Giveaway Winner and 2 Pleasant surprises!

Well everyone the Ramsign giveaway is over and we have a Winner! The winner of the Ramsign House # Plaque goes to....drum roll...Kelly Rossow from housetalkn. Congratulations Kelly, I hope you will love the Plaque! Thank you to everyone who entered my first giveaway...it won't be the last!

Onto other things from this week, I was greatly surprised when I opened my email the other day to find an email from Tina @ Tinas place for this and that telling me she was giving me an award...the Liebster award! It brought a smile to my face to know that someone actually thought of me and my blog. Thank you so much Tina! :)
However it doesn't end there! Tonight right before I went to write this post I opened my email to find another surprise! Tracey from Breathing English Air has also just bestowed upon me the Liebster Blog award...I couldn't believe it..2 in 2 days! The funny thing about that was that Tracey is one of the blogs I was going to give the award to as well. So now I am not sure if that means I need to give it to 10 people since I received it twice I think I will stay with the 5. Here is what the Liebster Award means and what it's about.

This award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers, in the hopes that it will bring many new friends/followers.
Leibster is German and means 'dearest' or 'beloved but it can also mean 'favorite'. The idea of the Leibster award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers. So, in the spirit of good fun I am passing this award on to five other bloggers. Please stop by and visit them.

The Rules are:
1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2. Reveal your five picks for the award and let them know.

3. Post the award on your blog.

4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogshare-other bloggers.

5. Finally and the best rule of all..........have fun and spread the love!

Here are my picks for the Liebster award in no specific order. I enjoy reading each of these blogs and hope you will give them a visit!

Michelle @ Dreaming of a Farmhouse

Tracey @ Breathing English Air

Jessica @ Four Generations One Roof

Christine @ Stonehouse Living

 Suzanne @ Daffodil Hill


Lastly I recently won a giveaway over at Megans Lovely Blog Splendid Design. I won the book Cake Pops By Bakerella. It's a really fun book with so many cute ideas for different types of cake pops. My kids love all the pictures and we will be attempting to make some for Valentines day! Thanks again Megan for the book :)

  Thanks for stopping on over, Hope you have a great weekend!

Till next time,
Rachel
xoxo

Ramsign European House # Plaque Giveaway

Having a wonderful Giveaway for a European House Number Plaque made by Ramsign...to enter the Giveaway go HERE! The Giveaway will end on Jan.11th 2012. Hope you'll all enter for the chance to win, and thanks so much to those of you who already have.

All the Best,

Rachel

xoxo

A Give Away...and it's From Europe

I am so excited to offer all of you this Give Away, and hope it is something you will like! Up for grabs is a new custom made European House number Plaque made by RAMSIGN. Ramsign is located out of Denmark and specializes in making custom porcelain enamel house plaques and has been doing so since 1991. You will be able to choose from any house number plaque up to 5 numbers long. The name and address plaques are not a part of this give away. Whomever the winner is will have their name and email sent to Tezz Hagelin the Marketing Assistant at Ramsign and she will then contact you to find out the sign you wish to have. It will be made to order and shipped to you free of charge! I don't know about you but I know I have always loved the look of European house number plaques. They add character and European charm to the outside of your home. I hope you all will enter for the chance to win!

 

 Here is what you need to do to enter this Give Away for the Ramsign house number plaque. 

-First Leave me a comment letting me know you are following my blog, if your not already following then become a new follower and let me know. Mandatory

-For a second chance to win go visit the RAMSIGN website, take a look at their house number plaques, then come back and let me know in another comment which one you would like to choose.

It's as easy as that! Hope you will join in for this Give Away, Best of Luck to you!

The Give Away will end next Wednesday January 11th at 8pm Eastern Time!

xoxo

Rachel

Thrift store Treasures

 I don't know about you but I know I always love a trip to a good thrift mall, you never know what kind of surprises or disappointments await you lol. Yesterday the family and I headed out to one of the larger thrift malls in our area to see if we could find anything worth while, I happily found a couple of things that made it worth my while. I wanted to share them with you all...I always love to see the neat things people can find for a good deal. 

I have yet to clean up any of my Christmas Decor....I am probably one of the last people in blog land to still have it up! I suppose I will get around to it sometime this week...it just looks so pretty at night that I hate to get rid of all the lights.  So you will see it yet again in these pics...sorry! 

First find is this new lamp with the Harlequin lamp shade. I believe it is originally from kirklands...$13.00 and I love it!

 

I am not sure if I will leave it on that side of the buffet but I guess I will figure that all out when I take all the Christmas stuff down and re arrange it. 

This here is an Angel that seems to be made of straw like fiber. I really liked the natural look of her and she reminds me of Holiday decorations from Germany. She was all of .13 cents!

 

My next find was this set of 4 placements. They are reversible and I love red and white checks so these made me very happy! Total for the 4 was $3.00...I think the trees are so cute for Christmas time!

 

I will use them on the plain checked side any time of year. I don't know if it's strange that these things make me so giddy and happy....but they do lol.

 

Mr. Santa...I thought he was so neat...different, with a bit of folk art look to him. His arms move and he has the same image on the other side. He was .25 cents I can't wait to clean him up and use him next year!

 

Lastly I picked up this silver tray. I thought about using it in my bathroom to put some of my glass jars on but I also really like it in the dinning room. We shall see where it ends up. It has some nice etching on it, but it's hard to make out in the pics. This was $3.00

 Those were my Thrift mall scores...hope you enjoyed them as much as I do! This next picture was a gift from my hubby. It is a small French ceramic jug. It came from an old French Restaurant in France and was used to hold aged apple cider that came from the Normandy region. It's a neat little piece to have...I will be sure to find a good home for it.

 

Here are some shots of the Dinning room at night with the glow of candles and my new lamp. The lamp really gives off a nice soft amber glow...I like it., just what I needed in there. 

I love lighting the candles at night, the lantern is my favorite one...$16.00 not too shabby.

I put the silver tray on the buffet....maybe I will keep it there with some candles in front of it to reflect the light. 

 Well that is it folks! Hope you made it through all the pics...and if you did thanks for sticking around. What have you found lately that was a bargain or made ya get all giddy?? 

Have a good one,

Till next time,

Rachel

xoxo

Linking up with the following parties
From My Front Porch To Yours: Treasure Hunt Thursday
Ivy and Elephants: What's it Wednesday 
Primp: Primp Your stuff Wednesday 
Savvy Southern Style: Wow us Wednesdays 
Thrifty Decorating:Thrifty Thursday 
A Stroll Thru Life: Table Top Tuesday 
French Country Cottage: Feathered Nest Friday 
My Romantic Home: Show and Tell Friday 
Chic on a Shoestring: Flaunt it Friday

A hodge podge of Christmas!

This years Christmas Season has been quite a busy one! I am pretty sure that for the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas there was at least one person in our home that was sick. Between strep throat, colds, ear infections, and the baby needing breathing treatments for a chest cold I should have had a personal parking spot at the kids doctors office I was there so much! Thankfully most of that has past!

My eldest daughter turned 10 on Dec. 21st. I can't believe how fast she has grown up...it leaves me with many mixed emotions. I am not ready for her to be a teenager, I miss her being a little girl and knowing that she is just going to keep getting older makes me sad. But I am very proud of the young lady she has become and feel fortunate to get to be her Mom. We had a Birthday party/sleepover for her the weekend before Christmas, so that had me running around as well! Glad she enjoyed it :)
 
 

My four year old son had his Christmas Concert for school at the Columbus Ga. art museum. It was the cutest thing. His pre-kindergarten class sang "Must be Santa" and did hand motions for all of the things they said about Santa. I wish I had pictures but we weren't aloud to take any in the museum. I have a DVD of it and love watching it...makes me tear up every time!

Then my kids all got a special surprise when their favorite Uncle (my youngest brother whose 18) came to spend Christmas with us! The kids were so happy to have their Uncle Craig here with them and I loved having him with us as well. He is such a big help, playing with the kids, cooking with me, running errands with me and the kids...it was a nice gift having him with us.
 
Cayla and her new Car from Santa!
 
Cullen wants a ride
  
Autumn and Uncle Craig playing Lets Dance...lots of fun!
 

As for me, I love getting to have my hubby home with me for 2 weeks work free! That is a perk to being in the military...nice long leave for the holidays. I will be sad when he has to go back....I never tire of having him home with me :)

Now we are headed into the New Year, I am looking forward to seeing what 2012 has in store for my family and me. I am pretty sure a trip to Disney is in the works! What ever it may be I will be sure to keep you all updated.

 Here are more Christmas pictures. It might be a bit much but I love pics!

The Living Room~

 

 
The Christmas Sign I made out of scrap wood.
 
 
 
 



The Dinning Room~

I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season and wish you a Happy New Year! Thanks for following along with me. I have a Giveaway that will be coming up soon...so stay tuned for that!

All the best,

Rachel 

xoxo