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Monday, November 28, 2011

You Can't Win if You Don't Play

My obsession with entering sweepstakes dates back to 8th grade when I entered a drawing at school to win a life size poster of Michael Jordan and WON!  From then on, if there is a chance to win anything from a cruise to an Orbit stroller to an Amazon gift card, I will enter.  Most people don't enter because they figure the chances of winning are slim to none...which they are, but someone has to win and why shouldn't that person be you?

Every month I enter a series of sweepstakes on Luckymag.com where they give away items from the issue.  This month, I actually one one of the drawings for a $250 shopping spree at LA MER Collections.  To be honest, I didn't remember entering the La MER giveaway, but was pleasantly surprised when I visited the website and saw all of the beautiful custom designed watches.  These aren't your everyday watches.  They are funky wraparound leather watches that I wouldn't typical purchase for myself, which makes the shopping spree even sweeter.  Earlier this year I also won a drawing for a free Taggies toy for Piper and also a gift card for Cold Stone Creamery.  

My all time big win was in 2008 when I wrote a two hundred word essay contest on BestWeddingSites.com to win an all expense paid luxurious honeymoon in Jamaica.  Most people get scared off by essays, but two hundred words is literally a paragraph.  When they called to tell me I won, my skeptical side kicked in and I thought it was a scam because it sounded too good to be true.  Turned out to be an amazing honeymoon.  We had a private villa, 24-hour room service, gourmet meals, water sports and spa services.  The only thing we paid for was a manicure I added onto the spa services.

The moral of the story is that you can't win if you don't play.  Who knows what you could win!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Tiny Shopping Carts and Two Buck Chuck

Having a husband is great preparation for having a baby.  It's amazing how similar the "big kid" and "little kid" can be at times.

I usually enjoy going grocery shopping by myself.  As nerdy as it sounds, grocery shopping by myself is almost therapeutic.  I can aimlessly walk up and down the aisles and take my time choosing items.  This weekend I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe with both Ryan and Piper in tow.  Can you see the writing on the wall?

We weren't in the store five minutes when Piper was trying to stand-up in the cart and Ryan was MIA.  When I finally caught sight of Ryan, his arms were full of items, none of which were on our list or that we needed.  Three types of cheese, a six-pack of beer I've never heard of, sunflower seeds, pretzel bread and a package of scones somehow found their way into my cart.  Don't get me wrong, all of these items are tasty.  However, I try to stick to a weekly shopping budget, which was quickly getting out of hand.  This was the first of numerous disappearances that resulted in more items appearing in the cart.

Simultaneously, Piper is screaming "dadada" and once again trying to climb her way out of the cart as my leg gets rammed with one of those tiny little kid carts that Trader Joe has.  Those are the WORST invention ever.  I have never experienced a trip to Trader Joe where a child hasn't hit someone with the tiny cart or knocked down a display.  Don't even get me started on the chaos surrounding the sample counter in the back of the store.

By the time we were ready to check, I made my own addition to the cart - a nice bottle of Two Buck Chuck.  After spending $35 over what I had originally planned, we made it home where my big kid and my little kid had lunch and went down for naps.  

What did I do, I hightailed it to Target where I could sip a non-fat gingerbread latte from the in-store Starbucks and finally wander the aisles, all by myself.