The “31 Days of Yule” giveaway, AKA “The Giveaway That Keeps On giving”, AKA “The Contest That Wouldn’t End” is almost over. Tonight is the last night, and we’re giving away $42.00 Dichroic Glass Runes…

Dichroic Glass Elder Futhark Runes

This was our first stab at this, and despite a clueless start and a few hiccups along the way, I think it was a success! We accomplished our goals, to bring more traffic to online small business owners, and make people happy with the chance to win something beautiful. Thank you to everyone who donated their wonderful products!

Now that we’ve got it down to a smooth changeover from day to day, we’ve agreed that it’s something we should do every few months…we’ve had people during the course of the month wanting to be involved, and we’d hate to let them down! We’re going to take some time to breathe in between giveaways, though, and we’ll be drawing the winner closer to 10PM EST than 9 – we need both kids in bed before Matt and I do “dueling computers” for the drawing and posting each night:)

By the way, thank you, Matt, for all your help! I had promised Juniper that she didn’t have to be a part of the contest because it’s more than she can handle right now, but I found out pretty quickly that I couldn’t do it myself. I give many kudos to all the bloggers who do – they obviously handle stress better than I do:)

Here we go again, for the last 10 nights! We’re kicking it back off with something really special,handmade Ogham Staves from a wonderful woman in the U.K. I’ve seen some incredible runes, and these look like a similar divination tool with a different flavor. Click the banner above to go to the contest page, and good luck!

The grandfather of one of my best friends was buried today, and Matt and I went to the funeral. As sad as it was, he was a great man who lived well, and well into his ’90’s. His mind was clear until the very end, and he was a kind and wise soul who was loved dearly by his family. My love and energy tonight continue to be sent his child, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The family line he helped to create is very, very dear to us.

We had a *bunch* of people who were trying to enter the contest tonight, and had fatal errors. Because so many people were unable to enter, we’re extending “Day 20″ until tomorrow night. We’ll also enter “Day 21″, so feel free to go crazy and enter them all:)

If you have problems commenting, please email me and let me know! We think it was a CommentLuv update that needed to be installed, so it should be fixed now…

On Saturday night, my cousin is getting married. It’s the first of rmy aunts’ sons to marry (she has 4), and he’s in his late thirties, and this is a BIG deal for her. It’s also a big deal for us, because she’s rented out a museum for this occasion. There will be at *least* one famous couture clothing designerer there and a very good chance of an A list celebrity or two, although I can only confirm the first part (but I’ll be sure to be posting about the rest on Sunday:)). Lets just say that my aunt and uncle run in some great social circles in NYC. Lets also say that suburban housewives like me don’t often get to go to parties like this, and although it may be shallow of me, I’m happy to be called shallow for this one because I’m psyched! I have an incredible gown, and Matt’s tux is starched and his shirt pressed.

So anyway…we’ve got to pick drop the kids off at Juniper’s house (in the midst of what might be a blizzard here on the east coast tomorrow), then pick up my grandmother (who’s in her 90’s) and take her over to the museum. Travel, with no weather or traffic, will take a minimum of 2 1/2 hours from our house to the wedding. We’re realistically looking at closer to 4 hours of car time. We need to be there with my grandmother at 7pm, and the ceremony starts at 7:30. Dinner is being served at 10pm, and the party ends at 1:30am. We’ll be sleeping over at Juniper’s house to celebrate a family Yule with them and our Amy on Sunday, and will lucky to get back there before 3:30am.

So why do you need to know all of this? Despite busy schedules and kids, Matt and I have managed to change over our contest each night at 9pm. One night Matt ran late, and it didn’t get done until 9:20, and I was upset.

There’s just no way to draw a winner tomorrow (Saturday) night. It can’t be done. Not only that, but I’ve been thinking about Christmas eve, Christmas day and New Year’s eve. It doesn’t feel fair to me to have contests on days/nights when no one’s going to be online.

This will *not* have an effect on the number of items put up for giveaway. I’ll either extend into a few days in January, or put up 3 items and end it on December 30th. This way, you’ll have the best chance of entering anything you want to, and our talented donors will have the best chance of having their work seen.

So we’ll be drawing tonight at 9pm for Mother Moon’s Runes, but I won’t be putting a contest item up right after like I usually do. I’ll put one up on Sunday to be drawn Monday, and we’ll go from there.

Sorry to put a kink in the works here, but black tie weddings are a pretty high priority on my list!

I have done a pretty good job at *not* blogging about my giveaways this month – well, ok, I made myself stop after a few days. I have started, however, poking around and looking for things I might win:)

Janie at Mother Moon’s Message handmakes runes from time to time, and has given them away on her site. People seem to go rabid over them, and I can’t blame them…they’re pretty special! She’s been kind enough to offer us a set she made, and they’re up tonight on our “31 Days of Yule” giveaway, so if you’ve entered a contest to win them on her site and not won, you’ve got another chance:) The winner will be drawn tomorrow night.

Jaz at October Farm is also doing a series of giveaways on her site, and she’s great at collecting all these wonderful Victorian things from her quaint town, and puts together pretty gift baskets and gives them away. She also gave us one to give away, earlier in the month.

Magickal Enchantments is also doing a great giveaway right now for a A Custom Spirituality Kit that’s really cool – she talks to you and finds out what you need, and makes something custom tailored to you…another creative person who helped us out in our contest with a beautiful gift basket…

Thank you to the three of you, and to everyone else who has joined in the spirit of giving this month. Especially the rest of our incredible giveaway donors. Just think, the month is just half over – for us at least…we’ll be keeping our giveaway going all of December!