I apologize: I’m a day late announcing the winner of my January giveaway. I’m super excited to have 8 more entries compared to last month. There was a total of 11 people who entered. People commented, tweeted, facebooked and blogged about the giveaway. What I did was make a list of the entries in the order they were received (if you notice below, I wrote little notes near their names for what types of entry- FB, comment, etc). Anyway…. the winner was one of my closest (real life) friends! I didn’t even think she read my blog, so this was very exciting. I call her my wife, so don’t be confused…Congrats Sarah!

I used an internet number generator to pick the winner:

And here is Sarah’s orginal entry (a comment on the blog!)

Hello Friends!

So I started a giveaway without actually deciding/posting what the prizes would be. I’m classy like that. Nonetheless… here are the fun gifts I’m giving away. I guess you could call this a Relax and Unwind giveaway. The winner will recieve:

• Bath and Body Works products which include an eye mask, hand lotion, fragrance mist and smoothing scrub
• Disolvable rose petals for the bath
• Exfoliating mittens
• Sex & The City DVD
• The book Broken by William Cope Myers (No, it’s not a white smudge at the top, that’s actually what the cover looks like)
• 

Now, I’d like to state for the record that these are a few of my favorite items. The Into the Wild products from Bath and Body Works is from their newest line, and the Bellini lotion is from their limited edition winter line. I am a Sex & the City fanatic, and I guess in my excitement, I purchased two of the DVDs instead of one. I swear by these exfoliating mittens. They are so much easier to use than one of those exfoliating towels or poofs, and takes up much less room in the shower. I’ve heard really great things about this book, so I bought it for my thesis semester, but I ended up having too many books for this semester, so this one didn’t make the cut. However, please let me know if it was good, and maybe I’ll read it after I graduate!

So that’s it, folks. You have until midnight EST on 1/29/12 to enter. A winner will be announced on 1/30/12. There are a few ways you can enter…

1. Leave a comment on this post (or on the original post) telling me what you enjoy most about starting a new year. I love new beginnings, and I’m always a fan of fresh starts.
2. Tweet about this giveaway. In order for the tweets to count, you must tag me @reinventingerin
3. Post about the giveaway on Facebook. For this to count, please come back and leave a comment on here telling me you did so.
4. Blog about it. If you share the giveaway on your blog, I will give you TWO entries. Just leave me a comment with the link to your blog post.

Alright folks, I mentioned last week that I really enjoyed my first giveaway that I did last month. I keep thinking about when I would do my next one, and what kind of goodies I would share with you guys.

I’ve decided to go crazy and do a last-minute giveaway this month. I’ll take some pictures tonight hopefully and post them on the blog so you know what kind of goodies you’re getting, but I promise fun stuff! (Update: The giveaway has been photographed and documented on this post!)

The giveaway starts NOW and you have until midnight EST on 1/29/12 to enter. A winner will be announced on 1/30/12. There are a few ways you can enter…

1. Leave a comment on this post (or the photo post) telling me what you enjoy most about starting a new year. I love new beginnings, and I’m always a fan of fresh starts.
2. Tweet about this giveaway. In order for the tweets to count, you must tag me @reinventingerin
3. Post about the giveaway on Facebook. For this to count, please come back and leave a comment on here telling me you did so.
4. Blog about it. If you share the giveaway on your blog, I will give you TWO entries. Just leave me a comment with the link to your blog post.

Good luck everyone! I will try to get pictures taken of the prizes and post it this evening.

There is a lot I would like to do here on this ol’ blog. Like, for example post more often… I can’t fault myself though. I successfully completed NaBloPoMo in December of 2011, and I can understand that after posting every single day for the month, there is only so much I can write about afterward.

It seems like I always want to do a year-end recap, but never get around to it on here. I’m going to have to work on that. Who knows, maybe in February I’ll share my highlights of 2011! I always get to things late, but you know, I’m okay with that. There are no rules on the blog. If I want to post a recap of 2008 on here, I don’t see why I can’t do that either.

I’m lucky to live near one of my friends from my MFA program (who happens to be in the same semester as I am!), so we try to meet weekly to help each other with the semester. I wish we did this during our first two semesters, because I can’t stress how helpful it is to meet with her. Last night I was worried about what I was going to discuss. I have so much to write this semester (it’s my thesis semester), but I didn’t have any ideas really before she came over. When we meet, we talk about our ideas and we help flesh them out. Anyway, when she left last night, I had three super fleshed out essay ideas. How amazing is that?!? I can’t stress how helpful it was to have her help last semester, and this one is the big one, so I’m even more grateful for her now.

Hmm, what else is on my to-do list for the blog? Well, I’d like to do another giveaway. That was fun. My first giveaway was this past December, so I think next month I’ll have giveaway #2! Keep your eyes posted.

I’m also inspired by the marvelous Kate at Suburban Sweetheart to start posting more “reviews” here on the blog. There are a lot of products, and also customer service, that I think are both good and bad, and I’d like to share my thoughts. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried out products from fellow blogger’s suggestions, so I think I should step it up and share my favorite (and not so favorite) products.

I desperately need to update my 101 challenge. I recently registered my own domain for it (I’m on my second 101 list), but I haven’t updated that- or the original blog- since mid 2011!!!! My new list started on 10/2/2011! I don’t even have any of the new stuff posted yet. Yikes! I need it to be posted to hold myself accountable, and I can’t do that if it isn’t updated.

Oh, I’ve got quite a few recipes to post as well! Don’t you worry… I’m still cooking weekly. The only time I didn’t cook was when I was away at school for 10 days, and I’m totally okay with that. When I was home on my day off I think I made cookies with Mr. O, and I’ve already repeated recipes, so I’m totally covered on that goal.

COLLEEN!

I used Math Goodie’s Custom Random Number Generator to pick a winner. We only had 13 entries (whomp, whomp, whomp: why don’t people like free things anymore?), so it gave everyone a GREAT chance to win.

Here is my fancy little sheet as to how I numbered each entry:

Here is the website before I clicked enter (I photographed everything with my iPhone):

Here is the number generated (#6):

And here is Colleen’s tweet which made her a winner:

Yahoo. I sent you an email Colleen with all the information. Thanks for entering everyone. I’m going to try to make sure I have one giveaway a month (if possible) on the blog. Make sure to add me to your readers and keep an eye on the site for January’s giveaway!

Days Until 2012: via

Week #4 was my favorite week of cooking, and it was also Mr. O’s favorite meal. I made “Shrimp Paesano” by following the recipe from this wonderful site. There isn’t too much that I altered with the recipe. To start, I used dried parsley because I forgot to pick up fresh parsley from the store. In my opinion this made absolutely no difference. I also did NOT need 2 full cups of flour. I threw quite a bit of flour out at the end. I also have a tendency to add things to recipes, so I added onions and some orange sweet peppers. Which I thought added a lot to the recipe.

So the first step is to let the shrimp soak in the half & half for 30 minutes. Mr. O was so kind to get this started for me before I got there, so I only had to wait maybe ten minutes before I started cooking. I took this time to prepare the rest of the stuff that I needed.

After that I moved on to steps #3 &4 and I personally found that I “dusted” the shrimp with a medium amount of flour. To me, dusting means like minimally powder something, but I lightly covered the whole shrimp. Hey, it worked for me. The ones that were less covered than the others lost a lot of the coating, and honestly didn’t taste that good.

So I somehow forgot to take pictures while making the sauce. There isn’t much to comment that you won’t learn on the recipe. The only note that I have is that I found myself putting more and more half & half in the sauce to thicken it up and make it more creamy. It was too buttery. When I make this recipe again, I will probably use less butter next time around, and make more sauce.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter my very first giveaway on Reinventing Erin for a $25 gift card to Overnight Prints!. You do not want to miss it. Click here to find out all the ways you can enter. TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO ENTER!!!!!