Bicycle Mud Guards (and giveaway winner)

Eleven years ago today, Mike and I met for the first time on our way to freshman orientation. We went on a long walk that night, and two years’ worth of walks later were engaged and then married a year after that. According to Mike, we never dated, but for our one-month “we’re not dating” anniversary he bought me a gift.

Sure, mud guards for a bike aren’t a traditional gift, but they were much appreciated. We were in Northern California, and it was raining a lot. And who knows when I would have found room in my budget to buy them myself… The mud guards were sold with my bike to a graduate student who, when bidding for my bike against another grad student, rejected my offer of a second price sealed bid auction (where the highest bidder pays the second-highest price), insisting instead on the winner paying the higher bid. And this was an economics graduate student in one of the highest ranking economics programs in the country. No wonder our country is suffering an economic crisis. And no, he wasn’t hitting on me; I was married and selling my “husband’s bike” because when I tried to sell a men’s bicycle as my own nobody wanted to buy it…

Thank you to everyone who entered, I got a lot of entertainment out of your answers. Random.org chose Katrina, whose use of logic I quite liked anyhow. Congratulations, Katrina!

Sew Organized and a Giveaway

Mike surprised me on Labor Day by suggesting we drive to Ikea to pick up this computer workstation I’ve been drooling over for the past couple of years with no intention whatsoever of using it for our computer. Mike says it’s my anniversary and Christmas present – meeting anniversary (this month), not wedding anniversary. Aren’t I lucky to have a husband who celebrates two anniversaries every year? =)

I’m hoping this will be my solution to sewing without having children climb on the table. I can lock the machines in the cabinet by putting a child lock on the doors, and I finally have somewhere to store my fabric, which actually mostly consists of clothing I’ve collected from family members who humor my questionably sane desire to repurpose all old clothing into new things.

I can’t call the cabinet thrifty, but my sewing stash is, and this is the best solution I’ve come up with for having a (child-proof!) sewing corner in a limited-space home (although I lived in a few apartments before moving here that didn’t have space for this corner). I’m especially proud of it because, although Mykel built the main frame for me, I managed to put on and adjust the doors and hinges all by myself – with all three children “helping”.

As for the giveaway, I’m offering a crayon roll like these to whoever can guess what the first present Mike ever gave me was. If you wish to earn entertainment points, give some ideas as to how he chose your guess of a gift for this girl he was “not dating”, only spending every spare moment with. If you have a preference for crayon roll colors, put that in your comment and I’ll match them if I have those colors in my felt stash.

If nobody guesses correctly, the winner will be chosen randomly – unless someone leaves me a particularly entertaining guess, in which case I reserve the right to subjectively choose them. If more than one person guesses correctly I’ll choose a winner randomly from the correct guesses (unless one correct guess was particularly entertaining, in which case they may win instead).

This giveaway is open worldwide; just expect your prize to take a while to arrive if you live very far away. If you know this story and want to enter the giveaway, make a suggestion as to what it could have been instead (fitting within the limits of my hints).

I’ll give you a few hints: it was very practical, relatively thrifty, very G-rated, and immensely useful. And last I heard, it was in the possession of a graduate student whose name I no longer remember.

This giveaway ends at 9am Eastern time on Friday, September 18th (the actual meeting anniversary).

Yoplait Giveaway Winners

Per RANDOM.ORG:

Keeling, who said:
Second question-- I actually HATE writing because I have to do it so much for school...right now, I'm supposed to be writing a paper about landmark special ed court cases, instead, I'm entering your blog contest :)

Jenna Z, who said:
I LOVE the peach! And I like to write birthday cards. I try very hard to remember everyone's birthday and send a nice card!

Thanks to everyone who entered this giveaway! If you'd like to try another yogurt, you can download a coupon for $1.00 off of a Fiber One Yogurt multipack here.

Yoplait Review and Giveaway

This giveaway is now closed, but if you'd like to try another yogurt you can download a coupon for $1.00 off a Fiber One Yogurt multipack here.

We eat a lot of yogurt at our house, so I was happy to accept when My Blog Spark offered me the opportunity to review Yoplait’s Thick & Creamy yogurt. They sent me a gift basket like the one pictured above with cute stationary, a pen (which Emma immediately claimed since it was pink, a trait I can’t fault too heavily since I would undoubtedly have done the same thing at her age), and a coupon for any flavor of Yoplait Thick & Creamy yogurt. I had actually tried this kind of yogurt before (like I said, we eat a lot of yogurt so we’ve tried most brands), and I used to eat it a lot in college. One 170g (6oz) yogurt contains 28 grams of sugar, which for me puts this into more of a healthy treat than a healthy snack category – treat because of the sugar content, and healthy because of the fact that it does have live and active yogurt cultures and vitamin D to help absorb the calcium. The creamy texture makes this yogurt a healthier alternative to pudding or custard.

Now for the giveaway:

I have TWO gift baskets identical to the one I received on offer for readers of this blog (US entries only, I’m afraid). To enter, leave a comment with your answer to one of the following questions (or answer both questions for two entries):

• What is your favorite flavor of Yoplait Thick & Creamy?
• Outside of blogging, what is your favorite way to write?

Leave your email address in your comment if you don’t have an email address in your blog profile so I can contact you if you win. You have until 9pm EDT July 30th to enter this giveaway. Winners will be chosen randomly from all valid entries. Winners must respond within 24 hours, or another winner will be chosen.

Bella Sara Giveaway Winner

Congratulations, fawndear, you won the Bella Sara Giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Review and Giveaway: Bella Sara Trading Cards

This giveaway is now closed - congratulations, fawndear!

Team Mom recently sent me two packs of Bella Sara Royalty trading cards to review, much to Emma’s delight. Here are my thoughts, and a giveaway!

Each pack comes with five trading cards, one ticket card (with a code for use in the accompanying online game), one tattoo card, and one sticker card. The cards have fantasy-style drawings of magical horses with inspirational messages underneath. The drawings are detailed and carefully done, and I like the positive focus of both the cards and the accompanying online game. The cards are designed for children aged 5 and older, but both of my children enjoyed playing/fighting over the cards and the accompanying stickers (I didn’t show them the sheet of tattoos).

I signed up for an online account to check out the online game. There is one section where you take care of a magical horse, and both Emma and Johnny found this very fun. I think this part of the site would get old quickly, however, because you do the same thing for each horse over and over (feed, groom, clean, soothe – very similar to what you would do for a real live horse). The website loaded very slowly on our computer. Our internet connection is not especially fast, but it is cable and most websites load more quickly. We tried to play around with other aspects of the online game, but it was sometimes confusing – and that, combined with the slowness of of site in general, made it a frustrating experience.

While these cards are marketed to children starting at age 5, I think the games are more suitable for children aged 8 and up. The inspirational messages on the cards are quite abstract, such as “Look beneath the surface and find your inner power”, and playing the online game seemed to require a fair amount of reading.

Now for the giveaway:

If you’d like a chance to win a Bella Sara prize pack containing one pack from the Royalty collection, one from the Miniatures collection, and one from the Treasures collection, leave a comment on this post saying why you’d like to win or who you would give the prize pack to. You can earn extra entries by following this blog, tweeting about the giveaway (be sure to leave a link to your tweet), and blogging about the giveaway. The deadline to enter the giveaway is 9pm EST June 14th (this Sunday). Make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. Winners must respond within 24 hours, and you must live in the United States to be eligible to win.

Shidonni Giveaway Winner

Congrats to Tricia, and thanks to everyone who entered!