Thankful Thursday - My First Giveaway!

This Thursday, I'd like to share some of my blessings with you.  Back in May, I was able to attend FitBloggin'11 in Baltimore, thanks to a ticket I won from the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  I was able to finally meet so many of you - women and men I've considered friends for so long - in real life.  I met more bloggers than I could have imagined and my Google Reader is overflowing every day.  I even learned a bit about blogging.  You can read my recap here!  This trip was win-win for me, to be sure!  Now, when I tweet or read blogs, I "see" and "hear" my friends in their posts.  It's wonderful!  FitBloggin'11was definitely a highlight of my year so far.

love the cute bowl!

One of my new friends is Annelies from Attune Foods.  Even before FitBloggin' happened, we had connected on twitter.  Annelies asked if I would like to do a review and giveaway of Attune's Uncle Sam cereal - uh YES! She sent me 2 boxes of Uncle Sam cereal and they arrived just prior to FitBloggin'.  We chatted and decided I would wait until after the conference to do my review.  At the conference, she even gave me this super-cute bowl! This week, I finally tried their cereal, and I can honestly say "Yum!"  I'm not much of a cold cereal fan (due to my tendency to not like milk), so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Before I get into the review, a little background on Attune Foods.  These two statements are found on their website and pretty much sum up their philosophy:

• What Matters Most is What's Inside
• Simple, pure ingredients that help you feel your best everyday

If you are a label reader, these features are probably important to you. I love that Attune's products are made with REAL food and ingredients that you can actually pronounce!  Nothing artificial.  If you follow a gluten-free diet, they have other foods made just for you.

Annelies included Uncle Sam Multi-Grain Cereal and Honey Almond Cereal for sampling.  Since Attune was one of the fabulous FitBloggin' sponsors, we were treated to their cereals for breakfast one morning.  I tried the Honey Almond and topped my bowl with fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.  It was A.Maz.Ing.  Since I didn't think I could top the bowl of Honey Almond I had in Baltimore (since I had no fresh fruit in the house - fail, I know), I decided to give the Multi-Grain a whirl.

Now, like I said before, I'm not much of a cold-cereal girl.  Mainly it's because I don't like the taste of milk, but I decided to take one for the team in the name of product research. You're welcome :)

Multi-Grain Cereal in skim milk

I have to say, I loved this cereal.  The Multi-Grain kept it's crunch in the milk and I loved the different textures.  There are 3 different grains in here: toasted whole wheat berry flakes, flaxseed, and oat flakes.  It had a nice sweetness to it, but it wasn't overly sweet.  The serving size seemed a little small (230 calories for 3/4 cup) but with 6 grams of fiber and 6 grams of protein, it kept me full all morning.  I can definitely recommend this cereal.  Since I thought the Honey Almond might be feeling a little left out, I had that for breakfast the next day.  Instead of a traditional bowl of cereal, however, I mixed it with a container of Black Cherry Chobani Greek Yogurt.  Holy moly was that tasty!  The cherry and almond together was like a dessert.  For realz.  You must try this.

could have passed for dessert

gotta love Click

Because this is a FitBloggin' giveaway, I checked with my friends over at the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans about adding some Click Espresso Protein Drink to the prize pack.  You see, Christy and Melissa were sponsored by Click and had TONS of samples to give away at the conference.  Somehow, I ended up with a whole bag full of samples.  Now, as much as I triple puffy heart LOVE Click (I have it for breakfast almost every day), the girls and I thought it would be great to share the wealth with some of you.  So, this giveaway is actually TWO giveaways in ONE!

Here's what is up for grabs:

One winner (likely chosen by pulling names out of a bowl) will receive 2 boxes of Uncle Sam cereal from Attune Foods, as well as the Click bag, drink shaker, and some samples of Click from me and ShrinkingJeans.

Then, 5 random commenters will each receive coupons for cereal from Attune Foods as well as packets of Click from me. (I was going to go with the first 5 comments, but didn't want to leave out my West Coast friends.)

Here are the rules (you didn't think there wouldn't be rules did you?)

1. The contest is open to US residents only.  I will also need some way to contact you if you are a winner, so make sure your comment is linked to email or twitter.
2. For 1 entry, leave a comment for me telling me your favorite healthy breakfast. This requirement is Mandatory.
3. For an extra entry, tweet about this giveaway.  Make sure to mention @barif0815 and @attunefoods in your tweet.  Comment back here to let me know you did this.
4. For a 3rd entry, follow @attunefoods and @drinkclick on twitter.  Again, comment here to let me know.

This contest will run from today until Wednesday, June 29 at 8:00 pm EST.  My girl, Kirsten, will be here visiting, so maybe we'll have to do something fun to draw the winners!  Winners will be announced on Thursday, June 30th!

So, there you go!  A chance to win a few of my favorite take-aways from FitBloggin'11.  I feel blessed to have made the connections I have here and at FitBloggin' and now I feel doubly blessed to pass on some of the rewards to you.

Attune Foods provided the cereal for review and the Click samples were provided by Click via ShrinkingJeans.  All opinions about these awesome products are my own.