Christmas Giveaway

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Okay, so I told you it was coming, now here it is: my Christmas giveaway.

The prize this time, rather than being a specific hair comb or barrette, is a gift certificate to my Etsy shop. To be exact, it is a $15 gift certificate. To make sure that the winner receives the items they choose in time for Christmas, this contest will be closing on December 16th at midnight.

The rules are simple and easy to follow. All you have to do is go to my Etsy shop, find your favorite item that's up for sale and come back here to this post and tell me in a comment. This will get you one entry. You can do this twice if you so choose (separate comments, please) to get a second entry.

For an additional five entries, you can blog about this contest with links back to this post and my Etsy shop. Just make sure to leave a comment here to let me know that you did this.

The winner will be chosen on December 17th and an email will be sent out immediately following, so please make sure to put your contact information in the entry. If the winner does not reply within a few days, a new winner will be chosen.

Good luck to you all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wish you all a wonderful day, whether you're in the States or not. I also hope your day started off better than mine did ... there's something about sticking your hand into a half frozen turkey to pull out giblets that doesn't really lend itself to a good day.

Oh well. Things are looking up. My sister is doing most of the cooking and I don't have to make small talk with people I can hardly stand. Yay for moving away from family!

Curse You Aqua-Scum!!!

The week leading up to Thanksgiving should not be this difficult!

High stress levels do not a good vacation make. We've even decided to postpone moving into the new apartment until after Thanksgiving so that we're dealing with at least a little less stress.

All I can really say at the moment is that I'm getting very irritated and I don't like feeling this way. I'm not sure how many of you feel like this, but when I get this way, the littlest thing can set me off, even though I know I shouldn't take it out on the people that push my buttons without knowing it.

Luckily, I'm calming myself down by making Christmas presents ... and the promise of not having to deal with my mother for four straight days.

Gift Guides

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hoover and Dirt Devil. All opinions are 100% mine.

You know what I want for Christmas? ... Okay, well aside from the obvious I would like a new vacuum for the cleaning work that I do. The one that I'm using right now isn't horrible, but I want one with so much more power and dirt sucking capabilities. I'm tired of having to go over carpet three or four times to get it clean. I want a
Dirt Devil. I know I'm not the only one who wants a high class vacuum for Christmas, perhaps there's someone on your list who would like one, too.



Even if you aren't in the market for a Dirt Devil this Christmas, you should still take a look at the Dirt Devil Holiday Gift Guide. Despite the possibly misleading name, the guide is full of a goldmine of information about finding the best deals this holiday season so that your wallet doesn't feel the pinch as tightly.

There's some great sections in there about tips for online shopping for Cyber Monday, and even ways to focus your thoughts when shopping for him or for her. The guide even has over 300 websites with great deals for you to check out: for men, women, and children. It's your guide to one-stop shopping for the holidays -- without any of the hassle of traffic, long lines, or crowded malls.

Banging My Head Through the Wall

That's exactly what I feel like doing. Sure, I've got all the work done today that I need to turn in, but I still have a term paper about A Midsummer Night's Dream due tomorrow and it's less than half written. But I know what I'm going to say, and that's really half the battle. Right? Please agree with me.

Last night the craft club when about two hours longer than expected so I wasn't able to do a lot of school work before plonking down on my sleepless bed and trying to shut out consciousness. I was fairly effective, but I really didn't want to get up this morning. Oh well, I did, and I made it to school for my 09:00 class.

Yay for me. Yay for French.

Oh! And I'm very excited because I'm getting one of those lovely ornaments from Three Fate's Design that I was telling you about. My name twin and I shall trade. I'm so excited there's this big grin on my face that I can't make go away. I'm not really sure I want to, either.

I never hated Shakespeare before taking this class. My teacher is too enthusiastic and it, quite frankly, sucks. Not to mention it's kinda boring. Imagine that! The master of comedy and action and human psychology is boring!

And so I bang my head on the wall ... or just wish that I could.

New IZEA Program

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Sponsored Tweets. All opinions are 100% mine.

It seems like our economy here in the States is effecting everyone right now, no matter how well they were doing before. A little extra income is always a great idea. One of the great and easy ways to get a little extra income (especially around the holidays when our pocket books seem to be oh so shallow and the demand oh so high) is to monetize the things that you already do online.

If you're sitting at your computer right now saying, "Yeah? So what? I already do paid blogging and advertising. What else is there?" I'll tell you: sponsored tweeting. It's easy and painless to sign up for sponsored tweets by IZEA.

Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out if a paid advertising company is a scam or not, but with IZEA run things like SponsoredTweets.com I don't have to worry. IZEA is a very reputable company with nothing short of honorable business practices. Working for IZEA is great and I'm glad that they're expanding out of just blogs to include microblogging as well.

The whole thing works by setting your own price on how much you'd like to be paid for each tweet, and then the advertisers will give you offers that you can either accept or deny. It's completely user run and so easy to use I don't know why anyone with a Twitter account wouldn't sign up. At the very least it's a few more bucks in your pocket and hardly any hassle at all.

Move Ins and Moving On

Yesterday was a pretty great day for me: I finished the final touches of cleaning on an apartment so people can move into that sometime this week and work can get started on the apartment they're moving out of. ... And I filled out my W4 so that I am now officially a member of the crew here at our lovely apartment complex.

It's really nice to know that I don't have to keep looking around for a job anymore. I have one. And a place to live. And I'm surrounded by loving people who like me for who I am and not what I believe or what I can do for them. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that they enjoy the things I can do for them, but that's not contingent on our being friends.

Conditional friendship is not friendship at all. I guess that's a lesson I'm still learning.

I'm still having hard days. Sometimes the pain that bogs me down on the hard days seems heavier than the happiness that consumes me on the good days. But I haven't chopped off all my hair in frustration yet, so we'll see what happens next.