On my other blog, The Daily Stitch, I’m giving away a copy of Fresh Quilting: Fearless Color, Design and Inspiration by Malka Dubrawsky.

Fresh Quilting is full of beautiful, inspiring, colourful projects and has become one of my favourite quilting books. If you’re an experienced quilter or just wish you were, Fresh Quilting is a wonderful book to have on your shelf.

Go over to The Daily Stitch and leave me a comment to win a copy!

Entries must be in by end of month and the winner will be chosen at random. UK residents only please.

Quick – MagicFreebies are giving away a cute blue Cath Kidston Bird Day Bag. It has a pretty print and practical design with a durable oilcloth finish which makes it easy to clean. Plus there are two side pockets, perfect for your umbrella!

The competition ends on 20th September so go enter!

Congratulations to Laura for winning the Tesco voucher code from my back to school giveaway!

Happy back to school! We’re really lucky because Clothing at Tesco sent us another great school uniform pack. They also gave me a £15 voucher to give away to a reader so tell me your favourite thing about back to school in the comments and you’ll be entered to win.

If you still need to buy some kit, Tesco are running a You Buy One, We Give One initiative which means they will donate a full uniform to a child in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Bangladesh for every item of uniform sold under the scheme.

Here is the pack we received. Complete with washing liquid. Don’t they think of everything?

We also received this great pack of school supplies. I love the notebook on top although I think the message was sort of lost on DSD.

Drop me a note in the comments with your favourite thing about back to school if you want the voucher! I’ll close comments on 16th September and do a random drawing to choose a winner.

Have a small artist around? This colouring contest is so much fun!

Vertbaudet, the international children’s fashion and interiors brand, is giving one lucky child between the age of five and 12 the chance to design the party outfit of their dreams – and see it turned into reality!

Children can use felt tips, crayons, paint, collage or whatever else they like to create their designs – anything goes! There are templates for both boys and girls that can be downloaded from Vertbaudet‘s website. Entries can be drawn directly onto the A4 paper, and they must be submitted either online or by post by 15th September.

The winner being announced no later than 15th October. The winning design will be turned into a finished product for the winner, and will also be sold in the Autumn/Winter 2012 Vertbaudet catalogue. The winner will also receive a Nintendo Wii and game, as well as £350 to spend with Vertbaudet.

Even as I write this I feel like someone’s hacked into the blog and posted something spammy! But I’m now £80 richer having won yesterday’s largest prize ever on FreePostcodeLottery.com so I feel inclined to pass along this tip. No matter that that £80 barely makes a dent in what I’ve spent on makeup alone for the wedding next month. Oh dear. Moving on.

Register on FreePostcodeLottery.com and if your postcode is picked you’ll win some money. The prize starts at £10 but if no one claims it it rolls over, and if you’re lucky, like me, you’ll win several days’ worth. The prize pot is paid for by the site’s advertisers. If you register you’ll get an email reminder every day which you might actually start to look forward to. Although now I’ve won I’m not sure that’ll be so true since the chances of me winning again are probably nill. When I won I was paypaled the money pretty much immediately. So there. Pretty good right? Can’t really see why you wouldn’t!

Fun contest alert! Vertbaudet is giving seven children between the age of five and twelve the chance to design a waterproof raincoat set and wellies that will be turned into a finished product and sold in Vertbaudet’s Autumn/Winter 2011 Collection.

Winners will also receive a Nintendo DSI XL Console and a New Mario Brothers Game as well as £300 to spend with Vertbaudet, so they can give their wardrobe or their bedroom a makeover.

To enter, children can either draw their design on a plain piece of A4 paper or download a template from Vertbaudet’s website: http://www.vertbaudet.co.uk/page/design-competition-SS11.htm (note as of this moment the site seems to be down). They can use felt tips, crayons, paint, collage or whatever else they like to create their designs.

Entries must be received by 18^th March 2011.

I’ve been a rubbish blogger. I know I haven’t posted in ages! We were on holiday last week and this week has been crazy-jet laggy-busy. My inbox is out of control and I’m just flat out ignoring it! Sorry if you’ve tried to contact me.

I’ll try to get back to a normal posting routine because I well know Christmas shopping season is upon us!

For now, I’ll just congratulate Cheryl for winning a copy of Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Clothing at Tesco are giving away prizes every week in the run up to Christmas on their Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ClothingAtTesco. This week the prize is “the chance to win a party dress for you and two friends”.

Clothing at Tesco’s PR wouldn’t tell me what the other prizes are, but hinted that a whole new wardrobe for your children might be one of them!

The giveaway launched this week and to enter you just need to Like Clothing at Tesco, provide your email address and tick the T&Cs. There will be one winner per week selected at random.

I’m running a competition to give away a copy of Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals over here. Stop by and enter!

Last night we cooked our second meal from the book, piri piri chicken. This was NOT a 30 minute meal! It took at least 45 minutes with E helping and the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off afterward. And I was stressed out the whole time!

I chose this recipe because we love Nando’s. I know it’s just Nando’s, but it’s good. So the thought of making Nando’s chicken at home in 30 minutes sounded amazing.

To prepare, I watched the episode in which Jamie actually cooks this meal. But that stressed me out while I was cooking because I was thinking about what he did and realising I wasn’t fast enough and it didn’t look the same. Actually I even noticed discrepancies, like he puts olive oil in the sauce in the show but not in the recipe. And my sauce came out green while his was yellow. Why??

In the end though, despite the stress and chaos, it was a great meal. It didn’t exactly taste like Nando’s, but it was yummy anyway. I think it would make sense actually to make double of this sauce and freeze or preserve some of it so you can just whip it out whenever you like and for smaller batches of chicken. I also loved the sweet potatoes with chilies, feta and coriander and the Portuguese tarts were absolutely incredible. Those will definitely be made over and over again.

This book is nice because it teaches you short cuts, like using your liquidiser or microwave to make tasty things quickly, but at the same time, he has you zesting lemons and oranges which takes me FOREVER.I’d recommend this recipe but give yourself 45 minutes to an hour to be safe. And have a glass of wine while you cook it – you’ll be less stressed out!

To enter the giveaway click here.