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.

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!

I’m giving away a copy of Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals over here. Go enter!

On Thursday we tried our third recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals, meatball sandwiches with pickled cabbage, chopped salad and banana ice cream. I don’t know if I was just tired because it was almost the end of the week but I just couldn’t make myself work quickly. I also let E help me the whole time because it’s nicer having him in the kitchen with me. We clocked in around 40 minutes.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed with this meal. The meatballs were nice, even though I made a mistake and they were falling apart, and the combination of meatballs, pancetta, jarlsberg cheese and olive oil on ciabatta was gorgeous, but I wasn’t a very big fan of the pickled cabbage. And that’s not because I don’t like red cabbage, for the record. The chopped salad was fine, but the banana “ice cream” was a miss. It was made of frozen bananas, plain yogurt and honey (which actually tasted really nice on it’s own) but then you’re supposed to coat balls of the “ice cream” in chopped coconut and that was messy, awkward and took forever. Then you froze it again. It was a bit odd.

Based on the three recipes I’ve tried from this book, and it’s philosophy, I’m a big fan. I learned a few new fairly quick recipes and I think they’ll only get quicker when I cook them again. And I learned how to use my liquidiser for more prep work, which is great. But once I go back to cook some of my favourite things I’ll definitely do a bit of mixing and matching rather than going strictly by the book.

For more thoughts on this cookbook, my friend A wrote a post here.

Want to win one? Visit the first post in this series!

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.

I’ve been given two copies of Jamie Oliver’s new cookery book, Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals, one for me and one for you! I’m really keen to give my giveaway copy to another blogger, so I can read how you get on with the book, but that’s not a requirement to enter. If you’d like to win, just let me know in the comments and tell me your favourite Jamie Oliver recipe! I’ll draw a winner on 30 November.

Now, if you read the blog you know how much I love Jamie Oliver. His site (and cookery books) are where I head first if I’m looking for a recipe. But he’s been turning out books so frequently even I had to wonder if he really had anything new to offer. And those horrible adverts in the tube with his head on a timer – he winks at you!

When I cook dinner it usually takes a lot more than 30 minutes – and since I have so many projects going on that is frustrating.  But I really want us to eat nice meals, ideally with lots of veg (the very reason I signed up for Abel & Cole). As I read the book’s introduction I started to believe it could be possible to make amazing meals in 30 minutes and maybe it would CHANGE MY LIFE! I picked three recipes to cook this week and see if I could actually do it.

The book is “revolutionary” because of the way it is structured. Jamie gives you an entire menu – usually a main, salad or side and pudding – and then walks you through every step of cooking it in the order you need to do each task. If you can’t picture that, basically it means you’ll jump from main to pudding to main to salad to main, etc. so everything finishes at the same time. It took getting used to but I like it.

The first thing I noticed was how much I’d have to buy to cook these meals. Even with several of the ingredients already in our fridge, freezer or store cupboard, we spent quite a bit at the supermarket to get everything we needed. I suppose I could have made some substitutions – and will in the future – but I stubbornly wanted to follow all of the instructions for the review! The book would benefit if menus were organised by ingredients so you can make sure you use up the various leftover bits and pieces. Shopping lists would then naturally fit in with the menus and I think that would also save time.

Last night I cooked Pregnant Jools’s Pasta with crunchy chicory & watercress salad and (what was intended to be) little frangipane tarts. I finished the pasta and salad at the buzzer (before serving) but had put the tarts in the oven about five minutes behind schedule so that meant I was late. Yes, I used a timer! The pasta was absolutely brilliant and the simple salad was nice. The tarts were a mess (but still tasty) and I think that’s because we couldn’t find the right pastry shells. One suggestion here would be to put a list of required equipment up front so you know what to have close to hand before you start.

All in all, I think I’ll use this book a lot and the first set of recipes I tried were winners. Jools’s pasta will definitely be put into the rotation! Later this week I’m aiming to cook piri-piri chicken and meatball sandwiches, so stand by for more reviews and enter in the comments if you’d like to join me in trying out the book!

Congratulations to Jenny Price, the winner of the Sheffield tickets! My best to your twin granddaughters, Jenny!

Congratulations to Jenny O’Brien, the winner of the Birmingham tickets! Have a great time, Jenny!

The London drawing (38 entries!!)  is completed and a huge congrats goes to Amanda! Thank you to everyone who entered – I only wish I had more tickets!!

In our most popular drawing yet, Lisa Evans won the Manchester tickets! Congratulations Louise!! Thank you to everyone who entered so far.

Here is the randomizer for Manchester:

I’ve done the drawing for Newcastle and the winner is dawnlouise millmoor! Congratulations to dawnlouise and thank you to everyone who entered! I still have tickets for Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and London left.

Here is the randomizer for Newcastle:

I’ve just done the first drawing for Disney on Ice giveaway for the Nottingham show and the winner is Emma from Adventures of an English Mum. Congratulations Emma and have a great time!

There is still time to enter for the drawings for the five other shows. See the original post here.