Another Giveaway Already!? Yes!!

This one is much more of a fun one. Provided by Crayola through MyBlogSpark, this prize pack is for the very creative and artsy types. You know who you are.

These little items are a new product by Crayola, and are pretty neat little kits. Here are the kits you will receive if you win the prize pack:

Glass Pendant, Stationary Box, Water Bottle, Color Glow Lamp, Wind Chimes, Shadow Box, Glass Plates. Seven kits in all!

Visit Pop Art Pixies for more information on each kit.


Meet Skye! She’s sweet, thoughtful, and always thinking of others and how she can help save the environment. She loves the outdoors, playing soccer, friends, wildlife and hiking.
Skye’s Pop Art Pixies craft kits include: Create a Water Bottle, Wooden Charm Bracelets, Skye’s Herb Garden and Wind Chime kit.

Meet Maya! A free-spirited young lady, Maya lets her inner creativity show and encourages everyone to express themselves without judgment.
Maya’s Pop Art Pixies craft kits include: Create a Glass Pendant, Shadow Box Kit, Create a Water Color Frame and Create a Sun Catcher kit.

Meet Naomi! She is big into technology and music, and can mix music with the best of the best. Music is her life and her DJ spirit inspires her desire to communicate more through actions and sounds than words.
Naomi’s Pop Art Pixies craft kits include: Create a Stationery Box and Create a Color Glow Lamp.

Meet Tatum! The bubbly, social butterfly of the Pixies and famous for her cupcakes, Tatum is fun-loving, outgoing and likes to host parties for her friends because everyday is worth celebrating.
Tatum’s Pop Art Pixies craft kits include: Create a Decoupage Glass Plate, Party Lights kit, and Create a Mosaic Picture Frame.


You can also follow this link for a $2.00 off coupon for any Pop Art Pixies kit.

The contest will go through December 31st, and winners will be announced on January 1st, 2011. To enter, just tell me which kit you think your daughter would have the most fun with. If you don't have a daughter, then you can just pretend and pick a kit you like. Or something your boys would like. Or your niece, or your best friend's cousin's aunt's daughter. I'm flexible like that.

Good luck!

And The Winner Is....

Debbie! Thanks to Random.org, you are the lucky winner! Please contact me so that I can get your information to the sponsor and you can receive your prize pack.

Shrek-Tastic!

General Mills is celebrating the May 21st release of Shrek Forever After, the final chapter of the Shrek films. Look for Shrek-tacular savings in the grocery store on your favorite General Mills brands like Go-GURT, Pillsbury, Fruit Roll-Ups, Bisquick, Green Giant and more. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for specially-marked packages of Big G cereals, in which you can find collectible water squirters and markers, which are shaped like your favorite Shrek characters.

To save even more green, visit www.everydaysaver.com/events/shrek to download coupons today. While you’re there you and your little prince or princess can get in the mood to see Shrek Forever After by taking a peek at the movie trailer.

Through MyBlogSpark, General Mills is being kind enough to provide a great prize pack to one lucky winner. If your name is chosen by the random generator here is what you will receive:

Shrek-tacular tote bag filled with participating products including Big G cereals, Fruit Roll-Ups Minis snacks and Betty Crocker Brownie Mix or Muffin Mix. The prize pack will also include a $10 Shrek-tacular Savings coupon book with fun Shrek trivia, a Shrek water squirter, a Shrek highlighter and a $25 gift card that you can use to purchase tickets to see the new Shrek Forever After film.

Please leave a comment for an entry. I will be using the Random.org random number generator to pick a winner. All submissions must be in by Monday, May 17th by 12 noon to qualify.

And just for fun, please answer this question in the comments section (will qualify as your entry):

• Who is your favorite Shrek character?

Winners will be announced sometime Monday afternoon.

ICE: Apples

Apples, I can do. I love apples. My great grandfather had an apple orchard where my cousins and I used to tramp about and pick apples and run through the fields and the forests, and play on the railroad tracks (shh, don't tell my mom!). Then we'd go inside for Granddaddy's apple pie that was better than my grandmother's. And yes, I made the mistake of telling her so once. It wasn't pretty.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house, and on weekends, we'd have these big huge breakfasts with sausage, bacon, and best of all, apple pancakes. I loved those more than anything else. Grandma would even warm up the syrup so that it went and soaked into the pancake quicker, and tasted so good with the hot apple chunks. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

I came up with these cupcakes a while back for another contest, but they fit so perfectly here that I wanted to enter them today. These cupcakes remind me so much of my grandmother's apple pancakes that they just taste perfect. I also added some glazed maple walnuts, just because they tasted so good.

I've been lax about entering ICE lately, but I had to enter when I saw that it was apples this time around. Plus, I knew I had the perfect recipe, too :)

Check out the sponsors for ICE, and see what they're providing for their prize pack this time around. You can also get more information about ICE here at Iron Cupcake Earth. The winner will receive this prize pack.

Now go vote for me starting this Friday, November 27th, at No One Puts Cupcake In A Corner.

Our Generous IronCupcake:Earth Prize Providers:

• The Demy™ by Key Ingredient
• Hello, Cupcake by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson
• Bella Cupcake Couture
• Cupcake Stackers by Gourmac
• The Cake Mix Doctor Returns! by Anne Byrne
• Beautiful Baking Liners by Vestli House
• Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Bakery & Cupcakey Supply

Apple Pancake Cupcakes

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon maple extract (this can be adjusted to your tastes, I just sort of kept adding)
1 cup buttermilk
1 apple, finely diced


Preheat oven to 300⁰F. Place liners in a 12 cup muffin tin.

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until it looks creamy. Beat in the egg and the extracts until the mixture is smooth.

Add half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and stir until almost combined. Add the buttermilk and stir, again, until almost combined. Add the rest of the flour and the apples and stir until all the ingredients are mixed in.

Using a cookie scoop, fill the cupcake liners just under 2/3 full. You will probably have some leftover batter, and you can either fill more liners in another muffin tin to be cooked at the same time, or save it for the next batch. (**I am going to work on some of the ratios for this recipe and hopefully finish perfecting it. I will post changes then.)

Place the muffin tin into the oven and raise the temperature to 325⁰F. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, checking frequently during the last 5 to 10 minutes. Just take a quick peek, as they are a tad difficult to judge when they're done. They are very moist.

Let the cupcakes cool for 10 minutes, and then remove from the muffin pan. Cool completely before frosting.



Vanilla Icing


2 cups sifted powdered sugar
4 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
2 to 4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine the ingredients with enough milk to the desired consistency.

To frost the cupcakes, place the frosting in a zip top bag, cut the tip off, and place a nice sized blob on top of the cupcake. It will spread out a bit over the next few minutes.



Maple Glazed Walnuts

2 cups walnut halves
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/8 teaspoon salt

Preheat a dry skillet over medium high heat. Add all ingredients and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes or until the walnuts are toasted and the syrup is caramelized. Spread out on waxed paper and allow to cool.

For garnishing the cupcakes, place one or two walnuts on top of the cupcakes in the center. Alternatively, you could also add some thinly sliced apples, and then top with walnuts.

And the winner is.....

Mexmarr, aka Misty!

Congratulations, if you could contact me with your address I can forward it to the company.

Sorry for the delay in posting this, I decided a little trip down the stairs would be so much fun, and found out that it wasn't. But, nothing is broken so that's a good thing :)

About That Contest I Promised...

Here it is! We got our games in the mail a few days ago. Giraffalaff Limbo, and Scatterpillar Scramble. Now, I have to be really honest and review these games in the way that our own family interacted with them, and how we were able to play with them and whatnot.

I'll start with Scatterpillar Scramble, as that is the one we started with. We got the game set up pretty easily once I found where the baby had hid the batteries. So that part is pretty straightforward. The goal of the game is that up to four people get to use a set of tongs to place marbles on the moving hands that are stacked 7 high. They send you two extra marbles too, in case you lose some, and we lost one within the first few minutes of the game. We spent more time chasing marbles than actually playing the game. Now, some of that could be the manual dexterity of my children, or the fact that we played on a table instead of on the floor, or any number of factors. But the kids weren't too thrilled with having to spend time chasing after the flying marbles, so for us, it didn't go as well as we'd have liked. But again, that could be just our family dynamics, so don't necessarily take my word for it.

Now, Giraffalaff Limbo was pretty cute, but took a while to set up. We were able to figure it out fairly quickly, and got it set up and running. One thing I noticed though, was that even my smallest kid couldn't have possibly fit under the giraffe without knocking him down, and yet the goal is to do just that. To me, that didn't make sense. I couldn't even fit under the highest level, and I'm not that big. So it's pretty much just for the kids. The younger ones had a lot of trouble understanding that there were different ways to go under (you get a little spinner to pick which move you get to make to get under the limbo bar). The older kids thought it was alright, but it wore out quickly for us. Again though, don't just take my word for it. We don't play those types of games as often, so perhaps we're just not used to it.

All that said, the games had the potential to be a lot of fun, and you can enter to win your own set of games right here, right now! Just leave a comment and make sure that I can contact you either through your blog (if you have one), or an email, and when the contest ends on Thursday, October 22nd, (my best friend's birthday!), the winner will be notified, and then your address will be sent to MyBlogSpark so that you can receive your games. Good luck!

Another Contest Is Coming, But While You're Waiting....

Check out this coupon for $4 off any Elefun & Friends game. The coupon is available for download through October 31st, and good for use until December 31st. So while you're waiting for this giveaway, you can get a really great coupon to use for some fun games for your kids. The giveaway will involve two new games from Elefun, and I will let you know as soon as I can start it :)

Yep, Another Giveaway!

Since I didn't hear back from me, Amanda is the next winner. If you could please contact me within 24 hours that would be great. Congratulations! However your profile is not available and you didn't leave an email, so I will need to hear from you for you to win.

******
And the winners are......

me **I don't have an email address for you, so if you could contact me with that, I would appreciate it. If I don't hear from you within 24 hours, I will pass the prize on to the next entrant.**
and
throuthehaze

I used random.org to choose the winners, and I will be contacting you shortly. Congratulations!

*********************************
I've been given one more opportunity to host a giveaway, this time for a nifty little prize pack from Pillsbury Simply Cookies. I have a package of those yummy looking cookies sitting in my fridge at this very moment, waiting to be cooked up.

And while my cookies are waiting to be cooked up, you can enter the contest for this nice little prize pack:

A coupon for a free package of simply... cookie dough

A tote bag

A small ceramic cookie jar



I've used the bag at the grocery store a few times already (it holds quite a bit!), and once I get the cookies baked up I"ll be putting them in the cute little cookie jar :)

Enter in the comments section, and make sure that I have a way of contacting you either through your profile or by leaving an email address. Once the contest is over, I will contact you for your address which I will forward to the host of the contest, and they will mail you your prize pack.

While you're commenting, here is a question for you:

What do you do to make your meals more simple?

Contest ends on August 2nd at 5pm.

Mmm... Tasty!

***Congratulations to Kelly and April, you have both won the Chex Mix Turtle Bars prize!!***

I have been given another opportunity for a giveaway here, and would like to share with you Chex Mix Turtle Bars. I don't normally care for the cereal bars like this, but these were very good, and my kids ate them up pretty quickly too.


So, if you want to sign up, just enter in the comments section with a way for me to contact you, and I will forward your information so that you can receive your free Chex Mix Bars too!

Deadline to enter is July 26th, 2009 at 5 pm.

Good luck!

Mother's Day Giveaway!

Go check out 5 Minutes For Mom for their annual Mother's Day Giveaway!

Maybe Some Day....

In my previous post, I said what could be better than Guns and Diamonds. Well, here's one for you, Guns and Roses.

While I think these gun turn in programs are a joke, as any person who wants a gun can get a gun on the black market, it's still an interesting contrast to the Guns and Diamonds program nearby.

Win $1000 Worth Of Knives!

I love a good kitchen knife, and the thought of winning a nice new fancy set is highly appealing. Most of my knives are sadly dull and bent and probably past their well-used prime.

Go check out the contest and sign up!

H/T No One Puts Cupcake In A Corner

Iron Cupcake: Milwaukee

I recently discovered a whole new Milwaukee underworld, Iron Cupcake. The theme is breakfast, and I am working on something from my childhood. I still need to work out a few tweaks, but so far, the flavor is great.

When I was little, my grandma used to make apple pancakes on Saturday mornings, along with bacon, sausage, and warm maple syrup. I still make the pancakes on occasion, though for some reason, my kids don't seem to like them as much as I did. They do, however, LOVE these cupcakes, or the incarnations that have been created so far. I'm still working on a few things, flavor combinations, icing, garnish, all the goodies.

The challenge is on Monday, January 12th at Fratellos in Milwaukee, at 5:30 p.m. Anyone is welcome to visit and check out the goodies.

As soon as the challenge is over, I will be sharing my recipe, so stay tuned.

Stash Contest

I just found a cute little site today that is giving away a stitcher's dream stash. Some beautiful threads, and a stitching book. I love embroidery, and this just looks like it would be such a fun little package to get. Go check it out!

And The Winner Is....

Lydia! Thanks for entering! Please visit my Etsy shop, and tell me which purse you'd like to have. Then email me at shanawoodman (at) hotmail (dot) com with your selection and mailing information, and I will get that out to you within a few days.

Congratulations!

Retro Giveaway!

Over at 5 Minutes For Mom! They are giving away a choice of a really great retro gift. Go check it out! Check out the Pedal Cars and Retro Collectibles and the contest link right here!

It's Fall, Y'all!

Yes, it's another Giveaway Carnival hosted by Rocks In My Dryer on her Bloggy Giveaway site!

I know exactly what I will be giving away, and it is going to be so much fun! You know all those purses I've been making like it's the last thing I'll ever do? Well, I'm going to give away one of those little beauts! I will look for more fabric options since I have plenty of time. Maybe I'll even do a Fall or Winter theme, since we're into those seasons (or will be). Sound good? Great!

I'll get some more pictures of the rest of the purses I made last night, and the ones I'm going to make in just a little while. I still can't get over how easy these little things are :)

I So Want One!!

My husband and I have been talking about getting a vacuum for a while now. Our old one was too much fuss (we had a Rainbow, which works great, for a while, until you accidentally leave it on the water a few times. It gets ugly after that). The one we're using now is an ancient one that belongs to his mother, which also works nice, but it's definitely an old one.

So, when I saw this post for the Dyson giveaway on 5 Minutes For Mom, I got very excited. Now, I realize I have a pretty good track record when it comes to winning things on this site, but this is definitely one our whole family would benefit from. Plus, I lost a very good friend to breast cancer several years ago, so this would be a great honor to her memory. (Does anyone still name their appliances? I might have to name this one after my friend!)

So go check out the contest, sign up, and hopefully, I'll win!!! (Just kidding!)

Supper Swapping?

This sounds like a very interesting idea. It's a book review on a book called The Great American Supper Swap, by Trish Berg. It really sounds like an idea that could be a lot of fun, and allow your family to try out new foods. The idea is that you find a few friends, and one night a week you make extra food for dinner, and take it to your other friends. Then on the other days, they do the same for you. It's almost like you only have to cook one night a week. If you can find that many ladies to do it with. Our family is picky, but you can tailor each meal ahead of time so that everyone is covered. Go check it out, and sign up for a free copy of the book!