Louisiana Festivals, and a GIVEAWAY!

Even though Louisiana’s state motto is “The Sportsman’s Paradise”, I really think they should be known as “The Festival Goers Paradise”.  Of course, that has less of a ring to it.  But seriously…it doesn’t begin and end with Mardi Gras, y’all.  Mardi Gras is just the big, flashy tip of the iceberg.  This is a state of people who love music, who love to dance, and who REALLY love to eat.  And drink.  And where BETTER to do all those things than at a festival?  I give you just a quick sampler (and their 2013 dates):

April 20-21: Angola Prison Rodeo & Arts/Crafts Fair (St. Francisville) – This is the longest running prison rodeo in the US, in operation since 1965.  The Arts & Crafts Fair portion originally started as a way for the inmates to make a few extra bucks selling items they’d handmade… now the fair portion takes up all of the morning, with the rodeo starting at 2pm.  Proceeds from the Angola Prison Rodeo cover rodeo expenses and supplement the Louisiana State Penitentiary Inmate Welfare Fund which provides for inmate educational and recreational supplies.

April 24-28:  Festival Internationale de Louisiana (Lafayette) – Since I lived in Laffy for 3 years, this is probably my favorite. Five days, eight stages, seventy-four bands, thirty-one food vendors, and thousands of people.  Fo’ free.  Well—the food & drinks aren’t free, but everything else is.  SEVENTY FOUR BANDS---from all over the world, and some from right at home, including a few of my faves like Marc Broussard, the Mike Dean Band, Feufollet, and Michael Juan Nunez.

April 26 – May 5: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (NOLA) – Easily Louisiana’s biggest music festival.  Ten days, over 130 bands.  This year’s lineup includes Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Dave Matthews, Maroon 5, The Black Keys, John Mayer, Hall & Oates, BB King, Earth Wind & Fire, Little Big Town, along with big name locals like the Neville Brothers, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Cowboy Mouth, Better than Ezra, Tab Benoit, Marc Broussard… I could go on forever.  Single day tickets run around $50 ($65 at the gate), or you can buy weekend passes and VIP packages at their website.

May 22-25: New Orleans Food & Wine Experience (NOLA) - Over the past 20 years this festival has raised more than $1 million for local non-profit organizations, while showcasing local food and chefs, and national and international wines.   This year in an effort to fight hunger and support culinary education, the 2013 beneficiaries will share 100% of the proceeds. Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana will receive 40% and the following will share the remaining 60%: the Louisiana Restaurant Association Education Foundation's ProStart Program, Delgado Culinary Arts School, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts’ Culinary Program, the John Folse Culinary Institute and the Edible Schoolyard New Orleans.  Eat for a Cause!!!!

October 2013 (dates not yet announced) Voice of the Wetlands Festival (Houma) – Here’s another free festival that runs for three days and always features one of my favorites, Tab Benoit.  The festival centers around raising money and general awareness for the ever-diminishing wetlands along coastal Louisiana.  I’m a big fan of the work they do, and getting to see 20+ bands for free while benefitting a good cause doesn’t hurt either.

November 1-3: The VooDoo Experience (New Orleans) – This rock festival in late fall is a total blast, and 2013 marks the 15th year.  The lineup for this year hasn’t been announced yet, but past artists include Metallica, Soundgarden, Snoop Dogg, Blink 182, Black Crows, Girl Talk, Fatboy Slim, Paulo Nutini, Muse, Lenny Kravitz, etc.

 

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And so, we move on to the giveaway!  One lucky reader is going to receive the prize pack shown in the photo below!

• 2013 12-month calendar featuring photos from all across Louisiana (taken by me, so I don’t infringe on someone’s copyrights), with the dates of major festivals and holidays.
• Authentic New Orleans Mardi Gras Beads and a Doubloon from the Krewe of Caesar
• Three discount cards from my New Orleans Drink Deck for three of my favorite New Orleans spots: Cure, The Bulldog, and Superior Grill ($22+ value).  And these cards have NO EXPIRATION, so use them as inspiration for planning your next trip down south!  Or, if you have no plans to EVER visit NOLA (so sad…) keep them as a memento, or sell ‘em on Ebay. :)  Save $10 at Superior Grill, and 20% at Bulldog and Cure.  Great food and cocktails, peeps.

 

 

How do you win?

- Use the buttons above on the left to follow this blog via Facebook, Pinterest, Feedburner, or Google (one entry per follow)

- Leave a comment here, or on Facebook or Pinterest telling me your favorite festival food.  Whether it be funnel cake, candied apples, walking tacos, or deep fried Snickers—I want to know! (Earns another entry)

- Winner will be chosen at random!  Deadline for entries is Friday, February 22, 2013 at 8pm CST!  Winner will be announced here and on Facebook (so that would be a good way to follow if you don’t already!)

Good Luck!

Weekend Pinterest Project: Wine Charms… & ANOTHER GIVEAWAY!

Hey there folks! 

So, first things first—we have our winner for last week.  The E-Reader case goes tooooooo….. *big drum roll*

AIMEE from ItsOverflowing.com!!!!  Congrats Aimee!  I’ll be contacting you to get your mailing info so you can get your prize!

(That’s right, Aimee’s the Big Winner!  Aimee Wins!!!)

Oh, and other readers, you should definitely swing by Aimee’s super-cool blog!  She’s quite the crafty lady!

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And now, on to THIS WEEK’S PINTEREST PROJECT…and yet ANOTHER GIVEAWAY!

 

I know, I know… back to back giveaways?  It’s inSANITY!

(Not THIS kind of Insanity.  I’m too lazy for that crap.)

 

This past week was my friend Babs’ “Dirty Thirty” birthday…

She’s a pretty cool chica, so I decided to make a Pinterest crafty-type gift for her.  I had a nice bottle of wine picked out, but thought some homemade wine charms would make a nice accompaniment.

 

This is SUCH an easy & quick project.  So lets get started!

 

Materials:

Wire hoops (you can find these in the jewelry findings section at Michaels or Hobby Lobby for about $1.50, or less—Hobby Lobby frequently runs50% off sales on jewelry components)

Small beads in a variety of colors

Cute buttons (a variety pack works best, since you’ll want your charms to be different, so you can tell whose glass is whose!)

Needle-nose/Jewelry pliers

 

Directions:

First, grab a wire hoop:

With your pliers, straighten out one edge so you can get the beads on, and then use the pliers to bend the other side down slightly.  This will make it easier to connect the two ends when you’re using the charms.

This shows the amount of bend to put in the end with the hole.

Now, start adding beads!  Fill up half the hoop, then add your button.

(I found these cute flip-flop buttons at Hobby Lobby when Sewing Notions were 50% off!  Paid $1.50 for a pack of 10!)

Then add the rest of your beads!

When you get to the bend, use your pliers to put a 90 degree bend back in the wire.

Now make 4 more!  And BAM:  You have THESE!!!

 

 

Now, kick back and have a glass of wine!

Now, I see that thoughtful glint in your eyes…. you want your very own set of wine charms!  So how can you get the set shown above?

Leave a comment here on this post, telling me your very favorite-est wine! 

For me, it’s Bonny Doon’s “Reisling To Live”.  I love their amazing bottle art almost as much as I love the wine.  It’s the perfect mix of sweet & tart.  YUM!

(Note: My wine rack is getting hideously low, so this is really all  really just a clever ruse for getting suggestions on what I should restock it with.  Muahahahaha….)

(PS—I’m not requiring it here like in the last giveaway, but if you newly follow my blog via Google+, Blogger, Facebook or Pinterest, you’ll get an extra entry!  Maximum of two entries per person for this giveaway.)

Contest is open until Thursday, April 5 at 8pm, and the winner will be announced next Friday!

For those who don’t win or enter, I hope you enjoy making your charms!  I love this project.  Everyone I know may be getting wine charms this year, it’s so fun to think up new themes!

Shared on Blissfull & Domestic, Petals to Picots, Two Sasters, 30 Handmade days, Mom on Timeout, Little Inspiration, Get Schooled Saturdays, Polkadot Pretties, Be Different Act Normal, Six Sisters Stuff, 52 Mantels, Live.Laugh.Rowe, the Sasse Life.

Weekend Pinterest Project: eReader sleeve… And a GIVEAWAY!

I, like so many others, have fallen prey to that which is Pinterest.  To the point that my husband, ever the financier, starting asking if Pinterest was a publically traded company so he could cash in on our insanity.

It is probably a blessing AND a curse that Pinterest didn’t exist when I was planning my wedding last year.  I’m sure I would have gotten sacked for pinning stuff all day instead of my real work.

This blog is already “a little of this, a pinch of that”, but I didn’t really have any crafty-type projects a-goin’ on.  Meanwhile, I’ve got an online Pinboard of “Crafty Crafty” stuff that was pulling an Energizer Bunny:

(Puns about Pinterest… Punny Pins?  Pinny Puns? Yes…I’m a dork.)

 

ANYWAY… My mom gave me a Nook for Christmas because I travel so much for work. I LOVE this thing.  I don’t have to have the bedside lamp on to read at night, I can take a book anywhere with it, it fits in my purse… it’s just fantastic.  I’ve read 7 books already this year thanks to that little technological wonder…6 of them were Harry Potter books.

She also gave me a sleeve to keep it in, but the sleeve was made for a bigger eReader tablet, so it doesn’t fit really well & frequently just falls out of it entirely if I’m not careful. Plus…the sleeve is covered in butterflies, and it’s not really my style.  I know it’s SOMEONE’S style, but not mine (FYI, the butterfly sleeve is NOT the aforementioned giveaway, LOL).  So when I saw this tutuorial on how to make my own eReader pouch, I Pinned it like, super-fast.  Like it was going out of style.  Like it was hot.  *insert other clever similes*

  

Now, I consider myself relatively handy with a needle & thread—even moreso when the needle & thread are already attached to a big automated machine. However, my sewing machine is on the fritz. So I headed to my mom’s house.

I had originally decided to make my sleeve out of neoprene (and I may still—I just have to figure out how to stitch it since neither my nor my mom’s machine can sew it), but over the weekend my mom & I hit up Jo-Ann’s Fabrics, and I found this super-cute double-sided pre-quilted material in the remnants pile ($2.50 for 0.44 yd—SCORE!):

 

The batting between the two layers of fabric offers up a nice amount of protection for one of these tablets—and it also offers the chance for us to make our case REVERSIBLE.  So we ran with it! 

Project Materials:

Double-sided padded fabric in a pattern of your choosing – you’ll need enough to be able to double it over and have a 3-inch flap.  My Nook is about 8.5” x 6”, so I used a 20” x 7.5” piece of fabric.

1-inch ribbon, or double-folded bias tape (if you intend to make your case reversible, you’ll need it for all the edges…if you’re not making it reversible, you’ll only need it for the flap and the top inner edge of the sleeve.)

Thread to match your ribbon/bias tape

Fastener of your choice: buttons, Velcro, snaps, etc.  Whatever you have on hand that is convenient for you.  I like the look of buttons, but button HOLES are a hassle, so we went with Velcro. NOTE: If you want to use a zipper, you can use a smaller piece of fabric since you won’t need the flap.)

 

Directions:

1. Trim your fabric so that you have nice, straight edges that match up all-purdy-like, ‘cuz lord knows those ladies at the fabric shop never cut it quite straight.  If you have one of those roller-razor blade things like what’s shown in the previous pic, use that and a good ruler. (I don’t know the technical term for it—it was my moms.)

2. You’ll want to hem the two shortest edges first—that’s these ones:

3. If you’re using the bias tape, open one side up so you can sew the innermost part of the tape to the fabric:

(Big thanks to my mom, our hand-model-slash-sewing-goddess while I snapped photos)

This secures the tape in place so that you can then fold it back up, flip the other edge over the other side, and stitch it in place, and the tape won’t shift.  Essentially it eliminates the need to pin things.  If you’re using ribbon, you’ll still want to pin it (and possibly iron a crease along the edge) so it doesn’t shift around while stitching.

Then you can trim the excess bias tape off (don’t worry about the rough ends, since they’ll be covered when you stitch the front & back together).

Do the same for the other short edge.

Now, fold the fabric exactly how you want it to be for your pouch.  Use a pin or two on each side to hold the fabric in place.  We don’t need things scooting around & getting away from flush.

If using the bias tape or ribbon, give yourself a little extra on each end, so that you can fold it inward before you sew it to the fabric—this will give you a nice finished edge on your corners.

 

Now sew the bias tape (or ribbon) like to did with the two short sides:

And VOILA!!!

But wait a minute.  What’s that you say?  You’re not loving the orange today? It looks a little too much like a potholder, you say?  (Seriously, my husband said this.)

NO PROBLEM!

BAM.  How cute is that?

 

(Pin shown because I hadn’t attached the Velcro yet.)

 

Now, how many of you are reading this and think, “man, that is a GREAT project & I could really use a cover for my eReader---but I just have WAY too much going on right now”?

Fear not.

For I am GIVING THIS ONE AWAY. 

Okay, well, not THAT one up there—because that was the first one I made & we were still working out our master plan.  So, rather, you’ll receive THIS ONE:

 

 

(Nook not included.  Sorry, guys. :D)

 

Yay!  It’s my first ever giveaway on this blog!!!

I actually had enough fabric to make a couple of these, so I’m giving one away to ONE LUCKY READER here.

(NOTE: You don’t have to have a Nook specifically.  This sleeve will fit any reader or tablet that is 6.5” x 9” or smaller.)

How to win?

1.  Do me a solid and either a) “Like” our Facebook Page, b) Follow on Blogger (see the blue taskbar at the top of the page), c) Follow on Google Friend Connect (see the right-hand sidebar), or d) Follow on Pinterest.

2. Leave a comment here telling me which one of the above things you did (or do MULTIPLE options and receive MULTIPLE chances to win! [4 ways to Follow the blog = max of 4 entries per person] If you go the “multiple entry” route, tell me so in your comment so I can get you down for the proper number of entries.)

2a.) In the same comment, tell me your favorite book of all time.

3.) Be sure your comment information includes your email info so I can get in touch with you if you win!

 

The winner will be chosen at random using Random.Org (to keep it all bidness & unbiased).

 

Contest is open until Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 8pm CST.  The winner will be announced next Friday, March 30th!

 

Aaaaand….ALLEZ CUIZINE!!!  Ooh, wait…wrong contest.

Shared at The Shabby Nest, Chic On A Shoestring, Blissful & Domestic, Petals to Picots, One Artsy Mama, Kitchen Fun w/My Three Sons, Two Sasters, C.R.A.F.T., Making the World Cuter, and Everything Under The Moon.