You Gotta Have Heart

February is American Heart Month in order to bring awareness and prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke. Combined these are our nation's number one killer but there is a lot you can do to maintain your health and lower your risk. The American Heart Association has a lot of great tips to keep heart healthy. One of these key items is to stick with a healthy diet including 4 1/2 cups of fruits and vegetables each day.

One way to make sure you always have plenty of fruits and veggies on hand is to subscribe to Door-to-Door Organics. This company will deliver fresh fruits and/or vegetable right to your doorstep or work location. Having fruits and veggies available makes it much more likely that you'll choose them to snack on or cook with. Also, developing a base of good heart-healthy recipes will ensure you always have a healthy option for meals. To help jump start some heart healthy eating I am having a contest. Submit your best Heart Healthy recipe by this Friday, February 11 at 11:59 pm MT and you will have the opportunity to win a free bitty Box from Door-to-Door Organics! Not sure what qualifies as a "Heart Healthy" recipe? Check out the AHA website for tips.

Please email entries (with pictures if available) to thecupcake@mycupcakemafia.com. Voting will be held from Saturday- Monday, with the winner being announced on Tuesday, February 15. You must live int he DTDO delivery area to qualify for the prize.

If you don't have a recipe to submit but are in the DTDO delivery area and want to try it out you can sign up and enter "cupcakemaifa" as a promotional code to save 40% off your first Bitty box!

Already receiving a Door to Door Organics delivery? Current customers can add Valentine’s Day goodies to their order, including items from local Colorado companies Beautiful Sweets Organic Bakery and Seth Ellis Chocolatier. Door To Door Organics will donate 10% of the proceeds from the purchase of these special Valentine’s Day items to the American Heart Association.  Orders must be submitted by February 13.

Contest: Show Us Your Best Summer Pic!

VOTING NOW OPEN Click Here

The awesome peeps at PosterBrain have given me a stellar prize to share with you, a 24"x36" Poster of your favorite Summer pic! However there can be only one winner so it's contest time!

We're going to move fast on this one so here's the details:

• Pics must fall in the theme of Summer 2009. Examples include camping, hiking, climbing, and vacation pics


• Submit your photo to contests@mycupcakemafia.com by 5:00pm MT on Sunday October 18


• I will place all photos in a Flickr Gallery for voting


• Voting will be done Monday-Thursday and winner announced Friday, October 23.

The fine print, basically keep it tasteful peeps! If I wouldn't look at the pic with my dad in the room I won't post it for voting (this is a family show!).

Biking in a Winter Wonderland!

It is barely autumn and some of you may shun me for bringing up snow...however preparing for inclement weather is important! Especially if you're a bike commuter. This will be my first year doing the winter bike commute so I thought what a great time for a contest!

Submit your best winter bike commuting tips and gear/clothing suggestions to contests@mycupcakemafia.com by the end of the day Friday, October 2! I will choose a winner at random and the winner will receive a handknit goody from me. Winner gets their choice of a hat, scarf or yoga socks and input on the color selection.

All tips and suggestion will be posted in an upcoming post. If you would like your contribution to remain anonymous at time of posting please mention that in your email.

We Have a Winner!

Thank you everyone who entered the contest. Choosing the winner of the Rocket Shower essay contest was hard! There were so many stories that I could relate to but ultimately I chose one based on a series of unfortunate events. The winning story was submitted by Jen Dennis and is titled A Tale of Dirt:

There have been a lot of occasions when I have been really dirty, and I mean, can't see my clothes because I'm that covered in mud, dirty. And somehow I always seem to be the only one who gets dirty; I think its an occupational hazard spending most of my life outside, but evening on hiking weekends I manage to get my legs covered in mud when everyone else is squeaky clean.

So here's a little story when the rocket shower would have been very useful.

Last year I went on rugby tour to Spain. Typical tour, we were drinking lots and playing the odd bit of rugby, normally in just sports bras and shorts because it was that hot. A lot of the time we didn't wear shoes either (because we were drunk and it seemed like a good idea.... I digress). Towards the end of the tour we got to play in the finals. Great.
The game was going well, the pace was quick and it was hot. Very hot with a hangover. I got the ball and I was making a break for a try, and all of a sudden I fell over on the ONE piece of mud on the entire pitch and got covered in mud. At least, we think it was mud - the ref. did try and tell me it was sewage ( so not).

Post game, so still hot and sweaty, we had to pile back into a coach which had turned into an oven whilst we were playing. So cue more sweat. great!

We got back to the hotel, and our wisdom me and my friends decided to put on our bikinis instead of diving straight into the outside pool. Because we were staying on floor 9 or something we got the lift up... and would you believe it, the lift broke down!!

We were stuck in there for an hour, and by the time we came out we roasted, and sweaty, and smelling of post- rugby work down (and mud).

I could have definitely done with the rocket shower at any time during that day.

The winner of the random drawing was Kerri Pszenny. Kerri's need for Rocket Shower was the result of the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk. That could be a hot and sweaty situation!