Giveaways!

Are you looking for a giveaway? My open and upcoming giveaways will be listed here:

Current:

LG 42" Smart TV Giveaway - Ends November 26


Future:

Blog Hops (Lots of different blogs each hosting their own giveaways)

12 Days of Gifts Galore - November 25 - December 6

Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas - December 1 - 15




Closed Giveaways
SPOOKtacular Giveaway Hop - Congratulations Janet!
Win $25 in Pampered Chef Products - Congratulations Jamye!
Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop - Congratulations Sarah!
Stuck in a Good Book Giveaway Hop - Congratulations Tracey!
Under the Sea Giveaway Hop - Congratulations Michelle!
Back to the Books Blog Hop - Congratulations Christy!
Cozy Up Your Home Giveaway Event - Ended

SPOOKtacular Giveaway Hop

I just found the opportunity to participate in a pretty fun looking Halloween themed giveaway hop in October.  I'm not quite sure what I want to do as my prize....

Seeing as Halloween is one of my absolute favorite Holidays, I have many fun ideas roaming through my head!!!  Make sure to come back in October for your chance to win!

The Review Wire will be hosting the "SPOOKtacular Giveaway Hop", which will run from October 1-15, 2012. Come celebrate Halloween 2012 with a hop filled with Spine Tingling, Bone Chilling, Frightfully Frightful Fun! All giveaways must be related to Halloween in some way. The giveaway can be costumes, candy, halloween make-up, clothes, party decor, gift certs to buy halloween products, hand-made decorations, spooky decorations...you name it.

 This FREE Event will run October 1-15, 2012 with a Prize Minimum of $25.00. For more details or to sign up visit The Review Wire.

Back to the Books Blog Hop - $10 Amazon GC!

This is an easy one, folks!  I love checking out other people's blogs, and blog hops are the way to go when you want to get eclectic.  My favorite kind, unsurprisingly, is a giveaway hop.  This awesome hop is hosted by I am a Reader, Not a Writer (one of my favorite book review sites), and Buried in Books, which was new to me.

I decided to participate because I love to read. I'm so thankful that I managed to pass the trait on to my daughter, whose favorite pastime is hanging out listening to Pandora and reading on her Kindle.  Life is good in the Brainerd House.  This hop is great because you have the chance to visit over 200 blogs offering book-related giveaway.  My choice is an Amazon.com gift card, because I'd rather let you pick out a book than restrict you to my choices. May I make a recommendation? Recently, I finished Deborah Harkness's novels A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night (the first two books in the as yet unfinished All Souls Trilogy).  They get two enthusiastic thumbs up, but you can get whatever you'd like - heck, feel free to buy some awesome Christmas DVDS (I recently expanded my collection with the help of Amazon's resellers).

Entering is simple, just complete the Rafflecopter form, and then, if you have time, check out some of the awesome other blogs!! And be sure to check out my other open giveaways!


a Rafflecopter giveaway



Make sure to check out the rest of the giveaways!!!

Cat Shaming? I don't think so.

I'm sure you've heard about the recent popularity of a fantastic web site devoted to "Dogshaming."  If, for some reason, you haven't - check it out - it's great.  I think what I like the most about it is that the dogs truly do look as though they're doing penance for their crimes against humans.

I've thought about all of the terrible traits of cats (this list is limited to cats that are currently living in my house):

• Eating so much that they vomit
• with a particular penchant for vomiting in places I am assured to step in it when I'm walking, barefoot to the bathroom at night, or
• vomiting on my bed, and then dragging the covers over it so I have a nice surprise when I go to snuggle in at night
• Peeing on laundry - generally, this is reserved for dirty laundry, but honestly, they don't really care
• Spreading cat litter on everything within two feet of the litter box, with the exception of their poop
• Scratching the walls, rather than pricey cat scratchers
• Attacking my mother
• Scratching screen windows to the point that I had to buy an air conditioner to keep it cool inside
• Knocking their water bowl over so that I get my socks wet

Wow.  If I did all of that, I would be SUPER ashamed, wouldn't you? 

My cats, however, are completely blase about the whole thing, and I suspect they laugh about me behind my back.  Why????

Fact of the day: Cats don't feel shame; they just feel awesome.

PS - I think some of this behavior is due to human tendancy to do embarrassing things like force them to wear Santa hats and stuff like that.

This earned me a nice, cold pile o' vomit in the bed

Win a Fandango Movie Pass!

If you're at all familiar with this blog, you know I'm hooked on movies.  Fact: I don't just love to watch them in my living room, I also like to watch them at a theater.

Recently, I won a code for a single movie ticket on Fandango - worth up to $12, and because there are no theaters in my area that sell tickets through Fandango, I thought I'd share it with one lucky reader!

Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below - come back daily - see if I've added any new entries, and get all of the available entries in!

*Note: I just had to adjust the form, I realized I'd put the wrong end date in - this giveaway ends on 8/31!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

What You Ought to be Watching on Netflix

Yes, it's almost 3:00 am - the fact of the matter is I am just a night (technically early morning at this point) person, and since I had surgery last month, and haven't had to wake up every weekday morning to go to work - my schedule has been slowly moving toward the nocturnal side; I return to work a week from Monday, so need to start weaning myself off of watching the sunrise.

My main form of entertainment while up all night is watching movies and shows on Netflix (surprise, surprise).

I happened upon a real gem tonight - it's called The Music Never Stopped, and is a newbie on Netflix.  This is the 'based on a true story" tale of a man and his father.  While I'm not usually a big fan of sentimentality outside of Christmas movies, this was incredibly well done.  My daughter just stumbled out of her room, claiming a shared case of insomnia, and I tried to describe the plot to her, this is the best summary I could come up with:

It's about a man who ran away from home when he was 18, in the late sixties.  His parents are contacted 20 years later, as he is in the hospital with a massive brain tumor.  The operate on the tumor, but it has caused permanent damage, largely to the part of the brain that processes and creates memories (the hippo-campus? I'm really not sure).  His father, who was the reason he ran away from home, reads about a professor in music therapy, and that's where the story really gets interesting. Only while he's listening to music, can the son connect with people, and he and his father develop an amazing relationship. Unsurprisingly, the movie has a fantastic soundtrack.

Yep - this one's a must-see.  

Rainbow Cake!

I have a major sweet tooth; this isn't a shocking revelation or anything, I've always had it.  Last night, Azi and I enjoyed a fantastic dinner at Kathy's new place (taco night, as usual), and I had it in my head that I wanted to make a cake.  I'd seen a great looking olden days recipe on a local blog through the Bangor Daily News - for something called "Harvard Cake" - apparently named after a person, not the college. This post was actually her first on the blog, aptly named Stop Thinking and Cook, but with the deliciousness, and easy recipe, I'm hoping it will be the first of many!

I started out just making the base white/yellow cake batter, but I wanted it to be prettier, so I took a little bit of the batter in three of my trusty pampered chef prep bowls, and mixed them with food coloring.  I then poured all of the plain batter into the pan, and put plops of colored batter all around, then swirled a knife through it to mix the colors:

The Batter, after I swirled it a bit

Following the recipe, I baked it 25 minutes, and took it out of the oven.  I resisted huge amounts of temptation to keep myself from snitching it before I frosted it.  

Baked cake (it came out a little flat, since I couldn't find my measuring spoons, and apparently didn't use enough baking powder)

The baked cake

While it was cooling, I whipped up the easiest butter cream frosting in the world (butter, vanilla, milk, and powdered sugar).  When the cake was (most of the way) cool, I frosted it with the plain, white frosting (fyi - I made the frosting very soft - if I had planned to just straight up frost it, I'd have probably added more sugar, to make it firmer, and I definitely would have let the cake cool all the way!).

Plain frosted blank slate

Then the fun began anew! I took the leftover frosting, and divided it into two prep bowls, mixed red food coloring in one, and blue in the other, then I dropped spoonfulls of the frosting on top of the cake, in a semi-pattern.

Getting ploppy with the frosting

The last thing I did was rinse off my little metal spatula, and drag it through the different dots.  My final result was one groovy looking rainbow cake! While I know I'll never be a professional cake decorator, it does make me pretty darn happy to be able to whip up something so whimsical in my kitchen on a Wednesday night!!!

My whimsical final product - delicious!