I Love Winning Giveaways!

Don't you? I am so excited that I won some awesome eye-candy recently!  I hope you win a new treat soon yourself -- have you entered my giveaway on Fantabulously Frugal? Win my handmade bobby pins for yourself or a friend just by choosing a favorite item from my shop, Stitching in Circles on Etsy!

I am so grateful to Beth at Stoney Creek Mercantile for sending me one of her adorable vintage berry baskets with a delicate and lovely antique quilt square as a liner. I won it in a giveaway she hosted at her blog, stoneycreekshops.com. It is perfect for storing all the bobby pins I just made!

Isn't it pretty? I love that she has found a great way to repurpose beautiful, very loved quilts.

I also won a beautiful set of silver earrings from Rebecca, who designs jewelry and sells it at www.rebeccaanneallen.com.  She also has a great blog... which is where I found the giveaway! Go check it out for yourself: rebeccaaccessories.blogspot.com/

These are my adorable new Rebecca earrings -- which just arrived! I was so excited to win Rebecca's give away.  I have great long earrings, but all my posts are really boring, so these are going to be a wonderful new addition to my small jewelry collection.

image via rebeccaallen.com

And my most recent win is the biggest! I won $100 gift certificate for some gorgeous, super modern art at www.mod-tots.com. WOW. The cool paintings are supposed to be for kids' rooms.... and I entered the giveaway thinking I would give it to a friend who just had a baby... but I love them! I am kind of tempted to keep it for myself.  I will probably cave and give it to my friend's newborn, though. I love the fox and the raccoon -- their pointy noses are so cute! And I am very interested to see what mystical creatures show up when they develop that section more. I think they could create some really cute modern elves.

Images below via mod-tots.com

I love this foxy fox!

Or should I choose this masked bandit?

I found these mostly through the blog Etsy Giveaways, which is a fantastic aggregate of handmade giveaways. If you are an etsy artisan who is giving away some of your beautiful creations, you should submit the giveaway to them. You might get a lot of people just swinging by for the freebie, but it certainly opens you to a winder audience, some of whom might even spend money later.

Skiing in Tahoe for Spring Break

Found on Flickr --  by Scott Thompson

I am so excited! My friend Kevin, a whip-smart fellow grad student in English, has invited me and some friends to stay with him for a five days at his boyfriend's gorgeous house in Tahoe. Yay Kevin and his retired-at-30-and-bought-a-house-in-Tahoe-because-he-invested-ridiculously-well-in-the-tech-boom boyfriend!

I haven't been skiing since I was like 16, when my mother sweetly took me, my high school boyfriend, and my best friend up to the mountains. My family used to go up to the snow every couple years before that, so I am hoping it's going to be more like riding a bicycle and less like html coding, which I am truly slow and stupid at when I haven't done it for several years. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see if I can stay upright while charging down mountains. I love the thrill of speed on the slopes, and I will just have to not eat much in order to be able to pay for the ski rental and lift tickets for as many days as possible.  Otherwise I'll have to go cross-country skiing, which is cheaper but  no fun at all, as in my opinion it's like walking, but harder, whereas downhill is more like

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!