Who doesn’t want free pizza?  If you don’t, well then you must be a little weird, since I (and my family for that matter) would love to win a free pizza a week for a year!  Sounds to good to be true?  Well, it is not.

Ristorante Pizza’s are offering this awesome Ristorante Contest that you can win a free pizza a week for a year. This contest ends tomorrow. However, you can enter once a day, so you can enter today and tomorrow and get 2 entries! It does not cost you anything to enter, so you really have nothing to lose and pizza to gain!

Some other cool things this site has is a store locator, so you can find the closest dealer that carries this awesome pizza. You can also sign up for the “12 Minutes to Romance” newsletter which will help you get the right vibe, food and drinks for an evening in.  They also have deals and promotions listed which of course is my favorite.  Who doesn’t like saving a couple of bucks!

Needless to say, you definitely need to check this contest and this site out.  However, I recommend that you don’t do it hungry (or maybe you should!) or you will be running out to get some of these pizzas to eat!

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No, we didn’t adopt a cat, dog, or baby. Instead we ended up having to buy a new stove. Here’s our new baby:

I can honestly say that this is the best oven I have ever owned. We have been trying it out the last couple of days. My old stove didn’t have a digital anything on it, so we have had a little bit of learning curve. The first time I tried to set the timer, I actually turned the oven off. Then we couldn’t figure out why the pizzas weren’t cooking! LOL Seriously, I love it!  It also has a simmer burner and a poweburner (which allows you to get water to boil faster — I think its something like 12,000 BTUs)

I am hoping that this is last appliance we will have to buy for a while now. Last fall, we replaced the washer and dryer. 3 weeks ago, we have to replace the phones and the microwave. Now, its the stove. The only thing we still have left to replace is the water heater (Knocking on wood that that doesn’t go out now!)

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I feel like crap right now, so this may end up being a short post. Or I might get going and this may take a while.

For those of you who do not know what is going on, I am going to do a short recap. About a month ago, I saw a little segment on CBS 2 Chicago news that Rachel Ray was doing a show about pizza and who had the best pizza: Chicago or New York. They asked us to vote for our favorite pizza joint. You could also enter to win 2 tickets to the Rachel Ray show which I did. I never win, so I was surprised when I got the call last Thursday that we were flying to New York.

We got on the plane at Midway Airport on Monday around 3 pm CST. Home Run Inn Pizza won for Chicago. These guys are awesome. They brought us pizza to eat while we were waiting to get on the plane. They brought us pizza to eat on the plane. We also got ice cream and cookies on the plane. We were on a charter flight, so it was all the winners and their guest on the plane and that’s it. It was the funnest plane ride I will ever be on.

We got to New York and to our hotel about 7pm EST. We checked out our room. It was pretty nice. Our hotel was the Grand Hyatt which is located right next to Grand Central Station. Let me tell you, that place is cool. After we got situated, we went and walked over to Times Square. There is no way to describe this place. I have some pictures that I will post later. It was almost like being in Vegas (but not). We bought some souvenirs and walked back to the hotel. We tried walking the other direction from the hotel, but there isn’t really anything exciting to tell. It was just New York.

We got up about 7 am EST on Tuesday morning. We showered and got ready for the Rachel Ray show. All of our clothes had to be ironed. I thought they would be fine, so I am glad we gave ourselves extra time. We met in the lobby of the hotel and hopped on a bus to go to the show. We drove over to the studio and boy were we surprised. Bill and I had walked past the studio the night before. We weren’t looking for it and had walked right past the building. We had to go check in with Rachel Ray’s people and then go through security. We then were all put into a holding room. They had water and food for us while we waited.

They prepped us to go into the studio. The taping would be 4 hours. If you left the studio, you would not be allowed back in. Tell that to a pregnant woman who has to pee every 5 minutes. Needless to say, I held it. What surprised me the most is how scripted everything is. We were told when to clap, when to laugh, etc. We got a snack while we there. I will actually be on 2 shows. The first show that I will be on will have Denny from Grey’s Anatomy. I might be on some of the audience shots.

The second show I know that I will for sure be on is the Pizza contest. We got to watch some of the clips that they got from the airport and the plane. I am in one of the clips eating pizza. I won’t tell you who won. You’ll have to watch the show. We also got a Rachel Ray hat when we left. AND I almost forgot. Each member of the audience got a free round trip ticket for pretty much anyplace in North America from Delta to use in the next year!!! It was awesome. We didn’t know that we were getting that, so the cheering you will hear from the audience is real.

We had about two hours to spend in New York before we had to catch our plane. We decided to take a cab and go see the WTC site. It was sad. I took some pictures there. It is definitely a place everyone should check out in you are in New York. It just makes you contemplate things.

We got back to the hotel, hopped a bus, and went to the airport. And that was my trip to New York.

I have to give a shout out to Home Run Inn pizza. Not only is it great pizza, but the owners of this company are some of the nicest people I have ever met. If you are in the Chicago area, go eat at one of their 7 locations. If not, you can order some of their frozen pizzas. They are the best! (and no this is not a sponsored post).

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