A Mommy Story

I can’t say that I’m someone who never wins anything. When I was younger I had really lousy luck and couldn’t win a contest even if I bought all but one of the tickets.

Over the past few years, though, I’ve had better luck. While I usually win small prizes, like a book or a pair of shoes (still very useful prizes!), earlier this year I won a $200 gift card from Elizabeth at Table For Five to help with textbooks for nursing school. And then last week, Parent Bloggers e-mailed me to let me know I won the blog blast shopping spree for Oliebollen.com.

I’m not one to get outwardly giddy over anything, and at first I was kinda stunned. I won a shopping spree? I had 12 hours to visit the website and choose up to five items with a total value of $400 or less. As I perused all they had to offer, that excited feeling from deep inside began to build, until I was annoying Aaron all evening with, “Should I get the fancy diaper bag or the Melissa & Doug castle? I’ve only got four more hours left to decide!!”

(As you can probably guess, his response was less than helpful. I think it was something like, “I don’t care, pick out what you want!”)

So after a lot of hand-wringing and having the “practical versus fun” debate with myself over and over, I decided on my five items. Here’s what I picked:

For Mira, a Daily Tea dress and pants.

I’ve always loved this brand, but like other favorite brands of mine (Hanna Andersson, anyone?), I can rarely justify the expense.

For Cordy, a dress so expensive (although on sale right now at Oliebollen!) that I would have never considered it if I was using my own money, because we could pay the electric bill with that kind of money.

I love this dress – with her pale skin and blonde hair, she’ll look stunning in this. And it’s probably the only time she’ll have a dress this expensive until her Senior Prom.

For both girls (mostly Mira, though), a Rody jumping horse.

They’ll never get a pony, no matter how much they ask. But this is a cute substitution.

And for me, a Fleurville sling tote diaper bag.

I’ve always heard moms rave about these diaper bags, and while I’ve drooled over some of the gorgeous designs, they’ve been out of my reach. But since I now had the chance to splurge, I figured it’s time I gave myself a little gift, too.

I should point out that the site has lots of other fun toys and clothing that aren’t quite as expensive as these. I wanted to maximize my shopping spree. Go big, right?

Big thanks to Parent Bloggers and Oliebollen for the contest! Now I’m going to hope my luck holds as I try to enter all 50 HP giveaways – have you seen these? LOADS of HP computer equipment is being given away! Winning a new laptop would be awesome.