One World One Heart 2011

Welcome to the 5th and final One World One Heart blog hop! The point of this blog hop is to hopefully discover some great new blogs and introduce your own blog to others. This blog hop will run January 30th - February 17th. Learn more about the blog hop on our host's blog The Whimsical Bohemian.

This is my third year participating in OWOH. Last year I was very lucky and won several times. I posted two of my winnings back on this post as a thank you (a third winning I never received), but the last winning I never posted, as I just received it a few months ago. So I wanted to take a moment here to post a little thank you and show everyone what I received.

Organic Odysseys promised me a piece of artwork, but wanted time to "get to know me" and do something specific to me. What I wound up with was this...

I thought this was so great, as it showed that she really did spend time getting to know me. She learned that my motto is "To thine ownself be true" and made me this bracelet depicting that motto. Absolutely awesome! So I wanted to take this opportunity to say "Thank You" to Kate for her very thoughtful gift and show everyone what she made me!

A quick introduction before the giveaway. My name is Heather, and this is just one of my many blogs (many of which are being neglected). If you like books, be sure to check out my other blog Cerebral Girl in a Redneck World.

I'm a divorced woman with no kids but a whole slew of animals. You can meet most of the ZooCrew here, and you can meet the latest addition Zucchini in my latest post about him. I enjoy a quiet life of family, animals, nature, music, TV, books and cooking (I am now a vegetarian/pescatarian, but I still have some great meat recipes listed on the blog. Check out my recipe for slow-cooked Short Ribs!). I blog here about all of these things except the books. That area of my life is usually covered over there at Cerebral Girl in a Redneck World, plus over at Snoop Dogg Adventures I cover any of my small adventures in life (camping trips, festivals and the like).

For my OWOH giveaway, I'm doing something a little different. I am a big fan of Kiva, which allows average people like you and me to make micro-loans to entrepreneurs around the world to give them a shot at bettering their own lives. You put up as little as $25 and allow an individual that you select to use that money (along with money loaned by others like you) to expand their businesses or begin a new business. Learn more here. I am currently loaning money to a woman selling cosmetics in Bolivia, a Bolivian man trying to fix up his home, a woman who sells in the food market in South Sudan and an electrician in Ecuador. I've also had three other loans successfully paid back. So you loan money out, they pay it back, and you loan it back out to someone else. The same money can help countless people. Kiva has even been listed by Oprah as one of her favorite things.

So what I'm proposing is this: I will buy the winner of my OWOH giveaway a $25 virtual gift card to Kiva for the winner to loan out to help someone else. We all need to count our blessings and try to help those in this world who are less fortunate. And I'd like to introduce someone else to this outstanding group!

So just complete the form below for your chance to become a Kiva lender! A winner will be drawn using Random.org on 2/18/11.

NOTE: If you aren't sure how to navigate through the form, just use your Tab key on your keyboard to go from field to field. For some reason the scroll bar disappeared.



Thanks for stopping by! I hope to "see" you again sometime, and I will be visiting as many blogs as possible myself. Have a great trip around blogland!