Simpli Stamped is a handmade jewelry company founded in Connecticut by Amber Saffo, who helped me celebrate my new middle name by making me this rad necklace. Fun story: when it came in the mail addressed to Amber Hope Marlow it was the first time I’d seen my new name in print!

She would also like to make something for a reader, so check out her website and leave a comment on this post to win an item from her store (up to $55). I’ll pick a random winner on Friday, and heads up for ordering for gifts, it’s about a two week turn around time.
You can pick from her pre-made things or have something custom-made, like I did. Congratulations to Patrice for winning!

What word or phrase would you get on a necklace?

photo of me by Gavin – thanks friend!

“Go see a show!”

Good for the Jews is a rock duo that has been described as a “Jewish Flight of the Concords” by NPR and “Adam Sandler with a few additional IQ points” by the Onion.

They’re doing a show in NYC on Monday, December 7 (details below), and I’ve got two tickets to give away!

You can enter by commenting on this post, and I’ll draw the winner on Monday, the 7th.

Good luck!

***

Monday, December 7, 2009 (the minus-fifth night of Hanukkah)
Tickets are $15 each

At the HighLine Ballroom
431 W. 16th St.
New York, NY 10011

Doors at 6 pm, show at 8 pm
SPECIAL GUESTS: DeLeon, Morgan Murphy, Seth Herzog, Rachel Sklar

Buy tickets online or by phone at (866) 468-7619.

Gelt, $34 for 2.2 pounds
Yeah, it’s a lot of gelt, but this stuff is good, and if you’re throwing a party, you’ll want a lot on hand.  You can buy it in smaller packages, too, just keep in mind that no one likes the dark chocolate as much.  Voice of experience here.

at OhNuts.com

***

Oh Nuts! has been providing Rob and me with our gelt for the past few years, and I’ve teamed up with the company before to bring the Amber Show readers fun giveaways.  Here is another one: leave a comment on this post saying which Hanukkah gift from Oh Nuts! is your fave, and I’ll select a winner from the comments to receive a $25 gift certificate to the store.  You do NOT need to be Jewish to enter – Hanukkah treats are tasty to everyone (I won’t even tell if you repackage the stuff for Christmas).

There’s a second prize to be won, too, being run by the company. You have two choices to enter that one, and doing both increases your odds:

1. go to the Oh Nuts! Facebook page and post your pick, along with the url, on their wall. Include the phrase, “I am here via TheAmberShow.net”

2. Follow @ohnuts on Twitter and tweet the following: “I want to win a gift certificate from Oh Nuts! Follow @ohnuts & Retweet to enter. http://bit.ly/6nIsCi”

Good luck!

Three things:

1 – Don’t forget to enter my awesome contest, sponsored by Overdue cards.  I’ll pick the winner on Monday.

2 – Check out my new Amazon Affiliate store. I’m stocking it with stuff I love, and it will fill up in the weeks to come.  If you shop through it, I get a few bucks. Awesome.

3 – Have a wonderful, happy weekend.  Should you find yourself in cake baking mode, I hope it turns out better than mine.  (It was so good, though.)

I met Mary Kramer at the National Stationary Show back in March* and was pretty smitten with her designs. She founded Overdue Cards, a cheeky greeting card and paper product company. They currently have two product lines: Overpass cards imitate “Will work for food” signs scrawled on cardboard, and her Overdue cards (the company’s namesake) are pretty backgrounds paired with old fashioned library catalog cards – some real, some made up, and some that look like a cross between the two – that coordinate with the greeting.

Mary has agreed to give one reader a box set of her whimsical cards. Just leave a comment below to enter – since it’s fall, share your favorite fall activity! I’ll draw the winner next Monday.

*I swear that I’m going to blog all of the wonderful people I met there EVENTUALLY, probably right before NEXT March when I meet a whole slew of OTHER people and have to start going through the stack of wonderful business cards yet again. So goes the life of the busy blogger.

Anna Jane was fun to interview, and it was great to have a woman on the show after a long string of manly guests. We giggled our way through a lot of it, and I imagined Rob on the other side of the booth wall getting really uncomfortable; we were talking about “body hair” and “waxing down there”. Good stuff.

Her new book, Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By is awesome. It’s a book of things that are becoming obsolete but we can still find and can definitely still remember. In the interview she says that she wrote it for herself – it’s not covered wagons or butter churns that she’s talking about, it’s stuff from our early 80′s childhood: answering machines, rotary phones, Polaroid pictures*, mini discs, and boomboxes. Since she and I are about the same age, it rang all the same bells for me, too.

Anna Jane has a contest going on on her Obsolete Blog:

Every day [until September 21], I’ll be accepting submissions…: photos, videos, short essays, audio clips, etc. Each day, the best submissions will be featured [the Obsolete Blog]; each day’s winning entrant will receive a free signed copy of OBSOLETE.

To enter, please email me your submission to ObsoleteTheBook@gmail.com or use the form [on the blog]. Make sure to include your email address so that I can contact you if you win.

But wait! There’s more! If you are a TUMBLR or FACEBOOK or TWITTER user and you reblog or mention this post, you will receive a little token of my appreciation. For free! Via mail! Old school, right? All you have to do is email me a link to the reblogged post, or a screen shot, and your mailing address.

*I can’t possibly the only person in the world who says “Polaroid picture” and then has to think, “Shake it, uh, uh, uh! Shake it! Hey ya! Shake it like a Polaroid picture!”

**Closed!** Thanks for participating!

Giveaway!  This one is a gift basket filled with apples, pomegranates, honey, and one of those cool honey drizzler thingys.   It comes from Oh Nuts, and is designed for Rosh Hashana, the holiday that Jews eat sweet things to represent a sweet new year.  (It’s going to be 5770!  My how time does fly.)

I promise you can win this if you aren’t a member of the tribe, though; just leave a comment below to enter.  You have until Thursday, September 10.  Good luck!

(Bonus points if you leave me a comment saying what you think my new blog logo should look like.  It needs help.)

P.S. Spreading the word via Twitter etc. is very appreciated!

matty’s modeling debut

I’m doing my very first Hey Brooklyn giveaway!  Friday’s episode features Porter Block and we’re giving away their latest CD The Gowanus Yacht Club. It’s a collaborative work featuring a lot of different singer-songwriters, and makes fantastic summer listening. Go to the episode page for details.

Please note: Only the CD is being given away. That cuddly dude with the soft brown eyes is mine-all-mine!

I’m still here at SxSW and will be back in New York on Wednesday, when I will resume regular blogging.

This place is kicking my ass.  I’m learning so much, and meeting so many new people that I’ve been eager to connect with, but it’s exhausting!  I’m going to go home and sleep for a week.  Not only am I tired, I’m getting sick, which is the height of suckage if not for anything else than DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I PAID TO BE HERE?!  I want to rock this conference for all it’s worth, but the endless sessions, followed by endless parties have had me crawling into bed whenever I have a spare second, even midday.  When did I get so old, yo?!

In other news, I have a pretty cute Adobe tee shirt that I won in a drawing, but it’s a size medium, and my boo-bays do not fit in it.  If you’re here, and you want it, come find me.  If you know someone who would like it, let them know to come find me, and I’ll give it to them.  If I don’t give it away here I’ll give it to the first person on this blog who comments that they want me to ship it.

March 2, 2009, 12:01 pm EST – CLOSED! Thank you to everyone who participated in making this my biggest blog post to date! I am so excited. The winner will be announced at 5:00 pm EST today.

-Amber

The folks over at Oh! Nuts have offered to sponsor a giveaway that will give one my readers a Purim basket!

For the unfamiliar: Purim is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Esther’s bravery, and will be celebrated this year on March 10. It’s a little like Halloween in that it’s considered primarily a childrens’ holiday and there’s a lot of goofy fun stuff that goes along with it. I think Purim baskets (like giving gifts at Hanukkah) are the Jewish answer to the Easter basket so that in the spring you don’t have to leave out the little Jewish kids… and the big ones, too; Rob’s mom gave us basket last year, and we were pretty excited to paw through it.

The best part of this giveaway is that you can pick whichever basket you want (up to a $30 value). Tell me which Purim basket you would like in the comments, and if you win, that will be the one that you get. I’m drawing the winner March 2.

This is the link for all of their Purim baskets $30 and under on their website. Good luck! Oh, and Twitter this around, too! I’d appreciate it.