Category: Reviews, promotions and giveaways

Flip Mino HD winner!!

Congratulations to Guillermo of Los Ziegler en Canada, one of Ottawa’s most unique blogs, who will be starting the new year with a new Flip Mino HD camcorder courtesy of Mom Central!!

Thank you all for your comments and your tweets. You might have noticed that there were some duplicate tweets and comments, but in tabulating the results I removed all the duplicates and in most cases, let people know that only one comment and one tweet per person would be entered into the draw.

Thanks, too, to Mom Central for sponsoring yet another fun giveaway! Stay tuned for more freebies in 2010, and a Happy New Year to everyone!

You’ll FLIP over my latest giveaway!

Remember back a few months ago, I told you about our new Flip MinoHD? Thanks to Mom Central, I can now give away another Flip MinoHD to one of you in the “You’ll Flip for the Holidays” giveaway.

Mom Central is asking to whom would you give a Flip and why. I’d say this is the perfect gift for just about anyone — of course, it’s especially good for those of you with wee ones. Face it, it’s a lot of work hauling the camcorder down out of the closet, making sure it’s charged, and getting it out of it’s bag every time you want to shoot some video. By the time you’re ready, the moment has passed. You know I’m not exactly good about putting things back where they belong anyway, but I do always have the Flip close at hand, and it’s easy to just slip it into a drawer in a central location where I can get to it in a flash. Or, erm, just leave it lying out on the cabinet, amongst the camera lenses and other clutter, where at least it’s easy to get to!

Entering is easy; just leave a comment below telling me to whom you would give the Flip this holiday season and why. (Please note, this is not “tell me whom you would flip off this holiday season”. That’s an entirely different blog post!!)

Here’s the fine print:

  1. Sorry, but this giveaway is only open to Canadian residents, age 18 years or older.
  2. To enter, leave a comment on this post telling me who you in your life you would give the Flip to and why. Go ahead, nominate yourself! (I promise I won’t follow up in January to make sure you actually gave it to Uncle Joe.)
  3. Please note that it’s you, the person making the nomination and not your nominee, who is entered into the contest.
  4. You must leave your comment before 12 pm EST on December 31, 2009.
  5. Only one comment entry per person will be counted.
  6. You can enter one additional time by tweeting “Win a Flip MinoHD from @danigirl and @MC_Canada: http://tinyurl.com/y8k2nl7 #Flip4holiday.” IMPORTANT: you must leave a comment linking to your tweet, because there’s more than one blogger using the same hash tag and I need to be able to find your tweet to enter you in the contest!
  7. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries.
  8. You must be willing to share your full name and mailing address with me, and I will pass it along to Mom Central Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

Good luck, and thanks to Flip and Mom Central Canada for yet another fun giveaway!!

Two – no, THREE! — very different advent calendars

’Tis the season for advent calendars, and even though we’re already half way through December, I wanted to tell you about this amazing blog post courtesy of my friend Sue, who is the curator of the children’s lit collection at UNB (doesn’t that sound like an awesome job?)

Sue has put together a wonderful list of 25 animated shorts based on children’s books. Truly, it’s a thing of beauty, this list. It’s defiinitely worth bookmarking, whether you share them with your kids throughout the holiday season or save them for a rainy day. Brilliant stuff! And if you love it as much as I did, toss Sue’s blog a vote in the Canadian Blog Awards, would you? It’s Mouse-traps and the Moon, and she’s up for Best Canadian Culture or Literature Blog.

And, ahem, if you’re still in a voting mood… you could always toss me a bit of clickety-love, too!

***

Speaking of advent calendars, I’ve continued to be impressed by the items we’re unwrapping from the Hill and Knowlton / President’s Choice advent calendar. We’re up to day 17, and despite continuing exhortations from Beloved to jump ahead, we’re still opening one new item each day. In case you missed it, here’s what we’ve had so far. In the last week and a bit, we’ve opened:

  • PC Mocktails, a raspberry fizzy drink. Beloved and Simon give two thumbs up (my kids don’t drink pop, so Tristan wasn’t overly impressed, and I’m not fond of sweet drinks like that myself.)
  • PC Holiday Cards: this was a nice change of pace, and will come in handy as I’ve already used up all my Costco Photo Cards.
  • From the PC Antipasto Collection, Gigandes Beans in Vinaigrette. Okay, this one didn’t fly at our house. Interesting idea, and I do love most antipasto nibblers, but this one was a universal bust with us. Oh well, you can’t win them all!
  • PC Mint Jelly: Not sure about this one, either. We don’t eat lamb, the only use I know of for mint jelly. Can you just eat it on toast? If nothing else, this calendar is broadening our horizons!!
  • PC Wheat Hazelnut Cantuccini Mini Biscotti. This? To die for. We polished off the box the very first day we opened it, and I bought two more at the grocery store later in the weekend. Yummy!!!
  • PC Caramel Latte Drink Mix. Again, too sweet for me (and I’m not much of a flavoured coffee girl anyway) but Beloved approves!
  • PC Chocolate Covered Gingerbread Bites. Really, do I need to tell you that this went down like a house on fire? Even the baby loved them.
  • PC Pad Thai Sauce. I’ve never had Pad Thai, though I have enjoyed many other Thai dishes. Since the PC Tika Masala is one of my favourite standby meals, and since the directions on the jar seem straightforward enough, I’ll have to give this one a try soon.
  • PC Chocolate Butter Fudge. Seriously. How am I supposed to lose those 5 lbs I’ve been working on when this kind of thing magically appears in the house? Sooooo good, especially straight out of the freezer with coffee.

With just over a week to go, even though I can’t imagine there is anything more delicious than the truffles and the biscotti left under the tree, I fear I may yet lose the battle to prolong our enjoyment of these treats throughout the full 25 days of Christmas.

Edited to add: when I was noodling this post in my head, I knew I had three advent calendar ideas but for the life of me couldn’t remember the last one when I actually sat down at the computer. Got it now! Courtesy of Suze of Here In My Head, check out this awesome collection of 25 of the year’s best images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Truly awe-inspiring!!

Welcome to our newest sponsor: BraChic!

I‘d like to extend a special welcome to the newest sponsor of Postcards from the Mothership, Ottawa’s own BraChic.

I am so pleased to have Marianne and her shop advertising here for several reasons: I love the shop itself, I love the idea of supporting local business, and I love the serendipity of how this arrangement came to be.

You might remember my blog post from this summer, of how walking into BraChic one day totally revolutionized how I see my body. Really, I’m not exaggerating. I was seriously considering a breast reduction when I realized that a well-fitting bra can do as much, if not more, to make you look and feel better than a scalpel could. I still love the two bras I bought at BraChic and think that I might be due for a third some time in the new year.

So I wrote about my bra-fitting experience, and at least some of you read it and wandered on down to BraChic yourself, because Marianne said that people had mentioned the blog post to her. And then one day I noticed that Marianne had also linked to my blog post in the “news” section of her Web site, so on a whim I approached her an asked if she’d be interested in advertising and she said yes right away. It took us a few months of missed contacts, vacations and downed Internet connections to get the deal put together, but I’m thrilled to have her on board.

Initially, she sent me this image when we were discussing how the ad might look. I could never have made it work as a sidebar image, but I knew when I saw it that I had to share it with you. Is this not awesome? It’s for a line called HotMilk Maternity Lingerie. I love this ad!

HotMilk ad

So thanks, Marianne and BraChic, for being one of the hand-picked sponsors of Postcards from the Mothership.

(And no, it has not escaped my attention that both my current advertisers are bra-related business, and I spend so much time yammering about my vexatious breasts that they need their own damn category. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence….)

Loblaws Giveaway Winner!

Holy gingerbread snaps, did you see all the comments on the Loblaws Insider’s Report giveaway post? Congratulations to JustAnOttawaDad, winner of the basket of PC holiday treats!

I am blown away by the number of entries to this contest — I don’t think I’ve ever had a contest go more than a hundred comments, let alone the additional 50 or so tweets on Twitter, and a good handful of blog posts, too. Thanks to everyone who played along! And special thanks to Hill and Knowlton and Loblaws for making this giveaway possible.

(Stay tuned, I plan to continue bragging — erm, I mean, blogging, about the products in my PC grocery advent calendar for the rest of the month!)

PC Holiday Package Update

Wow, more than 140 entries in the Loblaws / PC Holiday giveaway! I think that’s my busiest contest ever!!

Since the folks at Loblaws and Hill and Knowlton were nice enough to package up an advent calendar full of grocery gifts, and since some of you seemed as tickled by their efforts as I was, I thought it would be nice to give you periodic updates on the products as we open them. (We might not last the full 25 days, though. Beloved is worse than the boys and has asked three times today if he can open the rest of the packages, now living happily under the Christmas tree.)

Here’s what we’ve opened so far:

Day 1 – PC Mulled Apple. Our thoughts? A sparkly alternative to regular cider, but we’re not big soda drinkers around here. Would be great to have around for guests for a holiday party, though!

Day 2 – PC Cake Server. Used it on Beloved’s birthday cake two days later — so much easier than using two butter knives, my usual classy approach to cakes. Thumbs up! Bonus? Shiny!

Day 3 – PC Truffles Dusted With Cocoa Powder. Okay, so these? Are AMAZING! I am not really a truffle fan, and I’m not really even much of a chocolate fan. In fact, I don’t care for dark chocolate at all. But these are fantastic. It’s the perfect one-bite treat to go with a hot cup of coffee.

PC Truffles Dusted With Cocoa Powder

Which brings me to…

Day 4 – PC Gourmet Coffee. I mean, it’s like they knew it was Beloved’s birthday. A cake server, a box of truffles and coffee — really, I couldn’t have planned a better gift! And the next day’s package had Beloved’s sweet-tooth in mind, too…

Day 5 – PC Sweet Grinder. I already love my PC Salt and Pepper Grinder, but this one gives it a whole new (snicker) twist: Chocolate, cinnamon and sugar in a grinder. Beloved made pancakes for the boys on Saturday morning and they used this liberally as a topping. Such a daddy-and-the-boys meal!

Day 6 – PC Cranberry Orange Sauce. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what to do with this. The jar says it can be used as a cooking sauce, or simply as a treat over crackers and cheese. I think I’ll save this one for company on Christmas Eve.

And you still have one more day to enter to win your own gift basket of party treats from the PC Insider’s Report. Don’t be intimidated by the number of entries — someone has to win it! And if you’ve already entered — good luck!

Loblaws Holiday Giveaway!

When my friends at Hill and Knowlton asked me if I’d be interested in sponsoring a Loblaws / President’s Choice holiday giveaway, I was torn. I have a very intense relationship with Loblaws, even though I’m pretty sure Loblaws doesn’t even know I exist. (Seems alarmingly like most of my high school relationships, now that I think of it.)

See, on the one hand, I love Loblaws. I shop there or at the Independent across the street every single week, and I love their stuff. I especially love the Insider’s Report, and I’m absurdly and perhaps unhealthily excited when new products come out. On the other hand, Loblaws does occasionally make me so crazy that I want to divorce them and run away with Sobey’s. On the other other hand, you know I love Hill and Knowlton and the fun projects they bring to us. And when I accepted their offer of a bunch of new products from the Insiders Report based on a caveat that we could also put together a giveaway for you guys, they didn’t blink an eye. Really, I got on board this bloggy giveaway as much because of H&K as because of Loblaws.

So I knew I would be getting a big box of samples to try, and I knew we’d set up a giveaway for you to share in the bounty. What I did not expect was this:

Loblaws2

I mean, that’s a REALLY big box. And do you know what was inside? I so love this! They had individually wrapped and labeled 25 packages with the numbers one through 25. The box arrived on December 1st. Yes, they mailed me a giant grocery advent calendar full of President’s Choice products from the Holiday Insider’s Report. How awesome is that?

Loblaws1

The boys were beside themselves with excitement at this amazing box of presents, and had a great time lining them all up in numerical order. (Lookit me go, presents + free food + teaching opportunity! What fun!) Then they opened up package number one, which was a bottle of PC Mulled Cider (I looked, but couldn’t find a link. Another thing that makes me squirrelly about PC – the search engine is questionable at best). The boys don’t really like pop, but they asked for a sample of this with dinner and both agreed it was a sparkly twist on plain old cider.

Loblaws3

The December 2 package contained a shiny (ooo, shiny!) new PC Cake Server. I’m not sure if I can be patient enough to keep opening just one package per day when I know there are some really yummy treats in there, but so far we’re having a lot of fun with this.

(As you’ll see in the background of the photographs, we’re in the middle of transitioning from carpet to laminate, and finding a place to put 25 23 individually-wrapped grocery items is proving to be a lot more of a challenge than it might have posed on an ordinary week, since everything from the living room and dining room has been moved elsewhere in the house, including my overstuffed and oversized love seat and sofa taking up the entire kitchen. Currently, most of the treats from Loblaws are stacked in the front hall closet!)

So while this has been an unexpectedly delightful bloggy event (can we pause again to say how much I love H&K?) on my part, it gets better! Our friends at H&K have put together an amazing gift basket that one of you lucky bloggy peeps will win just in time for holiday entertaining season. (Or, the holiday “go away, it’s MINE, get yer own!” season, depending on how it rolls at your place.)

The gift basket is loaded with some of the best items for the PC Holiday Insiders Report, with holiday entertaining in mind.

Loblaws4

The gift basket includes:

  • PC Mulled Apple
  • PC Raspberry Martini Mocktail
  • PC Chocolate Egg Nog
  • PC Mini (6”) holiday crackers
  • Belgian chocolate cookie tin
  • PC gingerbread bites
  • PC Scottish Shortbread
  • PC Apple Pecan Gourmet Topper
  • PC Holiday Chocolate Figurines

And lookit how they packaged it all up in a reuseable PC Green Bin tote for you. Awesome, eh? So here’s the details:

The contest is open from now through noon on Monday, December 7, 2009. There are three ways you can earn a ballot to enter this contest:

  1. Leave a comment below and tell me one treat you look forward to during the holiday season. Grandma’s shortbread? Your special-recipe stuffing? Swiss Chalet’s Festive Special? What taste tells you it’s holiday time?
  2. Write about the contest on your blog, linking to this post, and come back and leave me a comment with the URL to let me know about it.
  3. Tweet the contest on twitter using hashtag #PC_Holiday and linking to this blog post, and leave me a comment with a link to your status update. (You can create a direct link to your Twitter update by clicking on the time of the update and saving that link.) You can use tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/ye6ayq2

The fine print: this contest is open to Canadian residents only. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries. The winner will be announced the afternoon or evening of December 7, 2009. You must be willing to share your mailing address with me, and I will share it with Hill and Knowlton Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

You can buy President’s Choice products at Loblaws, Independent, Extra Foods, No Frills, Superstore, Fortinos, ValuMart, Zehrs, Maxi, Provigo, SaveEasy and Dominion — here’s an online store locator!

Thanks to Loblaws and Hill and Knowlton for another fun giveaway. Good luck to all!

HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer WINNER!

Congratulations to lucky Chantal of Two Hands Full, who will I have no doubt make excellent use of her new HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer when she prints out images of her pending brand new baby boy!

(There’s a print-screen of the random.org page confirming the winner that will be inserted into this post a little bit later this afternoon!)

I think this was the most successful giveaway I’ve hosted, if number of entries can be used to measure success. Congratulations to Chantal, and thanks to all of you who entered. Special thanks, of course, to HP Canada and to my peeps at Hill and Knowlton.

A Thanksgiving Portable HP Photo Printer Giveaway

Here’s a Happy Thanksgiving gift for my Canadian bloggy peeps: a chance to win an HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer!

Remember this?

HP Photosmart around the house (3 of 3)

That was from my blog post back in the spring, when my lovely friends at Hill and Knowlton sent me a free HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One printer. And then they gave me one to give away, too. I think I might have mentioned how much I love them.

And now — for even better printing-from-the-bathroom or just about anywhere else you might go convenience — you can win an HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer. How awesome is that? Here’s the deets on the printer:

A646 printer and bag

The HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer Series makes it simple to view, edit, create and personalize photos—all without a PC—with easy-to-navigate menus right on the printer’s HP TouchSmart control panel with large 3.45-inch touchscreen. Ideal for on-the-go photographers and busy parents, this portable and compact device easily prints from Bluetooth®-enabled mobile phones, allowing users to print out and share their photos wherever they are.

With more than 300 creative elements to choose from, including borders, clipart, album pages and photo captions, the HP Photosmart A640 Compact Printer Series makes personalizing and printing home photos easy and fun. In addition, 30 editing and enhancing options from the HP Design Gallery, including pet-eye fix, slimming feature, blemish removal and sepia tones, make photos look their best.

This ENERGY STAR-qualified printer helps reduce packaging waste by shipping in an innovative, reusable tote made from recycled plastics.

I haven’t had a chance to see or try this printer, but I am totally in love with the quality from my Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One so I can only imagine that this one is equally excellent.

The contest is open from now through noon on Friday October 16, 2009. There are three ways you can earn a ballot to enter this contest:

  1. Leave a comment below and tell me one thing for which you are thankful. (It is, after all, a Thanksgiving giveaway!)
  2. Write about the contest on your blog, linking to this post, and come back and leave me a comment with the URL to let me know about it.
  3. Tweet the contest on twitter using hashtag #HPContest and linking to this blog post, and leave me a comment with a link to your status update. You can use tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/ykb87eb (Edited to add: you can create a direct link to your Twitter update by clicking on the time of the update and saving that link.)

The fine print: this contest is open to Canadian residents only. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries. The winner will be announced the afternoon or evening of October 16, 2009. You must be willing to share your mailing address with me, and I will share it with Hill and Knowlton Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

Thanks to HP and Hill and Knowlton for another fun giveaway. Good luck to all!

The one with the pancakes in a can — no, really!

Attention marketers and PR types: even if you have a product that might not otherwise catch my attention, if you can contextualize your product as a fun blog post in my head, you’ve got my attention. A good product is fundamental, but you also have to catch my attention — and inspiring my sense of whimsy definitely helps.

That’s what happened today when I had my first — and, I can only imagine, my only — experience of drive-by pancaking. Pancakes from a can, no less. No, seriously!

The Batter Blaster people were in town this morning doing a media tour, and they canvassed a few local bloggers to see if anyone might be interested in having chef Anthony Elman drop by and make a pancake breakfast for the family. That’s not a pitch you get every day! They were pitching a new product called Batter Blaster, which is basically pancake batter in a can. Unfortunately for me, I was already at work by the time I got the e-mail. I ended up exchanging a few e-mails with the PR team, and they offered to drop off a free sample to me downtown and, intrigued, I said yes.

I have to admit, at first I rolled my eyes. Pancake batter in a can that looks suspiciously like a whipped cream canister? But I read the ingredient list, and was surprisingly wholesome. Organic, no less. Since Monday is one of the days that I am on my own for dinner, this seemed like an easy and fun dinner idea. When I was a kid I used to absolutely love the frozen pancake batter you could get in a milk carton. In fact, not that long ago I wondered to Beloved why you can’t get that anymore.

So that’s how I came to meet Julie and Anthony, my Batter Blaster peeps, for an illicit mid-afternoon drive-by pancaking in the Market.

Julie and Tony

They’re super-nice by the way, and they’re surprisingly passionate about their pancakes. Not only did I get dinner, and pictures, and a great blog post, but they had more ideas and recipes, and even threw in (snicker, I swear I am not making this up!) a set of Batter Blaster t-shirts for the family.

The boys were fascinated by the idea of pancakes from a can, and were keen to “help” make dinner.

boys

When you squeeze the trigger, the batter is surprisingly light and fluffy, and kind of melts into a traditional pancake batter as it settles. (Please admire the artistry of taking a photograph one-handed with a right-shutter camera while using my right hand to dispense the batter!)

squirt

I taught the boys the fine art of waiting for the bubbles to surface, and they took turns squirting the batter and flipping the pancakes.

watching

And the true test? Damn, they were really, really tasty pancakes. I mean, really good! Light and fluffy, and better than I usually make from the just-add-water mix.

with syrup

We all agreed.

yum

In fact, I had to step up production when my helpers started absconding to eat the pancakes and I couldn’t make them fast enough.

three in a pan

In fact, we ate the whole can! I think the boys had about five pancakes each. I’d made myself an omelette, because I’m trying to watch my carbs again, but I couldn’t resist one or two myself — they were just that good.

empty table

So that’s the story of how I got drive-by pancaked by Batter Blaster, the pancakes in a can. I wanted to mock this product, but I have nothing left to mock. It was a tasty, easy meal; the clean-up was minimal; the boys played along; I made one meal for all four of us; AND every single piece of the empty can is recyclable. The PR pitch was fun, and so was dinner. Plus, I laughed a lot when I explained it all to Beloved when he got home, from the drive-by pancaking to the free t-shirts.

I’m telling you, sometimes life is stranger than fiction. Pancakes in a can. Who knew?