Author: Angie

I’m so excited for the Valentine Handmade with Love gift giveaway hop that starts tomorrow and runs until Feb. 6. Many blogs are participating. I have 6 awesome sponsors that have offered up some really cool prizes.

1.  HautTotes is offering a really cool zipper pouch with a fabric design exclusively available from HautTotes.

2. The Clever Hedgehog is offering a $25 gift certificate for her beautiful handmade jewelry,

3. Concrete Minerals is offering 2 of their best selling mineral eye shadow shades in Lolita and Smut.

4. South Texas Naturals is offering 5 bars of hand crafted soap in the winner’s choice of scents.

5. Madame Koiteh is offering a romantic lover’s gift basket that is a 3 piece bath and body set which includes: shea butter enriched spa bath salts, shea butter infused massage oils, and a moisturizing glycerin soap all in Strawberry kisses scent. As a bonus she will also give the winner a handcrafted candle tin in Japanese Cherry Blossom scent.

6. Angie’s Handmade Candles is offering a wax dipped bear in the winner’s choice of scents.

Several items will be available to International readers.

So how can you get 5 bonus entries today? Blog about this giveaway today with a link to my blog. Then when you come back to enter the giveaway tomorrow (starting at midnight) just leave 5 separate comments that you blogged about this giveaway with a link to your blog post on the giveaway post!  Feel free to copy whatever you like from this post to use in yours. 

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I’m a one that actively seeks out low entry giveaways. Almost daily.  It seems that there a many different perceptions of what is considered “low entry”.

I seek out low entry giveaways for several reasons:

1.  Good chance of winning

2.  Helps out  fellow bloggers to get more entries into their giveaway

3.  A lot of them are grocery or beauty type items I would normally buy anyway. This has helped take a bite out of our grocery bill which is fantastic.

So my question to you is, What do you consider “low entry”?

My personal definition is a giveaway with less than 100 entries and ending within a week.  There are exceptions if there are several winners. I usually multiply that by the number of winners for the giveaway.  So if there are 2 winners, less than 200 entrants still fit in my definition and so on.   One exception to my rule would be if it’s a really big prize with less than 200.  For example, something like a Dyson vacuum with only 200 entries and a week left would be low for that prize, in my opinion.

I don’t like it when I see 200+ entries with 1 winner and it’s being promoted as low entry.   I also hate to see when there is still 2 weeks left on the giveaway and it’s being promoted as low entry. That’s just my opinion though.  I know there are many views out there. 

That being said, I found a giveaway with low entries today I thought I’d share as an example:

Barefoot in Portland has a giveaway for a GLEE make your own candy kit.  With my entries included there are only 13 entries so far and end 2/4 (less than a week away).  So stop over and enter. 

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The Valentine Handmade with Love Gift Hop will be happening Feb. 2-6. Many blogs will be participating. All giveaway items are handmade items. I’m so excited to be sharing my wonderful sponsors with you. The next wonderful sponsor I have is:  South Texas Naturals 

South Texas Naturals offers handcrafted soaps as well as other handcrafted items like sachets and lip balms.  South Texas Naturals also has a gifts and favors section.  That would be a great idea for baby showers, wedding favors, prizes at parties, and whatever else you can think of.  Who doesn’t use soap?

I’m a fan of shea butter and whipped body lotions.  While browsing the site I see that South Texas Naturals also offers whipped shea butter, cuticle cream, goats milk lotion, solid lotion stick, and other things to quench that dry winter skin.

South Texas Naturals took the time to answer some of my questions to learn more about her business:

” I started making handmade soaps about 10 years ago after the birth of my 2nd child.  He had very bad eczema and I need to find a solution to his dry skin that was cost effective as the medicine the doctors prescribed was too expensive.  I did a lot research and found many stories of how handmade soaps was great for dry skin.  So I was decided to give it a try in making my own and I haven’t been able to stop since.  My biggest passion about it is being able to create my own recipes and trying them out.  Not all make it through to the end, but I love the feeling of accomplishment once a recipe I create comes together!

I have just started to venture from  just soaps to other handmade products such as lip balms, lotions, solid lotions and massage bars.  I am hoping to expand my product line this year in 2011 to bring many more handmade products. ”  —South Texas Naturals

You can also find South Texas Naturals on etsy

South Texas Naturas on twitter: @STNaturals

And South Texas Naturals on facebook

If you want to get a head start on some of the Valentine Gift Giveaway Hop entries you can follow the sponsors on their etsy, twitter, and/or facebook pages now.

South Texas Naturals will be offering one FFCM reader their choice of 5 handcrafted soaps.  Here are just a few of the many that South Texas Naturals offers:

Honey n’ Oat Milk soap

Green Tea soap

French Green Clay Soap

Stop by South Texas Naturals to see what other scents and types they offer. South Texas Naturals giveaway will be open to US only.

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It was two weeks of, “Mom when are we going snow tubing with the boy scouts”. I was looking forward to it myself. Neither my boys or myself had ever been snow tubing. I had been to Hidden Valley Resort in Hidden Valley, PA for a wedding about 10 yrs ago, but that was about it. The boy scouts in our area do this trip each year. This is the first year we were actually able to go. I lined up a baby sitter for my toddler. I was a little nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. I’m not a fan of being out in the cold for very long.  If I had only known that the cold would be the least of my concerns.

We arrive at Hidden Valley Resort. The snow tubing sign was prominent at the entrance of the resort. It wasn’t hard to find at all. We quickly found our boyscout pack, signed our release paper, gave our money to our pack leader who got us the group rate ($14 a piece for 2 hrs), and before long we were headed to the snow tubing slopes.

Our group time was scheduled 12-2 pm. Two Hidden Valley Resort employees gave us all a quick run down on the rules for safety. There was a visible conveyer belt (they called the magic carpet) that would take us with our tubes to the top of the hills.

It started off well enough. Then it started to get busy, yea, pretty busy. The Hidden Valley Resort employees were starting to become noticeably frazzled and at times, down right rude.

There were 2-3 employees at the top of the hill that were supposed to be helping to push people down the hills, as well as let us know when it was ok to go. They did neither. Several times I had to leave my inner tube to mark my place in line to step away and push my children down the hill as the employees stood there complaining about the people and socialized.

There were 2 employees at the bottom of the hills thatI had assumed were there to direct people. Only a few times did I hear them yell at small children to hurry up and get off the slopes. At one point I witnessed a child that looked to be about 5 or 6 yrs old literally get run down buy a full grown man in an inner tube. (Thanks employees at the top for being so vigil). The father was panicked and ran over to pick up his son. The employees just stood there. In the panic the father ran his son off the slopes leaving the tube behind. The kind and caring worker ::that’s sarcasm:: picked up the tube and threw it to the side while shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Seriously people, I witnessed this.

As it grew busy they opened another “lift” to the top. The conveyor belt was still running but they opened up  one that had the hooks that hooked onto the tube handles and gave you a ride up on your tube. My boys were in front of me. The employee hooking people up to this list was visibly annoyed. He was yelling at my 7 yr old “Hurry up, Hurry up, let’s go”. It wasn’t just my child though, I observed him speaking similarly to other people and children going through.

After an hour we decided to go inside where there was an over-priced concession stand. No one was manning the station. There were two employees directly behind us that were handling the tickets. They stood there and socialized as a line formed at the unmanned concession stand.  The man behind me became impatient and asked the ticket employees if someone was working behind the concession stand. She said “oh let me see if I can find someone”.  After about 5 more minutes a girl comes down to take our order who says “I don’t normally work down here so, I’m not familiar with the menu.”  Great… We did finally get our food.  We sat at a bar style counter and ate.  I noticed a younger man sitting behind me eating.  I thought he was another snow tuber.  He cracked some jokes at a guy coming through the door.  At least 3 of them gathered around.  It turned out they were employees.  As I nibbled on my soft pretzel I got to enjoy their rantings about how busy it was.  One employee even said “These people…dude you sit on the tube, you grab the handles, and you go down the hill, how hard is that?!” I was shocked that these Hidden Valley Resort employees were allowed to sit there and bash the clients that were sitting right behind them.

It could have been a great experience at Hidden Valley Resort in Hidden Valley, PA  for my children, the boys scouts, and I.  Instead the customer service made us seem like we were more of a pest than paying customers. 

***This review was not solicited by Hidden Valley Resort, in PA or any other company or person.  Occasionally have a very positive or negative experience with a company and feel the need to write about my observations.  All opinions expressed are my own personal opinions based on my experience.  This post does not represent those of any other person or party but myself***

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