“I was at a doctor’s appointment and my husband was watching the kids. He was in the bathroom on what I can only assume was not a normal bathroom break. When he finally walked out, he was greeted with a winter wonderland! He called me in total shock and said, “I can’t even describe it, you have to see it for yourself.” When I finally got home, I could not believe it! The boys were just running their trucks through the flour and playing in it. My husband told me he left it so that I could take photos! Ha!” – Heather
And that’s how Brayden and Cade won the Big Mess Little Kid photo contest and earned their mom an $1000 Target gift card and a selection of products from Seventh Generation to clean up their next mess.
Congratulations, Heather! Feel free to give those products to your husband so he can clean the next one. “Wait for you to take pictures”— that’s a good one, Mr. Heather!
Brayden and Cade won by reader vote, narrowly beating out Anistyn, the girl who took a dip in a bucket of house paint.
ANISTYN’S HOUSE PAINT DIP
“My husband and I were putting our house on the market and had been up late painting. I had done my best to push the lid of the 5 gallon paint bucket down (it’s really quite difficult to reseal!) and went to bed. The next morning, I was nursing my son while Anistyn played downstairs. After about five minutes, it got dead silent and I thought— I need to check on her. I had actually forgotten about the bucket of paint. I set the baby down, went down the stairs and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw her. I screamed “Anistyn!!!!” and she just froze. My sister was upstairs so I yelled to her to grab my phone and bring it down. I knew I had to take a picture or no one would believe what had happened.” – Victoria
Congratulations, Victoria! Anistyn’s mess won you a $50 Target Gift Card and a selection of products from Seventh Generation.
All Seventh Generation products are natural plant-based formulas, so your kid can effectively clean up their own mess without wearing a mask and rubber gloves. Well. they couldn’t clean up these two massive messes but at least they could pretend they were helping.
In addition to All-Purpose Cleaner, Glass & Surface Cleaner, Tub & Tile Cleaner and Disinfecting Wipes, Seventh Generation also makes a line of natural hand soaps which use formulas free of triclosan, dyes and synthetic fragrances. So you can wash your kids’ hands after they’ve dipped them in house paint, spread them with peanut butter, drawn on them with lipstick or coated them with diaper cream, without leaving behind scary chemicals.
Four more runner-ups were awarded a $50 Target Gift Card and Seventh Generation products.
They are…
EVIE IN “THE GREAT CRUMB CAPER”
“I tried to make a giant sensory bin filled with mini macaroni, mixed beans and buried little plastic toys. I gave her scoops and ice cube trays. Except instead of quietly exploring it, she just started throwing it and dumping it and spreading it around the carpet while Van Halen’s “Panama” played in the background (thank you Pandora).” – Brighid
WESLEY IN “THE BEAN BAG EXPLOSION”
“This happened while I was changing my newborn daughter. My boys were playing in their room and decided base jumping off the top bunk bed onto the beanbag chair was a good idea. I heard a loud POP, ran out of my room, saw the mess, turned back around and walked away. It took about a week, two full shop vac bags, about 4 large garbage bags, and a lot of trial and error in figuring out the easiest way to clean the beans. I’m still finding them in cracks in their beds, stuck in the baseboards, in my heating ducts, and for a while everywhere throughout my house. For awhile, every time the heat would kicked on, beans would fly into my room. As hilarious as the whole thing was, I think we’re good without a replacement chair.” – Sage
EVALYN IN “PEANUT BUTTER BATH”
“My husband was suppose to be watching our twin daughters while I took a shower. When I got out her sister was in my bedroom with a little bit of peanut butter on her so I spent time cleaning her up. When I came out to the kitchen, I got the shock of my life seeing her sister COVERED in peanut butter! Apparently her 8 yr old brother had gotten out a new 4lb tub and left it open on the counter. She dug in and covered herself in almost half of the tub.” – Heidi
AVA IN “THE PUDDING PIE THEFT”
“One morning, Ava was playing quietly by herself in the living room, so I took a few minutes to start some laundry. After a few minutes, I heard a little voice coming from the kitchen saying “yummmmmmm”. I walked in the kitchen to discover my 16 month old helping herself to the chocolate pie we had enjoyed the night before. I didn’t even know she could open the fridge!” – Emily
So there you have it. Don’t go to the bathroom, leave your spouse alone with your kids, nurse the baby, put pies on low shelves in the fridge, buy economy sized tubs of peanut butter, get creative with sensory activities or paint your home.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD— check on your kids when it’s TOO QUIET.
In case your kids make a big mess anyway (and you know they will), make sure you’re stocked up on safe effective cleaning kid-friendly cleaning products.
Congrats to all the winners and thanks to Seventh Generation for sponsoring this contest!
Just curious how voting irregularities were investigsted in thi contest. 1. Voting was allowed to happen after the stated deadline. 2. The winner was in second place two minutes before the deadline. Hmm. Please inform. I don’t want to accuse anyone of cheating, but it sure seems odd to me.
I did close the polls late – my bad. But since I use Poll Daddy, I am able to go back into the results and see how many votes came in after the deadline and who they were for so I can easily subtract them. There were 65 votes that came in after 9pm for Brayden and Cade. There were 19 votes that came in after the deadline for Anistyn. If I subtract those votes from the total number, Brayden and Cade are still ahead by 39 votes. It was a really close race- I thought Anistyn was going to win too! I had a whole post written naming her the winner that I had to rewrite.
I would also like to know who the “winner” won..Anistyn wad winning at the time cut off…so any votes after said cut off time should not be counted.
Why was voting allowed past the cut off? Anistyn was far in the lead until magically the last day the other one pulled ahead. Suspicious.
Why didn’t the voting close at the time that was listed? 9pm est.. Anistyn would have won if voting hadn’t countinued past the so called closing time.. Just a little annoyed that it said voting was suppose to end 9pm and didn’t…. Please fix the error or at least apologize to Anistyn’s family. Just not fair.
PS paint is way harder to clean then flour haha just saying!
Thanks for clarifying what happened to the votes! We honestly had our friends and family excited about this and their friends and family too! There was no suspicious activity simply nothing but loving, caring friends and family who were just as excited as we were. I had no idea this was even posted until Sunday and the contest started last Friday. It really was SUPER close down to the very end! Thanks again to everyone who voted, and although it looks like it may have been easy to clean up, it most certainly was not, you’ll still find some in the cracks. Biggest thanks to my 2 crazy boys this definitely would not have happened without them ????
This is a fun contest centered around children. Unfortunately, it no longer becomes fun when people start behaving in such a manner that I would certainly never allow my children to act.
‘Life is too short to be anything but happy.’
Thank you for the clarification. Congratulations Heather! I certainly was not trying to appear unsportsmanlike in my questioning. When my husband and I checked the poll at 7mst, it showed us as the winner. And then when the voting continued we were so confused. Maybe the time on our phones was incorrect? I don’t know. I’m just happy to hear an explanation of what happen ed since on our side, it appeared as though the voting was allowed to continue until the winner had changed (which we assumed was a glitch). Here’s to messy kids and all the chaos they cause us!
Thank you Victoria for this comment and your understanding! I totally get where you are coming from. I had no idea it had gotten go close at the end. They are both awesome pics and I wish you could both win!
That bucket should have been put in the garage. You got lucky. Go google “baby drowns in 5 gallon bucket.” This is not funny or any kind of good.
Awesome sweepstakes, loved all of the photo submissions! Congrats to the winners!
I loved this contest – thank you so much! So glad I can cash in on Evie’s huge mess 🙂
I’m still laughing at all those poor parents and so happy for not been a winner at this contest. Gosh, my kid runs free around the house and can make a good mess but nothing compared to the winners and other entries I’ve seen. I just feel like waking up my son and giving him lots and lots of kisses and hugs.
[…] Baby Covered in Peanut Butter Available for Cleaning A few weeks ago, I picked the winner for my biggest mess photo contest. It's sad Gina Gardner Brown didn't know about it, because she would have been a serious […]