Tree Of Life Necklace

I am so excited to have won this necklace, about three months ago I gave my daughter my only good necklace as she just adored it (it was a Ankh and she is very into Egyptology) so I have not had a really nice silver necklace in all that time. Well in the mail today came a new one, a Tree of Life. Jacaranda Designs Jewelry, these are "handcrafted, unique and sassy" says so on the card :) and it also says that custom orders are welcome! I won this perhaps 10 days ago - or less, and to have it arrive today was a complete surprise, again great customer service, that impresses me. It came just beautifully wrapped - sadly my picture of that did not work but it was so pretty and it came packaged in such a way that it would not get damaged. Please go check out Jane's sites - really you will be impressed - her blog is
jacarandagal.blogspot.com and her website is jacarandadesigns.etsy.com
go check her you - you will love it!!!! Here is my pic, of my new prize possession!

Today I Ate a Rainbow

My daughters prize pack came, it consisted of a book, magnets (she did not like the eggplant LOL) a sheet to go on the fridge that is the rainbow and a pad of paper. The purpose of all this is to encourage your child to eat the rainbow of fruits and veggies each day. So when she eats a red fruit for instance she moves a red magnet to the red area of the sheet on the fridge. She loves it - and is eating a wider variety for sure. I wish that the actual sheet was a magnet because it keeps sliding from my fridge -but hey it is pretty cool anyway. The book is pretty fun, about eating your fruits and veggies etc as well. The pad of paper is in colours so you can grocery shop in colour I assume - making sure you get each colour of the rainbow :) All in all, a success with my 5 year old, my 9 year old looked at it for 30 seconds and moved on. If you would like to buy this set for you lovely little one go to www.todayiatearainbow.com
Here is my set all of it and just the magnets and sheet on the fridge as my five year old and I set it up.

Little Lolita Drawing

Gossamer Hollow sent me a wonderful picture that is now gracing my daughters wall. What honestly impressed me so very much about this woman was that I had contacted her because it had not shown up and the conversations we had back and forth we so amazing, I was awed - truly! This business has some serious customer service and I was just a winner of a blog contest. That goes a LONG way with me. My daughter says "I love it" (she is nine LOL) I tried to get more out of her ;) Here are some pics, I put it in the frame with the backing, it is just red paper but it looks great with it in my opinion. Here are some address that came with it
www.customzombie.com

www.customzombie.etsy.com

www.facebook.com/customzombie

Panty by Post

I received my Panty by Post at the beginning of the week - it was great except that I had got a e-mail last week telling me they did not have what I had ordered so they were "going to surprise me" - I am sadly not big on surprises, but it worked, they are very pretty. Very small -as in not much to them, but very feminine and pretty :) The company is kind of neat in that it comes once a month, you can order for three months or a year I think, if I had the money I would sign up for a year just for the fun of some really high end knickers every month. If you are so inclined go have a look see - they are gorgeous!! at www.pantybypost.com
Here is what I got.

Wins with no warning!

Today I had the postie show up with a package for a contest win I had not had any notification for that I had won - now I am not complaining - just very surprised. The win was for a book I really wanted called Connected Parenting, Transform your Challenging Child and Build Loving Bonds for Life, but Jennifer Kalari The contest was from Today's Parent/Chatelaine and when I entered it was with my whole address -so maybe this is the norm - you just get it in the mail? Nice is all I can say. This book excites me in a HUGE way, one of my girls is bipolar and the other is ADHD, to say we have challenging children is to put it mildly - there are days where I am so exhausted at the end of the day I can't wait for my husband to come home. I love my girls to bits, and they are great kids but they do have some pretty heavy challenges. This book -just from flipping threw it, has some great ideas, tips, skills ect. I think I will get allot out of it and if I can get my husband who reads nothing by computer LOL to read it then he will to.

Guest Post, Zebrafish tween book win

My daughter won this book from Mom-Blog for being such a great kid! And will not do her first ever guest blog in the form of a review of this wonderful graphic novel. So I hand over my key board (She is nine)

The book "Zebrafish" was written by Sharon Emerson and drawn by Renee Kurilla, and it's a lovely story about five friends who start a band called Zebrafish to raise money for a machine for research for cancer because one of the friends got Leukemia. I liked it a lot, and just so you know, it's 119 pages. I would definitely recommend it to my friends. I loved the drawings. I really like the character Vita, she just relates to me a lot, and that she has purple hair and a purple dog! :) You can get this book at Simon & Schuster

Whiteduck6

My Cami Came!

So today we came home to two packages, one was my beautiful cami, the other was my daughters book which she is going to guest blog about after this post :)
So onto my Cami, it fits me like it was made to measure! I am TINY and this is just right, though not sure who else in the contest it would have fit, but I love it! The feel of this fabric is to die for, like Egyptian cotton sheets, truly my kids both came up to me and rubbed it and commented. I am going to wear it out tonight to our monthly dog park BBQ to show it off. Now here are some picks - oh and here is Liesl's Blog within you will find a link to her amazing store Her clothes are just amazing, truly!

To those that enter contests

I would love to hear from you that enter contests, how often to you receive what you win? How often to you ever hear that your "wins" have been sent from a blog contest? I have only had confirmation of my wins being sent from a few places and only received one win - my wonderful Belvedere Designs wall clings came and are up on my walls looking oh so good. I have had a e-mail from my book win saying it is in the mail and my Panty by Post has said it is in the mail as well as Green Eyed Monster, but these are all Businesses that have something to loose, except the book which is just a lovely blog owner :) I do have a nine year old asking me about ten times a day if the book has come LOL. The others - nothing, no e-mail, no mail, hmmmmm. So tell me other contest enterers. Do your wins show up? At what point to you contact the blogs, or do you? Do tell, I want to know the etiquette as I just don't know. I do intend to mark somehow my list as to things that have come and things that have not - so people know honest companies/blogs and not so much. But have not figured that one out yet LOL still a newbie :) Tell me how you all handle this!

My Green Eyed Monster Win!

Yesterday I won a ten dollar gift certificate from a wonderful online store called Green Eyed Monster, they have all sorts of Enviro friendly goodies, jewelry, clothing, bags, and what I loved was this:


We will use this for treats, sandwiches at the beach and all sorts. Not quite sure how we will decide which of the three of of girls will get to use it on any given day LOL. It will be well used I can assure you!

New Contest Win Today

Well I received this in my e-mail this morning:"Congratulations! You are the lucky winner of the Panty By Post giveaway from A Busy Mommy. Please reply to this email with your choice of Panty as well as size, along with your mailing address so I may forward it along to our sponsor." Just lovely, my nickers are all kind of cheep La Senza on sale nickers so to have a pair that will look sexy on my new body is super exciting to me. I picked a bright pink pair, I can not remember the name but they will be very sweet, and like nothing I wore at 230 pounds I can assure you :) This company Panty By Post is really neat, they do a monthly pantie mail out! Really - if I had the money I would sign up in a instant there things are just lovely, not trampy or little girly in the least. I would love to get a new pair in the mail each month, how nice!

Contest Wins

So I have been entering a lot of contests for about six weeks now, and I all of a sudden have come up with some wins, I just not have had my dear husband around to help me with the pictures :) I am going to get to it tomorrow though. I have won a book for my lovely oldest daughter though, and a $100 gift certificate to Canadian Tire from a small essay I wrote about water safety (a small passion of mine). So I am a very happy lady. It does seem to be paying off so to speak, I would love to win something for my youngest daughter, she is going to be sad when the book comes for the older, and there is nothing for her, but something will come. What I am trying to win for her is jewelry as it is what she likes :) Or backpacks LOL, odd that my home schooled child likes them so much but she does.

Please vote for me!

So I have entered a pretty great contest at Sears Canada about my youngest daughter, to do a MUCH needed makeover on my daughters bedroom. We have lived in our home for 11 years next month and we have done almost no renos - we bought it as a total fixer upper. The house is 120 years old and really was last decorated in oh, 1960 so we could so use this win. Not to mention I think that my little story about her first year is pretty good, it was a hard year, to put it mildly. Here is the link. Look for the story called "My Crying Baby" submitted by mom2girls on August 3rd. I wish I could put a direct link, but their web site doesn't seem to be ready to accept that type of thing.

I won a Cami

Well I am having a great start to my day! The reason I just posted about my weight loss is this win really, I posted over on this blog (and a few others) about my weight loss as reasons why I should win their contests - and this one I did win!
Go check it out! Her shop is just lovely, beautiful hand made clothing, so nice, so feminine. I can not wait to get this in the mail, my husband will be so happy to see me in something a little more classy than Old Navy LOL. Just a perfect start to what will be a great day, I am sure!

My weight loss -before and after

So on a number of blog contests I have entered I have referred to my 100 pound weight loss that I have gone threw this year, I thought perhaps I had better back that up a bit. I started last June with some serious changes to my diet - portion control in a HUGE way and exercise in the form of one mean Wii coach LOL and walking my dog every morning rain or shine, and living where I do it was mostly rain LOL. No one noticed the first 30 pounds, I started at 230 pounds but once I broke 200 pounds people started to comment. Then when I broke 165 pounds people really took notice - 165 is the "normal" weight for my height. I am now 130 and just loving it. I have never been the thin one, I have never in my life had a hard time finding clothing because they have not had clothing SMALL enough for me LOL got to say I like it! So here are some picks for you - a year and a lot of hard work, and family support later.

July 2009 - 230 lbs


Aug 2010 - 130 lbs

I won a Uglee Pen set!

So yesterday I won another blog contest from Mommy Moment. I am getting a three pack of the very cool Uglee Pens - though my daughters say they are very cute LOL. I am so excited - perhaps a bit to much for just pens - but hey, I am new to this! So go over here and take a look at my prize - and look at the blog to it is great and she always has amazing give aways, a lot for us Canadians to!