All righty – I’m running a little late, which is SHOCKING, I know, but I did want to announce the winner of the Engraved Euniques door prize.

Engraved Euniques is a business that makes wonderful customized tiles. You can pick the size and the finish that you like, and you can have your tile engraved with your favorite verse or quote. You can even have a plaque made for your front door, and I think the tiles make wonderful, one-of-a-kind gifts.

See?

Aren’t they great? You can see even more neat designs right here.

I asked Kaye at Engraved Euniques if I could give away one of her tiles after the tour of homes, and she was sweet enough to say yes. So a few minutes ago I drew a random number from the tour of homes comments (the comments, NOT the Mr. Linky), and the winner is…

…commenter #38, also known as Moriah at Please Pass the Salt. Moriah, if you’ll email me, I’ll put you in touch with Kaye so that y’all can figure out your customized creation.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Hey everybody –

I’ll have a giveaway post up later this afternoon, but before I forget I wanted to remind you that the Christmas Tour of Homes will be Monday, December 15th. If you want to check out how things worked last year, you can look right here.

If you want to grab the button for your blog, here’s the code:

<a href="https://www.boomama.net/2008/12/15/christmas-tour-of-homes-2008/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h134/boomama205/boomamachristmassmall1.jpg" border="0" alt="BooMamaChristmasTour"></a>

I’ll update the button code on Sunday, just in case you want to make the button on your blog link directly to the Tour of Homes Mr. Linky on Monday.

Finally, if you need a reminder about guidelines for the tour, you can find those right here.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The winner of the Kohl’s $50 Gift Card is Lisa, who left comment #156 at 8:26 pm.

Lisa, if you’ll email me your mailing address, your gift card will be sent out ASAP.

And thanks, everybody, for your participation. There’s one more giveaway on the horizon – a Sony digital camera, courtesy of Staples – and that post will go up sometime early tomorrow afternoon.

Congratulations, Lisa!

Since the little guy came along, I haven’t played as many games as I used to. I mean, I play things like Sorry and Go Fish, but the late-night marathons of Spades, Canasta and Scattegories are a thing of the past. Because these days, if I’m playing a game, odds are that I’m getting my Candyland on.

Until this past weekend.

Because this past weekend, my sister-in-law introduced me to this word game on the computer where you’re given about 60 or 70 different letter tiles, and your goal is to find as many words as you can in a five minute period. It’s sorta like Scrabble, sorta like a Word Search, and sorta like THE MOST ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE KNOWN TO MAN.

Plus, I’m not sure if y’all are aware of this, but between MSU sports (new coach! we have a new football coach!), diet Coke, and the hour-long delight that is “The Office” and “30 Rock,” I don’t so much need a new addiction.

But oh, do I have one.

And, if I may say so, I’m also really, exceedingly bad at it.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

My friend Daphne called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she too is addicted, and we laughed our heads off as we talked about how this stupid game has humbled us beyond belief. We consider ourselves to be fairly smart girls, and yet both of us have spent an untold amount of time staring at the computer screen, trying with all our might to find words longer than three letters (PIN! GIN! DIN! FIN!). If I really get on a roll I’ll find some four-letter words (PINS! GINS! DINS! FINS!), and on the very odd occasion I’ll run across some five-letter words (DINER! MINER! MOVER!) and feel a sense of accomplishment that is completely disproportionate to the task at hand.

I mean, on Tuesday? When I found the word “FOREVER”? SEVEN WHOLE LETTERS?

Forget about it. I think I actually screamed “BOOYAH” right there at my kitchen table.

The most humiliating part of this whole word game thing has been my willingness to abandon all standards of spelling in the hopes of scoring a few extra points. I have slammed my fists on the table when the word game refused to recognize “dryv,” “nie,” “rea” or “stov” as legitimate answers, because even though I know those words don’t, you know, ACTUALLY EXIST IN ENGLISH, they totally make sense IN MY HEAD. Let me tell you: if I had a nickel for every single time I’ve tried to submit “rok” or “snim” or “reil” as an answer, I’d probably have a whole dollar by now, and besides, I hardly think it’s my fault if this game expects for the words to be “in the dictionary” or “legitimate” or “complete.”

Is a little linguistic flexibility too much to ask?

(And if I could find “linguistic” in that word game? I WOULD BUY MYSELF A TROPHY.)

But never fear. I will not be deterred. One of our favorite friends in the world also plays, and I’m determined to beat his top score. Right now I’m about 100 points away from that goal, and I WILL NOT BE STOPPED, OH NO I WON’T. I will work and fight and spell until it hurts, people, and if it’s the last thing I do on this earth I will take down our sweet friend IN THE STRONG NAME OF JESUS, AMEN.

Oh, I kid.

But not really.

Because I’m a smidge competitive.

And if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my game now. I just noticed that my husband has recently passed me in the rankings, and quite frankly that is unacceptable.

I’m sure you understand.

Because this is the first time in 2008 that this has happened:

SOMEBODY HOLLA ONE TIME.

And really, it’s not that I get so much email.

It’s just that I still haven’t really figured out how to stay organized with the email. And I’m a perfectionist. So I want to answer everything, but then I get behind on answering stuff after a few days, and then I’m like, Oh, I’ll never be able to achieve my unrealistic standard, and so then I just eat some fried chicken and watch Bravo.

My interpersonal communication skills are impressive, are they not?

But for the rest of tonight, I’m going to bask in that big fat zero, oh yes ma’am I am.

And I’m going to eat some apple pie.

And, you know, watch Bravo.

Thank you and have a lovely evening.

Now I know – I KNOW – that lately there have been more giveaways than usual around these bloggy parts. But since it’s Christmas, and since the economy has, um, taken a bit of a hit this year, I’ve been a little more giveaway-ish than I normally am. Because I figure that every little bit helps, you know?

So when the people from Kohl’s asked if I might like to give away a gift card, I was all, “OKAY!” I know lots of y’all are dedicated Kohl’s shoppers and can work a Kohl’s coupon like nobody’s sweet business, so I thought a little Kohl’s cheer was definitely in order.

The Kohl’s people also told me that they have a handy little widget you can download straight to your desktop so that you get up-to-the-minute information on all the latest deals. If you’re interested in the widget, you can download it right here; it’ll look just like this on your computer:

As you can see, it is quite fancy.

Anyway, if you’d like to win a $50 Kohl’s gift card, you have to do three things:

1. Click over to the Kohl’s website.
2. Look around.
3. Come back here and leave a comment telling what you’d buy with the gift card.

Now isn’t that just as easy as can be?

This giveaway will only be open until Thursday, December 11 at noon central time, so get to clickin’, internets!

Have fun!

This giveaway is now closed.