The time has arrived. Midnight passed and I put everyone’s names into a handy dandy spreadsheet in the order they entered, for each entry. I visited the website Random.org and entered the total number of lines used in that spreadsheet and I clicked the “Generate” button. The person whose name correlates with that number is the winner of a $25 Amazon.com e-gift certificate which they can use to purchase (or put towards a purchase for) whatever their heart desires (you know, as available on Amazons gigantic website).
Are you ready for me to quit dragging it out?
*drumroll please*
Congratulations are in order for Becca8100!
Thanks to all the readers who participated in the contest for this month. I can assure you that there will be a contest again in September, so be sure to stay tuned to see what might be up for grabs next.
Do what??? A FREE $25 gift certificate? You betcha! I had spent so much time trying to figure out something to put together that my readers might be interested in when it finally occurred to me that if I did an Amazon.com gift certificate who ever wins can choose their own gifts. Duh, Jen!
Why am I giving away a $25 gift? Oh, I’ll tell you why… just in case you’ve forgotten since I’ve taken TWO months to get around to this:
It is thanks to my readers that I was able to win 1st Prize in the BzzAgent.com and Focus Features contest for BzzAgent BABIES Ambassadors. Remember all those posts that I flooded you all with during the months of March to May? The clicks you all made on the promotional material brought me up to the 1st place spot. That spot awarded me the Kate Spade Maclaren stroller!
Kate Spade Maclaren Ryder Stroller
Isn’t that adorable?! It will be perfect for Baby 3, Mister M. I can hardly wait for Baby M to arrive and a good excuse to take him out in the handy, lightweight (just 13 pounds!) stroller.
So, what are the rules for the giveaway? Read on, Dear Reader, read on. (I put all the important stuff in bold.)
For one entry: Leave some chicken scratch (a comment) on this post telling me how you would use the $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com.
For one additional entry: “Like” my Facebook page (see the side bar for a quick and easy link). Then, come back here and leave a comment letting me know that you “liked” Momma Hen: The Peckings of Jen Hen on Fb.
Follow me on Twitter (click on the Twitter link in the side bar), post a Twitter update saying “I want to win on www.mommahen.com”, then come back here and leave a link to your Twitter status as a comment. You can do this up to twice a day, each day of the contest, to increase your odds of winning (that’s a possible 42entries). I have to have a comment on here for EACH time that you post the twitter status so I can keep track.
I’m going to keep this giveaway up and running until midnight on Saturday, August 21st. That gives you THREE WEEKS to get in lots of entries! Depending on the response to this give away, there could be another give away next month, so spread the word! Get your chance!
Remember the movie BABIES from Focus Features and Director Thomas Balmes that I was promoting? It opened in theaters Mother’s Day weekend (in May). Well… it’s coming to DVD!
You can check out the website for BABIES here. The movie will be available On Demand and for Digital Download on August 17th, then on DVD exclusively at Target beginning August 29th. You can even pre-order your copy of the DVD for $19.99 (regular price will be $29.99).
I’m going to place my order! I wasn’t able to see the film in theater since the closest one showing the film was two and a half hours away, but you better believe I’m getting the movie. Hey, I won that awesome stroller (and a super cute onesie) thanks to the promotions I did for the film through BzzAgent.com! You might even want to watch for a special give-away on here in the future… there just MIGHT be a free copy of the DVD for one lucky reader.
That’s right dear friends and readers. I’m finally getting around to doing the give away I promised two months ago. I bet you got tired of waiting, but no worries… the waiting game is coming to a close. Keep a look out tomorrow for the details on how to play and how to win. It’s going to be super simple! And I’m hoping that my final decision on what I was going to give away is something anyone could enjoy. That was part of the delay… I wanted to be able to appeal to any readers I might have so I was wrecking my brain off and on for several weeks until finally I had the simplest “Ah-ha!” moment I could have had. Why is it that the simple solutions always take so long to click?
At any rate, I’ll be posting in the next 24 hours! Check back!
I came across some awesome giveaways today, and I wanted to share them with all of you! Who doesn’t like give aways???
First, go to helloky.com (just click on that); you’ll get to check out a review on the Sleepy Wrap from a few experts (kiddos) and get up to four chances to enter to win your very own.
Then, OH how I wish I could take the drive, BABIES is going to be shown in Bowling Green, KY this coming Thursday, May 20th at Greenwood 10. Go to THIS website to find out more… AND enter (up to three times) for a chance to win one of four great prizes!
So, in our completely impromptu professional style, and after firing changing the official “name picker-outter” due to Momma Hen’s procrastination and the passing of bedtime, we finally have a name for our contest. That’s right readers, one lucky winner has been drawn. After over a week of anticipation. After over a week of reading this monotony and sometimes arguably egotistical writing, someone is going to get to read something much less egotistical.
The winner of a signed copy of C.N. King’s first book, “Where My Ink Comes From” is….
Are you ready for it?
Maybe I should take the time to explain why I had to postpone things….. I mean, you guys didn’t really care about the winner, right? You didn’t really want to know. So, you wouldn’t mind a small interlude or presentation of an “inner monologue.” Would you?
Okay, Okay!….I’ll spare you. I’ll get to the good stuff. Beth V.M. is the winner! YAY! Congratulations to all the people who entered the contest. There were a total of 21 entries. Now… time for me to contact Beth so I can find out where I should mail this book to! And, I’ll be on the lookout for the next giveaway.
Due to personal circumstances and events, there will not be an entry of substance until Sunday or Monday.
This works out for you, my readers, because I am giving you all an additional two days to get your entries in for your chance to win the signed copy of “Where My Ink Comes From” by C.N. King. I hope that doesn’t peeve anyone. I’m hoping that more or less makes everyone excited who is already in the running. So, you have until Sunday, October 18th at 12 noon to get your comments posted on any of my posts for your chance to enter the drawing. I will announce the winner in “Momma Monday” on October 19th, so watch for that.
Until then, read back through the stuff on Momma Hen and post your comments.
Alright you guys, we’re getting down to the final 36 hours before the drawing for your chance at a free signed copy of “Where My Ink Comes From.” GET YOUR ENTRIES IN! Reminder: all you have to do is comment on any of the entries on my website. For each comment, you get one entry into the drawing. For every ten entries you make, you get an additional entry.
I was waiting for you to finish with all that before I started my ramble.Wasn’t that nice of me?
My little sister, aka Auntie E to my chicks, just got back from NYC Sunday. She was on an adventure for four days in NYC and following where she was being lead. In the midst of all that following, she managed to find a copy of “Village Voice” (you HAVE seen RENT right? You DO understand the connection, correct? No? Then click here and get a healthy dose), AND she brought me some fantastic cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery via air-mail (she’s a postal carrier now, you see… just kidding). Seriously, those cupcakes are FANTASTIC! The icing tastes like homemade vanilla ice cream, or “snow cream,” or something other-worldly. DH says there’s enough sugar to put a horse into a sugar coma, but I say you just need a tall glass of milk to go with it. Yum!
Along the lines of Village Voice, I feel horrible for forgetting to give acknowledgment to National Coming Out Day which is celebrated every year on October 11th. It is a seriously important day to many people in the LGBT community. In larger cities there are celebrations, not much unlike Pride Fest. But National Coming Out Day comes with a lot of sadness for many people. There are people in my life who have shared heart wrenching stories of their experiences with “coming out.” I have friends who found the courage to “come out” of the proverbial closet to their parents, and families, and friends on National Coming Out Day, only to be met with the misunderstanding, hatred, and putrid behavior that they had feared, but hoped would not present its ugly face. A dear friend to me when I lived in Michigan told me of how her father kicked her out of the house at age 15 because he wasn’t having a “fag” living in his house. While that didn’t happen on NCOD, it did happen. In fact it happened during one of the worst blizzards Michigan had seen in 10 years, in 1999. She was thrown out into that blizzard with nothing more than the clothes on her back and she had nowhere to go. She went from an honors student who had full ride scholarships to go to any Michigan University, to someone who lived on the streets, got addicted to drugs, and battled with several issues.
Then there was one of my speech students when I was coaching at Holt High School in Holt, Michigan. She came out to her family and friends on NCOD the year I was coaching there. “K” didn’t come back to school at Holt after the week following her coming out. Her family accepted her, and supported her. Unfortunately the things she started dealing with from the kids at school were so problematic that she decided to home school.
One of my other students opened the closet door that same year. He was far from embraced by anyone he told, but he wasn’t kicked out of his home. He stuck it out at school and “dealt” with the things he was confronted with. He graduated, and he went onto college. Last I heard from him, he was doing well and life was good.
The LGBT community needs people to support it. Straight people. Closeted people. Other LGBT people. It’s a tough life. I’ve often heard “people choose to be gay.” I’d like to ask just how many people think that my friend CHOSE to be thrown into the middle of a blizzard? Do you think my student WANTED to leave the school she had grown up in because she couldn’t go a day without being harassed? She was a member of peaceful protest groups, she was used to a lot of the comments. But things were worse than “comments.” Do you honestly think a person just wakes up one day and says “I think I’d like to be told I can’t ever marry the person I love, can’t carry insurance for the person I love, can’t adopt a child because of the person I love, can’t be myself because of who I love.” Really?
Do you think that the transgendered friend of mine in Michigan wanted to be picked on in middle school in the boy’s locker room for having “man boobs.” Do you think SHE wanted to feel so out of place? Do you think it was a choice that SHE felt like SHE should be in the girls locker room because those were the people she connected with on an emotional level and identified with on a physical level in a not-at-all perverted way?
Or even better, the idea that being gay is a “disease.” I think George Carlin hit it spot on when he said “I’ll just call in to work gay. ‘What’s that boss? Nope, I can’t come in today. I got gay.’”
I really could write forever on this topic. FOREVER. Sorry, I’ll step off my soap box for now. But, to all my friends in the Rainbow Community, Happy Belated Coming Out Day. I hope it went well for you all.
That’s right folks! It’s time for the first giveaway from Momma Hen.
I mentioned “Where My Ink Comes From” by C.N. King a couple of weeks ago. I’ve received my copy of the book, and while I haven’t finished reading it, I can tell you I love it so far. Really. I won’t lie about things.
The book is in journal format. Essentially it’s a modern day “Diary of Anne Frank” but with a totally different sense of desperation and oppression. Personally, having been a single mother, and having dealt with a lot of things myself, the book is fantastic. But, I really believe a lot of people will take something away from reading this. It’s another perspective. A perspective that many don’t understand, and yet, so many do. It’s a voice. A voice for the mother’s out there who had their kids younger than they planned. Who have seen the dreams they thought they had shattered in a flash of two pink lines on a pregnancy test, and then found the driving force to put those dreams back together and trudge forth. Because those dreams are no longer their own, but dreams they are sharing with a human being. It’s a book that shows the raw details of a girl trying her darndest to make things work, hitting an emotional rock bottom, and finding a new drive to come off that bottomless pit. Kids are Angels. Really they are.
I could really get started on an entry on this, however as it is I overslept this morning and I’ve missed my morning class. Now I have to kick it into gear and get to my jobs.
So, what’s the catch for this? I’m going to be begin the give away this week, but I will not pick a winner until next Friday. I want to give plenty of people an opportunity to win! AND! The author is doing a book signing next Thursday here in town. So, not only are you getting the chance to win a book, but the chance to win a SIGNED book!
What do you need to do??? Leave comments on my entries over the coming week! That’s it! Comment on here or any posts you feel like commenting on. I’ll be making little slips to throw into a hat. I think I’ll let Lil’C pull the name out. There won’t be any prejudice from the toddler. You get one entry into the drawing for each comment you post in between now and next Friday (up until time for me to draw the name). If you post 10 comments, I’ll throw in an extra entry. If you post 20 comments, I’ll throw in two extra entries. Um, but please don’t just post a single word or something. You know, be fair.
And, I’ll be on the lookout for the next giveaway.
