Funniest Author Autograph Ever?

Funniest Author Autograph Ever?

You be the judge–let me know.

CafePress Giveaway and Review

As you may already know, CafePress is my absolute favorite website to find funny t-shirts – for any topic, interest, or brand! After a friend of mine referred me to their website to find a t-shirt that she designed a few years ago, I was instantly hooked. I spent 2 hours looking around that night for items I wanted to buy and I’ve been visiting their website (and buying from them) ever since. I believe CafePress is the perfect place to buy almost anything, because they have hundreds of thousands of design choices and sell items such as water bottles, cool posters, sweatshirts, stationary and drinkware. In fact, you can find just about anything you want on their website, and if you sign up for their emails, you can also get great deals and discounts.

CafePress send me this British Flag Keepsake Box in black, which is even more lovely in person. It is made from solid lacquered Alderwood, and measures 5 1/4″ sq. by  2 1/8″  with a 4 1/4″ tile top, and a hinged lid. You can store anything from jewelry to trinkets to even a pair of sunglasses inside it, like I have. I picked the Union Jack design because I’m crazy for all things British, but if you are my lucky winner, you can pick from a wide variety of keepsake boxes that CafePress has to offer. As with every product I’ve ever purchased or reviewed for CafePress, I’m a 100% satisfied.

CafePress also send me the Mad Men Don Draper Journal with lined paper, which I love, of course. I’m always in need of paper, and this 160 page journal measures 5″ x 8″ and is the perfect size to take with me anywhere, as it fits in a purse or backpack. Mad Men is one of my favorite shows, and CafePress have hundreds of fun products that you can find Don Draper and the gang on–and my one lucky winner will be able to pick out your own choice of Journal from CafePress.

Are you tired of buying the same old boring gifts and merchandise in traditional stores? Then you are in luck, because I even if you don’t win my giveaway, you will want to consider buying something from CafePress. I really love my new journal and keepsake box. Not only was I blown away by the number of choices I had, but I was pleased by the durability and affordability of both items. If you haven’t shopped at CafePress.com yet, please consider doing so–because if you’re looking for that obscure, cute, funny or unique item, chances are they have it! Plus, if you buy something before midnight on July 31, 2011, they are offering 20% off all of their home accents.

CAFEPRESS KEEPSAKE BOX & JOURNAL GIVEAWAY

RULES:

**Open to US & Canadian residents only.

**No P.O. boxes, please.

**Must include your email in your comment, unless you signed in to leave a comment with your “real” email.

**All comments must be separate to count as separate entries. For example, if you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, leave 2 comments, one with your Facebook name, and one with your Twitter name. Or, if you posted about the giveaway on your blog, leave 5 comments, all with the link to your giveaway.

**Please read the additional rules here.

HOW TO ENTER:

**Mandatory Entry: Visit CafePress and and tell me which keepsake box and journal you’d want if you won this giveaway. You must leave a link to both the keepsake box and journal’s webpage in your comment. The items you pick are the items you’ll win, so make sure you leave the correct link, such as, “I picked the Mad Men Don Draper Journal with lined paper, found here  http://www.cafepress.com/+mad_men_don_draper_journal,455748956 and the British Flag keepsake box in black,  found here http://www.cafepress.com/+british_flag_keepsake_box,37526557.”

+1  MORE ENTRY: Becoming a fan of CafePress on Facebook.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook. Make sure to leave your Facebook name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook and share a link on your wall with the following comment I entered The Girl from the Ghetto’s CafePress Keepsake Box and Journal giveaway here http://bit.ly/rgyReg. Make sure to leave a comment below with a link to your Facebook profile or with your Facebook name.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow @CafePress on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter and tweet the following RT @NerdGirlBlogger to #win the @CafePress Keepsake Box and Journal #giveaway here http://bit.ly/rgyReg. You can tweet 4x a day (Once every 6 hours) for even more chances to win. Make sure to leave a link to your tweet in a comment below.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Subscribe to my blog via email or Feedburner.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment here and tell me why you need to win this giveaway! Do you have love keepsake boxes, journals, or CafePress in general? Or, do you just love winning free stuff?

+5 MORE ENTRIES: Write about this giveaway on your own blog as a separate blog post. Make sure to post a link to this giveaway, as well as a link to my main page, http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com. And, don’t forget to leave me 5 copies of your link via comment here.

Contest ends Sunday, August 7, 2011 at midnight. Good luck to you all!

30 Second Book Review: Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore

Sometimes, when I read a book for fun, I just want to read it, rather than read it in order to review it for my blog. I don’t want to think about what I need to write later, while I’m actually reading it. Being a book pusher, I still want to tell my readers how much I enjoyed reading a particular book. In those instances, I usually write a quick sentence or two on Goodreads.com, but today, I thought to myself, “Hey, why not also share my thoughts here, too?”

Thus, my solution—the 30 second book review. No author or book links, no fancy thoughts, just my gut reaction, back when I last updated my Goodreads “read” shelf.

30 Second Book Review: Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore

It was cute–reminded me of Freckle Juice by Judy Blume.

About the Book:

If you have freckles, you can try these things:

1) Make them go away. Unless scrubbing doesn’t work.

2) Cover them up. Unless your mom yells at you for using a marker.

3) Disappear.

Um, where’d you go?

Oh, there you are.

There’s one other thing you can do:

4) LIVE WITH THEM!

Because after all, the things that make you different also make you YOU.

From acclaimed actress Julianne Moore and award-winning illustrator LeUyen Pham comes a delightful story of a little girl who’s different … just like everybody else.

Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles – Book Review, Q&A and Giveaway

Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles was a FANTASTIC book–one I highly recommend to all historical fiction fans, if not all fans of good books in general. I loved it because it perfectly captures a complex, layered and authentic year in time of a young, impressionable immigrant woman trying to rise to greatness in Manhattan during the late 1930′s. Towles proves his literary abilities to be superior, giving the book genuine charm, sophisitcation, and spirit. I could ramble on and on about how well-crafter this book is written, but I’ve got a great Q&A with Amor Towles, so make sure to check that out, because he tells the story of  creating Rules of Civility much better than I possible could.

While the book begins at an art exhibit opening at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1960′s, the heart of the story begins on the last night of 1937, when Katya (Katey to everyone but her immigrant parents) Konent and her roommate Eve end up celebrating New Years Eve at a Greenwich Village jazz bar. The girls don’t have dates, and they’ve already drank up their dinner money, so they welcome the chance meeting of the dashing banker Theodore “Tinker” Grey, who is seated alone at the next table, seemingly waiting for someone. Towles writes the following about that moment:

Couldn’t you just have guessed it? How the WASPs loved to nickname their children after the workaday trades: Tinker. Cooper. Smithy. Maybe it was to hearken back to their seventeenth-century New England bootstraps–the manual trades that had made them stalwart and humble and virtuous in the eyes of their Lord. Or maybe it was just a way of politely understating their predestination to having it all.

Tinker’s brother never shows, so the trio become fast friends, and Katey and Eve are thrust into a dazzling world of wealth, gin and glamor. Of course, both Katey and Eve are vying for Tinker’s eye and eventual hand in marriage, so that they might someday leave their world of boarding houses and secretarial pools. While this sounds a bit superficial on the surface, trust me, it isn’t, as in real life, there is always more that what lies on the surface. Katey seems to have the upper hand in landing Tinker, running into him at lunchtime, and even sharing a kiss with him.

“I freed my hands and put a palm on the smooth skin of his cheek, taking comfort in the well-counseled patience for that which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and most importantly endures them.”

The girls friendship is deteriorating while Tinker’s and Katey’s relationship is growing stronger, and then the delicate teeter-totter is tipped forever when Eve is severely injured in a car accident. Wracked with guilt, Tinker has Eve move into his Central Park West apartment, and Katey realizes that she’s lost them both, once Eve and Tinker begin to have a relationship. Katey finds much inner strength while moving into an apartment of her own, quitting her job, and circulating in new rich circles, thanks to landing a great new job. She becomes an editorial assistant for a new magazine, and learns that Eve and Tinker have plans to marry. Katey tries to move on, living her own life on the rise, while Eve and Tinker seem to have it all on the surface, but then Katey learns a shocking secret after Tinker’s godmother (a wealthy society woman), shares the real truth about who the man Tinker Grey used to be, and how he became the man everyone thought he really was. Katey, Tinker and Eve’s stories all end as you’d never expect to imagine them, which of course makes this novel ever so delightful. As Katey looks back on 1938, she thinks the following:

Life doesn’t have to provide you any options at all. It can easily define your course from the outset and keep you in check through all manner of rough and subtle mechanics. To have even one year when you’re presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, your character, your course–that’s by the grace of God alone. And it shouldn’t come without a price.

A CONVERSATION WITH AMOR TOWLES

Q. Why did you decide to write a book set in the late 1930s and how did you research the period?

A. I’ve always had a great interest in the period between 1900 and 1940 because it was an era of such incredible creative combustion.

In retrospect, the pace of change in the arts and industry in the 19th century seems pretty glacial. Painting, music, the novel, architecture were all evolving, but at a pretty observable pace. Then in the span of a few decades you have James Joyce, Nijinsky, Cubism, Surrealism, jazz, Henry Ford, Sigmund Freud, the Russian Revolution, movies, airplanes, skyscrapers and the general upending of received forms in almost every area of human endeavor.

Over the years, I listened to the music, saw the movies, read the novels and manifestos, lingered in front of the paintings. So I really didn’t do any applied research for the book. Rather, I tried to rely on my secondhand familiarity with the period to orient my imagination.

Q. Why did you decide to write a book from the perspective of a young woman?

A. Some writers like John Cheever and Raymond Carver seem to draw artistic energy from analyzing the realm of their own experiences—their social circles and memories and mores. I’m one of those who draw creative energy from the opposite. I prefer to put myself in an environment that’s farther afield and look through the eyes of someone who differs from me in age, ethnicity, gender and/or social class. I think a little displacement makes me a sharper observer. It’s that challenge of trying to imagine what’s on top of the dresser—the small thing that’s always there on the periphery that somehow brings events into focus.

Q. Were there any personal influences from the 1930s that informed the book?

A. None of the characters in the book is based on anyone in particular. But three of my grandparents and a great-grandmother lived into their late 90s or early 100s. My maternal grandparents lived across the street from me in the summers and I’d see them every day. Over lunch when I was in my twenties, it was great fun to talk with them about their lives between the Wars—when they were young adults. My grandmother, who was simultaneously a woman of manners and verve, fended off marriage proposals until she was 30 because she was having too much fun to settle down. Like the book’s narrator, she pushed a rival in furs into the drink before ultimately accepting my grandfather’s proposal.

To some degree, these conversations (with my grandmother in particular) solidified my view that her generation was less Victorian than my parents’ generation. I think the 1920s and 1930s had a certain openness that was countered by the conformity of the 1950s.

Q. Talk about the role of chance encounters in the book.

A. One of the central themes in the book is how chance meetings and offhand decisions in one’s twenties can define one’s life for decades to come. I think there is something universal about this dynamic, but it was certainly my experience.

In 1989, I had a fellowship to teach for Yale in China for two years. I came back from California to New Haven to spend the summer learning Chinese, but because of Tiananmen Square, Yale cancelled the program. They gave us each a few thousand dollars and sent us on our way. I had all my belongings in my car and had no idea what to do with myself. As it turned out, an old friend needed a roommate in New York to split the rent, so I moved here.

My first night in the city, I got invited to a party at the home of an acquaintance. There, I met a few people who ultimately became close friends. In retrospect, a number of careers and marriages sprang from the intersection of social circles at that party—but we certainly didn’t realize the importance of the encounters at the time. We were just meeting for drinks, making haphazard alliances and cursory decisions, shaping our futures unwittingly.

Q. Do you think Katey’s story could have occurred somewhere other than New York?

A. I certainly hope so. I think the book’s themes of self-invention, aspiration, love and loss, are recognizable in any corner of America. But one interesting aspect of New York is that it is a leading capital for advertising, art, broadcasting, fashion, finance, food, journalism, music, publishing, theater, etc. This means that every year, young people from all over the world with very different backgrounds, interests and ambitions descend on the city. They are all looking to establish connections (in the E. M. Forester sense as well as the networking sense). This just increases the odds that the person you sit next to at a diner could change your life.

Q. Tell us about George Washington and his Rules of Civility…

A. I’m very interested in periods where there is a density of creative invention: Like the early Renaissance in Tuscany (with Massacio, della Francesca, Botticelli and Donatello), or jazz in the late 50s in New York (with Davis and Coltrane and Monk and Gillespie); or crime drama on TV in the 70s (with Kojak, Rockford, McGarrett, and Columbo). Throughout history there seem to be these brief periods when a group of varied talents come together and advance a whole art form by leaps and bounds. In some semi-competitive or cooperative dialogue, the players bring out the best in each other by spurring inspiration and risk taking, while defining new forms and frontiers. When I find a period like this I like to delve.

One of those periods for me is the revolutionary period in America. Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin were all men of such sweeping talent and character. In an incredibly short period, they formulated a system of ideals and practical applications, which has served us well for centuries.

Initially, I imagined Tinker as an avid student of the period. But once into the book, I happened to pull a collection of Washington’s writings off my shelf, which led off with his “Rules of Civility”—and I knew right away that the “Rules” should be the primary thing that Tinker had studied. My book investigates social stratification and manners, character and appearance, ideals and compromise—and Washington’s youthful list somehow seems at the heart of the whole crazy matter.

Q. The book investigates the nuances of social strata in the 1930s. Do you think the influence of class is the same in today’s America?

A. I’m not a sociologist, but it seems to me that the composition of America’s social strata has changed in meaningful ways since the first half of the century. The Second World War and the GI Bill were great leveling influences, in which many working class individuals migrated from their ethnic communities towards a more homogenous middle class. At the same time, the aristocratic families of the 1920s began to abandon the outward pomp of cotillions and tails. Wonder Bread™, Budweiser™ and Chock Full o’ Nuts™ found their place in pantries high and low (with consistency and low price being attained at the expense of differentiation and flavor). This convergence has had weird byproducts: The vast majority of Americans, spanning a wide array of economics (from the statistically rich to the statistically poor), now identify themselves as “middle class.” And where in the first half of the century the struggling youth would have aspired to the narrow circles of aristocracy, in recent decades the affluent youth have aspired to the fashion and cadences of the streets.

But having made these rough generalizations about transformation, I’d say that many aspects of 1930s social behavior prevail. We clearly still live in an aspirational society. We have just exited half a decade when virtually every tier of the American population has borrowed money in order to buy bigger cars and bigger houses with better fixtures. And we still have American youth in pursuit of success and stature, though success and stature today may mean wearing sneakers at a start-up, rather than a tuxedo at a country club.

Q. Could you describe how the book was written?

A. In my late thirties and early forties, I wrote a novel set in the farmlands of Stalinist Russia, which I ultimately stuck in a drawer. It’s pretty depressing to work on something for seven years and dislike the outcome…

That book had five points of view and a series of complex events that had been roughly outlined. As an investment professional with two young children, this structure proved hellish. Every time I sat down to work on the book, I needed two hours just to figure out where I was. Worst of all, in re-reading later drafts, I often found that the material from the first year was the best.

So in launching a new book, I decided it would be a distinctive first person narrative; all events and characters would be carefully imagined in advance; and it would be written in one year. After a few weeks of preparation, I started Rules of Civility on January 1, 2006 and wrapped it up 365 days later. The book was designed with 26 chapters, because there are 52 weeks in the year and I allotted myself two weeks to draft, revise and bank each chapter.

I revised the book thoroughly three times over the next three years (mostly making it shorter); but the original constraint of a 12 month draft proved a much more effective artistic process for me than an open-ended one. Not coincidentally, the book opens on New Year’s Eve and ends a year later.

Q. What have you been reading?

A. Around the time I turned 40, in reading Where Shall Wisdom Be Found, Harold Bloom’s tribute to reading literature for wisdom, I was struck by how little time I had left to read seriously. I figured I was lucky if I could read one book deeply per month. If I lived to 80, that was 480 more books. With that shocking consideration as a backdrop, three friends and I formed a group to read extraordinary works of literature.

The acid test for books of inclusion has been that they have been proven by history to merit multiple readings in a lifetime. We started with Remembrance of Things Past and then read works of Twain, Whitman, Dickinson and Thoreau as a precursor to reading works of Faulkner. Then we did Cervantes and Borges before reading Marquez. Last year we read through Nabokov’s American period and we have now moved on to Chekhov and Tolstoy.

To pre-order your own copy of Rules of Civility: A Novel, visit Amazon.com now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1964, Amor Towles was raised in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College and received an M.A. in English from Stanford University. He is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Mr. Towles is an ardent fan of early 20^th century painting, 1950’s jazz, 1970’s cop shows, rock & roll on vinyl, obsolete accessories, manifestoes, breakfast pastries, pasta, liquor, snow-days, Tuscany, Provence, Disneyland, Hollywood, the cast of Casablanca, 007, Captain Kirk, Bob Dylan (early, mid, and late phases), the wee hours, card games, cafés, and the cookies made by both of his grandmothers.

His only other published work is a short story cycle called “The Temptations of Pleasure” published in 1989 in Paris Review 112.

RULES OF CIVILITY GIVEAWAY – 1 LUCKY WINNER

RULES:

**Open to U.S. residents only.

**No P.O. boxes, please.

**Must include your email in your comment, unless you signed in to leave a comment with your “real” email.

**All comments must be separate to count as separate entries. For example, if you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, leave 2 comments, one with your Facebook name, and one with your Twitter name. Or, if you posted about the giveaway on your blog, leave 5 comments, all with the link to your giveaway.

**Please read the additional rules here.

HOW TO ENTER:

**Mandatory Entry: Go to Amor Towles website, AmorTowles.com, and tell me what fun or interesting thing you noticed there.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Like Amor Towles on Facebook.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook. Make sure to leave your Facebook name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook and share a link on your wall with the following comment I entered The Girl from the Ghetto’s book giveaway for Rules of Civility by Amor Towles here http://bit.ly/qFHmy6. Make sure to leave a comment below with a link to your Facebook profile message, or at least with your Facebook name.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Follow @VikingBooks on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter and tweet the following RT @NerdGirlBlogger Enter the @VikingBooks #book #giveaway for Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles here http://bit.ly/qFHmy6. You can tweet 4x a day (Once every 6 hours) for even more chances to win. Make sure to leave a link to your tweet in a comment below.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Subscribe to my blog via email or Feedburner.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Enter one of my other current giveaways and tell me which one.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Goodreads.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow Amor Towles on Goodreads.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Add Rules of Civility: A Novel to your to-read shelf on Goodreads.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment here and tell me why you need to win this giveaway! Do you love historical fiction, finding first time authors, or books set in New York? Do you enjoy reading in general, or, do you just love winning free stuff?

+5 MORE ENTRIES: Write about this giveaway on your own blog. Make sure to post a link to http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com, and leave me 5 copies of your link via comment here.

Contest ends Thursday, July 28, 2011 at midnight. Good luck to you all!

YogaHands Giveaway

Do you have problems with your hands, due to Arthritis pain, nerve damage, or other conditons? I do, and I’m sick and tired of feeling constant pain every day of my life. My hands have been hurting me for the past 5 years–out of the blue they started aching and burning all night long. I have a connective tissue disease which causes skin, muscle, tendon, and vein weakness everywhere in my body, so I have conditions like Tendonitis, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Neuropathy, possible nerve damage, Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and multiple Herniated Disks in my C-Spine. I have tried dozens of pain medications, and most make me feel drugged out, so I live life through the mind-over-matter approach–I make myself try to forget the pain. Still, it’s not something than can be done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so I’m always on the lookout for products that help easy my pain naturally.

When I found out there was a Michigan-based company that created something called YogaToes®, I was intrigued. Not only do I love to support and promote local businesses, but the products they have created seemed pretty cool to me, because it could be used while doing something else, such as reading, writing, watching tv, and blogging. I love to multi-task, and I was more than happy to receive a pair of YogaHands from them to review for my blog, especially since I have also previously reviewed (and loved) their YogaToes®!

According to YogaPro.com, YogaHands are a revolutionary hand exercise and therapy device that offer relief for painful, tight, cramping hands. With a simple but excellent stretch, YogaHands makes hands relaxed and refreshed in just minutes. YogaHands bring peace and calm in the very same way a hand massage does. Relax and de-stress.

Sounds good, right? Well, I put their product to the test a few weeks ago. They were pretty easy to use, as I just had to place the pointed ends of the 3 finger wedges between my fingers, leaving my thumb out. I then had to push each of the 3 wedges towards the palm of my hand, feeling a good stretch, and wore them for several minutes the first time. Then I repeated the process on my other hand. After the first few times, I was able to increase my time wearing them, as I had built up a tolerance. While I felt a stretch in my hands, it wasn’t the same type of amazing stretch I felt when I used my YogaToes®. It was less-intense, and a little less effective, in my humble opinion. I think it has something to do with the fact that my thumb wasn’t stretched by the product, or that this product was hard plastic, rather than a soft gel material. Plus, I wished that I had received a pair of YogaHands, rather than just one, which increased the amount of time I had to use them. Since (one) YogaHands costs $24.95, I was glad that I didn’t purchase this prodcut myself. I think they would be better off selling them in a set. While I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t see the amazing results that I did was their YogaToes®, it may be that I have serious hand issues, as I’m getting an EMG and Physical Therapy on my hand soon. I think if you have sore hands due to repeative motions, like if you are a cashier or a clerk or bartender, then this product would be worth checking out.

YogaHands come in the color blue. YogaPro.com also offers a wide variety of products, such as their YogaToes and YogaHands Combo,  YogaToes® Sport, YogaToes® Gems, and on my wish list, YogaToes® Sensations. YogaPro also offers Gift Sets and Toeless Socks . I’m really happy with the results I’ve seen with my own pair of YogaToes®, and I did see some result with their YogaHands. Why not purchase your own YogaPro product today here?

Additional Product Information:

• 30 day money back guarantee.
• Lifetime replacement warranty.
• Made in the USA.
• BPA & Latex Free.

YOGAHANDS GIVEAWAY – 2 WINNERS WILL RECEIVE A FREE PAIR

RULES:

**Open to US residents only.

**No P.O. boxes, please.

**Must include your email in your comment, unless you signed in to leave a comment with your “real” email.

**All comments must be separate to count as separate entries. For example, if you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, leave 2 comments, one with your Facebook name, and one with your Twitter name. Or, if you posted about the giveaway on your blog, leave 5 comments, all with the link to your giveaway.

**Please read the additional rules here.

HOW TO ENTER:

**Mandatory Entry: Visit YogaPro.com or their blog, Blog.YogaPro.com, and leave me a comment telling me telling me something fun or interesting about them or their products.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Becoming a fan of YogaToes® on Facebook.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook. Make sure to leave your Facebook name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook and share a link on your wall with the following comment I entered The Girl from the Ghetto’s YogaHands giveaway here http://bit.ly/nq7B97. Make sure to leave a comment below with a link to your Facebook profile or with your Facebook name.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow @YogaToes on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter and tweet the following RT @NerdGirlBlogger I entered the @YogaToes YogaHands#giveaway here http://bit.ly/nq7B97. You can tweet 4x a day (Once every 6 hours) for even more chances to win. Make sure to leave a link to your tweet in a comment below.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Subscribe to my blog via email or Feedburner.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Enter one of my other giveaways and tell me which one you entered.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment here and tell me why you need to win this giveaway! Do you have pain in your hands? Or, do you just love winning free stuff?

+5 MORE ENTRIES: Write about this giveaway on your own blog as a separate blog post. Make sure to post a link to this giveaway, as well as a link to my main page, http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com. And, don’t forget to leave me 5 copies of your link via comment here.

Contest ends Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at midnight. Good luck to you all!