Winners!

Yes, it's once again time for some winner announcements. I've had two giveaways end, and I think there are going to be some happy people.

For the Shutterfly giveaway, I had three winners who will receive codes for 25 free cards each - note that they expire December 31, 2011! The winners have 48 hours to contact me with their information or I will have to choose a new winner. Congratulations go to: Shutterfly Adict from Shutterfly Experience, Angie from Angie's Spot, and Carrie at In the Hammock. Congrats, ladies!

I also have the $100 Red Envelope gift card winner to announce. Congratulations, Eunice from Random Walk Down Mommy Street! She also has 48 hours to get back to me before I choose a new winner.

Enjoy - and come back soon for more great fun and giveaways!

Giveaway: $100 Red Envelope Gift Card

I wrote recently about Red Envelope and their personalized gifts for kids. Little Miss absolutely adores her pillow. Lucky me, Red Envelope also sent me some canvas wall art that again was personalized for Little Miss.

Note: I blacked out Little Miss's name and birth date for privacy purposes. The text matches the pink of the canvas and fits nicely with the rest of the artwork.

I've been working on completing her room, as I mentioned in my last post about Red Envelope. It's hard for me to find items that work for her because she isn't your traditional girly girl, but we have her room painted lilac which reduces our options. This canvas art was perfect for her. It has her first and middle name and is also customized with her birth date.

I wish that we could customize the text further like I could with her pillow (we did her first and middle name instead of first and last as is suggested, but that was all we could do). She loved it anyway because it's all about her. The canvas comes in three sizes - 24x32", 18x24", and 12x16" so that it fits in the space that you have to fill. While the canvas shows Little Miss as a little light skinned blonde haired girl, there are other options - including boy options - for hair and skin color. Oddly, you can't choose any skin color with any hair color as I could with the pillow, which may limit you if you have a child with black hair and medium skin tone, but the vast majority of options are available.

I will say that when I first received my canvas - wrapped securely in bubble wrap and then in a couple of very sturdy layers of cardboard to prevent any damage - the canvas was wrong. There are multiple possible ways to spell Little Miss's name, and unfortunately it came out wrong. Red Envelope immediately made it right with no questions asked, and a corrected canvas arrived very quickly. Things happen sometimes, and I absolutely respect companies that take care of issues immediately and politely. Red Envelope definitely fit the bill here. After all, when you're doing this much personalized kids room decor, you're bound to have something go wrong now and then.

With all the options, what would you shop for? Red Envelope has tons of gifts for everyone in the family, and I have the fun of giving away a $100 gift card to Red Envelope to one lucky reader. Yay, right? So what do you have to do to win? First of all, let me stress that you must follow all the rules. If you do not follow the rules, your entry will not count!

This contest is open until Wednesday November 16 at 7pm CST. I must have a valid way to reach you, so leave me your email address in your comment or be sure your profile has your email address visible. No duplicate comments will count. This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and older. Winners will be selected via random.org and must respond within 48 hours of being notified by me or I will select a new winner.

Mandatory Entry: Tell me what you would spend your $100 gift card on.

Bonus Entries (leave a comment for each entry - if you put it all in one comment, I'll count it as one entry):

1) Earn one additional entry for following me on Twitter, then tweeting this contest with the following tweet: "Sweet! There's another $100 Red Envelope GC #giveaway from @honestandtruly - holiday shopping made easy http://bit.ly/vpM1OU" (leave a link to your tweet as your comment and make sure you do all the steps!)
2) Earn one additional entry by following this review blog publicly via Google Friend Connect.
3) Earn one additional entry by following my “regular” blog Honest & Truly! publicly via Google Friend Connect.

And no, you won't earn any extra entries for it, but you will get good karma for liking me on Facebook!

Good luck!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a canvas featuring Little Miss for review purposes only. I was not compensated for this campaign. That said as always, all opinions expressed remain my own.

Winners!

I have winners for three different giveaways to announce today. And yes, I have more giveaways coming soon - hopefully one later this afternoon, too. Yay, right?

Elisabeth (no blog) won the Pink Together giveaway and has 48 hours to get back to me before drawing a new winner.

Kristy from Momma Loves 2 Shop! won the tickets to see Ringling Brothers in Chicago. Because of the timely nature of this one, she has just 24 hours to get back to me.

Susan from Susan's Disney Family won the $100 Red Envelope gift certificate and also has 48 hours to get back to me. BUT I have another $100 gift certificate from Red Envelope coming soon, so stay tuned!

Congrats everyone!

Giveaway: $100 Red Envelope Gift Card

Little Miss has been in a big girl bed since she was ninteen months old when she started crawling out of her crib, took a nap in Mister Man's bed one day when he was at preschool and promptly refused to set foot into the crib again. Needless to say, her room was set up quickly and not quite perfectly. While we've added various touches to it over the last four years, there's still more work to be done to make it the perfect room for her.

Enter Red Envelope, which is adding almost 400 new items this fall. They have everything from Beer and Wine Accessories to Men’s Gifts to Kids Room Décor and more. When offered the opportunity to choose something from their new product line, I jumped at the chance, and Little Miss's room was my first thought.

After looking over some of their new products, I decided upon one of their personalized pillows for kids. I love that the pillows allow you to share your child's personality with the pillow. The base is always white, but you can choose either a boy pillow or girl pillow. I would have loved to see multiple hair and skin color choices, but fortunately Little Miss is a blonde haired little girl, so it worked out well for us. You then choose your child's name, and a sentence that best describes your child.

Little Miss is frequently called Peanut by me and others because she's so skinny and tiny. I also call her my "perfectly pigtailed person" - something left over from my childhood. Since the picture on the pillow doesn't have pigtails, I decided to stick with Peanut, and now she knows that she's the best little peanut in the whole world. I like the script on it, and I think the stylized all lower case really works for this.

Note: I placed the black line over Little Miss's name to protect her privacy, but trust me that it looks cute in all caps block letters.

When the pillow arrived, it was packaged quite well. It was wrapped tightly in a plastic bag to ensure that it didn't get dirty or damaged while shipping. I opened it, and I will admit that I was surprised by the fabric the pillow was made from. It is a canvas type material, and I had expected something softer from a pillow. I would also have loved to see the cover with a zipper so that when we have the inevitable stains, it would make it easier to clean.

That said, Little Miss loves her new pillow, and it helps finish off her bed. I keep trying to explain to her that it's a decorative pillow, but so far she's insisting that she sleep with it. Too cute!

I have something for you, too: a $100 gift card to RedEnvelope.com to give away to one lucky reader. Note that the gift card is a one time use gift card. You must use the full amount in a single purchase. So what do you have to do to win? First of all, let me stress that you must follow all the rules. If you do not follow the rules, your entry will not count!

This contest is open until Friday October 21 at 7pm CST. I must have a valid way to reach you, so leave me your email address in your comment or be sure your profile has your email address visible. No duplicate comments will count. This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and older. Winners will be selected via random.org and must respond within 48 hours of being notified by me or I will select a new winner.

Mandatory Entry: Tell me what descriptor would you put under the name for your pillow.

Bonus Entries (leave a comment for each entry - if you put it all in one comment, I'll count it as one entry):

1) Earn one additional entry for following me on Twitter, then tweeting this contest with the following tweet: "Have you ever shopped @RedEnvelope ? Now's your chance to try it. Win a $100GC from @honestandtruly #giveaway http://bit.ly/nvOfnG" (leave a link to your tweet as your comment and make sure you do all the steps!)
2) Earn one additional entry by following this review blog publicly via Google Friend Connect.
3) Earn one additional entry by following my “regular” blog Honest & Truly! publicly via Google Friend Connect.

And no, you won't earn any extra entries for it, but you will get good karma for liking me on Facebook!

Good luck!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a customized pillow as shown above from Red Envelope for review purposes only. I was not compensated for this campaign. That said as always, all opinions expressed remain my own.

Winner!

Congrats goes to Deanna G - whoops, not sure where I got her blog from initially! She doesn't have one (and that's ok; you don't need one to enter) - for winning the Lands End gift card. I'm sure she'll put it to good use - IF she gets back to me within 48 hours. My apologies for the delay in getting the winner out for this one; the last week of school has been a busy nightmare for me, and I haven't been near my computer at all.

That said, look for more fun to come!

Giveaway: Lands End $100 Gift Card

Raise your hand if you hate your body. (Mine is up there, too!) Now raise your hand if you hate shopping for a swimsuit. (Yep, still up there. That's why my last swimsuit literally disintegrated before I threw it away and finally broke down and admitted I needed a new one.)

Enter Lands End with their National Swimsuit Confidence Week. I was able to choose a Lands End swimsuit that flatters me - a tough trick. I've had great experiences with Lands End in the past, and I was up for the challenge.

Their website has a variety of ways to search for a swimsuit. For those who have experience with Lands End styles, they offer various collections to browse that - based on reviews I read on the site - seem to stay somewhat consistent from year to year. For those of us who have no clue, there are other search methodologies - from shopping by solution (flatten tummy, slim hips, conceal thighs, etc - ummm yes?!) to special sizes (for everything from mastectomy suits to larger cup sizes and more) - which I thought was very cool.

The best solution for me though was to talk to a swimsuit advisor via their web chat, although there was also the option of video chat. I didn't need that, though. The web advisor was awesome. She talked through what I liked and was looking for and confirmed my measurements before recommending a few suit styles for me to check, including passing along the links directly to the suits. It was sort of like shopping with a girlfriend who knew what she was talking about, and I definitely need more of those!

I finally settled on the Beach Living Collection and the v-neck tankini top in a long, knowing that mine tend to ride up on me. I was sort of sad that though the suit offered a long option and a D-cup option (seriously, how did I not know this was available in swimsuits?), both were not offered at the same time. I'm also all about the swim skirts now, and the ones I've had have been actually pretty flattering, so I found a nice black one that I liked, figuring I could match it up with another swim top later.

A few days later, my new suit arrived. The color wasn't quite the vibrant purple of iris that I had expected given the color swatch on the site - it had more red to it - but I liked the color, and quickly tried the suit on, hoping that measuring myself meant I might find a halfway decent suit.

The suit didn't support my top quite as much as I'd hoped - and as other similar styles I've owned in the past have - but it was very comfortable. I probably could have or should have gotten one size smaller, and that may have helped. The swim skirt fit perfectly. It was supposed to be a tummy slimming one, but it didn't feel like it was pulling me in any - again, maybe I needed a smaller size. The skirt was also a little longer than I'm used to in a swim skirt, but as I'm getting older, maybe that's a good thing! I have a feeling I'll be a little more comfortable sitting on the edge of the pool playing games with the wee ones this summer with the slightly longer skirt.

Interestingly, I was unable to take a single flattering picture of me and the swimsuit. That said, it looks better on me in person, especially when I'm moving than it does here.

I do like all the options that were available for the suits, and I look forward to alternating the halter with other swim tops to avoid any one particular tan line. Or at least I will once I hit the gym far more regularly than I have been lately - except that's not at all what this week is about. It's about having confidence in your suit. Because, really, so long as someone is wearing a suit that fits, do we really go around judging all the other moms at the pool? I didn't think so!

Lastly, join Lands’ End every day from May 23 to May 27 from 12:00–1:00 pm CST for a series of National Swimsuit Confidence Week events on Twitter. This weeklong movement was created to celebrate women of all shapes and sizes as well as educate and inspire us to embrace our swimsuit beauty (obviously we need it!) and have fun this summer. Each day Lands’ End will give away 10 Lands’ End Swimsuits, 10 Lands’ End Beach Towels and announce exclusive swimsuit promotions.

There are twitter parties each day this week - Monday is Swimsuit Coverage, Tuesday covers (ahem) Swimsuit Trends for Real Women, Wednesday is all about Swim Slenderizers, Thursday focuses on Bring Your Confidence To The Beach, and Friday is the Ultimate Swimsuit Confidence Celebration. Follow @LandsEndPR and the hashtag #landsend for the parties.

As a part of this campaign, Lands End is giving me a $100 Lands End gift card to one reader to purchase a swim suit. Yay! So what do you have to do to win? First of all, let me stress that you must follow all the rules. If you do not follow the rules, your entry will not count!

This contest is open until Monday June 6 at 7pm CST. I must have a valid way to reach you, so leave me your email address in your comment or be sure your profile has your email address visible. No duplicate comments will count. This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and older. Winners will be selected via random.org and must respond within 48 hours of being notified by me or I will select a new winner.

Mandatory Entry: What is your biggest swimsuit challenge?

Bonus Entries (leave a comment for each entry - if you put it all in one comment, I'll count it as one entry):

1) Earn one additional entry for following me on Twitter and tweeting this contest with the following tweet: "Win a $100GC from #landsend as part of National Swimsuit Confidence Week from @honestandtruly http://bit.ly/m7y9a6" (leave a link to your tweet as your comment and make sure you do all the steps!)
2) Earn one additional entry by following this review blog publicly via Google Friend Connect.
3) Earn one additional entry by following my “regular” blog Honest & Truly! publicly via Google Friend Connect.
4) Like my blog on Facebook and let me know what name you used to like it.

Good luck!

In the interest of full disclosure, I was provided with a swimsuit by Lands End for review purposes. I received no compensation, and all opinions expressed are my own.