Well, I haven't title this post yet, since I haven't found a contest to enter, and I think I will try to make the title correspond to the contest. Aren't I just so very clever? Yes. Yes, I am.

Well, one exceedingly witty blog post title, and one contest entry later, I am in the running to win $1000 shopping spree from gardeners supply.com! This has endless possibilities, although I have to admit, most of them revolve around christmas presents for my various female relatives. I have been longing to plant some raised bed vegetable gardens for years, however, and this could provide me with the requisite raised beds! Too bad I won't be winning... THe contest ends November 1st, and the winner will be notified by November 10th. Oh, the drama!

Well, dear readers, (all, um, zero of you) I have had a couple of days of mayhem and excitement, and so have not posted any new contests! Therefore, I will be entering three, count em, three(!) contests today!!! Can the anticipation possible be contained?!? I think not.

This is going to take a while, I daresay, as finding contests that meet my requirements can be a trifle difficult. I am so devoted to you, my non-existent readers, that I will bravely make the attempt. Aren't I brave?

OK, Contest One: 500$ Gift Card to Lumber liquidators. We actually go our cork tiles for the kitchen floor from LL, and they have some gorgeous stuff. 500$ would be nothing to sneeze at... Plus, It met my requirements of Name/Email. ;) This contest ends on Sept. 30th, so I'll keep y'all (y'nobody?) posted.

Contest Two: Phew! Finally found one! You would be amazed by how few contests will require just a name and an email address... At any rate, epicurious.com has a contest for a 5000$ gift card, which would buy a lot of christmas presents.... That one ends on November 16th.

Contest Three: I got lazy for this one, and just put in an entry for the latest Publisher's Clearing House contest. 1 million dollars, plus 5000$ a week for life. Not too shabby...

:)

There you have it. Another lovely crop of contests that I will. not. be. winning.

So a member of my family has been wanting to buy a Ford Fusion, and is the type to love a hybrid one. I hunted down a contest for one of those, with the thinking that I could sell it to said family member, should I win.

Who here is thinking, "that selfish jerk! Why not *give* it to the family member, instead of trying to sell it to them?!". Here is the thing. Our lovely government feels that they deserve lots and lots of our money. They don't just want some of the money that people earn. They want some of every single source. So if your parents work hard and save money (that they have been taxed on), and then give it to you when they die, the government doesn't think of that as already taxed money, they think of it as a revenue stream. Here is the real secret. Our government officials, on every side of the aisle, do not think of your hard earned money as "your" money. They think of it as "potential future revenue".

Mini-rant over.

At any rate, something to always keep in mind when entering a contest of any sort, is that there will be taxes on anything that you win. Between federal, state, and local taxes, they might be as much as 60% of the value of what you won. So, unless you win cold hard cash, (in which case be sure to sock away 60% for end of year tax surprises), be prepared to pay around 1/2 the value to Uncle Sam come April 14th.

That is why I am only entering contests for cash or things I want or can sell easily.

Yay!

Ok gentle readers, I have selected the lucky winner of a contest for today!!!! Yay. The contest is for a Vitamix blender. I have always wanted one, but only in the sense of "I want one if someone gives it to me or if I come across one at the thrift store for 15 dollars". That is because they cost 400$. For a blender. There is also the fact that I would likely get one, use it like crazy for about two weeks, then.... Yeah. Back of the cabinet with you, 400$ blender...

At any rate, I won't be getting one from this contest either. It runs till October 30th, and the winner (not me) will be notified by email on the 15th of November.


-Coco

Well, this online contest entering thing is harder then I thought! I have entered my first contest. I looked around for quite a while trying to find a good candidate, because I had several stipulations that most of them couldn't meet.

· The entry had to only require a name and an email address. I'm not comfortable with giving my address to tons of random companies, in my sure-to-be futile quest to win something.
· It had to be something worth my time to win. In other words, winning two tickets to "Bob's super Awesome rodeo" just isn't something that I am super excited about.
· It couldn't involve anything more then a simple fill-out-the-form entry. There are a ton of websites out there that will "award" you an iPad 2 or whatever, but first you have to make it through a bunch of rounds of advertisements, etc, and often they even require you to buy something. No thank you.

I also established a new email account with which to enter these things, because as delightful as I find spam, I'm not really wild about having a ton of it show up in the real inbox...

So, the excitement has built (I can tell), and I will reveal the first, exciting, contest, that I will most certainly not win.

A $2000 Shopping Spree at Bloomingdales!! That would sure be exciting to win!!! Too bad I won't.

The contest ends on Sept. 25th, and the winner will be notified on October 1st. So, come October 2nd, I will be informing you all of my awesome lack of winningness. Unless I forget. That is fairly likely. Stay tuned! Maybe!

Coco here. I was talking to a neighbor of ours the other day, and he mentioned that his wife likes to enter contests. *Yawn* boring, right? Nope. It turns out that his wife not only likes to enter contests, she also likes to win. They are an older couple, but they have won, to date:

· Three cars
· Many, many trips
· 25000 dollars (from one contest)
· An entire set of new appliances for their kitchen (their most recent win)
· Lots and lots and lots of consolation prizes.

And that was just the stuff he thought of off the top of his head. In fact, they have an annual (semiannual?) garage sale, at which most everything is new, where she sells all the stuff that she won that she really doesn't want or need.

Now I am one of those people that does not *ever* win things. I mean ever. Even if the prize is a small plastic toy from the dollar store. I will not be the winner. So I mentioned this. Our neighbor said, well, he never won things either. However, if his wife entered his name in a contest, it would often win. If he entered, then zip. nada. zilch. It makes me wonder what the scene is in their house when she wins something. Probably something like this:

"Neighbors wife: Honey, guess what?
Neighbor: What?
Neighbors wife: I won a thousand dollars!!
Neighbor: Woman, the game is on. Don't interrupt me unless it's important!"
Neighbors wife: Oh, right. Sorry honey."

That same conversation in my house would go something like this:

"Me: Honey, I won a thousand dollars!!!
Hubby: I doubt it. Check again.
Me: (Looking again) Oh. Yeah, you're right. Never mind."

That sort of thing has been my experience all my life. There are certain people that have it, and some that don't. So I've decided to test my theory. I am going to spend the next year (Month, week, day, or until I see something shiny that catches my attention) entering contests, on the premise that I will not win a single one, no matter how many I enter. The rules are as follows:

· It must not cost anything to enter, so in other words, no lottery tickets.
· I have to enter *my* name. My husband occasionally wins things, so I am the only allowable entrant.
· No shady contests, scams, etc, it has to be a totally legit contest.
· I will post every time I enter something, and if my sieve-like brain can handle it, will track the results, and indicate whether or not I won. (SPOILER ALERT!!!! I didn't.)

I will maybe try to enter one thing every day? Dunno, I'll see how things play out. Stay tuned for the first contest post!

Coco here. Last night was not a banner night. My son woke me up no fewer then 6 times last night. Not a tiny little helpless infant baby. A five year old. Was he sick? No. Sigh. I don't thrive on limited sleep. In fact, my *bare* minimum required is about 8 hours. When I don't get my nine hours in I am a cranky, frazzled, mess. So this morning I was rushing out of the house to go teach a music class to the most *active* bunch of four year olds ever, plus a tassle of adorable three year olds, and I apparently failed to notice the ENORMOUS truck, belonging to my husband, parked behind me in the driveway. Oh yes. That is exactly where I am going with this. I backed right into the truck. Tears and a few choice words later, I rushed off to preschool, after backing out, past the truck, at approximately one inch per minute.

It took a while.

A little later, upon returning home, I was greeted by this:



I love my husband. :)

All I gotta say, if there is a dog fight stay out of it! It doesn't matter who's dog it is, why they're fighting or if you just think its scary. Because you WILL get BIT. I know from experience here. The only way you should be breaking up this fight is with a gun. I'm talking about a real dog fight here not just some little tussle. So a gun isn't an overreaction. Moral of story. In case of dog fight-bring your gun.
-Chipotle