competition – sea.ess.em.jay

Some Samsung Love and a Competition!

This competition is now closed. A crazy number of entries were received – thank you!

Congratulations to our winner @faffysibs, who was chosen, using random.org. Please get in touch with me and Samsung will get your prize to you!

It’s no secret that we’re a Samsung-mad family. From our televisions, fridge, mobile phones, watch and other home appliances, Samsung is the one brand that never fails us.

So I was quite excited to find out about Samsung’s range of LED lights. We use LED lighting throughout our house and have found it to be friendlier to our eyeballs and our wallets! Has your family made the switch to LED lighting?

Here are five reasons why you should make the change and switch to LED:

LED lights bring 80% more energy efficiency that CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps)
Compared to an incandescent bulb, LED light bulbs last up to 15 times longer
Cost-effective and good for your electricity bill
Fewer light bulbs to buy and change
LEDs are also dimmable to the softest levels with absolutely no flickering or annoying buzz

And as a bonus, “Samsung LED lights lasts up to 40 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs, resulting in a dramatic reduction in labour and replacement lamp costs. At the same time they provide substantial savings on overall electricity bills, with a recoup of investment time of between one and two years,” says Michael McKechnie, Business Leader for Digital Air Solutions at Samsung Electronics South Africa.

Now here’s the best part! The lovely folks over at Samsung have given me the opportunity to give away one Samsung LED Light hamper so you can get started on changing to the way better way to light your home!

How to enter:

1) Leave me a comment and tell me what lights up your life!

2) You can also tweet your answer using the hashtag #SamsungLED – tweet me (@cathjenkin) and Samsung (@SamsungSA)

This competition starts today (03/02/2014) and will close at midnight on Friday (07/02/2014). The winner will be contacted directly.

From underneath the artwork, a review and a competition!

I will confess – I am one of those parents who cannot cope with throwing a piece of lovingly crafted artwork away. As a result, I have a cupboard, filled with a variety of craft projects, paintings and an assortment of pieces I can’t find the other bits for.

Basically, I need a really good filing system.

Coupled with that, I’ve just received our stationery list for next year at school. I visibly gulped at the total amount and am currently wondering if I can auction off some advertising space on my forehead to pay for it all.

This morning, the doorbell rang and a beautiful little package arrived from Butterfly Products. A well-established stationery company, Butterfly Products are a licensed distributor of many leading brands in South Africa. I took a little look at their website and have firmly decided that I want everything, in every colour, and I know my kid will agree!

But what’s excited me most is the Butterfly Products range of Pocket Files! I think they may solve my little filing dilemma.

Available in a range of sizes, these durable pieces of filing brilliance are about to transform my poor “Art Cupboard” into a dream display of my kid’s best and most beautiful pieces of art!

But Butterfly Products doesn’t just produce these sanity-savers! They also distribute Activity Books, pencil cases, luggage and an exciting variety of other products that I am very excited to find out more about! Take a look at their website here.

And here comes the cool part! They’ve given me a set of Pocket Files just like the one you see above to give away! For all you stationery fetishists out there, and moms who need some help with filing *all* that art – I’m sure you’d love to win this!

It’s pretty simple to enter – all you have to do is pop over to the Butterfly Products Facebook page, hit “like” and tell them I sent you!

This competition is open to all of South Africa, and will close on 29 October 2013. Winners will be chosen on 30 October 2013.

This competition is now closed.

I went through the entries listed on the Butterfly Products Facebook page, gave each of them a number and let Random.org‘s Random Number Generator do the rest.

Congratulations Rosalie Vlassides! You won! – I’ll be in touch to arrange delivery of your hamper from Butterfly Products today.

To keep up to date on their product range, you can also follow them on Twitter or take a peek at their full range of products on their website here.

A Bogroll Blogpost.

Ah Babysoft. Okay, here’s something you don’t know about me – I used to be a 1-ply girl. Then, my best friend introduced me to 3-ply (and my life was substantially changed). When Shmooshy and I moved in together, he was insistent that we ARE a 2-ply family. So, yes, Babysoft, you’re actually quite a big feature in our life.

They’re launching a new mascot for their micro pillow technology, and need a new mascot. You should pick up one of their promotional packs and vote here for your favourite. You can also check out their Facebook page here.

Just for the record though, we’re #TeamSofti.

(sidenote – yes, I did receive a cute package from Babysoft that prompted me to write about this competition! it’s a little bit of fun for our bums, yes?)

So Angel’s Running a Competition…

Over here. And I’ve decided to enter…

Angel asked if we could write something about an old wive’s tale about parenting, and it’s relevance today.

Heh. Too easy for me. I’ve reviled against a million of them in my parenting life, and been slated for it numerous times.

I am so okay with that. I always go with my gut, and it turns out I’m right.

So, as a mom who recently made a big move in her parenting life, I’m going to up and confess something…

For most of her life, Cam and I co-slept.

Yep.

Wanna know what’s apparently worse?

I freaking loved every moment of it. It felt right to me.

Wanna know what’s, apparently, even worse?

I told her she could sleep in my bed for as long as she liked, until she decided she wanted to sleep in her own room.

Do summon the parenting police, immediately. Send them round to my house and get them to arrest me immediately for allegedly creating a dependent child. For allegedly creating a child without a sense of her own self. For allegedly creating a needy child. For allegedly doing something wrong. For allegedly leaving the decision-making powers for my kid’s life in her hands.

Why? Why is it allegedly wrong?

Because parenting books say so. Apparently.

Oh, wait. Here comes the funny part. Cam is independent. Stubbornly so. I can’t even pour her her own juice now – she insists on doing it herself.

And guess what? Guess what, Parenting Police?

Every time Cam has progressed from a baby to a pint-size person, she’s told me she’s ready to.

When she was ready to dump the bottle, she told me.

When she was ready to ditch the night-time nappies, she told me.

When she was ready to choose her own clothes every day, she told me.

When she was ready to get herself dressed, she told me.

And, a month or two ago, Cam turned to me and said

“mom, I want to sleep in my own room now”.

And so, a week later, she moved in to her own room.

Nary a peep of a concern from her part. For me, now I have all this unoccupied space in my bed. And often, late at night, I sigh to myself and wish for a cuddle.

So, Parenting Police and Parenting Myth-Mongers, tell me where the damaged, dependent child you told me I’d have if I didn’t shove Cam into her own bed, the moment you said so?

Oh right, that’s right. It didn’t happen.

*poof* – there goes your myth, your theory and beratings.

Instead, we have a real life, a real love, and have thrown the parenting books into the bin.

Lastly, here’s what we say to the Parenting Police…

🙂

The SheBee Blogorama

Wah. I entered the SheBee Blog Contest – see here for more

1. What/Who brought you to blogging?

I’ve always written. Anyone who knows me it really started in earnest with what we in the know – i.e. Seh and Trac, called the “little notebooks”. Then, when I fell pregnant (crap I hate that saying!), I spent a lot of time on Google, and I found Julie on alittlepregnant.com. Through her, I found Tertia. And we all know about Tertia! And that just inspired me. Here was a woman, unafraid, writing about her pain and her joy and letting the world read it. It took a few months, and then I started. And I have not looked back. Except of course, for the time where my first blog (wahah! a classic!) had a server which died/crashed/imploded and I lost it all. Then, there was the interesting incident of last year, and now here I am. I ain’t going anywhere either. I’ve tried to leave, sometimes, but I always come back.

2. What do you get out of it for yourself?

Wow. That’s a big one. I find peace in it. In being able to encapsulate something, and let it go in writing. It helps me to process things, events, changes, anything. It enables me to contemplate. Writing has always been my way of coping with life, and primarily with myself. Also, as SheBee and I both know, we write to read ourselves. It’s led me to a lot of healing, and a lot of self-introspection, which actually isn’t all that bad. Moreover, though, I like to honour things, people, events, life moments through writing. Also, it lets me rant. This is very important when you’re me.

3. If you have a theme / process you follow when blogging and why?

To be honest, I don’t. I never have had a process of beginning. It’s just always been there. I know when something irks me, inspires me, something will start to form in my brain and I get that I MUST WRITE THIS DOWN RIGHT NOW alarm in my head. And that’s always when I do. If I miss it, it is gone forever, this I know. Yes, that means I have a lot of little pieces of paper with scrawl on and yes, it does mean that sometimes I write a shit load, and other days, I write nothing. I call it my blogorhythms, and it’s not governed by my biorhythms.

4. your standards on blogging, if you draw a line at writing about any particular thing

I’m a huge believer that everything in life is autobiographical. On any level, whenever you create, something in there is a part of you. That said, however, I would never write intimate details of someone’s life without their permission or knowledge. I am not a gossip columnist (although, thats a career I think I would rock at!) and as such, am not going to divulge that Such-as-Such really has a small willy or somesuch. The closest I think I have ever come to doing that directly is to honour someone’s birthday or a significant event or act. Even then, cryptic is generally my way forward. You’d only really understand it if you were me, or them. And I’m okay with this.

5. the best thing to come of your blogging thus far

That’s a simple answer. The people. The people who I have met, and grown to know in the blogosphere. It’s brought me closer to people, to their stories and ushered experiences and awesome souls in to my inner circle. Hells, one of them even lives with me now! =)