Custom Binder Winner

Wow, what a fun day. All the contests and excitement. I hope I win some.

But now it's time to announce the winner of my giveaway!!

I'd like to congratulate Terry from Cherished Treasures for winning my Custom Binder Giveaway.

Email me with your mailing address and what you would like your binder to say on the front.

Giveaways Giveaways Giveaways

Oh my goodness. What wonderful things are being given away over at
The Secret Is In The Sauce today. You must go check them out.

I've entered so many contests I'm having a hard time keeping them all straight. There's Cheesecake Factory, Outback, Target, Macy's... Too many to count.

Here are some of my faves:
Tattooed Minivan Mom is giving away a Starbucks Card
Susie's Homemade is giving away cookie dough balls that look yummy
2 under 2 is giving away Cheesecake
All In a Mom;s Life is giving away a Starbucks or Target gift card
Carma Sez is giving away a McDonalds gift card
Theres Always Room For One More is giving away a Chili's Gift Card
Janana Bee is giving away a Cheesecake Factory card
Aubsfamfive is giving away a COACH wristlet
Melanie is giving away the cutest cupcake magnets ever
7 clown circus is giving away a $10 Target gift card
I'm not your average soccer mom is giving away a $20 Target gift card
It really is all about me is giving away an Outback gift card
A Trucker Wife is giving away a Target gift card
Sweet Home Amy is giving away a Nantucket Tote
Jam Jar Boogie is giving away a beautiful apron
One Crazy Kat Lady is giving away a $50 Target Card
It's a Wonderful Life is giving away a $50 Macy's card
Snarky Much is giving away an AMC gift card
Stilettos and Diapers is giving away a Snuggie

And that is just a fraction of the giveaways. Go check out the full list here. And don't forget to enter my contest for an awesome recipe binder HERE.

Spring Fling

The girls over at SITS are hosting a Spring Filing Tuesday. Everyone is encouraged to give something away on their blog, and SITS is hosting lots of awesome giveaways on their blog every hour as well. I wanted to participate in this, but until yesterday was at a loss about what to give away. The rules state that it can be anything new or used and doesn't have to be elaborate at all. Anything from a purse you don't use anymore to a batch of chocolate chip cookies. This doesn't help me much. Anything is just too many things to consider for someone with ADD. So for the last couple of weeks it's been on my mind.

What should I give away??

True to my ADD fashion, I had an epiphany at the 11th hour. Well technically I guess I had about 12 hours to spare since I figured it out around noon, but you get my point. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to come up with something.

So here is what I came up with.

Now I'm not giving you my recipe book, but what I am going to give away is a binder, with a custom cover, a few of my favorite recipes, and a lot of empty sheet protectors.

What is this good for you ask?

Well let me tell you a little bit about my binder.

I'm a bit of a pack rat. I hold onto all kinds of things because I never know when I might need them.

Craft supplies for umpteen billion different craft projects - Check
Enough scrapbook supplies for an entire lifetime - Check
A tote box full of socks in case I decide to start crocheting beads on them again - Check
A tote full of patterned socks, buttons, and embroidery floss to make sock monkeys waiting for my sewing machine to be fixed - Check

One thing I don't hang onto, or have cluttering my house anymore, is magazines waiting for recipes to be pulled out of, or loose papers on which I have printed out recipes from the internet.

I keep lots of extra sheet protectors in my binder just waiting to be filled with that loose paper. Now if there is a recipe I want in a magazine, I don't have to hang onto the whole magazine waiting for that someday that never comes to tear it out and do something with it. I save myself the time and energy of writing them all on recipe cards, and can chuck the rest of the magazine into the recycling bin without a second thought. The recipes from the internet go right in there too. The sheet protectors also mean that my recipe for pie crust isn't covered with actual pie crust from Thanksgiving pie 1994.

I also used to be a Tupperware lady, which means that all my pantry items, flour, pancake mix, instant mashed potatoes, sugar, pasta, beans, etc. are neatly stored in Modular Mates. What does this have to do with the binder, you ask? Well for years I dealt with the issue of while the pancake mix was all fresh in my Modular Mates, I no longer had the instructions on what to do with it. Even though I'd cut them out, somebody would always see that cut out piece of cardboard as garbage. Or I'd fold it and put it into the container, which would mean spilling some of the contents onto the counter when I removed it. So now, thanks to the greatest home printer/scanner/copier ever made , I copy the instructions and put them in the binder.

My binder has made my life so much simpler and allowed me to get rid of a little bit of my pack rat tendencies. Now if I could only figure out how to make everything else fit in the binder.

So my gift to you (assuming you are the lucky winner) today, is your very own binder. No having to make a trip to Office Max to get a binder and sheet protectors. Just a couple of days for it to come in the mail, since I haven't figured out that teleportation thing yet. The Modular Mates and the copier you are on your own to get, but I would highly reccomend them.

How do I get to be the lucky winner, you ask?

Leave a comment telling me why you want to win my binder for one entry.
Follow my blog for a second entry, leave a second comment telling me you are following.

The lucky winner will be picked at random (using random.org, I have a feeling that site is going to get a lot of traffic today) Tuesday March 10th at 9 pm, Arizona time (which is MST all the time, no daylight savings bull puckey here).

Good luck everyone, and don't forget to check out all the awesome stuff over at SITS today!

I won!!!

Thanks to those who commented on my new pretty blog. I've been so busy moving I totally forgot to announce that I won a contest at sassychicdesigns. She designed everything. Isn't it cute? Oh wait, you guys already told me it was. Thanks!!

Coffee Coffee Coffee

The Secret is in the Sauce is giving away this coffee maker.
I've been seeing the commercials for this thing and it's beyond awesome. Makes one cup at a time. No more stale coffee at the end of the day. It comes with these little single serve things of coffee or you can use your own coffee. My mom got one a month ago and she loves it. To find out more about it you can click here. Then go enter the contest.

Winner

Ok, so my whole week flew by and I never even went near my computer. I have so many things to blog about, I hope to find the time this weekend.

I woke up this morning and realized that I never got on last night to announce the winner of my contest. I have decided that Alisha had the best story. Maybe because I know her personally and the thought of her in a pink poncho reduces me to hysterical laughing fits. I was really hoping that more people would enter my contest and that the winner would be someone way out there in blog land, but when I only have like 3 loyal readers, I guess that was too much to hope for. I'm giving honorable mention to Lena and her Harold and Kumar poster.

Contest

It's December and Christmas is coming. That means, inevitably, bad Christmas gifts. We all have that one family member that always gives crappy gifts, and that my friends is good blog material. So I'm doing a worst gift ever contest. Up for grabs is a $20 gift card to Target, so you can go get yourself something good.


Here's the deal. Blog about your worst Christmas gift ever and link back to this post. You can even steal my nifty logo that Alisha designed for me. In fact please steal my nifty logo. Make sure you leave a comment on this post so I know to go read your blog. Best story wins the gift card. I'll announce the winner on Friday December 12th.

My story is about my mother. She is incapable of giving a frivolous, enjoyable gift. She is practical to the core and her gifts are always things that she thinks you really need. A couple of years ago she got me a vinyl shoe rack that hangs on the back of a door. She decided I needed one because I had about 20 pairs of shoes stuffed into a spare closet. The shoes were in the closet because I needed to sort out which to give to Goodwill and which to throw away. I wasn't planning on keeping any of them, therefore I didn't need a nifty storage system for them. What I needed was more hours in the day so I would have time to do all the really important stuff that needs done and have time left over to sort shoes. The shoes weren't bothering me, but apparently they were bothering my mother, so I got a shoe rack for Christmas. Then my mom got all butt hurt when I didn't do cartwheels with excitement about this gift. It's a freaking shoe rack. Even if I had needed one, it wouldn't have been cartwheel worthy. So now I don't even bother to hint around about what I want for Christmas, I make sure she knows what I need. At least that way I can try to act excited and at least use the gift she gives me. This year I asked for a memory foam pillow. Still not cartwheel worthy, but at least I'll use it.

Things that shouldn't be in my car but are

I've had way too much time on my hands this afternoon. In between cooking dinner, redesigning by blog, babysitting, and trying to wrangle my own children, I've been reading lots of other's blogs. Just clicking from link to link figuring if someone I enjoy reading thinks this person is worth reading, maybe I'll like them too.

I came across this.

Whiskey In My Sippy cup is having a nifty little contest and giving away some febreze for the best what's that smell in my car contest. Oh, how I could relate. The things that have been left, brought, or found their way into my car are numerous. These are my faves.

The wax coated paper cups that when left in the car for more than a few hours disintegrate and allow their contents to fill the cup holders with fluid and depending on the amount in the cup prior to the cup failure create little Niagara Falls of soda all down the side of the car where the cup holder resides. This isn't so much smelly, but really messy, totally annoying and pretty much avoidable if the children would just listen when I tell them "these are the cups that will fall apart and make a mess if you leave them, please remember to take them with you when you exit the vehicle"

Banana peels. Sure a banana is a handy (and healthy) snack to take in the car when the children are running late for school and didn't have breakfast because they chose to goof off and not get ready in the morning, but by the time I've run a couple of errands after dropping them off that banana peel is rank.

The half a cheeseburger that was left crammed into a cup holder in the 3rd row seat and not discovered by me until it was petrified. I'm not kidding. Hard as a freaking rock. I asked the children how long it had been there and someone was sure it had been around one of the children's birthday three months prior.

The snail that Kimberly insisted on taking with her to theatre rehearsal. The one that had escaped her by the time we had gone three blocks. The one we searched the van for an hour trying to find. Really, how far could it have gotten, it's a snail!!! The one that I found the shell of when trading the van in 6 months later.

My big giant Jamba Juice mug that mysteriously disappeared. It had rolled under the passenger seat and got wedged under there. I should have known better than remove the lid to see how funky it was when I found it a month later.

The gallon of milk that rolled away from all the other groceries on the ride home from the store this summer. It found a nifty little hiding place for itself under one of the kid's seats. Apparently with five people unloading the groceries from the car, into two fridges, it'shockingly easy to not miss a gallon of milk. Until it starts getting funky in the lovely Arizona heat. Two days later when we were playing "What's that stank" we found it. The plastic jug all bloated and looking about to burst filled with vile yellow liquid no longer resembling moo juice inside. The rotten milk smell that the plastic jug was unable to contain filling the air in a 10 ft radius. Found the day AFTER trash day so I had to continue to smell it every time I took out a bag of trash for 6 days.

By far the worst though is the RAT that lived in my car for the better part of two weeks. I can't blame any of the children for his presence in my car though. It was a Volkswagen Cabriolet, the car that my friend Alisha lovingly calls a "Bitch Basket". I called it possessed. It was the definition of Murphy's Law. One night I left the top down when I parked it. I guess the rat decided that he wanted to cruise with the top down too. The next day after putting the top up, I went to back out of my driveway. In the rear view mirror I saw this black blur scurry across the back deck and then over the baby seat. I turned around and didn't see anything. Maybe it was just a shadow. I went about my day and that night parked the car all locked up tight. In the morning I found little droppings on my seat, a slight urine odor in the car, and a bunch of the insulation stuff from inside the dashboard all over the passenger side floor. I immediately started banging on the dash, making all kinds of noise, doing anything to try to scare the rat into fleeing. No sign of the little shit, but I knew he was there. The next day more droppings and the urine smell is getting worse. I go to Home Depot and buy some sticky rat traps. They are supposed to be more humane than snapping their little necks but who knows. I'm sure starving to death while you struggle to free yourself from a giant lake of goo is no picnic either. I wasn't really feeling charitable to Mr. Rat though, I just didn't want to add to the smells by adding rat blood and guts to the party. That night I left one trap on the driver's side and one on the passenger side floor. Right under where he seemed to be entering and making his little nest as evidenced by the insulation stuff that had been excavated every morning. Put a little bit of cheese to try to lure him to his sticky death. The next morning the traps were there, the cheese was not, and the rat was still living somewhere in my car. The next night I put more cheese, trying even more carefully to place it dead center of the trap so little Mr. Sneaky Pants couldn't get the cheese without getting stuck in the goo. Again that little bastard got the cheese and managed to remain alive. Finally after a couple of weeks of this, I parked the car where I thought the rat might find something else exciting and left it, top down, windows rolled down, doors open. Left it there all day. I was only slightly worried that someone might steal it. That would have really been preferable to continue to share it with a rat. Being that it was the possessed car though, nobody stole it, and I had to drive it home that night. Thankfully though, the rat had decided to move on to greener pastures at some point that day. I never saw him again.