CakeBlast

When I posted about four Yo Gabba Gabba Giveaways the other day, I missed a few really good ones. I posted about one giveaway at Mommy Bits ending tonight to see Yo Gabba live in Cincinnati on March 20, but missed several other contests with similar prizes.

At Chefdruck Musings, there is an awesome giveaway where one participant will win FOUR tickets to the Cincinnati 2pm show on March 20! This giveaway ends on Friday, Feb. 27th.

Cincinnati Coupons is giving away TWO SETS of two tickets each to Yo Gabba Gabba Live’s 2:00 pm Cincinnati show! This giveaway will end on Feb. 21, 2010 at 9 pm.

Domestic Debacle is giving away 2 tickets to the 2:00 pm showing in Cincinnati! Ends Friday, February 26th at 10:00 am!

There are also a couple of giveaways still taking place for Yo Gabba Gabba Live in St. Louis! Our family lives about the same distance from each of these two cities, so we would be happy to win any of these great contests.

Go to STL Mommy and enter to win 2 tickets to the 2pm St. Louis show at the Fox Theater on Sunday March 21st! A second winner will receive 1 Yo Gabba Gabba! Music is Awesome CD and 1 of the brand new Yo Gabba Gabba! “Birthday” DVDs! This giveaway will end February 20th at 5 pm.

The Peterson Family is giving away 3 tickets to the 5pm show at the St. Louis Fox Theater on March 21. Like the other St. Louis giveaway, this one also has a  second winner who will win Yo Gabba Gabba’s CD Music is Awesome and the new Yo Gabba Gabba DVD Birthday! There are daily entries available for this giveaway that ends Tuesday, March 2 at midnight.

This is all of the giveaways I know about for now. If I hear about any more, I will update my Twitter and/or Facebook Pages

How many of you look at expiring sweepstakes on websites such as All Things Bloggy and Online-Sweepstakes? Have you ever found an awesome giveaway that you wanted to enter, only to find out that it ended earlier in the day? In the months that I have hosted giveaways I have discovered that my two biggest days are the first couple days and the last day of the giveaway.

The first day of my giveaway, my newsletter goes out and attracts a few visitors. Then, as I continue  my promotion in the opening days of my giveaway, it is listed in all the “New Sweeps Added” sections of the giveaway sites. The last day, I usually see a nice upsurge in visitors due to being listed in the “Expiring Sweepstakes” area of many websites.  PR Bloggers who end their giveaways early in the day are losing visitors and potential subscribers.

Many giveaway entrants will become subscribers, followers, and friends. It is also common practice to gain contest entries in exchange for  backlinks/button placement. These are all invaluable tools to help promote the growth of our blogs. I am surprised by the number of people who end contests as early as noon!

A few weeks ago my computer failed. In the weeks that it took to get back up and running, I didn’t enter hardly any sweepstakes. Once I had my computer reformatted and texter reinstalled, I wanted to catch up on giveaways that I had missed. I checked up on many Expiring Sweepstakes to gain some last minute entries on giveaways I had previously missed. I am usually only able to “sweep” in the evening after the kids go to bed, so about half of the sweeps “expiring” that day had already ended!

When bloggers are promoting their giveaways, they are always asked to provide an ending date. The date (and not the time) is usually used to categorize the giveaway, so participants can find it when they seek out giveaways ending on that particular date. Failing to end a giveaway at 11:59 pm causes listings in the popular Expiring Sweepstakes sections of websites to be valueless.

Of course, the reason I say 11:59 pm and not midnight is because once midnight strikes, it becomes a whole different day. I currently end my giveaways at 11:59 pm CST, even though I would be better off ending them using PST which is an hour behind my time zone. I know that I have missed certain giveaways due to EST being ahead of our time zone.

For a blogger just starting out, it can be a huge mistake to end giveaways too early in the day. I have discovered many great blogs from looking at expiring sweepstakes lists. There are many other blogs that I have found from these lists and then left disappointed after realizing that a contest is over. This is probably why almost every PR/giveaway blog I subscribe to ends their contests at 11:59 pm. There may be many more reasons, but I don’t think any more reasons are necessary.

After River turned about 8-months old, we began the transition from the bottle to a sippy cup. Some of these cups had a straw inside which made them easier to drink from, but it also made the cups harder to clean. Sippy cup straws are not like normal straws that can be thrown away and replaced.  Instead, they are made of hard plastic and come in various sizes that can only be fitted to the specific cups they were made for.

Even though River is four-years old he still uses cups with little straws, except now they are called “sports cups.”  Usually, I would run hot water through these straws to clean them, but that has never been an ideal solution. After all, I wouldn’t run hot water over a dirty drinking glass and then let my son drink from it.

Straws often need a good scrub down, but until recently there was never a way to do it. A stay-at-home mommy solved this problem by inventing the Sippy Straw Cleaner!

The Sippy Straw Cleaner is a BPA free mini-brush that was designed to clean the little straws inside of numerous sippy cups. Since we have started using the sippy-straw cleaner, we will never have to throw another expensive sippy cup away due to a dirty straw. Watch the video!

The Sippy Straw Cleaners’ long-lasting brushes are made with rust-free stainless steel wire handles and nylon bristle tips. For only $3.98 and a nominal s/h fee, you will get a two pack of these handy straw scrubbers.

Once you have a couple of these you will want to buy more. Besides saving sippy cups from the waste bin, Sippy Straw Cleaners are also perfect for cleaning infant medicine droppers. In fact, these are quickly becoming a must-have item for any parent with small children.

One of my readers will win a set of Two Sippy Straw Cleaners!

Congratulations Michele!

Here are your random numbers:

68

Timestamp: 2009-12-24 22:14:47 UTC

MANDATORY ENTRY: Go to StrawCleaner.com and then leave a comment on this post telling me something you learned about the Sippy Straw Cleaner or the company!

EXTRA ENTRIES: To qualify for extra entries, you must also complete the MANDATORY entry. Please put each entry in a separate comment. For instance, leave two comments if you have the Sippy Straw Cleaner button.

**Go to SAVE THE SIPPIES and grab a button for your blog or website (3 Extra Entries).

**Mention & link-to this giveaway in a blog post (1 Extra Entry).

**Have the Cakeblast button on your blog/website (1 Extra Entry).

**Follow my blog with Google Connect / Blogger (1 Extra Entry).

**Follow @sippystrawclean on twitter (1 Extra Entry)

**Follow cakeblast on Twitter – I follow back! (1 Extra Entry).

**Tweet about the contest. Feel free to copy/paste RT #Giveaway @sippystrawclean  WIN Straw Cleaners 4 Sippy Cups & Sports Bottles !! Merry Christmas – Ends 12/23 http://bit.ly/7BlTJD – Please leave the tweet link in your comment (1 Extra Entry – Can be done once per day).

** Subscribe to my blog by email or RSS feed (1 Extra Entry).

**Become My Facebook Fan (1 Extra Entry)

**Purchase an item from Sippy Straw Cleaner (5 Extra Entries).

Contest Ends Dec. 23 at 11:59pm CST. Must be 18+ to enter. Open to participants worldwide. Winner will be chosen by random.org & announced Dec. 24. Winner will be notified by email with “Congrats: You’ve Won The Sippy Straw Cleaner Giveaway” in the subject line. Winner will then have 72 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: Sippy Straw Cleaner provided me with a sample product for review purposes after I responded to an ad from The Product Review Place. Sippy Straw Cleaner is also allowing me to give one of my readers a two-pack to help promote the item. Sippy Straw Cleaner is going to be responsible for shipping the prize after I provide the shipping information of the winning entrants. No monetary compensation was received for this post, and the sample product in no way affected my opinion of the Sippy Straw Cleaner. This article offers an honest opinion and has not been reviewed or edited by anyone other than Larry H. of Cakeblast.

Two of a Kind, Working on a Full House is hosting a giveaway for an Oreck Halo vacuum! I’m sure I am not the only one who  would love love love to have one of these UV-light beaming, germ- killing, supervacs. This contest ends at 11:59pm EST on November 25th.

Mommy Goggles is also hosting an Oreck Halo vacuum giveaway! I need one of these vacuum cleaners! Contest ends on November 25, 2009 at 11:59 pm Central Time!

Two Oreck Halo giveaways ending November 25th! How exciting is that?! If we fail to win a Halo, there are several opportunities throughout the blogosphere to win a Hoover.

Feisty Frugal & Fabulous is hosting a giveaway for a Hoover Windtunnel Rewind Vacuum Cleaner! This giveaway is open to US and Canadian residences and will end on November 15th at 9:00pm CT.

Babes and Kids Review recently posted another Hoover Windtunnel Rewind Vacuum – Review & Giveaway.  This contest is open to US residents and will end December 1st at 11:59 MST.

What’s Cooking At DD is host to yet another Hoover Windtunnel Rewind Vacuum Cleaner Giveaway ! This giveaway ends November 29, 2009 at 11:59 PM EST.

Finally, Mommy’s Hangout is hosting a Hoover Windtunnel Rewind Giveaway. This contest ends 11/30/2009 @ 3:00 PM EST.

That makes six chances to win a new vacuum! If you have been following my blog for very long, you know I have been trying like crazy to win a new vacuum. Good luck to everyone, but I’m going to be jealous if you win.

About an hour ago, I finished reading The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Volume 2. This Klutz book seems to be aimed at tweens and teens, but I am 34-years old and found it uproarious. If you decide to buy this book as a gift for your child, grandchild, niece or nephew, make sure you read it first. Better yet, buy yourself a copy! You will be glad you did.

Another way to acquire this book and its predecessor is to win them here! Klutz is allowing me to give away copies of The Encyclopedia of Immaturity AND The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Volume 2 to three of my lucky readers! If you have ever owned or read a Klutz book, you know about their quirky blend of humor and instruction.

I have been a fan of the Klutz company for many years. Klutz books taught me how to juggle, to master the art of using a yo-yo, and how to create origami out of dollar bills. The books are easy-to-understand manuals that teach people how to do things that many people want to learn, but usually do not think to ask how. A unique feature of  Klutz books is that they usually come packaged with the apparatus used to master the skill being taught.  Since the company’s inception in 1977, Klutz has been a hotbed of arcane and outrageous knowledge.

In 2007, The Encyclopedia of Immaturity was released. This first volume  contains more than 300 hilarious facts, pranks, tricks and activities. The book was a bestseller and won the National Parenting Publications Gold Award. Now they have followed it up with the equally great and rollicking Encyclopedia of Immaturity Vol 2! Here is the synopsis from Klutz.

If you are not already a fan of Klutz products, you may very well  be one after reading this book. The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Vol 2 is a gut-busting blend of practical jokes, fun facts, cool tricks, and crazy antics that will amuse and inspire the child inside all of us. Check out the video demonstration below showing how to slip on a banana!

The Giveaway

MANDATORY ENTRY: Go to Klutz.com and then leave a comment on this post telling me about another book that you (or someone you know) would love to have!

EXTRA ENTRIES: To qualify for extra entries, you must also complete the MANDATORY entry. Please put each entry in a separate comment. For instance, leave two comments if you have my button.

**Have My button on your blog/website (2 Extra Entries).

**Follow my blog with Google Connect / Blogger (2 Extra Entries).

**Mention & link-to this giveaway in a blog post (1 Extra Entry).

**Follow cakeblast on Twitter – I follow back! (1 Extra Entry).

**Tweet about the contest. Feel free to copy/paste RT @cakeblast Giveaway! http://bit.ly/1B1yBI Klutz Encyclopedia of Immaturity Volumes 1 & 2!! #giveaway #books #contest Ends 11/22 – Please leave the tweet link in your comment (1 Extra Entry – Can be done once per day).

** Subscribe to my blog by email or RSS feed (1 Extra Entry).

**Become My Facebook Fan (1 Extra Entry)

**Add Cakeblast to your Technorati Favorites (1 Extra Entry).

Contest Ends Nov. 22 at 11:59pm CST. Open to participants 18+ with a United States mailing address only (international readers can enter if they have a friend in the States who can accept their prizes by mail). Winner will be chosen by random.org & announced Nov. 23. Winner will be notified by email with “Congrats: You Have Won The Klutz Giveaway” in the subject line. Winner will then have 72 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: Klutz provided me with a copy of The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Vol 2 for review. They are also allowing me to give three of my readers copies of both The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Vol 1 & Vol 2. The Klutz company is going to be responsible for shipping the prizes after I provide the shipping information of the winning entrants. No monetary compensation was received for this post, and the sample book in no way affected my opinion of the product. This article offers an honest opinion and has not been reviewed or edited by anyone other than Larry H. of Cakeblast.