I won a contest!

I have never won anything in my entire life. I just figured that I am unlucky and just don't ever win, but I decided to try and win a contest thrown by my favorite cloth diaper website, Banana Peels Diapers. All I had to do was upload a picture of D in cloth to their facebook page and get as many facebook folks to go to the picture and click "like" underneath it (if you do facebook, you know what I am talking about). The contest was to last 10 days and the picture with the most "likes" wins. In the end, there were over 80 pictures submitted by different moms (seriously, do you thing a dad would have done this??) and tons of people "voting" by "liking" the pictures. I didn't get really serious about winning the contest until the day before it ended because like always, I figured I'd never win. Well, my facebook friends sure did come through for me! I posted the link on my own facebook page - which shows up on my friends' newsfeed - and asked them to help me out by voting. I was amazed at how many people did! I started with about 24 votes and by the end of the last final days, I had 114 votes! I was so blessed to have my good friends and family post the link on their own pages as well giving the link more visibility to the facebook community. It was a close race as there were several other pictures that had a ton of votes as well, but in the end, I pulled ahead and WON!!!

Now, what did I win? I won a $50 gift certificate to Banana Peels Diapers of course! I was so excited because there is something that I've really been wanting but did not have the money to buy for my little guy. See, his nighttime diaper is considerably more bulky than a disposable diaper, so normal infant/toddler pjs just didn't fit over his bum. Up until this point I've been using a fleece cover over his diaper and just having him sleep in my most favorite thing, his Halo SleepSack. But...all good things come to an end (except Heaven that is!!!) and the time is near to retire the sleepsacks. He is now too mobile to be in a wearable sleeping bag, haha. This would leave his little legs bare at night, ahhh!! How chilly would that be in winter?!? The answer to my problem...wool pants to be worn over his fitted diaper. They act as a diaper cover since wool is liquid resistant (well, mostly, it can absorb something like 30% of its weight before it even feels damp) and as nice cozy pants to keep his legs warm. The wool only needs to be washed about every other week since wool is also self cleansing. And the wool that I wanted is super soft and snuggly, not itchy and scratchy like most of the wool sweaters out there. I wanted a pair of Little Beetle Organic Merino Wool Pants. The downside of this whole wonderful wool pant thing is the price $$$$. The pants were $49 which is DEFINITELY out of my price range! As much as I wanted them, I couldn't bear to spend the money even if I did have it, haha, but oh did I want to try them out for little D!

Winning this contest allowed me to get the pants for free. I am sure I will LOVE them when they arrive in the mail this week and the best part is that I didn't pay a dime for them! I did have to spend an extra $10 on some wool care items, but thats all I paid to be able to have a brand new pair of beautiful and luxurious pants for D to sleep in every night all Fall/Winter - except for wash day of course :-(

So, THANK YOU for all of you guys who voted and who posted it on your own facebook walls to encourage more voters. If you are not a cloth diaper"er" yourself, you may not understand how excited I am about this purchase and how wonderful they are going to be, but those of you that do use cloth, I am sure you can understand completely why I wanted these!! I will post a picture of D in his new pants as soon as they arrive and I get them prepped for use :-) Yay!!!

Oh, and check out these cute little wool footies that are made from recycled wool sweaters. Maybe I'll get to try one out sometime soon as I think they look GREAT as well!! Cloth diapering is so much fun!