Well, the voters have spoken and it was so very interesting to see where your hearts went.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read and vote and to those of you who reflected back to me their thoughts and feelings both via the blog and in private emails.  I was touched, not only by the stories themselves, but also by your thoughts about the stories and the thought you put into making your selections.  I so loved Boomdee’s comment about hope – did you catch that in the comments section of the last post?

In the end voting was very close between two stories.  And very close between the next five.  So close that there was only one course of action left to me – and that was to make everyone winners.

Here’s what has happened:

The story you voted for the most was C.  This is the story of Melanie, submitted by her father, Colin.  I do not know Colin or Melanie and have no idea how Colin found out about the giveaway.  But he did and he wrote a beautiful precis of his daughter’s life and we all thought it was worthy of a light catcher – so it will be sent to her as soon as her address is received.

Extraordinarily close behind was story A.  Norah’s friend Robin touched our hearts and so nearly won it would be a shame not to send her something – so she will receive a light catcher also.

Then there followed the middle runners [it’s sounding a bit like a horse racing event isn’t it ….]  These stories were all close together in terms of votes, you all liked them equally it seems causing a split vote situation.  Nothing for it then but to say all the people featured in these stories are also receiving light catchers:

B, D, F, H, J and K.

I took some time out of life for several hours and with intense purpose made several versions of a simpler, single strand Christmas Light Catcher to be given to the runners up.  Each  catcher is made with one AAA crystal ball, either of 30 or 40 mm, a random amount of AAA crystal octagons, a random amount of crystal faceted beads, various glass, acrylic or semi precious beads and finished with several charms.  They are all different.  My plan is to wrap them up, package them and randomly write on the addresses as you send them to me.  Which light catcher anyone gets will be the outcome of random choice, pure good fortune or the will of the Christmas Fairy – whichever way you choose to look at it.

This is a shot of several of the single strands, all mixed up together

And as another added extra, today I threw all the names of the commenters from the last post into my favourite coffee cup and drew one out.

Sharon, aka ‘Gentle Stitches’ will also receive a simple single strand Christmas Light Catcher.

Here’s a few more of them just lying around waiting to be parcelled up

Although these catchers made as extra giveaways are much simpler than the major giveaway, they will I hope, spread just a few more light rainbows around the world and remind the recipients that they are in the hearts of the people who submitted them and their stories touched the hearts of the people who heard them.

Please make sure to send me the address of your nominee if they are a prize winner – instructions are in the previous post. .

Thank you again for your participation and encouragement of this Advent activity.

To finish, especially for his fans, here’s  a shot of Siddy admiring his new front door:

Thanks for coming by today, I’m so happy that you did!