You Win! You Win!

Congratulations to Shore Debris, who won the set of three Halloween votive holders!

(I let my almost-2-year-old draw the winner out of a hat, which I figured was as fair as a random number generator, since he can't read yet.)

And thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway :-) That was lots of fun, and I expect I'll do another sometime, maybe something Christmas-y in a few months....

No Trick, Just a Giveaway Treat

This hereby kicks off this blog's first giveaway!

What am I giving away? These three spooky glass candle holders! They're perfect for tea lights or small votives. Each one is 2 1/2 inches tall, 2 1/2 inches across, and 9 inches around at the top. One is decorated with spiderwebs and a tiny spider; one with a black cat, a black witch's hat, the word "Boo!," and a ghost; one with the line from Macbeth's three sisters: "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

The cool thing about these, as you can see from some of the pictures, is that when they're lit, they cast shadows of their decorations on whatever surface you set them on. These make a great decoration for a table, counter, desk, etc. Add them to a centerpiece or set them up alone, whatever suits your fancy. I sold these for $5 each at a craft fair last fall, so this set is worth $15, and it can be yours for free! I'm even throwing in three free Halloween-y tealights, the ones you see in the top picture.

You see, I'm going on vacation until the 23rd, so you have until midnight that night to enter. On the 24th, I will draw the winner.

How can you be that winner? There are three ways:

+ 1. Leave a comment here listing your favorite item from my store, www.huggermugger.etsy.com , and either your email address or your blog so I can contact you if you win.

+ 2. Follow my blog. Leave a comment here letting me know you're a follower, plus either your email address or your blog so I can contact you if you win.

+ 3. Post about this on your own blog. Leave a comment here with a link to your blog post, plus either your email address or your blog so I can contact you if you win.

This means you can be entered up to three times!

Enter by midnight on the 23rd! I'll draw the winner on September 24, announce who it is here, and contact them to get their mailing address. Then I'll ship these three candle holders to the lucky winner, and that will be that! Good luck :-)

Montreal

We spent Labor Day Weekend up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. My brother and his wife came along too, so it was a really fun trip, despite the longish drives up and back. We got there late Saturday afternoon, and left Monday morning after breakfast. So all we really did Saturday was find the historic district and have supper there at a French/Alsatian restaurant, then go back to our hotel and crash.

On Sunday, we walked around the historic district again and did some shopping. We bought really yummy hot apple cider laced with maple -- the morning was a bit nippy, and of course we all forgot our jackets at the hotel, so the warm drink was welcome. Less welcome were the yellow jackets that started following us around, attracted by the sweet aroma. So we drank up kind of quickly and tossed our cups before anyone got stung.

We had lunch there in the historic district, then drove back to the hotel so Daniel could get his nap. Larry decided to snooze as well, but the rest of us went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. We didn't get to see everything, as we only had a couple of hours there before the museum closed, but what we did see was awesome. A Rembrandt, a couple Monets, a couple Picassos, a Degas, a Salvador Dali... and a lot more that I'm forgetting. We also got to see a whole bunch of paintings and artifacts from the Napoleonic age, including some busts and portraits of Napoleon, and also his actual hair in a locket, one of his famous hats, a boot, a pair of his gloves, and one of his shirts. Too cool.

We ate supper Sunday night at a restaurant near our hotel, in the newer section of the city, then took a dip in the hotel pool before bedtime. Daniel's starting to really enjoy playing in the pool, and he's getting very good at kicking his feet. He's even starting to trying "swim" by floating on his stomach with his face up out of the water while Larry or I supports him. Won't be long!

Anyway, that's all my news for now. We'll be going on a big vacation on Saturday to visit Larry's family -- we'll be gone for almost two weeks, so if you don't hear much from me for a bit, you know why :-)

Givaway from Grace Hester Designs

GraceHesterDesigns is offering a great giveaway on her blog: 500 free business cards! I've recently been looking into getting some business cards of my own, to include with orders and to hand out at the craft festivals I'm hoping to do this fall. So I know that depending on where you get them printed, 500 business cards are worth $50-75 or more! So you definitely want to go here and enter her giveaway right now.

"O Jerusalem" by Laurie R. King

I've read O Jerusalem before, but I think I enjoyed it more this second time through, possibly because I got to relish the storytelling this time through instead of breathlessly wondering what would happen next. It's one of Ms. King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books, and it's actually the fifth book in the series, although it takes place during the events of the first book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Someone recommended that I read O Jerusalem after Apprentice and before the second book, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, and I've done that on both my trips through the Russell/Holmes books. I've yet to read all of this series, but I was inspired to start the series afresh when I met Ms. King a few months ago at a book reading. I'm not sure it's best to read the books out of published order like this, but that's how I've done it, so oh well.

O Jerusalem follows Mary Russell and her mentor Sherlock Holmes to Palestine, where they seek refuge from a deadly enemy back in Britain while helping solve a mystery in the Holy Land. Since this is a mystery, I won't say much more, so as to not spoil things for anyone coming newly to this marvelous series. If you want to know more, you can read an excerpt and reviews here on Ms. King's site. I will only say that this book continues the exceptional relationship between Russell and Holmes and is an adventure worthy of them both. If you are a fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I highly recommend this series, as it is the best non-Doyle portrayal of the master sleuth I have ever read.