Winners of Sigrid Naturals Giveaway!!!

The "any woman" package...contains one Back to the Garden Body Butter,  a Simply Beautiful Body Butter,

a Nurture Nature Face Cream and a Beautiful Eyes Elixir

The Winner is...Sheepish of Sheepish !!

And the "mama to be, or new mama" package...contains one Back to the Garden Body Butter, a Mama's Belly Butter, Mint Chocolate Foot Butter and a Nurture Nature Face Cream...

The Winner is...Amanda Pedro of By Hook and Thread!

I know both these girls are fellow Canadians...how funny is that!

(and I happened to win a giveaway that Amanda recently had on her blog..oh karma!!!)

 

Thank you for everyone who entered and to everyone who went and checked out Sigrids shop!

xo maureen

Getting there...

As promised here are my after pictures!!!

This is our homeschool room which was in some desperate need of attention!

I redid the bulletin board by covering it with a piece of Autumny fabric, and glue gunning some felt leaves on the corners.  I think I'm going to do this every season and change it up!

I cleaned out and organized our homeschool cupboard too!  This cupboard is a life saver for me...it's where we store almost all of our learning supplies for the upcoming year...it also helps to keep things out of sight, (out of mind), for our little explorer toddler!

Here is the other side...this room is shared by Matilda and Ruby...I try to keep Matildas toys on the lower shelves and the books that I hold sacred on the top shelves!

And if you turn around, you see this under our stairs...a little play nook for the girls.

The kitchen and wooden fridge was built by my 15 yr old nephew Ryan. 

And here is the living room...note the absence of clutter!  (okay...I'll confess...most if it is sitting on my stairs, waiting to be put away upstairs or thrown away, but at least it's not on the window sills)!

My mother found the couch cover/quilt at the dump!!!!!  It needs a bit of mending, but it's just beautiful!

I'm astounded that people throw these things away...but, delighted when I receive such a treasure!

And here is our door that leads to an outdoor porch.  I've been meaning to sew curtains for this door for the past 5 years or so.  I decided yesterday that a cheap stained glass effect would work for me.  So we got out the tissue paper and modge podge and Ruby and I went to town!  Cheap and effective...gotta love it.

Now I just have to work on planning our daily homeschool schedule.  I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow, and we're going to ease into it slowly starting on Tuesday!  I'm pretty excited about this upcoming homelearning year...we'll be doing grade two this year, and I can't wait to see where Ruby leads me in her delight of learning!

Also...I mentioned before that I LOVE canning and preserving food...so I started another blog called

Putting Away the Harvest.  I'd LOVE to have other bloggers, gardeners, homesteaders, locavores and home canning enthusiasts contribute their recipes as well, (and ideas for putting away the harvest).  I'm dreaming that it will be a community blog where we have many contributers and ideas.  If you want to contribute please send me your recipes and posts, (even if you have old posts on your blogs relating to the subject...send them to me)!!!  I truly believe in the power of growing, preserving and storing food for winter...it's awesome to see the pantry filling up with food!

Send to valleyvixen@mail.com

Don't forget about our giveaway...please go HERE to enter! 

There are 2 lovely prize packages...each containing 4 creams!!!

(and one will contain a little extra)

Go and enter!!!

Happy Weekend Everyone!

xo mauren

Giveaway...Sigrid Natural Skin Care!

I'm thrilled to announce our latest giveaway!  Our dear sweet friend and neighbour, (she literally lives down the hill from me), has offered up some of her beautiful skin care products to 2 lucky winners! 

The story of Sigrid Natural Skin Care

Sigrid Natural Skin Care began in the summer of 2004, shortly after a personal experience with a homemade herbal salve. A wound in my hand wouldn't heal with conventional drugstore creams. Frustrated, I decided to try my friend's homemade comfrey salve. Within a day the swelling went down and the infection ceased. Excited about the efficacy of this homemade product I asked my friend to teach me how to make it. I immediately fell in love with the experience of crafting natural herbal body products, and thus Sigrid Natural Skin Care was born.

I began producing larger batches of my homemade skin care products and giving them to friends as presents. Shortly thereafter, the demand started to grow and people were placing orders. Since 2004 I have been apprenticing, researching, and experimenting to create my current line of unique skin care products.

*So this is where I want to add my own personal testament...when Matilda was a baby she had horrible rashes on her face and chest.  We spent a small fortune on creams and oils that didn't work at all.  Then someone suggested Sigrids Comfrey Cream...I thought I didn't have anything to lose at this point, because we had tried it all.  Well...it worked like magic!  Matildas skin totally cleared up, all thanks to this locally grown, locally made skin care salve!   I know I sound like an infomercial, but truly I'm a convert!

Sigrid has kindly offered up 2 prizes!!! 

The first is a package of creams that any woman would be thrilled to get...I'm not telling you what's in them...I'll announce them when I announce the winner...

The second is a prize package that would be suited for a new mama or a mama to be...

Please tell me in your comment which package you would like to win.

Wait...there's a bit more to this...some rules you must follow!!!!

What I want you to do is head on over to the Sigrid Naturals site, and tell me which of her products you think sounds heavenly!  Everyone who comes by our blog can enter once...however, if you are a follower and friend of Twig and Toadstool, you can enter daily until the contest closes on Tuesday Sept 7th at midnight), we'll announce the winners on Wednesday morning, and disclose your wonderful prize packages!

(and don't forget to tell us which prize package you want to win...the one for "any woman" or the

"new/mama to be"!)

Good luck!

xo maureen & shanti

Pay It Forward...a giveaway of sorts!

I'm a believer that we can change this world of ours one act of kindness at a time!

"Kindness can become its own motive.  We are made kind by being kind."

-Eric Hoffer

Here's the challenge...simple and sweet.  Someone out there in this vast blog network started a "Pay It Forward" challenge.  I signed on, and now I want to Pay It Forward myself.  So, here's what I'm proposing...a giveaway of sorts.

Leave a comment under this post.  At noon tomorrow comments will be closed, and I'm going to choose 3 people at random.  I'll make each of you a fabulous sunny window star, (if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, I'll make you a wonderful wintery window star)!  *make sure I have some way of contacting you!

The challenge for you will be to pay it forward yourself.  You can do this in your real life, or on your blog, (if you have one), let's just get these simple and divine acts of kindness rolling in our world.

"Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo."

from Pooh's Little Instruction Book

maureen xox

The winners are:
Rose Mamie
Sheepish and
CHILDHOOD MAGIC!!!
I'll be in touch with you all very soon!

Our First Fabulous Giveaway..help us give our Rainbow Gnomes a new home!!!

You could win these Rainbow Gnomes!!!!

Happy Monday from the Toadstool!

 

So, welcome to our first fabulous giveaway!  Remember those Rainbow Gnomes I made for Ruby's birthday?  Well, I made two sets of them, so we could have our first giveaway!  The rules are as follows...everyone can enter once...just leave a comment, and a way to get in contact with you if you win, however...if you are an officious "Follower" of our blog, you can enter every day for the next week...one entry per day, just leave your comments under this post...one separate comment for each entry,  (if you join our blog in the next week, you can enter every day from the day you become a follower, remember one comment equals one entry)!  And for our facebook friends, you can enter daily as well,  but you need to leave your comments here, and not on our Facebook page!   Feel free to mention our giveaway on any kindred blogs out there...we'd be truly grateful!!    We'll announce the winner on Monday June 14th...one week from today!  (we'll also ship them to anywhere in this wonderful world of ours)!!!  Good luck to everyone who enters...help our gnomes find a fabulous new home!!!

In the spirit of giving stuff away!!!

maureen xo