This Week’s Miscellany: (Winner of My Biggest Giveaway Ever! & Benjamin’s LOTR Birthday Party!) Vol. 149

If you’re just here because you’re dying to know who won the giveaway of the Everyday Oils set of 10 essential oils from Young Living, scroll ye to the bottom of the post and all will be revealed.

But before we get to all that, CAN YOU HANDLE THIS big farm girl? Can you believe that’s Gwen?

OK, next up. Benjamin had a 7th birthday party. It was his 3rd Tolkien-themed party which I just think is the best.

We did some party prep, like getting a giant dinosaur piñata that Daniel turned into Smaug the dragon by adding wings and flames. And Daniel planned all the food splendidly:

You’ve got your Shire foods: seed cakes, eggs, crackers, pickles, apples, and rice crispy treat Bag End covered in coconut flakes. Then if you go over the Misty Mountains made of toast, you’ll see Mordor and the Eye of Sauron and some Orc food corn bread muffins.

Daniel made rice crispy treat and formed it around a cardboard tube and covered it in black icing. Then he made the Eye out of Babybel cheese. Maps of Middle-earth compliments of our friend Christine who also serenaded Benjamin with a song in elvish. It. Was. The. Best.

And there was piñata fun. Even after the flames fell out of Smaug’s mouth. My lovely friend Holly took this photo and I ADORE it. Just look at the glee of that birthday boy in his hobbit cloak!

In other news we are on #kidwatch2016 waiting for baby goats to be born on the farm. We are obsessively checking on the pregnant mamas because the man in charge (Daniel) says whoever sees a newborn kid first gets to name him/her. And I want to name one Diana Barry if it’s a girl and Don Draper if it’s a boy.

So we’ll just be hanging out by the goats for a few weeks.

Links I Enjoyed This Week:

Valentines to Lead Your Loved Ones to Heaven: This Ain’t the Lyceum (Kelly is always hilarious.)

“You poor thing!” 25 Reasons not to pity me and “all those kids!”: California to Korea

Great Games for Little People: fountains of home (Christy and I will be chatting bout board games and card games for young kids that make our lives easier on the podcast soon, but here’s some GREAT ideas and I want to order them all from Amazon right now.)

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

So I have a little story to tell you about choosing the winner. I always use a random number generator when I’m choosing a winning comment for a giveaway and I was looking at the more than 500 entries to win the essential oils set and thinking “Yikes! If the generator gives me #250 that’s going to be a lot of counting to get to the winning entry.” But then when I clicked generate the winning number was…….ONE. I am not kidding. That has NEVER happened to me before. It was like a little gift from heaven. So the winner is……COMMENT #1: Cassie! I’ll shoot you an email, Cassie. Congrats!

Now if you’re one of more than 500 people who didn’t win (can you believe there were that many entries?!), here’s the good news: I’m offering $20 cash back on Young Living starter kits (with 11 oils, a diffuser, and extra samples and goodies!) ON TOP of a 10% discount for February. So the kit that’s usually $160 would be $124.

I’ve never been able to offer kits at this low a price because I haven’t ever seen them on sale before so if you are thinking about jumping in and trying essential oils, now is a great time. And the kit includes Stress Away, Thieves, Lavender, and Frankincense which were some of the oils you mentioned most wanting in the comments.

Shoot me an email (haley.s.stewart@gmail.com) if you have any question! And if you just want to jump in and grab them before the $20 cash back deal ends here’s what to do:

• You will go to beta.youngliving.com
• Click on United States (or your country if you live outside the U.S.).
• Click on Menu-Virtual Office-Become a member.
• When it says who introduced you, check the first circle and put 2736034 in both spots.
• Fill out info and sign in information.
• For tax info, click the top circle that says individual-here they will ask for your social security number only because it is a federal law and they will only use it for tax purposes if you ever decide to sell.
• Check that you have read terms and agreements and continue.
• Pick premium starter kit and skip essential rewards. Indicate “no, thank you” to autoship.
• You can click on checkout or continue shopping.
• Once your order processes, I will email you and connect with you on Facebook to add you to an Facebook group about how to use your oils exclusive to members.

Disclosure: I am an independent distributor with Young Living, so I will receive a commission when orders are made through me. I only share about products I love and use at Carrots. 

Wishing you a weekend of beautiful warm and sunny weather like we’re having in Texas! If you’re buried in snow, don’t worry, it’s not REALLY that nice outside my window. (It really is that nice. Texas forever.)

Haley

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