Bloggy Giveaway Winner!!

Thank you all so much for entering my giveaway and leaving me with so many really great ideas for homemade and/or inexpensive holiday gifts for kids and also for the gift ideas for kids to make for others.  I will compile several good ideas in an upcoming post but if you have the time to look through many comments, you will get some great and inexpensive ideas for gifts!

Now for the winner……#14, Carol!  I have already contacted Carol by email and if I don’t hear back from her within 72 hours, I will move on to the next number generated by random.org.

Thanks, everyone for playing and keep a lookout for my future giveaways and big thanks also to Bloggy Giveaways!

Baby Candy Mama & Child Giveaway!

I am offering a great giveaway for both mama and child that is already wrapped and ready for the holidays!  Baby Candy, a small, mom owned company, makes cute shirts and onesies for babies, toddlers, kids and mamas, too.  I am giving away a matching “Sugar Mama” chocolate brown 100% cotton tee shirt size L for mom and the same adorable shirt size 2T for her toddler.

The way they are packaged is very unique – it looks like candy and comes with a “nutrition facts” label on the back listing the size and what it is.

This giveaway is worth just about $50 and makes a wonderful gift for the holidays!

To enter (up to three chances to win!):

• Please leave a comment telling me some of your creative ideas for holiday gifts for kids that are inexpensive or homemade. I think we all will be trying to economize this holiday season and I hope you can share some tips that I may not have thought about yet!
• If you would like another chance to win, subscribe to my feed via RSS or email and leave a separate comment letting me know you have done so.
• For yet another chance to win, just link to this post on your blog and then leave another comment here with the link to your blog’s post.
• Be sure to leave a valid email address
• Contest is open to US and Canadian citizens
• Contest will end on Saturday, November 1st at 12:59pm EST
• Winner will be chosen by Random.org and contacted by email

Be sure to stop by the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival to see all the other great giveaways!

And The Winners Are…..

My first ever giveaway is over and I want to thank everyone who stopped by and took the time to enter! I used Random.org to select the 2 winners of the reusable tote bags. If I don’t hear back from the winners within 3 days, I will move on to the next numbers on the list generated by Random.org. Keep a lookout for my next giveaway that will be coming up soon!

Winner of the 100% Organic Cotton tote bag with tree design:

Marcia!!!! (#126)

Winner of the “I’m Saving The Planet, What Are You Doing?” recycled polypropylene tote bag is:

Joy F!!!!! (# 107)

Congrats, Ladies and I have sent you each an email today, August 4th. Please respond by August 7th with your mailing addresses. Thanks!

Happy Blogiversary To Me And A Giveaway!

Yes, it is my one year anniversary (ok, technically it was yesterday) of writing a blog. I started to write a blog for a few different reasons – to keep in touch with friends and family all over the country, to be able to yammer on about topics that are near and dear to my heart as well as interesting info I came across in my day to day life. The biggest reason I started a blog was to force myself to learn more about the computer – an area I am not that fond of because I really get overwhelmed with anything technologically advanced (psychic readings = easy for me, techie stuff = difficult and boring to me). I guess that comes from being forced to learn DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 in school. Ugh, awful stuff that scarred me for life.

I admit, I use my brilliant, software engineer husband as a major crutch in this area and I don’t like using anyone or anything as a crutch so I had to commit to learn more about how to use the ‘puter for more than just surfing or shopping. A blog was the next logical step for me. My husband was very excited for me to do this and said he would help me out.

The only people I know personally who blog are local friends and they are all techno savvy women unlike me so I began asking them tons of questions (since my husband is a techie but no blogger) and they helped me out quite a bit. So, big thanks to my friends Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess, Heather at A Mama’s Blog, and Julie at ChezArtz. You guys rock and you know I will still be asking you my questions as I keep progressing. I also want to mention my friend Nicole (who has a private blog), just because she is a knowledgeable local blogging friend, too.

Over this past year, I have learned so much about the blogging world, many social networking sites (still find this part overwhelming!), learned how to “hack” in a line of code to get my post to do what I want when Wordpress was not cooperating (via Michael) and to not always rely on him for everything on the site. That feels pretty good and pretty independent, too. My fear of all things techie has gone way down and I actually grew to love blogging!

I have also learned that how Michael and I have been living our lives the past 11 years together is now considered trendy and called “green living” (a lot falls into this category) and “frugal”. I had no idea about this until I started writing about topics I knew about and that are important to me and reading other blogs talking about it. We also are not as frugal as some families are, I think that’s from wanting to live and experience life consciously in the moment but still be smart with our money and long term plans. “You never know when you’ll be run over by a bus” is my way of thinking, you can’t always save everything for the future.

This next year, I plan on writing about topics I just never found the time to organize and get to such as living in a yurt off the grid – I found tons of pix we had taken and plan on getting it together finally as well as write about more of my expertise, what I do for a living – alternative medicine and energetic healing.

Ok, enough about me and on with the good stuff – the Giveaway!

In honor of my Blogiversary, I am giving away two fun, reusable tote bags to two lucky winners.

The first one is a 100% organic cotton, long handled shopping bag made by Ecolution that has a funky picture of a tree on it. This company sells 100% organic cotton products sustainably grown in India as well as hemp products.

The other, is a very funny “eco-freak” reuseable tote bag (the size of a dept. store shopping bag so it’s big) made by Blue Q. It’s 100% recycled polypropylene with woven handles. It says on it, “I’m Saving The Planet – What Are You Doing?” All of their stuff is pretty cute and made with the environment in mind. This company also has on staff a group of individuals with disabilities who get to live productive, satisfying lives as a result of their employment at Blue Q. These are the types of companies I like to support – those that help others and who don’t sell to “mega-crap mart” (as they refer to it on their website).

All you have to do to win one of these 2 lovely bags is to leave a comment! That’s it!

If you’d like a second chance to win just mention this giveaway on your blog with a link to this post. If you don’t have a blog, send an email to your friends including this post’s link and cc me on that email for your second chance to win (naturedeva at naturedeva dot net). The winners will be chosen by random.org. Deadline to enter is Sunday, August 3rd, 11:59pm. U.S. residents only, please.

It’s super easy and both bags are awesome! I will be having more upcoming giveaways fairly soon so keep a look out for that!

Update:
Welcome Bloggy Giveaway Carnival people! Thanks for taking a look and entering my giveaway for 2 fabulous totes! Good Luck!

photos: nationalentertainment.co.uk, ecolution & blue q.

Some Green Giveaways

Here are two great, green living giveaways you should know about:

My friend Heather at A Mama’s Blog is doing a huge green eco-products giveaway. Check it out to see all that you could win!

My friend Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess is giving away a non-toxic weed killer. Be sure to stop by to try and win that, too.

As Kermit the Frog would now say, “It’s easy being green.”

Haitian Children Need Our Help

Some friends of ours are adopting 2 children from an orphanage in Haiti called Foyer de Sion. Because of the food shortage and riots going on in Haiti, their already limited 2 meals a day of rice and beans have been cut down even further. They get hardly (if any) produce and all the children have parasites living in their bodies which rob them further of nutrition. We are so fortunate in the U.S. to not have to suffer like so many millions of people – especially children – around the world do.

The adoptive parents have joined together to get a 40 foot container filled with food to be shipped over to the orphanage to feed the more than 300 children who live there. Please consider making a donation to the orphanage using PayPal to help feed these starving kids. Please be sure to note that your donation is for the “Food Freight For Foyer Campaign”. A mere $7.00 donation would feed 63 children at the orphanage for two days; $100 would buy nearly 200 pounds of staple foods like rice, sugar, flour, and powdered milk.

If you wish to donate actual food items, the container truck will be traveling across several states in July picking up donated food. If you are in Colorado, contact me and I will be sure your donated food gets on the truck when it stops at our friends’ house. It will take 36,000 pounds of food to fill the container being sent to the orphanage. They are collecting non-perishable food items, specifically the following:

• Powdered Baby Formula (any kind)
• Powdered Milk
• Rice
• Dried Beans (any kind)
• Spaghetti
• Wheat
• Sugar
• Oatmeal and Other Hot Cereals
• Vegetable Oil
• Peanut Butter
• Canned and Dried Meats

If you are a blogger, please consider helping to spread this message on your blog and my friend Julie at ChezArtz may reward you with a $25 Target Gift Card for doing so. Just leave her a message at that link and put the button on your blog.

If you are not a blogger, please forward this message to your friends and families and help spread the word about the dire situation in Haiti and how we can all help – even just a little bit can make a huge difference in the lives of these children.

Giveaways Galore

If you don’t already know about the big Bloggy Giveaway events going on right now in the blogosphere, I recommend you check them out! There are many and a lot of nice things are being given away.

First, is my friend Amy’s blog, Crunchy Domestic Goddess. She is having the “Mother” of all giveaways right now with free organic tee shirts, sea glass jewelry, organic cleaning products, reusable shopping bags, reusable sandwich wraps and a tree in a box. Stop by and check it out!

Then, stop on by the very large and ever growing list (over 800 now) of blogs giving something away at the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival. My friend, Heather, from A Mama’s Blog, is giving away an adorable onesie from her store.

Check back with me in the future when I will enter the carnival to give away some good stuff, too. Good luck, maybe you’ll win something!