Giveaway Winners! And Cranberry Sauce

Oh, wow, has it been a busy week! Sorry that I'm back here with the results a little later than planned. But, without further delay, here are the winners:

The Random Integer Generator gave me 4, 3, and 1, which means that Rachel wins the ornaments, Andrea wins the wrapping paper, and Kristina wins the cards. Ladies, email me your addresses and I will get those off in the mail to you!

Thanks to everyone who entered. I'm sorry that I don't have something to send to all of you, but I'd love to share a little something with you as a treat if you didn't win (or even if you did!).

I love cranberries, and this is the time of year where I cook with them a lot. Cranberry sauce and cranberry pies are my favorite!

I always make this cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, and sometime for Christmas, too. It's very simple and fast. This is my mom's cranberry sauce recipe:

Cranberry Sauce

* 3 cups of cranberries

* 1 cup of sugar

* coarsely grated rind of one orange

* 3/4 cup orange juice

Put all the ingredients in a medium pot and cook on high heat, stirring regularly, until all the berries pop (about 10 minutes). This will thicken as it cools. That's it! (I told you it was fast).

The recipe can easily be doubled or tripled. I usually triple it. :) I also like to use fresh squeezed orange juice with it, though it tastes good either way.

Enjoy!

Happy December (and a Giveaway!)

Today is the first of December, and that means:

I put up the advent calendar (handmade and bought years ago by my parents - this is the one I grew up with)...

Put out the Christmas books...

And chose a tree!

(I knit that hat myself! More about that soon).

Twinkly lights at the tree place.

The lights are on the tree now, and so is the angel, but the rest of the ornaments will have to wait till the weekend.

But now, on to the giveaway! I have three, that's right, three different prizes you can win. And three ways for you to enter - read on.

One prize is a set of three ornaments made by me (inspired by ornaments in the December 2008 Martha Stewart Living).

The set includes:

a wreath,

a candy cane,

and a snowflake.

Remember the handmade wrapping paper I posted about here? Well, I am also giving away two yards of hand stamped wrapping paper, in two different patterns:

one yard of candy canes,

and one yard of trees.

And finally, I am giving away a set of ten hand stamped cards (similar to the ones in this giveaway):

with ten matching envelopes.

The set of cards will come tied up with a pretty ribbon. The cards feature red, poinsettia-esque flowers with a little glitter in the center. The winner will have a choice of what else is stamped on the cards. If you win, you may choose to use them as thank you cards:

Or Christmas cards, with a stamp on the outside that says 'Merry! Merry!':

Or a stamp on the inside that says 'Merry Christmas':

The words are shown stamped in red, but can be stamped in green if you prefer. The cards can also be left blank.

So here are the three different ways you can enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post telling me something you've made for Christmas, or something handmade that you hope to get for Christmas (links to your blog or elsewhere on the internet are more than welcome!).

2. Follow me, and then let me know that you did by leaving a second comment. (If you already follow me, let me know that with a second comment!).

3. And finally, link to my giveaway on your blog, and then leave me a comment letting me know you've done so.

Three prizes. Three ways to enter. Your chances of winning are great!

Happy December to you all.

Edited to add: I will leave comments open for a week, and draw the winners on Wednesday, December 8th.

Cozy

Yesterday morning I woke up to this sight outside my window:

The first snow of the season!

It was absolutely beautiful. I had a very good friend in town visiting for the weekend, and the snow made our Saturday plans rather exciting!

Love the one lone fall leaf left on the tree...

Last weekend, I made Italian Sausage Soup, courtesy of Alicia over at Posie Gets Cozy.

As soon as I read the recipe, I knew I had to make it!

The snow this weekend makes me want to cook up another batch already. It was so good! I see this being made many more times this winter.

Even more cozy goodness from Alicia:

My Walk in the Woods ornament kit arrived in the mail! I've noticed a lot of you have also gotten your own ornament kit, and I've even seen some finished ornaments out there already. I have to say, I'm impressed! With all the presents for other people that I need to work on, I'm thinking my ornaments will have to wait until after Christmas...

This kit is just one of many things that have been arriving in the mail recently. I can't wait to show you more! Most are things that I've ordered, but a few are things that I've won (!!).

Beautiful Summer Dress

Grosgrain is having another super-wonderful giveaway! Go check it out. (You have got to see the "before" pic of this dress. Kathleen is one talented lady).

Summer of 69 Thrift Store Refashion Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's a really cool St. Patrick's Day project - I found the link on The Crafty Crow. I'll share my own finished photos of the project later on.

In the meantime, The Crafty Crow is also hosting a giveaway - you could win a doll kit from Pretty Ditty! The dolls are so cute. :)

Hop on over and check it all out!

And Another One

Oh, wow, I LOVE this dress. I must have it!! But I am still sharing the link with you, cause I'm nice like that. Also cause I have to. :)

Sunday Laundry Shirt Dress GIVEAWAY!!!!

Just a Quick One to Say...

...that Not Quite June Cleaver is having another giveaway!

And speaking of giveaways, my one-year blog-iversary came and went without me mentioning it! It was earlier this month, and in celebration I will come up with a giveaway and let you know what it is soon.

A little bubbly to celebrate.

Valentine's Day...

...because it's better late than never, right?!

So I haven't shared a lot of personal information on here, but I have had some big changes I wanted to tell you about. This past summer, my husband and I got divorced. I don't need to go into details here, but suffice it to say that we are both better off this way, and I am much, much happier. It's sad when something like that happens and a chapter in your life is over, but at the same time it means a new chapter is starting. 

And so, on to the bulk of this post: for Valentine's Day I bought my boyfriend this tie on Etsy, from a super cool store called Sugar Lust. I love the idea of taking old ties and creating something new with them, and I thought that would be fun to try.

I got my chance sooner than I thought I would. Just after the sweet robot tie appeared in the mail (but before I had given it as a gift), my boyfriend picked up several ties at a thrift store, including this one:

It wasn't until he was showing them to me later that we discovered this on the inside:

Super-funny that he hadn't realized it was there, but that didn't mean he wanted to wear it. He threw it away, but later I thought to pull it out and repurpose it.

First, I dug through my fabric stash, and found just what I needed with some lovely things that I won in a giveaway that Amy had awhile back. I'm so sorry I didn't get a chance to put it on the blog before now, Amy! She sent me this sweet pack of fabric, among other things:

In addition to the fabric, Amy sent me some beautiful ribbons, buttons, paper cut-outs, and lace. I will have to get some pictures of it all when we start having some sunny days around here. :) I pulled this bird from Amy's goodies, and hand stitched it over the logo on the tie:

From the fabric, I chose a floral one and hand stitched it inside the tie, then I took off the label that was on the tie:

And added my own:

So that the whole thing looked like this:

Much better, don't you think?

I took the robot tie from Sugar Lust and the tie that I had fixed up, and wrapped each of them up in their own boxes. I wrapped the boxes in white paper, and then fashioned some pipe cleaner hearts as decorations:

Share the Love

Head on over to 'Not Quite June Cleaver' for a very generous Valentine's giveaway!

The Creative Family

Just a quick post to tell you that you should head on over to Simple Mom for your chance to win a copy of The Creative Family, by Amanda Soule (of the wonderful blog Soule Mamma). But hurry, the giveaway only goes through Friday, August 1st!

A Card and a Winner

[This post could have easily been titled 'Ugly Photo Post.' Sorry about the quality of the pics, but bear with me.]

First of all, I made another card for the Daring Cardmakers (DCM) challenge. This week, it was called 'It's All in the Shape,' and you had to make a card that was a unique shape (as in, not a square or rectangle). Well, we went to our friends' wedding today, so I decided I would make a wedding cake-shaped card:

And actually, the stamp I used for the design on the cake looked a lot like how their cake was decorated, funnily enough. Though they had it over the whole cake, and I didn't use their colors for the card.

Ok, I know you all just want to know who the winner is. Well, I used a random number generator to decide the winner (I didn't have too many entries, but using the RNG makes me feel like the responsibility is out of my hands, and then I feel less guilty that not everyone can win...). And the RNG chose the number:

Four! Melody is the winner. Congratulations! Email me your mailing address, and I will send your magazine off to you as soon as possible. And thank you to all of you who entered.

It's That Time Again

Giveaway time, that is! When I was in France, I picked up a couple copies of Marie Claire Idées. I had never heard of that particular magazine before I started reading blogs, but as soon as I saw it, it looked like my kind of thing. I picked up the most recent copy (at the time - looks like doe-c-doe has her hands on the newest one now!) for me. But it seemed to me that many of you already had your own copy of that one. [Though of course now I can only find one link to back that statement up! But really, I did see it in more than one place!]

I also picked up another Marie Claire Idées that they had at the bookstore. It's an 'Hors-Série' one for April (I know it's May now, but hey - we were gone all of April!) It's a special one all about babies. And no, there isn't something I've been holding back from you! I'm not having a baby, I just couldn't resist the magazine! Plus, my mom and I are hosting a baby shower this summer, so I could use that as my justification for buying it. :)

It has some great ideas in there about things for baby showers, as well as adorable baby gifts, and even some things that I would just like to make for me! I'm really hoping to try my hand at these cookies for the shower we're hosting:

I hadn't seen anyone post about this copy of Marie Claire Idées, so I picked up a second one for one of you! It's still wrapped in it's original packaging, and even has a free embroidery gift that comes with it:

You do not have to have a baby to enter. It has beautiful photography, and lovely ideas, and is so worth having even if you don't have a specific baby to make things for. :) All you have to do is leave me a comment. I'll leave it open for a week, and draw the winner next Saturday. Maybe I'll even use one of those random number generators to take it completely out of my hands. And ideas on where to find a good one?

Ok, folks. Enter by noon Minnesota time on Saturday, May 31st.

And can I just say, I am so obsessed with this magazine now? I gotta ask doe-c-doe where she gets hers here. Somehow I just don't think I'll be able to pull off a trip to France every three months to pick it up...