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Linky Interwebby Awesomeness 10.29.08
29 October 2008 by
– Jennifer’s post about The Two-Income Trap is excellent.
– Several of y’all have asked about my reactions to the marriage conference my hubby and I attended this past weekend. Well here you go.
– And here’s way more insight than you ever wanted or needed into my admittedly strange sense of humor: this SNL sketch has been making me laugh every single day for about three weeks.
I know. I know.
“Ring The Bells” Winners
7 October 2008 by
Have I mentioned that Travis Cottrell has a new Christmas CD out today? And that I enjoy his new Christmas CD very much?
Well apparently I’m not the only person who loves this CD. Because this morning there was a rave review in CCM Magazine. I mean, “Goosebump-Inducing Holiday Record of the Year”? That’s some high praise, my friends.
And look who’s Mr. Number-Four-on-iTunes-Holiday-Downloads:
FANCY!
So needless to say, I’m oh-so-happy to be able to share this CD with ten of you.
Here are our winners!
52 – Cyndi
58 – amykay
162 – Marie – no blog – yahoo email
190 – Jesica
369 – Britt – no blog – yahoo email
443 – Jessica
699 – Lindsay
755 – Kelly
814 – Rebekah
931 – Joyce – no blog – cox email
Congratulations, winners! Just send me an email with your mailing address (please write “Giveaway Winner” in the subject line), and the CD will be on its way to you ASAP.
If you didn’t win, you can certainly download a copy of your very own, oh yes you can.
Thanks so much, everybody, for your tremendous response to this giveaway!
Another Oreck, Anyone?
6 October 2008 by
This is one of those giveaways where I feel like anything I might want to say is completely inconsequential. Because really, anyone who’s reading this post just wants me to SHUT IT, ALREADY and stop talking about the fact that even though I don’t personally own an Oreck, I do have a mother and a sister who are very! enthusiastic! about the entire Oreck product family, not to mention that they would both tell you in a heartbeat that their Oreck vacuums are convenient, powerful, and light-as-a-feather.
But y’all don’t really want to hear that. Y’all just want me to cut to the chase and tell you about the free stuff.
Specifically, you want me to tell you about how you can win a free Oreck vacuum that retails for $599.95.
So.
Here goes.
First. Look! It’s adorable!
SASSY!
Second. If you’d like to win this very special vacuum that’s raising awareness for a very special cause (Clean for the Cure), here’s what you have to do:
1. Click here to visit Oreck’s site and look at all the fancy features on the Special Edition XL Gold. This is going to have to be done on the honor system, because it’s going to be next-to-impossible for me to check every single one of my outgoing clicks. However, I do know that the clicks out to this link should (roughly) match the number of comments on this post. So please do me a favor and click on the link and look around once you’re there so that I don’t have to put anyone in time out, oh thank you.
2. Come back here.
3. Leave a comment on this post (only one comment per email address, please) and briefly tell me why you’d LURVE to win an Oreck.
One catch: you have to be a resident of the continental United States in order to win (I know, Canada. I KNOW. I feel your pain. Because guess what? I can’t win, either).
This giveaway will be open until Monday, October 13th, and I’ll announce the winner on Tuesday, October 14th. If you win, I will contact you at the email address associated with your comment, so please be sure to type your email address correctly. You’ll have 24 hours to respond, and if I don’t hear from you within that time period, I’ll draw for another winner.
Have fun, y’all!
This giveaway is now closed.
“Ring The Bells” Giveaway
29 September 2008 by
When I was in college, I would break out my cassette (YES. CASSETTE. AMEN.) of Amy Grant’s A Christmas Album just as soon as Halloween was over. It was my Official Soundtrack during November and December road trips, and “Heirlooms” was always a sure-fire recipe for Tender Introspection since I was a terribly sophisticated nineteen year-old and all.
A nineteen year-old driving a Buick Regal that would sputter to a dead stop if the accelerator wasn’t pressed at all times, and yes, that includes at red lights and stop signs.
Anyway, my point is that Amy Grant’s first Christmas CD is the gold standard of Christmas albums for me. Other Christmas albums have joined her in my Christmas music hall-o-fame over the years – like Harry Connick Jr.’s and James Taylor’s, for instance – but I’m a pretty discriminating Christmas music listener. I want worship and reverence and fun wrapped up in one musical package, and I don’t want want a hint of corny in the mix. But other than that I’m not picky at ALL.
Ahem.
Last year, not too long after Melanie and I dragged Travis Cottrell into the vortex of our lives by obsessing over his wife’s jeans, he mentioned that he was about to start working on a Christmas album. He also mentioned that his producer was going to be Brown Bannister, a name I immediately knew because I’d seen it printed on the top, right-hand corner of every piece of Amy Grant sheet music I tried to play on the piano when I was a teenager. Since I knew that Brown Bannister produced Amy Grant’s Christmas albums, I figured that Travis’ Christmas CD was bound to turn out pretty well.
However, I had no idea that when I heard Travis’ Christmas CD for the first time, I would get all teary-eyed and fan my face and feel so unbelievably proud of our friend. The CD is absolutely, positively, completely, stunningly beautiful. Christmas music perfection. We’ve been listening to it in our house since Labor Day (YES. LABOR DAY.), and on at least four different occasions David and I have had in-depth conversations about how great it is. Every single day the five year-old gets in the car when I pick him up from kindergarten and asks if he can hear “Frosty.” Every single morning I have some church with my iPod when I listen to “In The First Light.” It is, plain and simple, a wonderful CD.
Ring the Bells will be released next Tuesday, October 7, and there’s no question that you’re going to want to add it to your Christmas music collection. But if you’d like to try to win one of ten autographed copies of the CD before it’s released, then here’s what you need to do:
1. Leave a comment telling me your favorite Christmas song.
2. Pause and think for a moment about how this is pretty much the EASIEST GIVEAWAY EVER.
I’ll close this giveaway next Monday and announce the winners next Tuesday.
And just FYI: Travis is so stinkin’ humble and self-deprecating about this whole Christmas CD thing that it’s sort of unbelievable. In fact, we have debated for weeks about how many comments this giveaway will generate, and I have contended that we’re gonna hit the hundreds. Travis’ official prediction is 46.
I have a feeling y’all are going to prove him oh-so-wrong.
Make it a merry one, internets.
This giveaway is now closed.
Before & After
26 September 2008 by
All righty. I’m going to be totally up-front with you, internets.
Earlier this week I came thisclose to cancelling this Before & After bloggy shin-dig. But I felt guilty about doing that because I know several of you have worked hard to meet deadlines and finish projects and do all the things that I thought I would do when I first posted about this little carnival way back at the beginning of the summer.
But several things have gotten in the way of all my fancy home-beautification plans. First and foremost on that list would be me. I have big ideas and think I have plenty of time and don’t take into account that, in addition to my day-to-day responsibilities with my family, I have things like travel commitments and work deadlines that also demand my attention. Plus, for the last couple of weeks we’ve had some family members staying with us while they’ve had some medical stuff going on, and really, nothing says, “WELCOME! HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER SOON!” like a house that reeks of paint fumes.
Which is to say: I decided to postpone the painting.
I guess it’s just that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And in light of everything that we’ve had going on around here, the color of the paint in our bedroom just hasn’t been very squeaky.
However.
I did, in the spirit of the festivities, take care of a LITTLE something that’s been driving me cuckoo the last few weeks, and that something is my closet. It’s been driving me insane because it was 1) messy 2) unorganized and C) messy and unorganized, so I took everything off of the shelves and hung up all the stray bits of clothing that were strewn about, then I threw out some junk and put everything back together again.
Sort of like Humpty Dumpty, only not.
Anyway, here’s the before:
And here’s the after:
STUNNING, ISN’T IT?
Nonetheless, there you have it. It’s certainly not the dramatic ENTIRE ROOM TRANSFORMATION that I originally envisioned, but it’s progress. And I’ll take it.
I can’t wait to see your progress, so if you have a project you’d like to share, just leave a link to YOUR SPECIFIC POST – NOT YOUR GENERAL URL – in the Mr. Linky below.
Thanks for playing along, everybody!
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