Winning!

I have a habit of entering online contests. I used to do this a lot a few years ago, and even won $5000 cash from an online contest. Mostly I win movie passes, DVDs, tickets, that kind of stuff. I do really like free stuff, who doesn't? Obviously, I'm particularly drawn to contests with craft supply prizes. You may recall when I won a Yudu screenprinting machine a year ago? I was ridiculously excited about that! Well....

Here's my latest win - an Accuquilt Go! Baby.

It's a die cutting machine - it cuts accurate shapes out of fabric super fast. Since my experience sewing has shown that my biggest issue is that I cannot cut stuff out accurately, I'm quite excited about giving this machine a whirl. I got to pick 3 dies that were included in my prize - so I selected triangles, hearts, and 2 1/2" strips (perfect for bike cuffs!).  It's a very generous prize from Accuquilt! I won it from a lovely craft blog called Follow the White Bunny  (if you like embroidery, you'll love her blog) - thanks Nicole!

I'll be sure to post again when I've had a chance to play with it. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for crafty blogs with great prizes (I've seen several Accuquilt contests over the past year), it's always worth tossing your name in the hat! The best advice I can give for entering online contests is to set up a separate email account for your contest entries, because you will get lots of newsletters and spam - but every now and then you'll get a notification about a win too!

In other news - Peter and I made our annual batch of cold-process soap last night. That's what everyone does on a Saturday night, right? Make soap? Peter was skeptical of the whole idea of making soap at first, but I lured him in with the danger aspect of it (lye can burn) and once he used our homemade soap, he was a convert, and now we make it every year - some for us and some to give as gifts. He's actually more particular about it than I am and hates store bought soap! 

We always use this tutorial and recipe as our base, though we vary it a bit according to the oils we have on hand. We have a signature scent that's a mix of sweet orange, clove, and cinnamon - smells like the holidays to me now. :)