Winner! Pixie Laine Boutique Custom Dress!

Thanks to random.org, we now have a winner for the custom Pixie Laine Boutique dress and matching accessory. 

The winning number is:

Michelle!  Since I don’t have an email address or blogger profile for you, I’m unable to reach you – please contact me ASAP to claim your prize!

Thanks to everyone who participated in this give away - this is the best response I've seen thus far! If you didn't win this time, no worries, I have plenty of great give aways coming up over the next few weeks. There will be plenty more chances to win - stay tuned.

The end.

Don’t forget that today is the last day you can enter for the Pixie Laine Boutique give away.



To refresh your memory: Stephanie will be giving away one (1) pillowcase dress with one (1) matching hair accessory.  The dress/hair accessory will be custom made for your child using the fabric of your choice in the size you request.  She makes dresses starting at size 0 months all the way to size 8.  Even if you don’t have a little girl, this give away would be perfect for a shower or birthday gift – the sky’s the limit!
How cute are these dresses?




Here's how you can win: To be entered into the giveaway, you can do one or all of the following. The more you do, the more chances you’ll have to win. Please note that some options will allow you to leave multiple comments (i.e. If you write a blog entry about this give away, you can leave two comments for that one entry).

MAKE SURE YOU ENTER HERE: (do not leave a message in this post or it won't be counted)

1. Go to Pixie Laine Boutique and comment on which dress is your favorite.  (1 entry)
2. Publically follow my blog. (1 entry)
3. Blog about this give away (2 entries)
4. Tweet or Share this blog entry on Facebook/MySpace/Any other social network (2 entries)
5. Add my button to your blog (2 entries)
6. Become a fan of the One Porkchop on Facebook (1 entry)
7. Follow me on Twitter (1 entry)
8. Sign up for Swagbucks (5 entries)
9. Sign up for Ebates (5 entries)

I will draw a random winner on today at 6 p.m. (CST).  Good luck!

Stealth ninja.

Since becoming a mother, I’ve become quite ninja-like in my day-to-day tasks.  While holding my child, I can walk through a room full of toy clutter, carefully dodging every random Lego and Fisher-Price “drive you crazy because it talks incessantly” toy with the most ninja-like stealth.  I can sneak into my sleeping child’s room to put away toys and/or clothes and not make a single peep.  I’ve learned to hone in on my ninja skills because falling with a baby in your arms or waking a sleeping baby is never fun.  I’ve learned this the hard way on both counts.  Trust me. 


Any of you who have been following my blog for a while know that I have a picky eater.  I guess karma a la king has caught up with me since I was the world
‘s worst eater while I was pregnant.  Chili cheese fries?  I ate ‘em.  Sour cream and cheddar Ruffles?  Heck yes, daily.  Fruits and veggies?  What are those?  So, my child, being primarily composed of Sonic Tater Tots and Wendy’s french fries, had no other option than to be a junk-food junkie.  I tried to help her get over this addiction by filling her up with veggies and fruits in the earlier months of her life (once she started eating solids), but now she’s completely regressed into her pre-birth junk addiction. 

One thing I have noticed, however, is that she will try to eat whatever I’m eating.  She just takes it upon herself to reach onto my plate with her grubby little hands and take whatever she wants – like I’m some community chest of food or something.  Now that she’s grown a couple of inches, she’s even tall enough to reach onto my plate when I have it on my office desk.  She can’t even see what she’s grabbing, but she doesn’t care.  It’s a grab bag of food. 

I italicized the word try because if she doesn’t like it, she’ll throw it on the ground, spit it out or play with it until it dissolves into a pile of mush on the carpet.  Half of my food winds up on the vast wasteland of carpet in our house.  If she would actually eat healthy food off of my plate, this would be a great solution to get her to eat more balanced foods.  She’s too smart for that, I’m afraid. 

Sometimes mama just wants to eat her own food.  Sometimes mama just wants to eat food without having dirty baby hands all up in it.  So, to accomplish this feat, I’ve started relying on ninja moves and ninja stealth to trick my child into thinking I’m food-free.  While Anna is watching Yo Gabba Gabba, I gracefully hide my plate of food behind my back and dart across the living room like a prima ballerina.  Most of the time she doesn’t even notice me, but if she does, my arm is securely tucked behind my back with a plate of food, and she’s none the wiser. 
Sometimes I’ll stop and dance a little bit to the Yo Gabba Gabba tunes just to throw her off of the food scent.  If she sees me dancing, she won’t think I’m holding food behind my back.  She just dances with me and then tunes back into the show. See how easy it is to outsmart a toddler?  Write this down, folks, this is verbal gold!

Some of you may think I'm mean to hide food from my child, but it's the only way I can eat, people.  Most mothers will be able to relate, and if you can’t, you’re lucky.  Very lucky.  And you’re never going to perfect your ninja skills.  So, there.  Bah. 

Pixie Laine Boutique Give Away!

I’ve teamed up with Stephanie over at Pixie Laine Boutique for a fun Friday give away. 
 

Pixie Laine Boutique is your one-stop-shop for cute clothing and accessories for your child.  Over the coming weeks, Stephanie will be adding additional pieces to her Etsy store including hair accessories and more!  To spread the word about her shop, she’ll be giving away one (1) pillowcase dress with one (1) matching hair accessory.  The dress/hair accessory will be custom made for your child using the fabric of your choice in the size you request.  She makes dresses starting at size 0 months all the way to size 8.  Even if you don’t have a little girl, this give away would be perfect for a shower or birthday gift – the sky’s the limit!


How cute are these dresses?


Anna’s BFF Kadence was the model for this dress!  




Here's how you can win: To be entered into the giveaway, you can do one or all of the following. The more you do, the more chances you’ll have to win. Please note that some options will allow you to leave multiple comments (i.e. If you write a blog entry about this give away, you can leave two comments for that one entry).

1. Go to Pixie Laine Boutique and comment on which dress is your favorite.  (1 entry)
2. Publically follow my blog. (1 entry)
3. Blog about this give away (2 entries)
4. Tweet or Share this blog entry on Facebook/MySpace/Any other social network (2 entries)
5. Add my button to your blog (2 entries)
6. Become a fan of the One Porkchop on Facebook (1 entry)
7. Follow me on Twitter (1 entry)
8. Sign up for Swagbucks (5 entries)
9. Sign up for Ebates (5 entries)

I will draw a random winner on Wednesday, March 31st at 6 p.m. (CST).  Good luck!

The Office.

I’ve often said that my child came out with a briefcase and a Blackberry in her hand.  She has an obsession with laptops, cell phones, pens, paper and basically anything else that can be used to run an office or work in an office.  When we go to Best Buy, she salivates over the Mac computer displays.  Then again, so does my husband.  I guess she gets her “all things techie” obsession from her parents.  Let’s hope she didn’t inherit my inability to do basic third grade math.  I’m already worried about future math homework. 

Anyway, one of the biggest problems I have with my little child is that she likes to climb on my office chair and mess up my laptop settings while I’m doing something in another room.  When I come back in the office, my laptop screen is turned upside down, and my mouse is nowhere to be found.  That’s because she klepto’d it and moved it to an undisclosed location that I eventually locate hours later.  You can imagine my frustration. 

So, to appease Anna’s inner-techie-beast, I finally had a lightbulb moment.  Many years ago when I graduated from college, my dear parents bought me a laptop.  As with any computer, it eventually became obsolete, so I put it in the attic with the rest of the stuff I can’t part with yet.  My bright idea was to get the laptop for Anna – maybe then she would stop trying to destroy mine!  A-HA! 

I plugged it in.  Heck yes, it still works!  Anna’s eyes lit up.  She started clapping.  The old yet familiar start-up music chimed, and my old wallpaper – The Trady Bunch (all of the designers on Trading Spaces arranged like the Brady Bunch grid) – quickly popped up on the screen.  Groovy! 

It all started out great. Anna was happy. I was happy. Life was good. Then, she closed the screen. Hell ensued. This is a photo stream of how it went down.

Yay!  My very own laptop.  I’m a spoiled little girl!

Now I can type like mom!  (Goodness, that child’s hair – well, there are no words.)

Go away, mom, I am busy. 

Hmm, I wonder what will happen if I put this down. 

Um, mom, it’s no longer making noises and showing pretty pictures.  

HELLO!  Can you help me here?!

I’m really about to lose it, mom. 

I warned you!

How cool of a mom am I that I actually let it reach that point?  Pretty pathetic, right?  Oh well, it makes for a good photo.  I’ll have you know that I opened the laptop for her after this picture, and all was well in Anna land.  At least for 1.2 seconds until she closed the laptop again.  Then I got a genius idea on how to keep this from happening again. 

TAPE!  Yes, this is how trashy, poor people like myself fix things – we just tape ‘em. 

So, now Anna and I can spend more quality time together on our laptops.  Ain’t life grand?

Oh, P.S. -
If you happened to notice that my office looks like a tornado hit it, take a look at this photo:
Anna also likes shredders and shredded paper.  She doesn’t like cleaning it up, though – she leaves that task to me.  Joy.

I survived a night at The Myrtles Plantation.

So, some of you may remember my Ghost Hunters expedition that I blogged about a few days ago, er, a week ago.  I’ve been a total blog slacker this past week, haven’t I?  Anyway, I didn’t back out of the trip even though I really wanted to skip the Myrtle’s.  You see, I talk a big talk, and I walk a big walk, but when it comes down to it, I’m basically a scared wimp.  I had visions of myself jumping out of the window to “safety” after seeing an orb of light or peeing on myself after hearing an entity call my name. 


So, now I'll bet you're totally curious if I peed my pants or broke an arm jumping out of a window to safety, right?

Well, this is what I heard, saw, smelled...




No footsteps on the floor.  No poltergeist activity coming through the white snow on the TV (oh yeah, that’s ‘cause they didn’t have a TV in the rooms).  No, “Don’t go towards the light, Carol Ann” moments.  Nothing, nada, zip, zilch.  A part of me is relieved, but a part of me is bummed.  I really wanted a good blog story.  I really wanted to pee on myself.  Like any good blogger, I was willing to suffer incontinence just to have something interesting to write about. 


However, I will say that one rather odd thing did happen while we were there.  My cousin took a photo of my aunt while she was standing in the room, and this is what she got:

She was messing around with her camera settings, but we weren’t able to duplicate that effect the rest of the night.  So, we’re not 100% sure that this is anything other than one of those weird photographic anomalies.  My aunt is convinced it’s a ghost, but I have to remain skeptical, that’s what Grant and Jason would do. 

I’m glad to say that I did survive a night at the Myrtle’s Plantation, not many people can say they stayed an entire night.  Perhaps the ghosts were hibernating that night or still recovering from the binge drinking they did on St. Pat’s Day. Who knows?  All I can say is that based on my one night there, this house had as many ghosts as my own house.  0+0 = none.

Luck o’ the Irish.

We’re not Irish, not a bit.  Not even 1/10th Irish.  I do have curly hair and albino white skin, but that’s about the extent of my Irish’ness.  So, I never get into St. Pat’s Day.  I’m not a beer drinker either, so, once again, not a big day for me.  Anna doesn’t care for St. Pat’s day either, at least she didn’t last year when I snapped these photos (the only photos I have of her wearing something green – she’s 5 months old in these photos, aww).  This is my contribution to this holiday, so be grateful and appreciative for all I do for you.

I rock rough and stuff with my muffin top. Always have to add a blackmail photo b/c I’m evil.  

May your thoughts be as glad as the shamrocks. May your heart be as light as a song. May each day bring you bright happy hours, That stay with you all year long. 

Don’t drink too much green beer today.   

Ghost hunters.

I've always had a slight fascination with all things paranormal.  Granted, I'm not in my bedroom conjuring up spirits with a Ouija board or anything like that, but I can listen to ghost stories and watch shows about hauntings all day long.  My slight fascination started when I was a young lass, about 8 or so.  Two simple words, uttered by a diminutive child, would be my first glimpse into the afterlife...

...They're HERE!

Poltergeist, my friends.  This movie scared me to death.  This movie made me have nightmares for weeks.  This movie is one of the reasons why I refuse to live next to or near a cemetery.  This movie is why I don't like unfinished swimming pools.  This movie is what made me crazy enough to do what I'm about to do.

Can you guess what I'm about to do? 

I've decided to become a part of the TAPS/Ghost Hunters team and do my own ghost hunting at one of the country's most haunted homes - The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana.   Jason and Grant contacted me personally and asked me to help them out since I'm such an expert in the field.

Nah, I kid. 

I'm not really going to be a part of the TAPS team, I'm just going with some of my fun family members to see if we can be spooked enough to leave out of there in the middle of the night.  According to the stories we've heard, not many people make it through the night in that place. We shall see. 

I talk a big game while I'm sitting in my unhaunted house, but methinks I'll have some fun (and scary) stories to share with you all once I get back - maybe even some pictures.  Either that or I'll just find some ghost pictures online and pass them off as my own.  That's the honest thing to do.

So, anyone else out there fascinated with ghosts and ghost stories?  Have you ever had a paranormal experience?  Care to share?  Leave a comment and let me know.  I'll be following up once our trip is over to let you know how it turned out.  That is, if I'm not in therapy 24/7 to cure myself of the scare.

Cherry on Top Giveaway Winner.

Thanks to everyone who entered to win the precious hair accessories from Fairy Tales Do Come True Bowtique!  The winner of the cute hair bow set below is…


Heather from 3 Under 3!  Yay – I love Heather’s blog, check it out if you haven’t been there before.  She has the most precious little girls who will look so cute in these hair bows – the only problem is, will they share?! 

Please send me your physical mailing address, and you'll get your prize soon! Congrats to you and thanks to everyone who entered. Please keep checking back for more cool giveaways! 

 

Jungle Boogie.

You have the rest of the day to enter the "Cherry on Top" Fun Friday give away.  Even though it's Monday, you can pretend it's Friday - that should put you in a good mood, right? 

So, please enter now (if you haven't already).  Pretty, pretty please w/ a cherry on top!

It's too cute to ignore!

Dr. Google.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a hypochondriac.

Dull headache? It's a tumor.
Pain in my stomach? It's a baby.
Blurred vision? It's eye cancer.

I'm not really sure why I'm this way, but I'm willing to bet it stems from my hypochondriac mother. That's just a guess.

So, it's always fun when I innocently Google some random symptom for something I'm feeling, hearing, smelling, seeing.

Here's how it usually goes down...

Hangnail.  Innocent enough.  Certainly there's an easy solution.  Something not too painful.  Something that I won't need copious amounts of prescription narcotics for, right?

Let's see what Wiki, the authority on all things factual, says:













::If you ignore a hangnail, you will get gangrene in your finger and eventually die a penniless, fingerless loser::

I feel the blood rise.  My heart starts pumping.  I'm going to lose a finger?  I will die penniless?  It's a harmless hangnail.  Isn't it? 

I start writing out my will while my finger is still in non-gangrenous working order.  I divide my penny between my child and my husband.

Then I sue Google for freaking me the hell out! 

Let this be a little PSA for you guys and girls.  DO NOT GOOGLE DISEASE STUFF!  You will freak yourself out unnecessarily and get a finger amputated for no darn reason.  Don't tell me that I never taught you anything.  You can take this to the bank, my friend.

I'm off to go soak my finger in epsom salt now.  That's what the people on Yahoo! answers advise. 

“Cherry on Top” fun Friday give away!

Fairy Tales Do Come True Bowtique is giving away a precious hair accessory kit for one lucky Pork chop fan!  Just in time for summer (and for those of you still dealing with the cold weather), Fairy Tales Bowtique has created a perfect combination kit to carry you through the rest of the winter months into the warm summer.  Mix and match and create your own personal style with the different pieces in this kit.  Your child will be the envy of the neighborhood (and so will you)!  Leave your mark in the comments section.  Good luck!




Here's how you can win: To be entered into the giveaway, you can do one or all of the following. The more you do, the more chances you’ll have to win. Please note that some options will allow you to leave multiple comments (i.e. If you write a blog entry about this give away, you can leave two comments for that one entry).

1. Become a fan of Fairy Tales Bowtique on Facebook.  (1 entry)
2. Publically follow Fairy Tales Bowtique’s blog (1 entry)
3. Publically follow my blog. (1 entry)
4. Blog about this give away (2 entries)
5. Tweet or Share this blog entry on Facebook/MySpace/Any other social network (2 entries)
6. Add my button to your blog (2 entries)
7. Become a fan of the One Porkchop on Facebook (1 entry)
8. Follow me on Twitter (1 entry)
9. Sign up for Swagbucks (5 entries)

I will draw a random winner on Monday, March 15th at 6 p.m. (CST).  Good luck!

Carnival of crazy.

One reason I had a child was so I could go to birthday parties with her and eat cake.  When we get party invitations in the mail, I jump up and down a little and instantly start salivating at the thought of birthday cake – especially if it has butter cream icing and is flavored with almond extract. 

Plus, it's an excellent photo opportunity for me. I often forget to bring my camera when we go places, so I more than make up for it at birthday parties.  I’m that mom – the one who takes photos of every.single.move my child makes at the party.  Aww, she’s scratching her face – CLICK.  Aww, she’s gagging on cake – CLICK.  Bad mom, bad mom. 

So, this past weekend I went to my cousin’s son’s 2nd birthday party.  So, it was my second cousin’s party – Anna’s third cousin.  Right?  After first cousin, I’m pretty much lost.  So, let’s just pretend that I’m right here.  Anyway, it was such a cute party theme.  Aidan’s (my second cousin, Anna’s third cousin) mom had a carnival setup complete with a cotton candy machine, a jumpy thingamajig, a little outside bowling lane and all sorts of other cute stuff for the kiddos to be entertained with. 

In true Anna form, she played the shy card for the first 30 minutes or so until she was able to better scope out the place.  Then all hell broke loose.  I don’t think my child sat down for more than 1 second the entire day.  She was everywhere and into everything, and I got some great photos.  Unfortunately, she’s too busy playing that she forgot to look at the camera, so they’re all candid.  Those are more fun anyway, right?

Here she is attempting to bowl a strike.  Or a spare.  Or if she takes after me, just hoping to knock down one pin (or Coke bottle in this case).  By the way, the pictures I posted in yesterday’s post (Letter to Anna: 17 months) are from the same day.  She doesn’t wear this dress everyday, I promise.

 

Here you can see her cheeks are starting to get red.  That’s b/c I forgot to put sunscreen on her that morning.  Sun – 1: Mom – 0.

Anna tries to conquer the bike. And gives up quickly. Anna finds a bike that is more her size.  And wastes no time trying it out. Now she wants to go fishing. And eat the plastic fish. She also likes to steal prizes from the prize box. She wasn’t quite feeling the jumpy thingamajig, but she certainly looked cute in it! Cute dimple shot! Should I go down the slide? Nah, I’ll just kick back and chill for a while. And crawl around for a bit.  I see London.  Yay!  Slide, slide, slippidy slide.  My beautiful mother and my beautiful daughter who refuses to look @ the camera.  Yay, mimi, flip me over! I think I’m going to barf.  Oh boy, I’m exhausted mom.  I see London.  (<—Ok, I really need to teach my child to be more lady-like.)

Happy Birthday, Aidan!