Giveaway Winner!

I had hoped to pick a winner this morning. I thought that 48 hours after posting was plenty of time to wait. However today was pretty horrible, from the 3 hours 45 minutes sleep I got overnight to the dead blue-tongue lizard I found in the backyard, helpfully chewed into three pieces by my dog, my stupid stupid dog who I no longer love.

And the baby who has decided that as of last night, he now needs only a quarter of the sleep that he has previously needed, and will only nap when I have to deliberately wake him and put him in the car to do a kindy pickup. And who now cries as he lies on the floor, 'playing' with his toys.

Anyway.

A winner.

How to pick a winner?

This is my first blog giveaway, and it's been positively shocking to see how most of my Australian readers have all run under rocks to hide.

What are you afraid of? It's only a giveaway for goodness' sake. It won't bite.

Are you afraid of winning $50.00 to put towards the purchase of lighting from the kind folk at http://www.buysterlighting.com.au/?

(Or is it the actual lighting you're afraid of?)

(PhobiaList.com tells me that Photophobia is a fear of light, Photoaugliaphobia is a fear of lights/glaring, Brontophobia or Karaunophobia is a fear of lightning and thunder, Selaphobia is a fear of light flashes and Auroraphobia is a fear of Northern lights. So which is it?)

Whichever way you look at it, it's terribly embarrassing. Still, I will pretend that I received HUNDREDS OF ENTRIES and had to pick but one winner, for the sake of my dignity.

So how does one pick but one winner from a pool of HUNDREDS of entries? I have seen other bloggers do this a few different ways. One way is to use random.org to generate a random number and then pick the entrant whose comment in the list corresponds with that number.

The other popular way is to place each entrant's name on a small slip of paper, place all the slips in a bowl and ask one of their children to pick out a slip at random. They usually post a video of the draw, and it's always terribly cute.

I have been thinking about new and exciting ways to pick a winner. I wanted to find a way of selecting randomly, and I wanted it to be de-Elba-specific.

One idea I had was to place the slips of paper around the yard overnight and to check in the morning to see which was the closest to the spot where Jaz did her morning ablutions. Then I stopped myself. I realised that instead of an innivative, random, de Elba method of selecting a winner, I was subtly rubbishing the winner. And perhaps not being random enough, as Jaz has her preferred abluting spots. And being Just. Plain. Gross.

See? A little sleep deprivation (depravation?!?) and I lose all Appropriateness Filters in my brain.

I decided to abandon that innovative approach and to ask Nat to draw a name instead. There were two things wrong with that though:

• 1. Nat spent all afternoon having a playdate with a small friend, and I didn't want to leave the small friend out or place his photo on my blog. Nat is now asleep.

• 2. Seriously? With the HUNDREDS of entries I received, I don't think I have a bowl BIG ENOUGH to accommodate all the slips of paper. Seriously.

So here I am, with random.org, picking a winner from this massive pile of entries in the most prosaic way possible. And wasting a lot of blog space doing it.

I like the way it says, "Too many options?" down the bottom. Hrmph. I can do without the sarcasm, thankyouverymuch.

The upshot of this post is that we have a winner! From the GIANT POOL OF HUNDREDS OF WORTHY AND DESERVING ENTRIES, each one of which I have read, random.org has selected

The Accidental Housewife

as the winner! Congratulations Mrs Accident!

Let me introduce you to Mrs Accident. She lives 1300km north of me and enjoys hotter weather than uwe do. I love her blog. She says she "never meant to be a housewife, but it's growing on [her]." I think she's doing a great job! She is married to Mr Accident and they have a gorgeous baby girl.

All she wants for Christmas is for Mr Accident to be home and safe (read her blog to find out why he often isn't), enjoying his baby's first Christmas with his family. She says that the following wouldn't go astray either: her great aunt's world famous brandy sauce (which sounds so tempting I may have to ask for a bottle to be sent down here. Or a crate of bottles), some dark blue nail polish, and some more thread for her sewing machine.

Mrs Accident, please email me at ukulelefly@gmail.com so I can organise for this Gift Voucher for you.

And everyone else, stop by her blog, check out that too-cute lil girl of hers, and leave a big Congratulations there for her.

She deserves it. She ...er-hr'm... beat incredible odds!
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As well, don't forget to head over to http://www.buysterlighting.com.au/ - they were kind enough to donate the gift certificate! Thanks, Buyster Lighting!