Is the Last Chance the Best One? (contest/giveaway)
June 22, 2009
The lucky and confirmed winner of week #2’s drawing was:
Rita G. (entry #279) from New Jersey!!
I’ve notified entrant #649 (generated from Random.org from all the eligible entries — I had to delete a few of those duplicate) for week #3’s drawing and am waiting to hear back… but there’s still this 1 more opportunity to win!
So that means it’s time to move on to week #4 — the final week of this awesome contest. The last of the 4 posts I’ve going to make this month. I’m really going to miss finding fun, drool-worthy ice cream pictures to post and drawing names that will result in one of you winning FREE Blue Bunny® Ice Cream for a whole year.
The Prize
Each of four winners will receive a shipment of one carton of Blue Bunny® ice cream and one Blue Bunny® novelty pack each month for a calendar year. You’ll receive a menu of Blue Bunny® ice cream and novelties every month, and have the opportunity to choose the carton and novelty that you’d like to receive. Each winner will also get a Welcome Kit complete with spoons, bowls and an ice scream scoop to get them ready! The prize value is $97.80 per winner. Sorry, only one winner per household – we want to spread the joy around!
The Contest Details
You will have the opportunity to enter your name & a valid email address using the form below. If you haven’t won any of the previous weeks, for each previous entry, you will still have an entry (up to 4) for this final drawing!! (Assuming you haven’t already won!) If this is your first week, you can still win. See Week #1’s description of the rules for further information (or feel free to email me if you’re still confused!)
How Winners Are Chosen
Each week’s drawing closes at Sunday 11:59pm ET and the winner that week will be chosen from all valid entries submitted according to the method listed above. The winner for each drawing will be selected at random using a number generated from Random.org based on the total number of valid entries received between the start of the contest on June 1st and the date of the drawing. Winners will be notified via email and will have until the next drawing to reply (in the final week, this means one week from date of close.) In the event that a winner does not reply within the time given, or the email is returned as undeliverable, a replacement winner will be drawn using the same method. Duplicate or multiple entries for the same week will be deleted. Winner must be legal resident of one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, and supply an address where s/he can receive an over-nighted package of ice cream/novelty on dry ice – unfortunately, this means no P.O. Boxes will be accepted.
So the dates work out like this:
- 1st drawing — now closed winner drawn & notified Monday June 8th
- 2nd drawing — now closed winner drawn & notified Monday June 15th
- 3rd drawing — now closed winner drawn & notified Monday June 22nd
- This drawing — open Monday June 22nd thru Sunday June 28th – winner drawn Monday June 29th
I can’t believe that we’re at the end of this already. I also can’t believe how much ice cream we’ve bought and consumed in this house during June. But seriously – it would take a stronger woman than I to post these things every week and not give into temptation herself. My favorite?
In the interest of full disclosure? I am being compensated for holding this contest (this is a lot of work dude!) but I don’t get the ice cream – so I really am jealous!! But very happy for the four winners. I just have to lose a little weight from the ice cream I’ve already bought myself! 
So if this is the first week you’re entering, you’ve still got 2 more chances (including this one) to enter and possibly win! Good Luck!! p.s. no need to comment to win – just put your name & email in the form and hit submit!!
Get Your Licks In While the Lickin’ is Good! Week 3 (contest/giveaway)
June 15, 2009
The lucky and confirmed winner of week #1’s drawing was:
Nadine L. (lucky #13) from New Hampshire!!
I’ve notified entrant #279 (generated from Random.org from all the eligible entries) for week #2’s drawing and am waiting to hear back… but there’s still 2 more opportunities to win!
So that means it’s time to move on to week #3 of our yummy contest, doesn’t it? The 3rd of 4 posts I’m going to make this month that will result in one of you winning FREE Blue Bunny® Ice Cream for a whole year.
The Prize
Each of four winners will receive a shipment of one carton of Blue Bunny® ice cream and one Blue Bunny® novelty pack each month for a calendar year. You’ll receive a menu of Blue Bunny® ice cream and novelties every month, and have the opportunity to choose the carton and novelty that you’d like to receive. Each winner will also get a Welcome Kit complete with spoons, bowls and an ice scream scoop to get them ready! The prize value is $97.80 per winner. Sorry, only one winner per household – we want to spread the joy around!
The Contest Details
You will have the opportunity to enter your name & a valid email address using the form below. If you don’t win this week, your name will still be submitted for the remaining drawings. So if you entered last week, but didn’t win? You can have up to 4 entries for the last drawing!! (Assuming you haven’t already won!) If this is your first week, you can still have up to 2. See Week #1’s description of the rules for further information (or feel free to email me if you’re still confused!)
How Winners Are Chosen
Each week’s drawing closes at Sunday 11:59pm ET and the winner that week will be chosen from all valid entries submitted according to the method listed above. The winner for each drawing will be selected at random using a number generated from Random.org based on the total number of valid entries received between the start of the contest on June 1st and the date of the drawing. Winners will be notified via email and will have until the next drawing to reply. In the event that a winner does not reply within the time given, or the email is returned as undeliverable, a replacement winner will be drawn using the same method. Duplicate or multiple entries for the same week will be deleted. Winner must be legal resident of one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, and supply an address where s/he can receive an over-nighted package of ice cream/novelty on dry ice – unfortunately, this means no P.O. Boxes will be accepted.
So the dates work out like this:
- 1st drawing — now closed winner drawn & notified Monday June 8th
- 2nd drawing — now closed winner drawn & notified Monday June 15th
- This drawing — open Monday June 15th thru Sunday June 21st – winner drawn Monday June 22nd
- 4th drawing — open Monday June 22nd thru Sunday June 28th – winner drawn Monday June 29th
Oh… and if you happen to be lactose intolerant? Yeah, did I mention that Blue Bunny also makes a bunch of cool treats that are dairy-free? Like Bomb Pops. Which now come in a variety of flavors. But the Red-White-and-Blue ones always remind me of 4th of July and the Ice Cream Truck that used to be the only place you could get those when I was a kid.
In the interest of full disclosure? I am being compensated for holding this contest (this is a lot of work dude!) but I don’t get the ice cream – so I really am jealous!! But very happy for the four winners. I just have to buy my own Bomb Pops.
So if this is the first week you’re entering, you’ve still got 2 more chances (including this one) to enter and possibly win! Good Luck!! p.s. no need to comment to win – just put your name & email in the form and hit submit!!
Week 3 is now closed.
The Scoop on That One Contest, Week 2 (Contest/Giveaway)
June 7, 2009
“Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.” ~Voltaire
Seriously. If Voltaire’s wish was granted, I’d be in a lot of trouble. Or maybe even in jail. Maybe they’d serve ice cream in jail though. It would totally be worth adding a year or two onto my sentence for the right ice cream… mmmm.
What’s that? Oh, yes, sorry – I was daydreaming. You don’t really blame me, do you? I’m willing to bet it took you a second to get past your own mental image of the perfect ice cream to read further. (If it didn’t, you have super-human strength. Did you see that picture?)
Anyhoo. It’s time for the 2nd of 4 posts I’m going to make this month that will result in one of you winning FREE Blue Bunny® Ice Cream for a whole year.
The Prize
Each of four winners will receive a shipment of one carton of Blue Bunny® ice cream and one Blue Bunny® novelty pack each month for a calendar year. You’ll receive a menu of Blue Bunny® ice cream and novelties every month, and have the opportunity to choose the carton and novelty that you’d like to receive. Each winner will also get a Welcome Kit complete with spoons, bowls and an ice scream scoop to get them ready! The prize value is $97.80 per winner. Sorry, only one winner per household – we want to spread the joy around!
The Contest Details
You will have the opportunity to enter your name & a valid email address using the form below. If you don’t win this week, your name will still be submitted for the remaining drawings. So if you entered last week, but didn’t win? You can have up to 4 entries for the last drawing!! (Assuming you haven’t already won!) If this is your first week, you can still have up to 3. See last week’s description of the rules for further information (or feel free to email me if you’re still confused!)
How Winners Are Chosen
Each week’s drawing closes at Sunday 11:59pm ET and the winner that week will be chosen from all valid entries submitted according to the method listed above. The winner for each drawing will be selected at random using a number generated from Random.org based on the total number of valid entries received between the start of the contest on June 1st and the date of the drawing. Winners will be notified via email and will have until the next drawing to reply. In the event that a winner does not reply within the time given, or the email is returned as undeliverable, a replacement winner will be drawn using the same method. Duplicate or multiple entries for the same week will be deleted. Winner must be legal resident of one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, and supply an address where s/he can receive an over-nighted package of ice cream/novelty on dry ice – unfortunately, this means no P.O. Boxes will be accepted.
So the dates work out like this:
- 1st drawing — now closed winner drawn & notified Monday June 8th
- This drawing — open Monday June 8th thru Sunday June 14th – winner drawn Monday June 15th
- 3rd drawing — open Monday June 15th thru Sunday June 21st – winner drawn Monday June 22nd
- 4th drawing — open Monday June 22nd thru Sunday June 28th – winner drawn Monday June 29th
So now that I’m all drooly and day-dreamy… I thought I’d share with you that there’s also an option for those of us watching our caloric intake and yet still in love with le glaceau. Blue Bunny has a Premium Light option that has 1/2 the fat and 30% fewer calories than its regular version. I’m putting it on my shopping list for tomorrow. Because now, I’m even more jealous of you guys than I was last week.
In the interest of full disclosure? I am being compensated for holding this contest (this is a lot of work dude!) but I don’t get the ice cream – so I really am jealous!! But very happy for the four winners. I just have to buy my own 100 Calorie Bars.
I’m sending the email now to Week One’s winner as drawn by Random.org – if it’s not you? Then you’ve still got 3 more chances (including this one) to enter and possibly win! Good Luck!!
Week 2 is now closed.
I Scream, You Scream – Okay, Don’t Scream, But Dude… (Contest/Giveaway)
June 1, 2009
A couple of weeks ago this really nice person from Barkley, the PR and ad agency for Blue Bunny® Ice Cream asked me if I’d want to hold a contest on my site that allowed me to give 4 of my readers this really incredible prize… FREE Blue Bunny® Ice Cream for a whole year.
Of course I said no. Because I love you guys and I’d end up having to hate 4 of you out of sheer Ice Cream Envy if I did.
Wait, no I didn’t! I said “Are You Freaking Kidding Me??!! Of Course I’ll Do It!!!!”
So here’s the deal: The month of June is going to be Ice Cream Central around here…
The Prize
Each of the four winners will receive a shipment of one carton of Blue Bunny® ice cream and one Blue Bunny® novelty pack each month for a calendar year. You’ll receive a menu of Blue Bunny® ice cream and novelties every month, and have the opportunity to choose the carton and novelty that you’d like to receive. Each winner will also get a Welcome Kit complete with spoons, bowls and an ice scream scoop to get them ready! The prize value is $97.80 per winner. Sorry, only one winner per household – we want to spread the joy around!
The Contest Details
Starting with this post, you will have the opportunity to enter your name & a valid email address using the form below. If you don’t win this week, your name will still be submitted for the remaining drawings. But each week you have the chance to submit another entry – up to 4 (once per post) – and that will increase your odds!
Let me explain that a little better. If you enter every week, you will get one entry per week… if you don’t win that week? Your entry will roll over into the next drawing as well – BUT – if you come back and enter again, you will have another entry into that week’s drawing.
So you can just enter now, and you will have 1 entry for each week. Or you could come back next week, enter again and have 2 entries for drawings 2, 3 & 4… If you enter every week? You can have up to 4 entries for the last drawing!! (Assuming you haven’t already won!)
How Winners Are Chosen
Each week’s drawing closes at Sunday 11:59pm ET and the winner that week will be chosen from all valid entries submitted according to the method listed above. The winner for each drawing will be selected at random using a number generated from Random.org based on the total number of valid entries received between the start of the contest on June 1st and the date of the drawing. Winners will be notified via email and will have until the next drawing to reply. In the event that a winner does not reply within the time given, or the email is returned as undeliverable, a replacement winner will be drawn using the same method. Duplicate or multiple entries for the same week will be deleted. Winner must be legal resident of one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, and supply an address where s/he can receive an over-nighted package of ice cream/novelty on dry ice – unfortunately, this means no P.O. Boxes will be accepted.
So the dates work out like this:
- 1st drawing — open Monday June 1st thru Sunday June 7th – winner drawn Monday June 8th
- 2nd drawing — open Monday June 8th thru Sunday June 14th – winner drawn Monday June 15th
- 3rd drawing — open Monday June 15th thru Sunday June 21st – winner drawn Monday June 22nd
- 4th drawing — open Monday June 22nd thru Sunday June 28th – winner drawn Monday June 29th
Okay – I’m already jealous. Seriously – this is my kind of contest. And before you say “but wait, aren’t you trying to lose weight again GeekMommy?” Let me just tell you that one of my *favorite* desserts when I’m watching my calories? Yeah, The Orange Creme 100 Calorie Bars. Mmmm… (pardon my drool.) I like the Raspberry ones too, but GeekDaddy & I have been known to fight over the last Orange Creme bar in the box.
In the interest of full disclosure? I am being compensated for holding this contest (this is a lot of work dude!) but I don’t get the ice cream – so I really am jealous!! But very happy for the four winners. I just have to buy my own 100 Calorie Bars.
So what are you waiting for? An Invitation? Okay, I hereby invite you to enter. Good Luck!!
Entries for WEEK 1 are now Closed. Winner will be announced in a follow up post upon confirmation. Please don’t forget to enter again for weeks 2 thru 4!! ~GeekMommy
24c vs. Vitamin Water (sponsored)
March 30, 2009
The Setup
When I gave up soda at the beginning of 2009, one of the hardest ones to give up was Jones Soda. I got hooked on their Cream Soda down at BlogWorld Expo last year and I’ll admit, I’ve always been kind of partial to their quirky, offbeat approach to being “the little guy” in the soda world.
So when they contacted me to see if I wanted to compare their new 24c Water against Glacéau’s Vitamin Water I was totally game. Yes, they offered me a small stipend for my time and effort, but I would’ve done it regardless – as I’m always on the hunt for new drinks to replace the void that soda has left in my life. Sh! Don’t tell them that tho… if they knew how much fun it was for us to do this test, they might decide not to pay me – and I need to be able to afford more flavored enriched water!
Okay, so the Test then
You know that there’s probably an easy way to do this – but if you’re half as geeky as my family, easy isn’t nearly as fun as “scientific process.”
With the help of GeekDaddy – I set up a “triple blind” taste test of the 5 sets of flavors to be compared. First, we took 5 pairs of blue plastic cups and labeled the bottoms with a sharpie so that they had a number and a letter to represent each pair (i.e. 1a, 1b thru 5a, 5b) and put each pair in front of the bottled pairs. Then slid them around a few times, turned them over and assigned the appropriate bottle to each one on our list.
The first list was essentially just showing which bottle went to which cup. But after listing each one, GeekDaddy and Buttercup went into the other room while I poured each one into it’s respective cup and lined them up by pairs. Then before calling them back in, I shifted each pair around a few times randomly so I didn’t even know which one was which.
Then I went into the other room while GeekDaddy came in and did the same – playing the shell game with each one. Then he went and randomly switched the order the pairs were in. All we knew at that point was that each cup in the pair went together.
I came back in, sent him out again and rotated the cups yet again. At this point, unless you had memorized the color and clarity of each one, there was no telling which was which. We kind of tried to vary the taste order by color – but we knew we were going to be drinking water and eating saltines in between each to clear our palates.
So we started a new page and made a list that would allow us to taste each one and record which one each of us liked best. At this point, the kidlet was getting a bit impatient… after all, all this cup switching and whatnot was keeping her from “drinking the water already Mommy!” I have to admit, I was more than ready myself.
The Water
Before we get much further, I suppose you’re probably wondering my now what flavors of water we were comparing.
To save you from trying to peer at the picture above that has cups on top of bottles and determine what they were, I’m going to take a moment to show you what we were ‘experimenting’ with here.
Glacéau’s Vitamin Water has titles for their water, whereas Jones Soda’s 24c is just named by flavor. Since “energy” and “endurance” don’t exactly indicate the flavor, I just went ahead and used the flavor titles in my research data. Besides, the name for the Vitamin Water Blueberry-Acai-Pomegranate one is likely to bring in a lot of the wrong kind of traffic, see the picture if you want. We couldn’t get an exact match on flavors, but here were the lineups:
The Results
I know you’ll put up with a few more pictures here – just because well, I wanted to make sure that everyone wasn’t baffled by the process. We had cups that we couldn’t see the designation on, we had a hidden list that went with the cups, and we had a bunch of yummy water to try.
So you saw the randomly selected order above. I was keeping notes by hand, but it didn’t take long for the data to migrate to a spreadsheet. Yes, it’s true, I’m one of those kind of geeks. You should see the dozens of spreadsheets on my hard-drive, you’d laugh.
Anyhoo… as you can see, with the exception of the first go round, there was no unanimous decision. Nor were our palates always in agreement. I did take some notes as we went – but I think you can see for yourself that while we all loved #1 & #5, #4 wasn’t exactly a winner with any of us.
So we’ve got our list… to decipher it, I made another list (yes really!) of winners by cup.
Then I went back and deciphered the cups – because seriously, if you’re doing a triple-blind test, it’s kind of one of those “now which one does that mean we liked?” And because I like you enough to do it for you? Here’s the deciphered results: 
So what does that mean? Well, the Glacéau Vitamin Water Tropical flavor was a hands-down winner over the 24c – but for the rest of the groups, 24c edged out Vitamin Water on flavor. Granted, as you can see by the notes, all of us would drink either brand when it comes to the Peach Mango flavor. After Thoughts So they’re pretty comparable flavor-wise, but 24c tends to be a bit better to us on most variants. The prices are pretty comparable as well. So why choose one over another? Well, the 24c waters have 500% of the USRDA of Vitamin C and they seem a bit more vitamin enhanced than the Vitamin water… so that might be the tipping point for me. But honestly? I was a little disappointed in the labels. Yes, labels – I know, I should only be focusing on the flavor, content and vitamins – but I’m sort of hoping that the marketing guys at Jones realize that part of the reason I always gravitate toward their product is that I can find it in the drink case at the convenience store. Given how similar the labels of the 24c product are to Vitamin Water? I’m liable just to grab whichever one is closest in the peach mango flavor. Still, it’s nice to have some great new options to help me out in my resolution to drink healthier… Just don’t expect me (or my family) to go with the Berry-Pomegranate versions of either. They’re the only bottles that got poured out rather than finished following our experiment. Ick. Tasted like perfume.
Bring on the Peach Mango!!
*Administrative note: as mentioned early in the post and in the title – the author of this post was compensated by Jones Soda in order to participate in the taste test. All opinions expressed are the author’s or where noted, her family’s. Jones Soda and their representatives had no editorial input over the post, nor were the opinions in any way affected by the compensation, nor the amount of compensation impacted by the findings.
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