Vote for Cruella: It's Chicken Madness Time!

Let's have a little fun, shall we?  The folks over at Backyard Farming have come up with a fun contest called Chicken Madness where you can submit a pic of your favorite chick and folks vote on the chicken that they like the best. Well, I just couldn't resist entering that picture of Cruella sporting the latest in feathered friend eyewear.

Cruella asked me to pass along this message to her would-be constituents: "Bawk!  Bawk, bawk, begawk. Bawk baaaaawk bawk chirp begaaaawk bawk.  Bawk bawk."

Translated, that means "If I win, you'll have a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.  And I promise to balance the budget, pay off the debt and procure world peace. It's so easy a chicken can do it."

Okay, well maybe not. 

But we sure would appreciate your vote in the Madness Challenge for Cruella.  The champion of the challenge wins a copy of "Your Farm in the City" by Lisa Taylor.  Since Cruella can't read, I'm sure she'd let me borrow it.

Thanks for your support!  You can vote for Cruella here.

Go Cruella!

A Cool Surprise

In real life, I'm an "IT guy (girl)" but sometimes technology can be a real pain.  After much deliberation, I ended up replacing my dead desktop PC with an HP Ultrabook laptop.  It's blazingly fast, which is great, but it doesn't have a CD\DVD drive and that's making it a pain to get all my software reinstalled.  There are benefits, however:  I can go sit out on the patio and blog to my heart's content if I want.  And I gained a ton of desk space and I'm loving that!

 

Today brought a present surprise that I suppose is tech-related also.   I had submitted a question a couple of months ago to the Timber Press Garden Problem Solver folks back when my tomatoes were having all those problems.  You can see my question and answer and submit your own questions here. 

The Timber Press folks gave me some great advice and apparently my question entered me into a weekly drawing.  And I won!  The prize was a copy of their book titled "What's Wrong With My Vegetable Garden?" by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth.  It was waiting for me when I got home from work today.

Flipping through it, I can see that it has a ton of full-color photographs which can be really helpful if you're trying to identify an issue or bug. It focuses on 100% organic gardening practices, which is a must.  The reviews that I've read for the book state that it's a very informative, beautiful and practical.   I am so happy to have received this book after all the problems that I've had with the garden this year, and I can't wait to sit down and read through it from cover to cover.

Well,that was the highlight of my day today.  If Microsoft Office ever finishes its 6 hour installation (lol), my plan is to go check out some of your blogs and then turn in for the night.

What have you been up to so far this week?  Any pleasant surprises come your way?

Giveaway: Let's Play "How Hot Is It?"

This is what greeted me on the patio when I got home from work tonight.  We lucked out and got an awesome deal on six of the Ball half-gallon canning jars at Feldman's home store on Sunday.  J. had beat me home and was using them to make some sun tea which slightly distressed me.  Not because I don't like sun tea (I LOVE it!) but because I had just gone to the store and the frig was full.  I mean, I don't think I could even fit a pickle in the sucker.

So I asked J. what he was going to do with that tea and, without missing a beat, he said "well, I was going to put some ice in there and drink it."  A half gallon!  The poor man is going to be in the bathroom all night.

(That does look like some tasty southern style sweet tea, doesn't it?)

Oh, and that's my new gardener's hat that I bought a couple of weekends ago - also on sale for half price.  It reminds me of that hat that Chevy Chase wears in Fletch II where he's singing Zippy De Doo Dah.  J. says it's a riverboat gambler hat.  Whatever that means.  I just think it's cool.  The only way that it could possibly be cooler would be for it to have a fluffy bee on a sproingy stem sticking out of the hat band.  I suppose that might attract some certain amorous flying insects, however, so maybe I should re-think that plan.

Giveaway:  Enter to win a $10.00 Amazon Gift Card!

Anyway, how about a contest to celebrate this heat and the fact that I'm now over 200 posts here on the Cranky Puppy blog?  I thought it might be fun to see who can come up with the most creative ending to the oft-heard-lately question "How hot is it?" 

The Prize:  A $10 Amazon gift card delivered electronically to the winner via email.
The Deadline: Oh, let's let this go 'til the heat breaks.  Let's say August 4th.
Rules: 

• You must be a follower of Cranky Puppy to win.
• You can enter as many times as you like by leaving a comment with a creative answer in the form of "It's so hot that __________". 
• If there are duplicate entries (e.g., two people enter the same answer), then only the first person's entry will count.
• This is a purely subjective contest where I am the sole judge.  No randomization here, folks.  I'll be picking what I think is the best entry in the contest. The more creative you are, the more you make me laugh, the better your chances of winning.
• I will announce the winner here on the Cranky Puppy blog on Sunday, August 5th..  The winner has 48 hours to respond and claim their prize.  In the event that they do not respond within 48 hours, the prize will go to the runner-up.
• Other legal mumbo jumbo here...blah blah blah

Why don't I start this thing off with a couple of my own?

It's so hot that.....  my chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs?

Or how about this:

It's so hot that.... the tomatoes are melting!?

I know...weird, huh?  That's one of my poor, sun-scalded Early Girl tomatoes that I picked tonight.  I've never seen anything like it.

So good luck with the contest and I'm looking forward to reading some rip-snorting hilarious entries. 
  

Good luck and have fun with this!