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!

OWOH 2010 Winner

So the 2010 One World One Heart event has come to a close, and it is time for me to look into my crystal ball and divine who is the winner of the $20 Barnes & Noble gift card and bookmark.

And the winner is...

#87 Sandra of Thistle Cove Farm

Congratulations, Sandra! And thank you to everyone who entered to win, and to Lisa Swifka for the great event. It was great getting to meet so many new people, and I hope to see all of you again next year!

One World One Heart 2010

It's that time of year again! It's One World One Heart 2010, and we're taking off together on a magic carpet ride!

If you are unfamiliar with it, this event was started by Lisa Swifka of A Whimsical Bohemian in 2007. She reminisces:

I created this event in 2007. The original idea behind this giveaway event was to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet. It closes the gap of the blog community and enables us to interact, discover new and wonderful people, and in the process possibly win a prize or many prizes along the way. 2007 had roughly 85-90 participants and many connections were made because of it......friendships that are still going strong.

We had a strong showing the first year for sure, and then in 2008 we had just about tripled that number. In 2009 there were 911 participants, to say I was amazed is an understatement. 28 countries were represented in the 2009 event as well.

I joined in last year for the first time. In fact, it was the book giveaways that I happened upon while touring around the OWOH participating blogs that led me back to books and into book blogging.


This year Santa was so excited about the OWOH event that he decided to fly in on his flying carpet to see what all the hullabaloo is about. (You didn't know he had a flying carpet? Well the reindeer have to recuperate after their all-night trek around the world, don't they? So this is his backup transportation...)

I have many blogs, but this was my first and is my heart and soul. I blog about my life in general, and often blog about my cooking adventures, outings to art and music festivals, nature adventures and my animals (I have five cats- plus a new backyard stray- a lovebird and a turtle).

So, while many of the participants in OWOH make their own gifts to give away, I won't be. This year I will be giving away the following to one lucky winner:

A $20 gift card to Barnes and Noble, and a neat little bookmark that I found that includes an emblem on it that has been embedded with wildflower seeds. So you take the emblem off of the bookmark and plant it, and it will sprout up flowers. Cool!

To enter to win, just comment below and be sure to leave an email address so I may contact you if you are the winner. The contest will end at 6 PM EST on February 15th, and a winner will be drawn and announced later that evening. Oh, and while you are here, feel free to check out any of my other blogs as well:

• Cerebral Girl in a Redneck World is my book blog. All things book related, including book giveaways!
• Freedom Gardening is about growing food for self-sufficiency and economy.
• Weedy Garden is for tracking my work (or lack thereof) in my garden.
• Snoop Dogg Adventures tracks the adventures of my good friend Snoop Dogg.
• Just Me Spouting Off is a place for me to rant on occasion.

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy your stay. Leave a comment, and maybe, just maybe, Santa will be flying by your place to drop off a little something...