My Humble Apologies…Your Winners And Easter Activities..

I don’t know if there is any punishment in the blog world for being late on giveaway announcements but I do apologize for my tardiness. We had some last minute guests arrive this weekend to spend a couple days with us and leaving my guests to blog just isn’t going to happen folks…so I do apologize but my guests came first…I hope you understand!!

I have to tell you the number generator on Random.org was a lot easier then I thought. I simply put in the amount of comments I had on my giveaway and clicked to find a number…I did this three times as I promised three winners…and here they are:

Winner of the beautiful jewelry set and knitted hat is:

Comment number 8 which was left by Sylvia at Hjemmebest. Congratulations Sylvia!!!

Winner of the adorable child’s dress is:

Comment number 21 was left by Caroline..who truly believed this dress would look adorable on her English Rose….and now I guess we will find out!! Congratulations Caroline!

Finally, the winner of the set of photo cards from me and an extra surprise is:

Comment number 28 which was left by Jaymo! Congratulations!!

I’d appreciate it if all my winners would send me their addresses privately to the following email address: dinjente@hotmail.com and we will get your prizes out to you as soon as possible ok?

Thanks again everyone for participating and thank you again to the wonderful ladies who volunteered the beautiful prizes!!! You are the best ladies!!!

So we have had Easter vacation since last Tuesday and it has been great to not have a clock we have to follow….just do our own thing. I have had a little more time to try out some recipes which I have been wanting to try. I don’t really have recipes but I will share what I did as I pretty much made these up as I went…I had seen these recipes other places but either didn’t have everything needed or only remembered parts of the recipe, so I just made up the rest of it myself…never the less…here we go…

The first lunch, I toasted bread by brushing the bread with some olive oil and rubbing fresh garlic over the bread…

I added some brie cheese to each slice and then I took some yummy asparagus and dipped them in egg and then in bread crumbs and garlic pepper and then lightly fried them in a pan and added them on top of the brie. I had a couple garlic shrimp left in the fridge so I put them on the one bread but not the second. You could use any kind of cheese for this really, camberet would be nice, blue cheese would be good too. I have also seen people roast pine nuts and put them on here and when I was done with this lunch I thought next time some honey drizzled lightly over the top here would be good too…the only limitation here is fantasy folks…

I had taken out chicken breasts to make chinese one night but realized I had taken out one too many breasts…so what to do with the last one? The Captain and I were home alone for lunch so I decided to whip up some chicken curry salad. I lightly fried up the chicken breast in some olive oil under a lid so the moisture would stay in the chicken breast. I put more garlic pepper on (my favourite spice for the moment) each side and when it was done I chopped the chicken up into tiny pieces and added some chopped yellow pepper, onion, and cucumber. Mayonaise, a little aioli, and curry powder. Blend well and put into flour tortillas with some lettuce and cherry tomatoes for a scrumptious chicken curry wrap!

Friday we had agreed to meet some friends down at the beach to grill hot dogs and just enjoy a beautiful day together. I had made some homemade cinnamon rolls to bring along for everyone and they were a hit!

Some people (eh hem…the Captain) couldn’t put theirs down even while grilling hot dogs!!!

It was a beautiful day…one of many we have been having here on Helgøya. I am completely convinced we will be having a fabulous summer because the spring is so wonderful..just like the year we moved in here.

My little friend Marte and I were checking out a Viking burial grave site which was next to where we were grilling…there is apparently three such sites here on the island…kind of weird to think there are a bunch of Vikings buried under those stones but also kind of neat to see how they were buried and such a beautiful view the people who buried them gave them…

My buddy, Marte, is an expert climber for her age…I wish I had half her energy and looked this cute when I was climbing…but I know I don’t have her energy and I know for sure I don’t look this cute climbing…

It was a great afternoon on a beautiful day with wonderful friends…I was so grateful for everything…

Our guests this weekend were The Capitan’s cousin and her family. They were going to pick their son up who was visiting friends in Eidsvoll and decided to go down a couple days early and spend some time with us and we are so glad they did. They are the kind of people that you can say, “make yourself at home” and they do…there is no stress, you can be together and talk and laugh or just be together in quietness…they love to eat like we do and so it is a joy to make food for them. We ate turkey, salad, broccoli salad, waldorf salad, mashed potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, and gravy for dinner yesterday (Easter Sunday) and carrot cake for desert. YUM YUM! They have a Duck Tolling Retriever female who was with them. She and Jenny hung out together all weekend and I think Jenny thought it was great to finally get a fur visitor who was her size and not bigger!!

Yesterday afternoon we got a call from a friend of Julia’s who she was suppose to be out with. He told us Julia had had an accident on a cross bike she borrowed from another friend. He said it looked really bad, she was awake and moving around but we should come and get her. We had been drinking a little so we sent Sarah to pick her up and the boys were going to bring Julia’s moped back to the house. When Julia got here she was crying and scared. Terribly shaken by what happened and still in shock. She was all scraped up with blood on her hands and legs from big scrapes and cuts and dirt and parts of last year’s field crops in her pony tail. She doesn’t remember anything from what happened. Her last memory is of the tires starting to wobble and shake and that is it. According to the boys, she was racing around the field on a 250cc Cross Bike and apparently lost control and flipped head first over the bike and onto the ground. She just lay there completely motionless for a few moments until the guys got over to her and they said when she woke she was disoriented and wandering around talking nonsense. She had thankfully been wearing a helmet but that is the only protective gear she had on her. Otherwise she was in shorts and tennis shoes!! The boys said it was the scariest thing they had ever seen and they were just sure she had been killed…

As a parent your first concern is- is she ok? When you find out that…you start to get angry…how stupid could she have been to say yes to borrowing the bike and not having any protective gear except a helmet? And how stupid of the kid who owned the bike to let her borrow it without any protective gear….there are a lot of things to be angry about but we are hoping lessons were learned from everyone who was involved and there will never be a repeat of this accident. Julia was truly lucky and I choose to believe my mom was watching over her which is why she came out of such an ugly accident as well as she did. Time will tell if my adventure seeking daughter learned her lesson or not…

Ok folks, I am going to let you go. I am still using my old computer to blog and fix photos as I haven’t quite figured out the mac yet…I am still trying though…so maybe one day I’ll post my first mac blogpost but for now this will have to do!

Enjoy your Monday everyone!!!

Until next time my friends…..

Mac Attack

This has definitely been a long week so far full of ups and downs. It began Saturday when the Captain and I were going to go to a party here on the island. A Venners Venner fest which loosely translated means Friends Friend party. A couple is given a table and asked to invite 8 other couples to their table. Dinner is served and wine and jokes are told, everyone gets in a great humor and then they remove the tables bring out the band and everyone dances, drinks, and makes merry all night long! They really are quite fun evenings but I’ve become such an old fuddy duddy that I could be happy with just the meal and drinks and jokes part and then call it an evening….but ok….enough with that…my darling Julia did my hair that evening and I was so impressed…she made my otherwise uninspiring shag look pretty nice…don’t you think?

Around midnight I got this horrible pain in my stomach area but a little higher up, right under my breast area….I have to admit I thought it was gas…can I say that on here?? Well, I did…so I grabbed the Captain and said let’s walk a bit….away from the party….thinking I’d release said pressure and be fine again…but no doing….I got worse on the walk and we ended up calling Sarah to come pick us up. As soon as I got home and crawled into the house I knew I was having a gall stone attack. Nasty horrible attacks…hoping it wouldn’t get too bad, I crawled into bed without even saying goodnight to Sarah and found a position where I got some relief and fell asleep. Obviously when you can find a position where you get some relief the attack isn’t that  bad but it still hurts. I woke in the morning thinking the worst was over but still felt uneasy in my stomach area…I had some breakfast and after that got my second gall stone attack, this time it was the mother load I think…I seriously thought I was going to die, or would have preferred to die over the pain I was feeling. I can’t even begin to describe it but those of you who have gone through a gall stone attack know what I’m talking about. Thankfully the stone must have passed because the pain eased up and outside of being totally exhausted after being in such pain for close to an hour I felt fine. I felt like I still had a knot in my stomach but no pain like I had experienced so I figured it was just my body slowly coming down from the pain it was in…Monday morning I woke to go to work still feeling that knot in my stomach but determined to go to work as it was Easter holiday for many and I knew we wouldn’t have very many at work and I didn’t want to leave them hanging with my job on top of theirs. But I felt unwell all morning and told everyone I was going to head out of there as soon as I was done serving and cleaning up from lunch. Well, talk about timing, just as I was loading the last of the dishes in the dishwasher at work I started getting another attack. Managed to drive home but felt like I was driving while in labor or something…leaning back as far as I could, waddling out of the car and into the house…it was horrid..but again, not the pain I had on Sunday thank GOD….once home the pain started to ease up again and went away and I used the rest of the day to rest as I was totally finished physically. Tuesday I awoke feeling WONDERFUL!!! No pain, no knots, no nothing and that was a fabulous feeling after three days of pain and exhaustion. Time to celebrate!!! For a long time I’ve been eyeing a couple things that I feel are important investments…the first is a macbook…

I’ve heard from people who use Mac that they are much more stabile then a regular PC and less likely to get infected by viruses…which is extremely positive when I think that I hardly download anything, I think I’m a relatively safe surfer on the net and yet I run into all kinds of problems with my computer which irritate me. I’m hoping to get into school this fall and wanted something to carry me through the school years…so with tax money on it’s way in October…a new macbook was purchased….YEAH….but with that said, I’m very technically challenged and I’m trying to figure everything out which is taking it’s time. I’ve heard once I go Mac I’ll never go back…which is very encouraging, I just need to make sure I can do the things I love to do on the Mac, like edit my photos (at the moment I’m downloading a trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 program) and blog. I have been using Windows Live Writer to write my posts but I’m thinking I won’t be able to do that with the mac since Windows is a PC program…so I’ll probably have to go back to writing my posts through blogspot unless anyone can suggest a writing program I can use on mac for my blog??

The second investment we made yesterday is one that is long overdue….16 years ago when we moved to Norway we were sleeping on a foam mattress. That’s what the majority of Norwegians slept on back then…the big spring mattresses that we have in America were practically unheard of…or rather just arriving here in Norway…so as we were getting ourselves in crazy debt I insisted we had to get ourselves an American bed because I could not sleep on foam….so a Svane mattress was bought 16 years ago and has been our faithful friend every night since….until yesterday….when we went out and found ourselves this little baby…

I knew our old bed was….old….well formed after our bodies…I knew I was having more and more restless nights of sleep probably because anything called support in the bed was gone….but I had no idea how BAD the old bed really was until we spent the night in this new one and not only were we supported but we were comfortable and we slept like babies all night long!!! Hopefully we won’t keep this bed for 16 years like the last one…but for the years to come that we will have it, it’s a wonderful investment!!! It’s a Jensen brand bed 150x200cm. We use to have a 180x200cm bed but decided our next one would be smaller…nothing wrong with a little snuggle in bed…especially when I see the Captain so seldom- hehehehhe… and we actually feel we have plenty of space so we don’t have to sleep so tightly if we don’t want too. Plus our room is small, so this allows us more room. We’re sooooo happy with this purchase!!!

I’m now off from work until the Wednesday after Easter which is wonderful! We have several things planned for the next days…today I’m taking my camera out to photograph the new baby calves that are starting to arrive at my neighbour’s….I saw a completely white one out there the other day…so cute…I know they aren’t mine to name, but I think he or she should be called snowball….that’s what they looked like…I’m also going to try and capture some of the beautiful spring flowers popping up in the woods around here.

Friday we’re grilling along the beach with some friends and Saturday both girls are working…Sunday I’ll make an Easter Turkey with all the trimmings…I know lamb is probably more appropriate and it’s good too but I got an extra turkey at Christmas and decided we’d have it for Easter..so that’s that…I’m also hoping to bake a little while I have off. Not just sweet stuff…but some good breads…if I come up with something good, I’ll share it with ya ok?

Hope you all have a wonderful Easter…I’ll blog again as soon as I can probably from my new mac, if I can figure it out. Be patient with me if my blog looks funny for awhile until I figure everything out….

Until next time my friends…

Random Thoughts

Hey everyone!! Finally a chance to write again, the weeks seem to fly and that is a good thing and a bad thing sometimes. Why didn’t time fly as fast when we were kids? I remember as a kid thinking if only I could be older…if only it was this or that time….and now I’m wishing time would slow down a little…ever feel that way?

First, thanks for all the newbies who have stopped in via my Jumungus Giveaway! A huge thanks to Misha over at From My Front Porch In The Mountains who has sent a bunch of great visitors my way and to Monica over at Lunamon Hobby Blog for also promoting my giveaway both on her blog and on facebook! Monica is also one of the great ladies who has donated some of the great prizes you can win…she’s very talented and her blog is definitely worth visiting..I’m sure you’d find something you love!! I’ve ordered a crocheted blanket I saw over at Mia's Landliv which looks like this..

I could never make something like this which is why I need Monica to do this for me…I know I know, many of you are probably thinking, “Oh yes you can Amy if you put your mind too it, you can do anything you want…” But seriously folks….I couldn’t do this…I was born with two left hands when it comes to hand crafts like this…I also have a serious lack of patience for activities like this…so no, I need someone like Monica who lives and breathes for her hand craft hobbies to help me on this one!! I’ll post a photo of my blanket when it’s done but this is a lot of work so it will be awhile but you know what they say right?….All good things to those who wait!!!

I need to clear up something also…you DO NOT need a blog to enter my giveaway…I didn’t realize people misunderstood that until I got a comment about this…all you have to do is leave a comment and how I can get hold of you if you win- it’s that simple! If you have a blog you can get more chances to win by announcing my giveaway on your blog and becoming a follower of my blog. But you don’t have to have a blog in order to enter…like I said, this is open to anyone anywhere in the world!!

This week I have completed my first week of my new work schedule. I had been working 4.5 hours every day Monday til Friday but now I am working three days for 7.5 hours and I get two days off plus the weekend. I LOVE this work schedule so much better..I love having more days off to do whatever I want and I feel like I am able to enjoy my job so much more when I have more time to do the things I want like bake and chat with the kids…I made some Orange Rolls which I called Appelsin Snurrer or Sunshine Snurrer (Snurrer means rolls in Norwegian and Appelsin is Orange in Norwegian) for the kid’s Easter lunch they are having today…

You can find the recipe HERE…there is also a nifty metric converter here for my European readers you can just choose the metric measurements and it will give you the measurements for this recipe in the metric system. You can also change the portion sizes here. I use AllRecipes.com a lot, there is always lots of interesting recipes to try out here!

These turned out really good. I made one batch totally milk free by using lactose free milk and butter that was milk and salt free. Then I made a batch with the milk and salt free butter but regular light milk and both turned out great. For the icing I used powdered sugar, vanilla sugar and orange juice from the oranges I used in the recipe. This was very fresh and a nice change to regular cinnamon rolls…my boss and some of the employees got to try some yesterday and I got thumbs up the whole way around, so that was nice, hope the kids like it today!!!

We’ve been in Sweden also recently….nothing like a trip across the boarder for some cheap meat and other goodies we can’t get here in Norway, like ROOT BEER and Dr. Pepper (in big bottles and cans)

Sarah wasn’t with us as her boyfriend is on leave from the military so every single free minute is spent with him…yes, I’m feeling her seperation from us and it hurts…but it’s life…so I’m trying to be ok with it….just glad they aren’t all pulling away at the same time, I’d probably have a lot of trouble dealing with that….

Still…..there is someone missing in this picture and that is sad…

We managed to have a good time though, the four of us…we went crazy in the shoe stores at this shopping center and bought several pairs for all of us…generally we buy one pair a piece every once in a blue moon and wear them until they are falling apart…so it was fun to buy several pairs and can change them out so maybe they last a little longer. Don’t ask me why we have only gotten one pair in the past..probably because they are so expensive if you’re going to buy shoes here in Norway of any quality and when there are five of us to buy for…that can very quickly be close to 5000kroner for good shoes…WOW!! You can buy many other things that are more interesting then shoes for 5000kr so there is something in me that won’t allow me to spend that kind of money on shoes…so we had fun this day..

I’ve bought in some fresh flowers which smell devine…the kids smelled them and said they smell like summer…it’s true…a wonderful smell which I’m hoping we’ll smell more and more outside as the days go….

I don’t have any Easter decorations up yet, but this little chicken and yellow Begonia plant had to come home with me also to give us a little Easter feeling…

While some of us here in the house are laying around being lazy like Stuart here…

Others are trying to change their lifestyle and become healthier which is not easy!!! I’ve been exercising consistently for a few months now and I’m seeing results but slowly. Mostly because I’m not wanting to give up all the foods I love, so I’m trying to find a balance with what I eat or actually how much I eat vs what I burn off…so it’s a one step forward and two step back game which sometimes irritates the crap out of me, but when I want my cake and eat it too…I have to understand that there will be this dance until I figure out the balance for me.

Today I’m going to attempt to bike to my workplace, even though I have free today, just to see how long it takes. It’s about 11km one way…and there is a lot of hills and a bridge to cross…I’m nervous and I’m trying to build myself up to do this…part of me wants to just say to heck with it and go for a walk with a dog but another part wants to do this…so I’m going to try…ugh…wish me luck will ya???

Tonight we’ll be having a birthday party for Thomas, a little late but this is the first chance we’ve gotten to have it. Tomorrow Stig and I are going to a party here on the island and Sarah is driving us and picking us up…what a luxury with a kid who can drive!!! Sunday we’re going to an antique auction near our home…hopefully I’ll find some interesting things and actually be able to get them and show them too you next time…I’m always amazed how much money old people have at these things!!! They are buying everything left and right!!! You’d think they had enough antiques wouldn’t you???

I’m going to leave you with a cute joke I heard the other day…

Wittle Wabbit

A little girl walks into a pet shop and asks in the sweetest little lisp: "Excuthe me, mithter, do you keep wittle wabbits?"
And the shopkeeper gets down on his knees, so that he's on her level, and asks: "Do you want a wittle white wabby or a soft and fuwwy bwack wabby or maybe one like that cute wittle bwown wabby over there?"
The little girl puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and says in a quiet voice: "I don't fink my pyfon really giveths a thit."

Hahahaha…that makes me laugh…hope you’re smiling too!!!

Until next time my friends….

Fabulous Odds….

Hello everyone!!! Have you missed me? Well, I have to be honest with you, I’ve been slightly shocked over the lack of response to my Jumungus Giveaway so I’ve been unsure what to write? I thought for sure there would be a lot more interest in all these lovely prizes from such creative and talented women! Even if you don’t wear a size 4 child’s dress you might know someone dear and near who could wear it and then you’d be the wonderful aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, or cousin who gave them this gift without any cost out of your pocket!!

At this point the few who have joined my giveaway are going to have fabulous odds since I’m picking 3 winners!!! However, it’s not to late, click the link above and join my giveaway where I’ll draw 3 lucky winners the 24th of April!!

I might get around to stopping in at the Skafferiet later today to look for my little surprise I’m going to add with my photo cards I’m giving away. Skafferiet was one of 5 best country style stores here in Norway as rated by the popular Norwegian magazine, Lev Landlig. Charlotte has turned a tiny little house on her family farm into a cozy bakery/cafe and gift store with interior items, designer clothing and accessories, and many other adorable items for your home and garden. Not that anyone needed another excuse to come to Helgøya, for the nature and beauty around here should have been enough, but now there is one more great reason to visit this beautiful island in the heart of the Mjøsa. I highly recommend anyone visiting this area of Norway to stop in and visit Charlotte and her charming little country store and cafe here on Helgøya!

Ok, this photo was taken April 9th 2010.

And this photo was taken this morning, April 9th, 2011. While the top photo is a gorgeous winter morning photo…the bottom photo represents what I hope will be the start of warm spring and summer months to come…the snow is melting with record speed here and considering just a couple weeks ago we had gotten a huge snowfall which turned everything completely white again and sunk my usually cheerful and positive attitude right into the ground…this is amazing and SO positive!! I keep thinking back when we took over this house on the 29th of April 2007…it looked like this…

And that first summer we moved in here was out of this world fantastic!!! It was exactly how we dreamed living in the eastern part of Norway would be like after years on the weather turbulent western coast. So we’re hopeful that this summer will be like that summer. After that first initial beautiful summer we have had two summers of crappy weather where we had only a couple weeks of weather that reminded us of the first summer here and then rains….which reminded us of summers on Averøy. Weird part was while we were getting rainy summers here, Averøy was getting the summers eastern Norway should have had….you just have to love global warming don’t ya??

The Captain made me this lovely planter box at the end of last summer and I’ve asked him to make me one more to have on the veranda…I’ve thought about planting some veggies up here but maybe you all have a better idea what I could plant in here? I’m not a gardening expert so I appreciate any advice..this is really deep and it’s lined with plastic..so let me know what you think I should put in here and eventually another planter box like this…I can’t wait until I can start getting some plants to fill my pots with and see what has survived the winter in my garden. We have tons of work to do in the yard but it’s a good type of work because the results are usually so beautiful!!

I’m off to the gym…I’ve been a very good girl lately and it’s Saturday which is my challenge day…I allow myself anything I want to eat this day but I’ve been bad the weekends before because I usually start my weekend with something good Friday night….then there is Saturday which is suppose to be my free day but I usually bake or something which means there is usually good stuff still left in the house on Sunday…which has to be gone by Monday..ugh…horrible cycle there…so I’m trying..it’s a constant process to change to a healthier lifestyle…I don’t want to give up anything and yet I want to live healthier…I’ll do a post about what I’m doing later on and maybe you all have some healthy tips for me??

Until next time my friends…have a great weekend and be sure to join my giveaway!! The odds are fabulous!!!!

JUMUNGUS GIVEAWAY!!!

Jumungus you’re all thinking, what the heck is that? That’s Amy’s word for HUGE…I mean outta this world HUGE! You didn’t know Amy had her own language did ya? hahahaha!

Well, besides having my own language, I have some very talented friends who have graciously agreed to be a part of this giveaway so you have the opportunity to win some wonderful prizes!!!

First we have Monica over at Lunamon Hobby Blog. I met Monica because she and her family are dog crazy like we are. They have a kennel where they breed not only these beautiful Lion dogs, Leonbergers, but also Eurasier and Howvart. You can visit their kennel pages HERE. Unfortunately both of these sites are just in Norwegian so for my foreign visitors I hope you have the google translate option at the top of your browser!

Monica is a lady with many talents, knitting, crocheting, beading and jewlery making AND she loves to bake- much to her husband’s dismay as he’s trying to lose weight. (Which he is doing a great job with!) I highly recommend everyone to take a peek at Monica’s work over at her blog and if you see something you just have to have I’m sure Monica would be happy to sell it to you and if you see something you like but wish you could have it in another color, she is a very flexible lady and will gladly make you whatever you wish in the colors you want! Monica also has a facebook page you can check out here:Lunamon Facebook Group

From Monica’s collection I’m going to be giving away the following:

This gorgeous necklace and earrings set. This set is in turqoise and pink with white pearls and swarovski crystals!!

A very cute knitted hat like the ones pictured above. I have one just like it but mine is purple and I love it! It’s perfect when you need something on your head to keep you warm but you don’t need to bundle down completely!!

I’m sure by now you’re all thinking, WOW, just these prizes alone make this a great giveaway…BUT WAIT!!! I’m not done yet!!!

You see I have even more talented friends who wanted to be a part of this giveaway!!! I work with Linda and she came to work in an adorable fleece dress once with a cute heart on it…then I started noticing the little girls at work in the same adorable dresses…then it became clear to me that Linda makes these dresses! She has them in all the colors of the rainbow and can make them for babies all the way up to women’s sizes. You can visit Linda’s blog HERE.

Again, I’m sorry to my foreign visitors but Linda’s blog is only in Norwegian! However, I’m sure if you wanted a dress from Linda she can speak English well enough to make an order for you!

For my giveaway Linda has generously donated the following dress in size 4 years old. (Note, this is a small size, so this isn’t for the biggest 4 year old but perhaps a big 2 or 3 year old.)

You can also find Linda on facebook but I don’t think she has a page just for her dresses yet. Be sure and visit Linda’s blog and tell her Amy sent ya!!

I told you guys this was JUMUNGUS!!!! I mean it’s beyond huge!!! GUESS WHAT THOUGH??? It doesn’t stop here!!!!

What kind of hostess would I be if I didn’t give you something personally from me? Now I don’t sew, I don’t knit, I don’t know how to make jewelery, and if I baked you something and sent that I don’t think you’d really want it when it finally got to you….hahahaha…but I do have some cards I can give you with photos I took from this beautiful island I live on…

And knowing myself well enough I’m sure I’ll add a little surprise along with these cards…what that will be is going to have to remain a surprise until the winner gets his or her package in the mail but I aim to please so I’m sure whoever gets this prize will be happy!

Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, will there be only ONE lucky winner here??? Are you kidding?? There are too many wonderful prizes here for just one lucky person…so for this giveaway we will have not one, not two…but THREE winners!!!

Here is how you can take part in my giveaway:

1. Leave a comment below telling me what your favourite hobby is and how I can get hold of you if you win(if I can’t get hold of you, we have to give your prize to someone else!). = 1st chance/ 1 Lodd

2. Become a follower of my blog and let me know you’ve become a follower by leaving another comment. = 2nd chance/ 2 Lodd

3. Announce my giveaway on your blog and let me know you’ve done this by leaving yet another comment. (you can borrow whichever picture you’d like above to use for announcement purposes). = 3rd chance/ 3 Lodd

We’ll pick the winner Easter Sunday, 24. April. 2011. I’m going to try and use that random.org number picker to pick the winner, I’ve been reading up on how that works and if I can figure it out then I’ll do that…otherwise it’s going to be the old fashioned way (out of a hat)…but for you I’m going to try and become modern and figure out that number picker thing. We want to do things as honest as possible around here!!! And listen up folks- this giveaway is open up to anyone around the world…so don’t be afraid to enter if you live in China, Africa, USA, Finland, Russia, you name it…you have just as much of a chance to win as anyone else….we do not discriminate around here!!!

Don’t forget to visit Monica and Linda’s blogs and check out all the wonderful things they have for sale. If you need help contacting any of them (for my foreign readers) let me know and I’ll be happy to help you!

Have a wonderful Sunday my friends…the Captain is returning from Brazil this week and I’m so happy and so ready for him to get back. He’ll be home until the 16th of May, so we’re going to enjoy the weeks of spring with him and hope by the time he leaves all the snow is gone and everything is green and blooming!!!

Until next time my friends….