Giveaway Winners

The winners of the Oh Baby it's a Martha Stewart Giveaway are:

1. Anonymous said...

I also my home with a new born, 6 weeks old today, and can't wait to make crafts together!

2. Suzie said...

posted on FB

3. Anonymous said...

You can add me to the draw. Alexander is really enjoying doing crafts. I'm going to make a basket of supplies for him for Christmas.

4. Anonymous said...

Very Cute Sarah... Dante the Model helps to increase the WOW factor behind the amazing wonders of Martha Stewart!
Tracy O ;-)

5. Mya said...

Love it!

I will be contacting the winners for their information, so your prize packages can be sent out to you. Thank you everyone for entering the draw.

Startet Mommy Giveaway

My Friend Megan has a Blog called The Starter Mommy featuring money saving tips & freebies geared towards Moms & families. She is also hosting a giveaway. Please check it out here. She is giving away a $25 superstore gift care or a box of Huggies diapers.

Oh Baby it's a Martha Stewart Giveaway

I have been wanting to host this giveaway for a while, but a little adorable addition to the family arrived & I have been side tracked ever since. I have been busy trying to figure out what this little guy means to our lives. Now after a week at home we have kind of figured out a schedule, as scheduled as a newborn can be. I'm excited to finally have the opportunity to share these amazing products with you.

I have loved Martha Stewart from her first debut on cable TV. Her craft products have always been attractive, reliable, & unique. Once again Martha has released her seasonal Christmas craft supplies at Michaels, and the products are wonderful as always.

Here is Dante showing off the amazing Martha Craft supplies that are up for grabs.

I'm looking forward to using the treat boxes to give some homemade gifts. The divided Scandinavian treat boxes will be great for cookie swaps. In my opinion there are never enough uses for cello gift bags. The best part of the Martha Stewart bags & boxes are the included gift tags, tissue, & ribbon.

The berry & pine cone stickers are super cute & 3 dimensional. They will be fun to customize your Christmas package, used in Christmas/winter themed scrapbook pages, or to decorate your Christmas cards.

Glitter, what isn't more fabulous than glitter. I know what you are thinking. Glitter is for children. These days amazing things can be done with glitter especially the type of glitter Martha Stewart sells. It's a fine sanding type of glitter, not that chunky kindergarten craft project glitter. It can make plain ornaments into beautiful sparkly gems for your tree. It can also be use to liven up gift cards, & scrapbooking projects.

I never though I would fall in love with a set of paper punches. Martha Stewart is a genius. I have use paper punches in the past with only moderate success. I have never found them to work as well as I though they should & have had very little success creating a pattern with single punches becasue it's difficult to line up the punches so they are spaced evenly, & every time I end up either bunching up the punches at one end of the design, leaving too much space between the punches, or accidentally cutting into an adjacent punch. Martha has eliminated these problems by adding retractable wings to her punches which help line up your design for flawless punching every time. The punches can be use with our without the wings & all the wings fold to make the punches easy to store.

The Snow Flurry Punch Around the Page Sets has a corner & edge punch. The corner punch has two wings that can be pulled out singly, or together to allow you to punch inside or outside corners of folded cards.

The edge punch has designed wings that work with the corner punch that allow you to create seamless die cut borders on cards, gift tags, or scrapbook pages.

The Deep Double Edge Punch is incredibly beautiful. The wings on this punch line up perfectly creating a beautiful edge, or a continuous garland with ease.



The Giveaway:

5 winners will receive

· Punch Around the Page Sets (Snow Flurry)

· Berries & Pinecone Stickers

· Classic Christmas Glitter Packs

· Deep Double Edge Punch

· Scandinavian Snowflake compartment boxes

· Scandinavian Snowflake treat boxes

· Candy Caney Cello Treat Bags

To enter just leave a comment below by midnight (central time) on November 28th, & I will pick a winners by random number generator & post them on November 29th. Please leave your e-mail in your comment so I can contact you if you are a winner.

Want extra entries:
-Become a follower via RSS feed, or Blogger
-Share this giveaway on Facebook, or Twitter
-Share giveaway on your blog
(for each extra comment leave an additional comment for each activity to receive an extra entry)

Stay Tuned Holiday Giveaway Comming Soon!

For all my followers I will be posting HUGE Christmas Giveaway in the next week, so stayed tune.

Want HINT: She's the queen of Crafting, and all "Good things"

Craft time

I have been trying to get some crafting in while I still can. I love having my own craft area. It makes it so much easier to have a room that I can start projects/messes & leave them to continue another time without destroying the dining room table or living room. In our one bedroom apartment I didin't even have room for my sewing machine, so I had to sew at my parents, which was not conducive to spontaneous projects. Here is a list of a few projects I have been working on.

• I have been working on some taggie blankets for all of the cute new babes that have arrives in the last few months.

• A diaper clutch to help organize our diaper bag. (picture to be added later)

• Some nursery embellishments.

Squirrel for a modified Mobile.



Acorn for the same mobile

Finished mobile

• Curtains for Al's office & the baby's room.

• A wristlet to keep my things in the diaper bag & a new change purse that is large enough to keep money, ID, & some cards if I needed.

• Most recently some tomato pincushions I saw on the Martha Stewart website. as usual they didn't quite turn out like Martha's picture perfect crafts, but they make me smile every time I sew.
  

• I have a few other projects in mind, but we will have to see if I have time before our baby decides to arrive.
  

Lean Time

Reading several friends blog posts has inspired me to write this post. Being that any day now we will be starting the new, exciting, & scary challenge of being new parents. This challenge will also bring a huge cut in our income & struggles to make ends meet. I have been trying to find ways to conserve money during this next year.


I hope to channel my life growing up when we did not have lots of money, but had tons of fun. My parents was great at keeping us happy & entertained on little money. We made our own playdough, cooked most of our meals, went camping, & when money was good took trips down to Grand forks for shopping, or a flight out to visit our aunt in Vancouver. My mother was always good at coming up with crafts, & taking us on walks to the park & around the neighborhood.


I think that this was the reality for most families I knew growing up, I know it was for both of us. People didn't go out several time a week to eat, or travel multiple times a year, or buy huge expensive electronics & toys. Eating out was a treat, we made our own Halloween costumes & crafts, & travel was something you saved up for over the year or even several years. In fact this is how Al's Mom still chooses to live.

To prepare for these lean times I have been cooking dishes to freeze for easy & inexpensive meal when we have no time to cook. Stocking up on baby care products when they are on sale. I have been slowly putting money on my Starbucks card (my own guilty pleasure) to allow me the splurge on a fancy coffee every so often. I have purchased some Groupons, a site that offers discounts for local companies. I have joined blogs about saving money featuring freebies & coupons.

We have decided to go the route, of cloth diapering & I want to make our own baby food when the time comes. I'm hoping to revamp the back garden next spring & plant a veggie & herb garden. We have been composting like crazy in hopes of having some nice rich compost to add to our garden, & we have less guilt if we have veggies & fruit go bad, knowing that they are going to a new cause.

Then the always amazing & incredibly talented Sarah M. has posted an amazing story about conserving money while still eating delicious, & healthy food. 20 Tips: How to eat well for less money couldn't have come at a better time. It helped to remind me of some money saving tips & strategies that will come in handy over this next year. I have never heard of Food buying clubs until I read this post & think that this is something I am going to look into. I will certainly be referring back to this post during lean times to remind myself how to maximize my dollars.

Nursery Before & After

In an earlier post I promised a before & after of our nursery. At the time I gave a sneak peak of a project I had been working on for the nursery. So finally it's ready to be revealed. There are still some element that we are working on, but I'm afraid that I may not be able to share these photos with you if I don't post them now, since my due date is coming up soon, & at this point it could conceivably be any day now. Speaking of that I really have to get my bag packed.

Here are the Before Pics:
When we moved in, this room became a dumping area for any extra boxes. Good idea at the time, bad idea forgetting a nursery organized. This shot shows everything cleared out & ready for nursery prep. This corner will be the new home of the dresser/change station.



Here is the future home of the baby's crib. I would also like you to note the color in the room. All I can say is that the people who lived in this house before us really must have liked butterscotch. There are three rooms that were painted a butterscotch type color. The living room is luckily more on the pumpkin side, but the washroom upstairs is more of a peachy butterscotch color. That will be the next painting project. I can't wait until it's done, because it is UGLY.

Being that Al & I have decided not to find out if we are having a boy or girl, we needed a neutral nursery idea. I have also never been a fan of the traditional light blue or pink nursery. I am really not a Winnie the pooh fan. I have nothing against the books, TV shows, & movies, but I don't want to look at the rolly polly bear everyday. I have also never understood why nurseries have to be old fashioned & why they can not have a more modern look.

Years ago when I was watching one of the many reno shows I saw a nursery done in different shades of creams & reds. When it was time to plan our nursery, red was the first thing I suggested. I knew I wanted chocolate brown furniture, and I thought hat Squirrels would look really cute with the color scheme. The rest of the details just fell in place. When I mentioned to Al that I wanted to do the nursery in one of his favorite colors (red) & squirrels (his favorite animal), it wasn't hard to convince him. We decide to paint the wall a neutral light cream so when our babe grows up, they can have a blank slate to choose whatever theme they want , and the last thing I need is an over stimulated baby in a bright red room.

The final results:


The dresser/change station finally unpacked & in it's corner. We hope to put some art work on this wall, but haven't decided what we want yet. I was the first babe to sleep in this bassinet, & since then it was where my sister, cousins, family friends, & my new niece have spent their first nights.

The crib in it's alcove, with the first hint of the red accents. The first picture of the reworked mobile. Can you see the acorn from the sneak peak post?


The baby's view from the crib. I was not able to find window covering that I liked or matched our theme, so I decided to sew some curtains. I had a much different idea when I started the project, but I'm happy with how they turned out, & I my decide down the road to add some squirrel embellishments, & some red trim, but I can not decide, so for now we will live with them & decide what we think of them the way they are.

This red book shelf was original in my room as a girl. It started as a white bookshelf, then in my teens I decided I wanted all different colors of furniture, so I painted in purple, & now it has been transformed into a red bookshelf thanks to my mother & father.


We decided to put the glider out in the hall outside the nursery. To keep the open space in the nursery. Luckily we have a very wide hallway. Within 5 minutes of assembling the glider I took it for a test drive, & had a hour long, very comfortable nap.

Her is a close up of some of the squirrely details in the nursery:


Here is a close up shot of the finished Mobile. I haven't been able to get a proper shot of it yet, but it gives you the idea of the finished project.

One of two metal squirrel hook I found at Out of the Blue.

Another squirrel hook with a cute crochet hat our friend Becky made for the baby, & just happens to match the baby's snowsuit.

Once we have a few more of the details added to the nursery I will post an update, maybe by then there will even be a baby in the nursery, the best addition of all. My parents need a big THANK YOU for All the painting & decor help.