The Nifty Foodie's Life

Since I’ve been on Twitter, I’ve discovered how awesome Twitter contests are. It’s like blog giveaways, but way quicker. Most of the time, the odds are better since less people enter, so I definitely go for them. Most of the time, prizes happen through a Twitter chat or a trivia contest. Easy enough…Google is your friend, y’all!

A couple of months ago, KitchenAid held trivia contests to publicize the Senior PGA tournament that they were sponsoring. The first prize they were giving away was this:

Image source

It was an under counter fridge. A gorgeous one at that. So, I answered the trivia question. Now, I wasn’t really holding my breath on this one, since it was a high value prize, but heck, you never know until you enter, right?

Well….the next day this happened…

WHAT???!

So yeah..I won it!!

I told my husband, and while we were stoked, we were both unsure how we’d squeeze this in our kitchen. So, we planned on just keeping this in our garage in the meantime.

Lo and behold, my husband knew someone who was building a house, and needed an under counter fridge. So, we sold the fridge to him since he definitely would use it for the purpose intended. That gorgeous fridge shouldn’t live in a garage!

With some of the money, I decided to gift myself a fun kitchen prize that I’ve been wanting for quite a while. Check it out!

I’m WAY excited to break this bad boy in. Thank you so much to the folks at KitchenAid for the amazing prize. While the fridge didn’t work for us, this mixer definitely will! I would have never purchased this ordinarily, but because of the prize, I decided to treat myself (and ultimately, our family/friends/coworkers who get the baked goodies that come from our kitchen). Cool, right??

Have you tried Twitter giveaways before?

Things have been a little quiet here. Oops! With two blogs, I usually find my stride with one and the other kind of just suffers. Since it’s the holiday season (aka baking season), I’ve been a little busy in the kitchen, so I’ve had a good bit to share on the other blog because of it. At the same time, I’ve been working on quite a few things non kitchen-wise, which I want to share with y’all.

One of the biggest pieces of news I have is that I entered a recipe contest. It was a local one that my newspaper held, and I stumbled upon it sitting in traffic reading one of those billboards that seems to flash from one ad to another. I immediately started brainstorming in my car when I saw “Holiday Dessert Recipe Contest”. I had two ideas in my head and the idea I tested out was a peppermint bark cheesecake truffle.

I ended up making one batch and brought it to my coworkers. I thought it was a decent dessert, but I mean, you are your own worst critic…I just thought it could be better. However, my coworkers started raving about these truffles and quite a few of them wanted the recipe. So I thought, maybe this truffle is perfect just the way it is. So that evening, I submitted the recipe.

To become a finalist, you had to be in the top 10 popular vote-wise. The hard thing about it was that if you wanted to vote, you had to register on the website. So, that made begging for votes even harder. I was in 7th or 8th place with votes in the end, so I barely squeaked by as a finalist. Whew!  (Thanks to all of you who voted for me!)

After I was selected as a finalist, I had to bring my truffles to the newspaper’s office for a taste test. I can’t tell you how nervous I was to bring those truffles to the office. What if they all HATED them? I started to doubt my recipe. So, I thought…maybe if I put them in a cute tin with some paper shreds, I might get some presentation points? (I have no clue if this was part of the judging criteria, but to me, a pretty dessert never hurts!)

I was told that they were announcing the winners on Saturday at a furniture store, which was 40 minutes away from our house. H offered to bring me, since he knows that I ::really:: needed to know and waiting until Monday for a possible phone call would just KILL me. So, we went.

I can’t tell you how nervous I was. My palms were sweaty, I had butterflies in my stomach and I kept telling my H that there was no way I placed. No way. Listening to some of the finalists, you could tell they knew what they were doing.

They announced 3rd place (wasn’t me)….2nd place (wasn’t me)…so, at this point, I told H at least I tried. The 2nd and 3rd place winners won gift certificates to a local grocery store, which to me, would have been completely awesome to put towards the Christmas dinner we were hosting! But yeah, didn’t win 2nd or 3rd place.

They go to announce 1st place, and my H is just smirking. I was 99% sure I was just going home empty-handed, because the 2nd place winner made a cheesecake. Why would they choose another cheesecake-type dessert to win? However, they said “Peppermint Bark Cheesecake Truffles”.

WHAT?

I WON?

I looked at H and started tearing up like a dork. I’m such a dork. I couldn’t BELIEVE I won!

The prize for 1st place was a $1000 for Paula Deen furniture at the store. I already discussed with H that if I won, I really wanted to get my family a new sofa for Christmas. He was totally on board with the idea since my family’s sofa is/was about 20 years old and had DEFINITELY seen better days.

Sadly, the store didn’t carry Paula Deen sofas, but thankfully, the clerk who helped me allowed me to use the credit towards ANY sofa. SCORE!

So, my H and I finally found this sofa set that was discontinued on major sale. Not only were we able to get a sofa, but we also got my family a loveseat. I tried to keep it a surprise from my Mom as long as I could, but in the last few minutes, I had to spoil it, since we had to clear the old sofa and the stuff around it before the delivery people arrived.

Blurry shot, but here is the new set!

My family absolutely loves the new furniture, which makes me so happy. When it comes to the holidays, I care more about giving gifts than receiving them. I truly love to see the reactions of those I give gifts to, and this one just had me beaming.

Thanks so much to The Advocate for having this contest! Winning this contest was one of the big highlights of 2011 for me, and I’m sure it was for my family too!

My husband and I have been cleaning maniacs for the past week and a half. We tackled clutter, dog hair, dust bunnies…you name it. It was really gross how much dust can accumulate in a month. Why the sudden urge? Well, we decided to host a party for our families on Saturday!

Besides cleaning, I had a little sewing to do as well, because I’m nuts like that.

I’m sure you remember when I purchased these pretty fabrics.

I was definitely going to make bunting with them because I have a sore spot for bunting lately. Plus, how easy are little triangles? I also was planning to make napkins, but realized that my guests probably wouldn’t care and Party City napkins would work just as well.

I was trying to think of other ways to incorporate the fabrics into the table decor. I originally thought a long table runner would be nice, but I quickly imagined our puppy pulling the runner to the ground and playing with it like a new toy. So, I shortened it, incorporating most of the fabrics in there, and it served as part of the centerpiece.

You can tell it’s not ironed…funny story. The centerpiece fabric  has fusible fleece on the inside, and not thinking, I placed the iron on the fusible fleece as I was assembling the top, fleece and bottom together. There is heck of a LOT of residue on that iron now from that mistake, and I can’t use it on fabric until I get it off. I hope this stuff does the trick.

Oh, and here is the bunting. This was after the guests left and my feet were basically jello from standing up for hours, prepping, cooking, etc. Right after this picture, I basically glued my head to the  pillow and I was out until hubs woke me up.

I will say the work was worth it, and the party was an awesome success! I’m still getting the hang of hosting large parties, and I was so glad that everyone loved the food! If you want to see food-wise how it went down, check out this post on the ol’ food blog!

How was your weekend?

I have been wanting to add some cute, classic centerpieces to our dinner table for quite some time. I was able to do this centerpiece for less than $20. I’m probably going to decorate it for every holiday too. I’m pretty excited!

Don’t hate on the iPhone pic!

This isn’t too fancy, but it’s pretty classic. I purchased two hurricane vases from Ulta, of all places, because they were clearancing out these vases because they were free with fragrance purchases around Christmas. Afterwards, they were both $6.99 to purchase!

Last night, I went to Hobby Lobby to buy some fabric (yep, I’m sewing now..can’t wait to blog about it!) and found these 2 candles for 50% off, as well as the marbles. Total cost? About $9.00…gotta love sales!

I can’t wait to dress these with some Mardi Gras ribbon and beads!

After a couple of months for no personal purchases, because of the holidays, I decided to put some money towards me!

The great thing is, I got each of these for quite a steal. I saved about $100 alone on these two items!

First gift to me were new shoes for work. I’m a flat shoes gal, thus the reason I chose the moniker of Mrs. Ballet Flat on Weddingbee. My current flats had the sole separating from the shoe, so some new ones were needed!

These retail on Nordstrom for $95, but RueLaLa had them for $45. I would never spend $45 on work shoes, ever. (Yeah, I’m cheap…) However, I had a $30 credit, essentially paying $15 for these! (plus shipping and handling)

For this next gift to me, I love to bake. I get even more excited with pretty kitchen stuff. I’ve been lusting over some Emile Henry bakeware, but again, I just couldn’t justify the $$ to spend on it. These retail for $45 each, but this pie dish was $25 on One Kings Lane. I had a $10 credit for this site, so the pie dish became $15 (plus shipping and handling).

I am so excited about the gifts to myself, but more importantly, I love a good deal, which makes it even more exciting!

I’m sure most of you are members of either sites, but if you are interested, here’s a brief description of each, with a link to an invite since these sites are invite only.

RueLaLa (invite) sells mostly clothes, but they sometimes sell home decor, kitchen stuff, accessories and makeup for up to 70% off.

One Kings Lane (www.onekingslane.com/invite/joinokl) sells mainly home decor items, but they also offer accessories, and kitchen stuff for huge discounts!

Have you gotten any good deals since the holidays?