Category Archives: Giveaway

Giveaway Winner and Holiday Fun!

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Hey guys! Happy (?) Monday! Hope you all had a great weekend! I wanted to pop in last night but my day ended up being really long and exhausting so I didn’t get a chance to say hi. I’m really excited with how the maternity shoot came out and I’ll share some of those with you a little further down the road. Delilah was all over the place but I got a few cute ones to share :)

Before I get to that we have some business to attend to! Using the Random Number Generator, I’m happy to announce that the winner of my giveaway is entry #2, Amy! Congrats Amy! Please send me an email (xvavaveganx@yahoo.com) with your address and please include any allergies that I should be aware of!

Thank you all so much for entering! If you didn’t win no worries, I have more fun stuff coming up for you in the near future! ;)

So as the holidays approach I decided to buy myself a gift. My family and some of my friends and I have come to the agreement that we won’t be doing large gifts anymore which made me really happy. I love this time of year but get a little bummed out when the stress and pressure of buying gifts overwhelms the spirit of the season. I feel a lot more relaxed this year. And I decided that I would give myself some gifts because I deserve it dammit!

Basically, I decided to give myself the gift of good health. This year has been really hard for me in terms of health. I have felt really sick for months and have been in pain for years. I don’t really feel any closer to having an answer so I’m taking my health into my own hands. Check out what I purchased!

First up we have Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Kitchen Cookbook! I felt my best after doing the Crazy Sexy Diet 21 day cleanse and I’m ready to kick the gluten for good and to cut the sugar dramatically. This book will definitely help me get back on track to feeling better! If you’ve wanted to check out this book I’d suggest checking it out now because it appears to be discounted :)

The second book I decided to FINALLY order for myself is Amber’s book Practically Raw. I’ve been a big fan of her site for a while now and have heard amazing things about her book. I’ve had it on my Amazon wishlist for a while but decided that it’s time for me to spring for it! A whole chapter devoted to kale chips?! I’m in! I’m hoping to definitely eat more raw foods so I’m really excited about this book. I also really like that she offers cooked options for her recipes too. While I want to eat more raw, the cold winters get rough so it’s nice to have that cooked option! Can’t wait until this is delivered!

Finally, I ordered Rodney Yee’s Daily Yoga DVD. I’ve really wanted to get back into yoga to help stretch and move and center myself and decided to start with this DVD. He also has a Yoga For Flexibility DVD that I’d like to try so I’ll see how I like this one before I order it :)

I can’t wait to show you what I make out of these books! I’m also going to be baking over the next week or so and I’ll have some fun things to show you from that!

For Shen, who is a big fan of Delilah’s fashion sense ;)

This may be the cutest outfit ever!

A rare moment where she’s sitting still! So sweet :)

Snowballs!!

So that’s what I’ve got for you today! I’ll be back with some food tomorrow! Sorry, I know it’s been a while but my appetite is still off. Working on it though! Had x-rays this morning (what a waste of time, there’s no injury but whatever) and I’m going back to my rheumatologist next Monday. I guess we’ll see what happens!

I hope you all have a great night!

Holiday Treats Giveaway!

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Hey everyone!! Hope you are all ok! Sorry my posts have been more sporadic lately. Between a low appetite and being busier than usual it’s been tough to get posts together but I promise this will be a good one!! As always, I’m planning on making A LOT of baked treats for the holidays this year to give to friends and family and have decided that it’s GIVEAWAY TIME!!

I’m going to make up a yummy package of delicious vegan treats for one of my awesome readers :) Before I get to the details, I figured I’d provide some inspiration from the past few years.

Peppermint Cookies ‘n’ Cream Bark

S’mores Bark

Almond Joy Cookies

Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Biscotti

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies

Candy Cane Joe Joe Truffles

Ginger Snap Truffles

I love holiday baking in case you couldn’t tell ;) I finally decided on what I’m going to make this year and with the exception of one item, everything will be new this year! Can’t wait to see how everything comes out!

So here’s where you come in. All you have to do is comment on this post with your favorite holiday treat by midnight on Sunday, December 9. Earn an extra entry by tweeting about this giveaway (please tag me @xvavaveganx). Please write a second comment for the tweet and include your twitter name :) If you don’t have twitter you can earn an extra entry by posting about this giveaway in your blog! Please link back to this post and provide the link to your post in a separate comment!

That’s all you have to do! I’ll choose one winner on Monday and let you know that evening! I’ll be baking starting next week and I can’t wait to show you what I’m making!

I hope you all have a great night!

Fun Friday! Vintage Sarah and Giveaway Winner!

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Hey everyone!  Hope you are all doing well and that your Friday is flying by! We made it to another weekend, although mine won’t be all that relaxing. Oh well :) A little change in plans for me today, I ended up taking the full day off because I haven’t been feeling great over the past few days. I wanted to go to the dr. and rest today before it got worse and I wouldn’t have time to take care of it. Here I am an antibiotic, an antihistimine, and some nasal spray later. I’m sure you know how I feel about antibiotics so I’m really bummed about that but sometimes you just have to do what will make you better, even if you don’t like it. On the plus side, I’m at home resting now and I get to enjoy a rainy day snuggled up in bed watching movies.

Now onto some business :) I have chosen the winner of the 2 Pura Vida Pantry e-books!

Congratulations Amanda! Please send me an e-mail (you can find it in the contacts section) and I will send you the e-books!

So I’m not feeling stellar right now but still wanted to give you a really fun Friday post. Rather than dig through Pinterest I decided to dig through my personal photos and give you a little peek into what I was like as a kid! Check out some vintage Sarah photos for this Fun Friday post :)

You will notice a trend… I am always sticking my tongue out! And I tend to have really bad haircuts. Thanks for that Mom ;)

Check out that sweet couch. Whoever took this photo has a masterful eye… check out the reflection in the table.

Cheeks. That’s all.

Quite possible one of my favorite pics ever. Sitting on a giant present, holding a mound of presents.

Playing with Superman and Batman. NBD.

I think this was at Sesame Place? I’m not going to lie, if I had that bathing suit right now I’d rock it big time. Check out the tongue sticking out again.

I had to include one of me and my brother and why not choose one of him wearing that outfit. ;)

Do you guys remember Jellies?! Also, check out the bruises on my knee. I was scrappy even back then ;)

Hope you guys liked the pics! It was fun strolling down memory lane ;) I’ll be back to more fun food, DIY and fitness related stuff next Friday. I’ll probably submit my Healthy Vegan Friday recipe either tomorrow or Monday.

Have a great Friday!

Delicious Sunday

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Hi my friends! I hope that you are all well and that you enjoyed your weekend.  I was pretty productive today which was surprising because I thought I’d be a lazy ass but I actually got a lot done! I’m glad I did everything I had to do so I can rest between work and my training session tomorrow. I’m really excited about it because I really enjoyed my last session on Thursday! We incorporated more MMA type workouts without any of the impact so I still kind of felt like I was fight training! It helped a lot too because it showed me that I’m still strong even with an injury :)

I am so excited to show you today’s meals! I was really focusing on eating all of my meals and snacks and drinking tons of water. As of now I’ve had about 80 oz of water plus all of the water in the fruits and veggies I ate! Pretty good!

For breakfast I had my Good Morning, Sunshine smoothie! As you can see it came out a little thick because I didn’t measure my frozen fruit (oops) but it was so good! It was like eating soft serve for breakfast ;)

An absolutely delicious plum for my morning snack. It was so good.

Avocado toast for lunch with the other half of the avocado from yesterday. It was a perfect avocado! I’ve had bad luck with avocados lately but this was a good one.

For snack I had some of my garlic and herb roasted cashews (I totally forgot I had them!) and some roasted seaweed sheets.

This was the perfect end to the day! I think it was definitely my favorite meal and probably one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. Now I know I said I was done with tofu for a while but tofu scrambles are so good and a really good, quick meal. I figured I don’t eat soy otherwise really so I got some tofu for some scrambles. This one is my new favorite with lots of spinach and a cocktail tomato (very good by the way), and I ate it with some roasted cauliflower and a carrot. Such a perfect meal.

Yesterday the lovely Gabby over at the Veggie Nook tagged me in a Hope Blog Relay. I’m always one for a challenge and like Gabby mentioned in her post, writing like this is a challenge for me. It is so difficult to choose the right words to discuss a topic like hope but I figured I’d give it a try for you :)

For me, hope is a choice. It is a leap of faith. It is believing that you can have anything you want in life. We can all choose to have hope. We can live our lives knowing that we will one day reach our fullest potential, and we will work harder in order to do so.

It is so easy to become overwhelmed by the hardships that life throws at us. Conversely, it is incredibly difficult to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and to carry on, knowing that it will all work out in the end. It shows incredible strength to be able to make that choice. I know that I am guilty of making the wrong choice from time to time and I get stuck in my rut, believing that the unhappiness and hardship that I experience are my destiny. When I sort it out and realize that I deserve happiness, health and to be on the path that I envision for myself, I’ve made the choice to have hope. Right now, I have hope that I will be able to reclaim my health and that I will one day be doing what I am meant to do in this life.

I hope (ha) that makes sense. This was a tough one to put into words! Thank you for the challenge Gabby :)

Now, as this is a hope blog relay, I’m supposed to tag some of you, my lovely readers. You are not obligated to participate!

Caralyn @ glutenfreehappytummy

Sage @ Sweet and Sage

Ingrid @ Ingrid Improves

Molly @ Vegan Flower

Mary @ Veganfully Me

Rachel @ Miss Rachel

Also, there is still time to enter the Giveaway! You can win two e-books written by Cassidy, the owner of Pura Vida Pantry in Costa Rica! Any living food/juicing fans will want these e-books, trust me!

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening! I’m looking forward to a great workout and yummy meals tomorrow!

Giveaway!

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Hey everyone! Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, it turned into a whole lot of craziness and I had to stay at work later than I expected.

Anyway, onto the fun part of this post! I was recently contacted by the lovely ladies at Pura Vida Pantry. Pura Vida Pantry is a vegan eatery in Costa Rica(!!) that focuses on healthy, living foods. The owner, Cassidy, is passionate about health, living foods and juicing and is also the author of two e-books. Pura Vida Pantry is a really great introduction to living foods and a raw lifestyle and contains tons of amazing recipes! She includes smoothie and juice recipes like the “Coco Loco Smoothie” and “Paw Paw’s Favorite Juice” (which looks amazing!!), vegan milk, butter and cheese recipes, appetizer, dip and dressing recipes (Avocado Chipotle dressing sounds amazing!), soups, salads and slaws (Lentil Salad and Szechuan Slaw sound amazing!), wraps and rolls, pastas and grains (pumpkin noodles with spicy peanut sauce, yum!) and of course some sweet treats (count me in on ALL of these). I am so excited to try them and definitely really excited to share the results with you when I do ;) Juice Here Now is another e-book that focuses entirely on juicing, including juice recipes, information on cleanses and juice recipes to help alleviate your ailments. I don’t have a juicer just yet but would love to get one in the future and will definitely try these recipes when I do!

Sounds great right?! This is where you come in! The lovely ladies want to give away both of these e-books to one of you! All you have to do is comment on this post with your favorite juice and/or smoothie flavor/combo by next Thursday, August 9 at midnight. I will randomly select a winner and post the results on my Fun Friday post next week!

I hope that you are all doing well and I’ll definitely be back with some food this weekend. Have a great night tonight and stay tuned for my Fun Friday post tomorrow :)

*This giveaway is now closed*

Giveaway Winners!

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Hey everyone! Today I woke up and the sun was shining again which is such a nice feeling :) This is going to be a quick post but I wanted to announce my giveaway winners!

Using the random number generator (and excluding Ingrid’s post because she opted out very graciously), congrats to numbers 8 and 1! Sophie and Sage please e-mail me (xvavaveganx@yahoo.com) to claim your prize, a bag of the Beanfields Nacho Bean and Rice chips! Congrats ladies!

As promised, I finally tried the Nacho flavor of these chips:

Let me tell you, these chips are amazing! They are savory and cheesy which is surprising with the notable absence of nooch in the ingredients! Another reason that these are far superior to Doritos (minus the whole lack of yucky dairy and chemical products)? Notice the lack of radioactive orange glow to the chips and eventually your fingers after you eat them. That stuff is a reminder for the rest of the day that you filled your belly with something that just doesn’t occur in nature. I’m so glad that Beanfields chose me to try these products and that I could pay it forward! I hope you ladies like them as much as I do!
Have a great day everyone!

Product Review and a Giveaway!

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Hey everyone! Hope you are all well. I’m very excited that tomorrow is Friday.

Last night I got home from my long day at work and was greeted by another very happy surprise!! Let me show you ;)

A box full of Beanfields Bean & Rice Chips!  I was contacted by the company and asked to sample their chips. I was pretty stoked and said that I would be happy to and they sent me this huge box with bags and bags of chips! Right before my pantry challenge, ha!
Beanfields products boast some pretty cool nutrition facts! First, they are made entirely of rice and beans, therefore the are gluten free (and also corn free). Also, if you recall I’ve mentioned a few times that rice and beans combine to form a complete protein (one of the reasons it is one of my favorite foods!) and one serving of these chips provide 4 grams of complete protein as well as 4 grams of fiber.  If all of that wasn’t a good enough reason to try these chips, VegNews named them Best in Show for Best New Vegan Snack Product. Sold!
I believe the Nacho flavor is the most popular and the one that was mentioned to me when I was asked to sample and review this product but they were kind enough to send me a variety of flavors. I received large bags of the Nacho, Sea Salt and Pico de Gallo flavors, and snack sized bags of the Nacho and Pico de Gallo flavor. I was pretty amped about the nacho flavor (think vegan doritos!) but I really wanted to tear into the Pico de Gallo chips so that’s what I did.
Isn’t it purdy? I needed a small snack anyway so I ate the snack sized bag of Pico de Gallo chips. Let me tell you, these chips pack a ton of flavor! If you like Bar B Que chips you will LOVE these! You get a smoky flavor right off the bat and sure enough there is natural smoke flavor in the ingredients. These chips were really tasty and indeed filling. I’m really looking forward to trying the other flavors!
This is where YOU come in! I requested some extra bags so I could do a giveaway and they were nice enough to oblige! Not pictured are two large bags of nacho flavored chips! Two of you will get a bag of these chips to try, which I thought was pretty cool of them. If you want to try them please just comment below with what your favorite snack food is! I’ll take entries through Monday, April 23 and will select the two winners Tuesday morning. I will also post my review of the Nacho flavor on Tuesday so the lucky winners know what is coming to them :)
Thanks again Beanfields for your generous snack delivery! Can’t wait to taste the rest of the flavors and share what I think with all of you!
Oh, before I go I’ve been meaning to ask if anyone watches the show Impractical Jokers on TruTV? I’ve been watching it for a while it is one of my favorite shows! It is so hilarious!! If you can check it out I definitely recommend it, and that is what I’ll be watching tonight.
Hope you all have a great night! Yay for Friday!
*GIVEAWAY CLOSED*

GIVEAWAY Winner!!

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Hey everyone! I’m just popping on to share the giveaway winner with you!!
I had to go old school with my picking because I had a few comments that were not entries so I just did the old numbered pieces of paper deal. I pulled lucky number 4! Congrats Ingrid!! You won a sampling of my holiday baking this year! I’ll probably start baking in a week or two so sit tight! In the meantime, please e-mail me your address at xvavaveganx@yahoo.com.
Congrats to Ingrid and thank you all for reading and entering. I’m sure I’ll host another one soon so please keep checking back!
Have a great Sunday night!

Keeping Promises & A HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY!

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Good afternoon everyone :) I hope you are all enjoying this gorgeous Sunday. It has been unseasonably warm the past few days, I feel like it is spring! So beautiful.

I woke up super early this morning. I was at Whole Foods when they opened and I accomplished a lot before most people even crack their eyes open. I decided that I would finally fulfill a promise I made a while ago.

I love baking. My biggest problem with this business is that I have a hard time accepting payment for the things I bake. A tradition I have is that I’ll bake my friends and family treats to suit their taste on their birthdays. In March I made Alicia Silverstone’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups from The Kind Diet. The birthday boy was kind enough to share with some other friends and they were a big hit. So much so that I get asked to make them on a regular basis by one of my other friends that tried it. I kept promising I would make them, the latest time was that I’d make them for him for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving came and went and still no peanut butter cups. I felt guilty so I made it my project for today.

I made them minis by using a mini muffin tin. They made A LOT. Like 3 dozen a lot. I gave him most of them but kept some to give out to a few others. 

I packed them up in this holiday tin because it was the only one I had :X They are 3 deep, I think I got 22 in here. 
I ran them over to him and he was so surprised and happy! It felt good to follow through on a promise. I can’t wait for the holidays! I love spoiling people with yummy vegan treats! :)
Speaking of which, I’ve decided to host another GIVEAWAY of yummy vegan baked goods! I’ll put together an assortment of treats that I’m baking this year for one lucky winner! All you have to do is comment on this post and tell me your favorite holiday treat! I’ll choose the winner on December 4 using the random number generator thing. When I bake my treats mid December I’ll send over an array of goodies, so the winner will have to sit tight, but trust me, it will be worth the wait! Good luck!
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
*THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED*

Vegan MoFo Day 31: Peace out MoFo!!

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone!!! I love Halloween so much but haven’t indulged in any treats today because I’m preparing for my 30 day cleanse that starts tomorrow. Go figure, I finally get through MoFo (which was so daunting, I can’t believe I posted every day!) and I plan a 30 cleanse to document. I probably won’t be posting every day but I will definitely post a lot to show you what kinds of meals I’m cooking for this cleanse. I’ll detail it for you in tomorrow’s post as well.
I may not have eaten a treat today but I still received one!! The lovely Molly over at Vegan Flower hosted a giveaway for an AMAZING skull apron (it has skulls AND it is pink…couldn’t be more perfect) as well as The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook AND I WON!! October has been such a lucky month for me! This is the second giveaway I’ve won and let me assure you, I NEVER win anything. I’m SO excited, this is by far the most perfect Halloween treat I could ask for! Thanks again Molly!
I grabbed the photo from her blog so I could show you what I won :) Yay!
As I said before, I have been trying to get ready for my upcoming cleanse so I took some time to prepare some veggies for the week…
Why hello there spaghetti squash. How you doin?

Check out the yield on this bad boy! This is a HUGE tupperware container full of it!

A giant tray of roasted veggies. This particular mix has zucchini, mushrooms and eggplant. Noms.
Make sure you stay tuned to see how I use all of this and all of the other clean eats I have planned :)
I hope you all have a wonderful, safe Halloween! To all my fellow MoFoers out there, congrats on a job well done and thank you to everyone for your support!
Last but not least, the final round of the Holiday Baking Bracket!!! Choose one from each of the two brackets please :)
Happy Halloween and have a great night!