Win a £250 holiday voucher with Money Magpie

I'll hand over to Money Magpie to tell you all about it themselves!

Name our Magpie and win a £250 holiday voucher!

Consumer finance website Moneymagpie’s iconic mascot needs a name – and we think that’s a job for our readers! Perched atop the site, seeking out the latest bargains and money-making ideas – the least we can do is give our faithful Magpie a name!

So on Monday 2 April 2012 Moneymagpie founder Jasmine Birtles is opening it up to the public by offering a £250 voucher for travel site On The Beach for the best name received.

All entrants need to do is head over to the Moneymagpie Facebook page and leave a post saying:

“Hello Jasmine! I’d like to name your Money Magpie (enter name).”

The winner will be announced on Monday 30 April 2012. Entries must be received by 3pm on that day.

Good luck!

Terms and conditions

1. This competition gives the winner a discount of £250 on holidays (flight & hotel) or Hotel Only from On the Beach (excludes flight only)

2. £250 discount can only be used when booking directly with On the Beach by phone

3. Your booking must be made by 1^st June 2012 for travel by 31st December 2012, and can include any holidays available at On The Beach.

4. Voucher must be used against ONE booking and cannot be split into multiple bookings

5. Winner to pay difference if holiday worth more than the voucher amount

6. Winner’s forename and town/city may be used in future promotional material

7. Offer is non-transferrable and no cash equivalent will be given

Using lists to tackle Twitter

If you are anything like me, you follow a LOT of people on Twitter. And that means unless you are watching the screen 24 hours a  day, you simply can't keep up with everything that's happening. When you drop in, you can have missed thousands of tweets, and you may have missed a friend announcing good  or bad news, who may then be hurt that you haven't mentioned it. You may have missed an announcement from a company you follow - maybe a great offer you would have liked to take up or a competition you would have liked to enter. Or you may have missed the breaking of a major news item or a piece of juicy celebrity gossip.

If you have several different interests and follow people connected with them, you may also find your Twitter page is so jumbled up that you can't keep up with conversations. As a comper, a crafter and a foodie, I can find myself trying to keep up with discussions about problems with a competition judging,  a new set of embossing folders being shown on television and the opening of a new restaurant, all at the same time. It's sometimes like being in a crowded room with everybody talking at once, and you can only pick up snatches of conversation so nothing makes sense.

Because of this confusion, a lot of people give up on Twitter. But there is a way to keep on following the people you want to follow and yet not find it as confusing, or to reduce the number of people you follow and yet still read what they say. I find the latter very useful as there are a lot of people like chefs and celebrities with whom I never interact and yet I still like to read their tweets. The answer to all this confusion is to sort the people you follow into lists.

Once they are listed, you can go to your Twitter page and select "Lists" from the drop down menu in the little head and shoulders silhouette at the top right, then again from the new menu which will appear on the left.  You'll then see a list of all your lists. I have lots of lists - two for compers because I know so many, one for foodies, one for health issues, one for my own family, one for crafters, one for local friends, news and businesses,  one for each day of the week to show me which companies tend to run competitions on each day,  one at Christmas time for Advent competitions and one for everything else which I simply call "The Best".

If I'm running a competition I will create a list of the people who have entered, and if I am researching a topic I might create a list of people who tweet on the subject. When I've finished with a list, I can simply delete it.

To organise people into lists, go to their Twitter profile and you'll see a second head and shoulders silhouette next to the Follow/Following button on the top right. From the drop down menu this produces, choose "Add or Remove from lists" ad a pop up will appear with a list of your lists in it. Select the one you want to use, or start a new one by clicking on "create a list" at the bottom. You can use this to put people on more than one list - for instance a few of my comping friends are also crafters so they are on both my comping and crafting lists.  Once the little timer wheel stops working, the job's done.

If you choose to create a list, you can make it private or public. If it is private, only you can see or follow it. A public list can be followed by anybody, and you can follow anyone else's public lists by going to the list and clicking "Subscribe" - from then on it will appear in your own list of lists.

Organising people into lists can take a lot of time, but it is well worth it in the long run. I tend to do it just a few people at a time, but I try to remember whenever I follow someone new, to immediately add them to a list.  The only app I can find to help  you organise your lists is Twitlist  - however it locks up my screen every time I try to use it. Maybe if you have a different setup from mine you will be able to make it work. If you know of a better one, please tell me in a comment or a tweet!

Now you can start to use your lists - for instance if I'm in a crafting mood, I can read  my craft list. If I'm wanting to catch up on comping news, I can read one of my lists of compers and if I want to know what the traffic's like on the local reads, I can read my local list.

The main Twitter page of advice and information about lists has lots of step by step advice about using them. But if you are using the Twitter web page, you still have to visit each list separately. You could, of course, open each one in a separate tab so you can  watch them all, but a really great way to view them all at once if you don't want to miss anything is to use Tweet Deck, where you can add a separate column for every list.

Now you have your lists, here are a few tips for using them to make your Twitter experience better:

• even if you have blocked somebody, if you have them on a list you will still see their tweets. So if you REALLY don't want to see what they say, unlist them. And remember that if THEY have YOU on a list they can  also still see your tweets, so don't be TOO rude about them!
• unfollow them and free up space to follow some new people.
• If you are following two people, you will see conversations between them both, even if you aren't part of the conversation. If you have them on a list but don't follow them, you won't see the conversation between them. This can do a lot to declutter your timeline.
• A list can't contain more than 500 people. Once you reach that point, you will need to either remove somebody or start a second list.
• You  can't add yourself to, or remove yourself from, somebody else's list, and nobody  can add themselves to or remove  themselves from yours.
• You can only have a maximum of 20 lists. This appears to include other people's lists that you are subscribed to.

And finally,  I wish I had £1 for every time I have used the word "list" in this post! I'm sorry for being repetitive but there really isn't any other word for it.

Mary Queen of ....... SOCKS?????

Mary Portas, well known for her TV series "Mary Queen of Shops" has created a hosiery line, and Posh Tights are giving you a chance to win £150 of products - that's one pair of each of the eleven styles plus one extra pair.

To enter, you need to register with the site, which counts as one entry. After registering,  you will get an email containing your personal Competition Code. Then tell a friend about the site and ask them to register, quoting your code when they do so. You will then be entered into the competition, and your friend will get a code which they can use to refer somebody else for their own entry.

The competition closes on May 31st, but you will also be given a 20% discount code, valid until the end of June.

Be clean and green for a year - win with Dishmatic

Did you make a New Year's resolution to be greener this year? And have you already broken it by picking up your old familiar cleaning brands from the supermarket? Well, Spring started this week, the sunshine is streaming through our grubby windows and spotlighting winter's grime, and it's time to think about Spring Cleaning so what better time to revive those resolutions?

 

Dishmatic and EcoForce are giving away a year's supply of spring cleaning goodies worth £50 helping you to go green when you clean.  

 

For your first entry, enter on line at

http://www.dishmatic.com/win.asp

For a second entry, like them on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Dishmatic

and for one more entry, follow them on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/Dishmatic and use the ready made tweet on the competition entry page above to tweet about the competition - all you need to do is click on the tweet button they have provided!

Closing date: 30.4.12.

UK and Ireland only. Adults 18+ only.

 

And since I haven't got a photo of anything being spring cleaned for you, here is a gratuitous dirty photo (I wonder how many people searching Google for "dirty photo" are going to be disappointed by it?)

 

 

Fine dining...... in FLEET

Recently Peroni ran a competition where you had to phone in with details from your pack for a chance to win a pop up restaurant in your home, with runners up prizes of hampers. Having only entered once, I was surprised and delighted to be the winner of the first draw back in November -  a chef to come to my home and create a real pop-up restaurant.

As it was my husband's birthday last weekend, we arranged to take the prize last week, and chef Mario Presi came to our house to create a very special dinner for two. He had already visited to help me plan the menu and this time he brought two helpers with him who set to to transform our dining room from this

to this

While they were creating the restaurant - having brought everything with them from candles to lighting, and  cutlery to music - Mario got to work in the kitchen. He was cooking constantly from when they arrived just after noon until late in the evening! My kitchen, which is quite used to seeing a lot of activity on a daily basis, had nevertheless never experienced anything like it. Every surface was covered in wonderful food and the finest ingredients.

Mario didn't mind when we popped in to ask questions or inspect unfamiliar ingredients, and was happy to let us take photographs.

The smells and sounds coming from the kitchen were very tantalising and neither my husband nor I got much work done that afternoon!
Eventually it was time for dinner and we settled down in the living room, which had also been transformed with a beautiful arrangement of flowers

Aperitivo were served by Olga, the waitress - chilled Peroni, of course, accompanied by Polenta and Sopressa Veneta, Rosemary Foccacia with Stracchino and Rocket and Slow Cooked Rabbit with Borlotti (Note- from this point onwards, we were too busy enjoying ourselves to take photos, so the remaining photos have been reproduced with kind permission of Mario Presi, who recorded each dish as it was ready to be served)

When these delicious morsels were finished, Olga escorted us through to the dining room. We hardly recognised it with the pictures softly spotlit and candles flickering on the table! Our amuse-bouche of Cauliflower and Saffron Fritter with Broad Bean Purée was brought next - this was one of my favourite dishes of the whole evening, along with the Slow Cooked Rabbit and the Pork Belly which came later.

After all this food, it was time for our starter! We had Busiate Pasta with Trapani Pesto - a Sicilian style pesto that included cherry tomatoes and almonds, making it completely different from the more familiar pesto Genovese

Different wines were served with every course - above you can see us enjoying a refreshing glass of prosecco before moving on to our main course of pork cooked three ways - Fritters of Pork Cheek, Saltimbocca  and Pork Belly, on a cauliflower puree with Marsala sauce. Herbed roasted potatoes and Chantenay carrots, and broccoli were served with this.

Finally, as I don't eat dessert, Mario had provided us with a platter of beautiful Italian cheeses which was served with a selection of fresh fruits and some delicious sesame crackers. And as well as coffee, he offered a selection of teas including my favourite after-dinner drink, fresh mint tea.

We'd had a wonderful "evening out" - with no worries about getting home afterwards, no irritation from other diners (why is the person at the next table always the one with the loudest voice?) and no stress about being rushed to make way for the next party. And a  wonderful meal at home with no cooking or washing up. The kitchen was left spotless and the fridge was so full of food that we made all our meals for the next two days from the leftovers.

Thank you to Peroni and everyone involved in running the competition for making this amazing experience possible, and to Mario and his helpers for turning the dream into reality. It was an evening we will remember forever.

Grape Vine does Basingstoke

Yesterday I decided to make Basingstoke the venue for one of my "safaris" - a hunt for new competitions to include in Grape Vine (or indeed to enter myself).  The next issue of GV will cover competitions closing from 13th April onwards, but I found a lot of new ones with earlier closing dates that I wanted to share with you, and as the April update has already gone out I thought I'd tell you about my day out and give you the entry information at the same time.

Those of you who know Basingstoke will know what a labyrinth the multi storey car park is. I'm always convinced that if I don't park in exactly the same spot every time, I won't find my car again! Luckily, "my" place was free so I could relax. In the lift there was a notice

Visit Procook for a chance to win a set of baking tins

So I headed straight there. That was a draw just for the local branch, but if you are in the area before March 31st, pop into Procook and give them your details for a chance to win. While you are in Festival Place, look out for stands offering you a chance to win a £15,000 wedding, closing April 7th. The stands weren't manned when I was there, but with my 35th wedding anniversary approaching and both daughters now married, I probably don't need to win a wedding!

My next stop was the new branch of Topshop where there is a form to hand in, again exclusive to the Basingstoke branch, to win the entire window display of £350 worth of fashion.

I continued around Festival Place, carefully examining each shop for piles of leaflets, posters, special displays  and window stickers. Almost immediately, I spotted a window sticker in USC fashion. It said

 Win a trip to New York. Go to facebook.com/uscfashion or ask a member  of staff

The competition  closes 31 Mar and unfortunately is a "most likes" competition and therefore open to abuse. But there are daily prizes of iTunes vouchers, Spotify premium accounts and Converse apparel, and it's very easy to  enter, but I see they only had 11 entries yesterday so you might want to give it a go.

It wasn't time for a coffee  yet, but I had to pause at Muffin Break where a poster said

Win free coffee for a year - find MuffinBreakUk on Facebook

This is a tiebreaker competition - you need to complete the sentence "The perfect treat to have with my Muffin Break coffee is...." in no more than 25 words, and  it closes on 31st March.

There was nothing new to me in Superdrug (although they did have several competitions)  or Poundland, no new competition stickers on any of the books in W H Smiths or Waterstones  and  no leaflets in any of the fashion, home or beauty concessions in the department stores, so my spirits were starting to flag, but then I found competitions in Wilkinsons and Halifax which will be in your April Grape Vine. Tesco hadn't had their delivery of magazines yet, but in Schuh I picked up a postcard directing you to www.schuh.co.uk/rocketdogthehungergames for a chance to win a year's supply of shoes and a private screening on The Hunger Games, with 10  goody bags for runners up. This closes on 31st March and there are film merchandise bundles for 10 runners up.

There was plenty of interest in The Entertainer where I picked up forms  for a monthly draw for £100,   a Sylvanian Families children's writing competition closing 1st May and  one more writing or drawing competition, closing 31 March, exclusive to the Reading, Basingstoke, Camberley and Winchester branches with prizes of theatre tickets and gift vouchers.

I picked up the Toni & Guy magazine but they no longer seem to have regular competitions, then decided it was about time for a cup of tea. Knowing their new magazine was due out, I thought I'd have my tea in Wetherspoons. I ordered a cup of tea and asked for a magazine, and was rather surprised by the assistant's reply.
"I'm sorry but I don't think we can find the key to the dungeon."
She seemed to be puzzled about why I found that funny. However by the time I'd drunk my tea, she must have found the key as she brought me a copy of the magazine. It was very sticky - I wonder what goes on in their dungeon???

Refreshed and with my mind boggling, I left the town centre and set out to comb the out of town supermarkets and retail parks. In Chineham, the huge Tesco still didn't have any magazines, but I picked up promotional packs  of Pepsi  and Capri Sun. The nearby Brantano had an entry form and in Martins newsagent I found details of an instant win promotion when you buy Maltesers.

Next Morrisons where I spotted new competitions on Frubes, Feel Good drinks and Lech beer, as well as an entry form for one of three trips to Dublin. To enter this, you need a till receipt dated between 19th March and 1st April showing a purchase of a 475ml bottle of HP Sauce with Guinness and then either send it with an entry form or give the details from your receipt at www.morrisons.co.uk/competitions by April 9th.

The next retail park included Toys R Us, where there were no competitions at all, JJB  where I got information about one to win a chance to watch the England team play, and Currys where there were leaflets about a competition to win a trip to LA. I popped into Hobbycraft to get the latest copy of their in-house magazine, and then headed on to Asda where I found competitions on Trebor Sweets, Fruitypot Jelly  and Delamere Dairies milk.

I decided to make a slight detour on my way home to visit one final branch of Tesco  and it paid off, because they had the magazine in. You'll need to pick up a copy of your own, and a multipack  of the new 250ml sized Pepsi Max, 7 Up or Tango if you want to enter a draw to win one of 3 x £1000 adventure holiday vouchers. One of the other competitions closes too soon to be included in the April GV. It is on Dove Men+Care Antiperspirant and Bodywash. The prize a VIP box at the Heineken Cup Final on 19th May for the winner and up to 7 guests, all of whom must be aged 18 or over.  To enter, buy one of the products from Tesco and keep your receipt in case you win. Then text (normal rate) DoveMen and the last four digits of the barcode from your pack to 57782. One entry per person per day is allowed until the final closing date of 19th April.

Finally I got home after eight hours of competition  hunting. And of course the first thing I did was to open my post. There was a Lands  End catalogue containing details of a new competition, an invitation from Hotel Chocolat to attend an Easter  event which will have a prizedraw, and best of all, written confirmation from Blue Dragon Foods that I am a winner in their instant win competition,and will be having a chef coming to my home to prepare  an Ortiental Banquet for eight.

Then I had to check press releases for info on new competitions, deal with Grape Vine renewals and sample requests and cook dinner, which, inspired by my letter, was an Oriental banquet of my own!

Last night I had a very early night.......

A quick apology

I've got several blog posts planned for this week, but at the moment I'm having problems with my internet connection. It's affecting the whole local area and repairs are predicted to take around a week, so I may not be able to keep the blog up to date this week. it also means that any comments you make on any of my posts may take a few days to appear, as I have to approve them.

I hope I'll be able to keep in touch with you all over the next few days, but if I can't, behave yourselves and keep on winning!