Giveaway winners

I am still so excited that a family has decided to adopt Ivy.  Thank you again to everyone who contributed here to her adoption fund.  It has been amazing to pray and hope that she would find a family and then to watch God answer in such a wonderful way!
We have picked our winners for our giveaway here and I will email each of you to find out where to send your prize. The winners are:

$50 Lakeshore Learning Gift Certificate - Leslie N

$30 Music for Little People Gift Certificate- Allison B

Felt Color and Size Sorting Toy- Katrina N

Congratulations and thank you for you generous donations and your prayers for Ivy!

Ivy

I hope everyone is having a good weekend.  We are having some nasty weather here.  We were hoping for snow but all we have had so far is rain.

If you have been here before you may have noticed that I have placed a ChipIn! on the side of my blog yesterday.

I have always felt strongly about adoption.  I believe that God commands us to take care of orphans.  We have been involved with Bethany Christian and their adoption ministries for special needs in the past.  I just learned about Reece's Rainbow and their awesome work with adoption ministries for children with Down Syndrome this last year thanks to my blog friend Leslie who has a huge heart for these kids.  Children with special needs around the world face a very bleak future if they are not adopted into a loving home.  Unfortunately the high cost of adoption can make it hard for some families that would love to bring a child into their family.  

I have been reading the Reece's Rainbow website and staring at the precious faces of all the children there that so desperately need homes.  They are all so sweet but one child in particular has really captured my heart.

Meet Ivy

 

Is that not the most angelic face?  She really needs a family that can love her.  She is 4 years old.  She lives in Eastern Europe and she is nearing an age where if she is not adopted soon she will face a very sad life in an institution.  My hope and prayer this year is that if I can help to increase her adoption fund some family will be able to bring her home and give her the love she needs and deserves.

I have placed the ChipIn! on the side of my blog in hopes that in the next month I can raise $600 to help her. 

Now to help promote my fund raising effort  I have decided to host a drawing for a couple of prizes here.  I will be placing your name once in the drawing for each of the following things:

1.  Each $5 donated.  If you are donating under $10 I would ask that instead of using the ChipIn! you would send in your donations to:

Reece's Rainbow

PO Box 4024

Gaithersburg, MD 20885

You will need to designate on your check that it is for Ivy(31). Paypal takes out their fees for each donation so anything under $10 doesn't end up as much.  If you do send a check please come back here and leave a comment so that I can enter your name.  I would appreciate your honesty. 

 or

2. If you make a donation of $5 or over and you post about this event and link back to here on either your blog, Facebook, or Twitter.  I will give you an extra entry.  You must make a donation first!

On March 2 I will draw three winners.  The first winner will win a $50 gift card from Lakeshore Learning.  The second winner will receive a $30 gift certificate from Music for Little People.  The third winner will receive a beautiful felt color and size sorting toy from the Etsy store Play to Learn.  I have to post a couple of pictures because it is just a beautiful toy.

I will need to have a way to contact you if you win.  If I can't contact a winner within a week I will choose a new winner. 

I really invite you to think about giving to help little Ivy.  I just know there is a family out there for her if we can do something to lessen the adoption expenses.  Thank you for taking the time to read this and consider if you can help.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Christie at Monkey School !

You have won the Fall Workbox Giveaway.  Thank you for your entry.  Thank you to all those who entered and I can't wait to try all your great ideas.

Fall Workbox Giveaway

I love Fall!!!!  I love the colors, smells, recipes.....!  I know it is not fall yet and many of you are still enjoying summer.  It is in fact still in the 90's every day here.  I, however, am not a summer person so I am looking forward to the fall.  We have a lot of things we like to do at our house in the fall.  I love to hang paper colored leaves on the windows and my boys love to play in the leaves outside.  We also like to go pick out pumpkins and do lots of baking.  This will be our first fall with workboxes and so I began thinking about all the fun stuff we could do with them for fall.  One thing we do every year is make pumpkin pie playdough and play with it with pumpkin shape cookie cutters.  It smells awesome and my boys love it.  This would be easy to put in our workboxes.  I would love to know what everyone one else will be putting in their boxes this fall though so I decided it would be fun to have a giveaway and let everyone post their ideas on their blog and leave a link here with MckLinky.  

Since this is also a giveaway let me tell you what the winner will receive:

1.   Everything for Fall: An Early Childhood Curriculum Activity Book

2.  Focus on the Family Radio Theatre: The Legend of Squanto 2 CD set

3. Draw Write Now Book Two (Christopher Columbus, Autumn Harvest, and The Weather)

4. History Pockets Life in Plymouth Colony by Evan-Moor

This giveaway will run through August 31, 2009.  I will pick a random winner on September 1 and will notify you and give you 3 days to get back to me or I will pick a new winner. The winner must live within the United States.

To enter you must:

1.  Leave a post on your blog for your fall workbox idea

2.  Leave a link to your specific fall workbox blog post (not your whole blog) below with MckLinky

3.  Mention this giveaway on your blog

If you DO NOT have a blog leave a comment with your fall workbox idea and email address in the comment section of this post.

I am really looking forward to hearing all your great ideas!