won!

Winners!

Oh you thought I was kidding about the hat and paper?  Because I wasn't.  I am super impressed with how many people commented.  I thought this was going to be easy and I'd just mail to the one or two people who entered.  Now I feel bad that I actually had to pick!

So congrats to Joy and Mr. Ryals on winning!

Now I am going to bed because I am exhausted.

MLK Jr. GIVEAWAY!

The cool thing to do when you have a blog is to have giveaways.  I have entered countless giveaways on the blogs I follow and have, sadly, never won anything. Since holidays are for great deals, and I am close to having 2,000 hits on my blog (wow!) I thought I would try out a giveaway on my blog, even though it's not a cool new product.

I had talked earlier about how we made our Christmas presents this year and how much work it had been.  We had made extras because we didn't want to run out after all of the work we had put into them.

I bet you're wondering what exactly are these presents? A cookbook, pure homemade vanilla, a small utensil set (our favorite, we have about 4 sets of these), and all of this is wrapped in a dish towel.

We compiled our favorite recipes from all different sources into a cookbook for our friends and families.  The recipes came from scribbles on scrap papers in a folder, cookbooks, internet searches and our families.  We enjoy cooking and wanted to pass along some tasty recipes to others.

 The recipes are divided into nine different sections including Breakfast, Breadmaker Breads, Soup, Starters and Snacks, Sauces, Sides, Entree, Dessert and Beyond Food.  There are also occasional color photos of the items taken by us.  The recipes range from an amazing blueberry muffin to stinky shoe solution. 

 We also made homemade vanilla.  Many kinds of vanilla have additives, including the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, and aren't really pure vanilla.  Don't worry I opened, scraped and sliced the vanilla beans myself.  This is pure vanilla.  I actually haven't baked since it was finished brewing in my cabinet, but I hear it is very good.

So, I am going to offer two of these to two people who read my blog.  I don't have any neat computer program that will randomly select a winner, so I will have to do it the old-fashioned-pick-a-name-out-of-a-hat way.  In order to enter this giveaway leave a comment here on my blog with your email address. To have a second entry, become a follower of this blog and leave a comment saying that you are a follower. I will put all of the email addresses into a hat and draw from there. 

This giveaway will end Wednesday January 19th at 8:00am.  (Mostly because that's when I'll get home from work to see who entered.)  If you are a winner, I will email you and ask for your mailing address.

Good luck!