a peek inside the fishbowl

Helloooo Fishies.

I am very happy to be posting about this sweet little giveaway today, for two reasons. (1) I secretly love Valentine’s Day. Pink puffy hearts! Love! Chocolate! Cupids shooting arrows into unsuspecting victims! (2) It’s from Fishbowl patron, the Village Quire, and there’s a special place in my heart for this little store in Westboro.

There’s so much to love here. And look how pretty it looks right now:

As many of you may already you know, the girls have spent our fair share of Valentine’s Days making our own cards. And when we didn’t make our cards we chose valentines with cute illustrations that spoke to us in some way.

Without revealing any card-related snobbery with which I may be afflicted, it needs to be said that the Valentines at the Village Quire are charming and lovely, and there’s a great selection for school age kids. I’m smitten with the Valentines by Meri Meri and by Peaceable Kingdom: scratch n’ sniff, jokes and tattoos… there’s lots of kid-appeal for girls AND boys.

Good news! The Village Quire is giving Fishbowl readers a chance to win some really sweet Valentines. The winner gets to pick which package they’d like.

Option 1: Meri Meri swashbuckling themed cards. There are 20 per pack with one for the teacher. Each card comes with a co-ordinating temporary tattoo and a gold foil envelope.

Option 2: These adorable hamster scratch & sniff Valentines by Peaceable Kingdom. This package of 30 cards (6 different designs) comes with a sheet of 50 grape-scented stickers that can be affixed on the card.

Would you like to win one of these? It’s easy.

• In order for your entry to qualify, please leave a comment below and tell me which package you’d like to win. That’s it. If your name is chosen you will win the package you mentioned in your comment.
• This giveaway is void where prohibited by law.
• If you can’t post your comment for whatever reason you can email it to me for posting at andrea at quietfish dot com. Please note, I cannot be responsible if your entry is misdirected or gets stuck in my Spam folder.
• I will draw one name using Random.org at noon EST on February 8, 2014. I’ll contact the winner via email, who will have to pick up their chosen prize at The Village Quire (312 Richmond Rd, Ottawa) in a timely manner.
• The Village Quire is on Facebook. Liking their page is not a requirement of this giveaway but it’s a great way of keeping up with news, local events, and 411 about other local businesses.

That’s it. Over to you. Good luck!

I got a FitBit last week. Have you ever heard of this gadget? It’s basically a pedometer on steroids and I’m really liking it. I will fill you in when I’ve played around it a bit more, but I just wanted to share this with you today:

I had started to type: “how long does it take to walk 10,000 steps” when this came up. It indicates top search terms for that phrase. Isn’t that funny? I guess a lot of people really want chiselled abs eh?

Two other things:

• Thank you for filling out my ten-second questionnaire over at Capital Parent yesterday! You can do that here if you haven’t already. Your votes will be tallied and published in the March issue in pie-graph format. :)
• I have a sweet little giveaway coming up tomorrow. So stay tuned for that!

Happy Friday everyone!

Hello Fishies! Can you take ten seconds out of your busy day to answer a March Break-related question over on the Capital Parent website today? Please and thank you!

p.s. Yes, that is indeed a heart-shaped donut from Timmies!