Four Buck Luck

Update: Raffle is now closed, I'm afraid—we reached $200 in record time. More details at the end of the post. 

I would like for you to have a mixer. I would like for you to have a brand new, shiny, cherry-red mixer that sings to you from a corner of your kitchen and makes you happy when you look at it every day. Does this sound like something you would like to have? Is the pope Catholic? Is the sky blue? Am I unable to resist a man in a plaid shirt? All true, my friends, all true. (Prooooooooooobably I would resist the pope in a plaid shirt, though. You know, if it ever came to that.) 

(Oh, that reminds me: tomorrow I need to tell you the story of how I stood three inches from my #1 crush, Evan Dando, over the weekend, AND HE WAS WEARING A PLAID SHIRT. Just to mess with me, I think.) 

Anyway, I have a brand new mixer and I need to get rid of it. It has never, ever been used—in fact, it has never, ever been taken out of the box. I have no use for it, unfortunately, as I already have a hot pink Kitchenaid mixer, and so it is just sitting in my garage, all lonely with no-one to mix cookie dough for.

Therefore, I would like for one of you to have it. Would you like to have it? It looks like this: 

 

You can read a little bit more about it here, if you like. There are many details concerning its redness and shininess! It is truly very red and shiny. 

So here is how it will work: I am going to raffle off this brand new shiny red mixer, at $4 a ticket, with all proceeds going to Charity: Water, a non-profit organization which aims to bring clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. If you would like a shot at winning it, all you have to do is click the "donate" button below, and kick in four bucks. Four bucks! That's, like, a pumpkin latte. A tall one. 

But here is the kicker: your odds are going to be pretty good for winning the mixer. In fact, your odds are going to be 1 in 50, because once 50 people have donated $4—meaning we've raised $200—I'm going to be capping it. So four bucks buys you a 1-in-50 chance at a brand new shiny red mixer: not bad, eh? 

I'll close the raffle on Monday November 5th, or when we reach $200—whichever comes first—and I'll use random.org to choose a winner that afternoon. I'll ship it to you myself that week, so that you have it in plenty of time for the holidays. You could make a lot of pumpkin-themed desserts with that bad boy. Or hey, regift it! Be the world's most awesome daughter-in-law!

There is only one caveat, I'm afraid, which is that I'll only be able to ship it within the U.S. I'm terribly sorry about that, and I feel rather awful about it, but shipping and customs being what they are, non-U.S readers might have to sit this one out. For U.S. readers, please know that it is very heavy (23lbs! I put it on my scale!) but I'll pack it as carefully as I can, and will let you know as soon as I've shipped it (plus, I promise not to use your mailing address for creepy things, like showing up one day on your front porch and asking to borrow a cup of sugar. Unless you live in San Francisco, that would be a really, really, really long way to go for sugar.) 

So there you have it: a 1-in-50 chance of winning a shiny red mixer just in time for the holidays, and all you have to do is donate four bucks to a good cause. Thank you, thank you, thank you for playing along.

Update: Wow! That was so quick! We just reached 50 entries (and raised $200—yay for you guys!) so I've taken the donate button down and closed the raffle. I had no idea I'd put it up last night and wake up this morning to 47 donations already (I sat here and monitored the last three), so thank you all so much. I'm so sorry if you didn't get a chance to enter; I honestly had no idea it would go so fast. Winner will be notified shortly and the mixer will be sent out after that. I'm glad to hear you like this kind of thing, so I'll have to brainstorm on more. Thank you again!