gift cards

Want to win a laptop? Sign up by Wednesday.

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F8C35AV_0ther_PCMAG_513Although I’m neither a contest blogger nor a deal blogger, I do sometimes post  giveaways, TweetChats and other promotions from elsewhere. Occasionally one carries the potential for affiliate income for me, e.g., when someone signs up for a seminar. Mostly, though, I put them up to give readers a chance to win stuff.

The folks at Savings.com are giving away a laptop computer. Specifically, they’re giving away an HP Pavilion 11t-n000 x360 PC (Energy Star).

Edited to add: The giveaway quickly filled up with more than 5,000 entries and closed early. But it has been retooled and is now back in business. You can enter up until 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday, April 30, by going to the Savings.com giveaway page.

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Go win these gift cards.

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thWhenever I see a chance to win gift cards I tend to enter. Sometimes I even win.

Whenever I see a chance for readers to win gift cards, I tend to share. Here are two chances to win Home Depot and Amazon.com cards. The former is pretty easy; the latter takes a bit of work but there’s a chance at a pretty decent payoff.

Savings.com will be giving away $3,000 worth of Home Depot e-gift cards today through Wednesday. Between 9:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. EDT each day, go to the Home Depot page at Savings.com and enter your e-mail address.

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Want a $100 Amazon card? Join this Tweetchat

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thA watched pot never boils, but an unwatched pot full of raspberries and rhubarb can make a real mess of your stovetop.

Yep, I’m back from Florida and I’m making yogurt. And messes.

I didn’t get home until 1 a.m. Tuesday and was so glad to be on the ground I didn’t care that it was covered with snow. Total time between waking up in Tarpon Springs, Florida and getting into my own bed in Anchorage: 23 hours. Alaska is really far away from a lot of places.

Since then I’ve been scrambling to play catch-up with several different projects (including multiple interviews for one of them), so I have neither time nor inclination to write something deeply meaningful. However, I wanted to do a quick roundup.

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Another “Coffeehouse Cliche” giveaway.

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thPicture yourself sitting in a coffeehouse and writing the Great American Novel. Or next year’s Pulitzer for Best New Play. Or just sucking down some java and pretending to be all sensitive and deep.

I can help.

This week I’m having a second Coffeehouse Cliche giveaway, with three essentials to literary pretentiousness:

A notebook. Not the electronic kind, obviously. This is a 5-by-7-inch navy blue book with lined pages and an attached pen. Go ahead. Fill it up.

Starbucks e-gift card. This is good for $10 worth of whatever caffeine you need to jump-start the muse.

Coffee mug. This stainless steel Cutter & Buck mug has a lid with a handle and a leather sleeve if you’re not a handle-holding kind of sipper. The sleeve bears a discreet logo for Bankrate Insurance — yep, I got it at last year’s Financial Blogger Conference.

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A “solar vortex” and a short rant.

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swagcodeOn Thursday, March 6, the Swagbucks rewards program is offering a “Solar Vortex” Swag Code Extravaganza – and from now until April 5 new Swagbucks members have the chance to earn a 500-point bonus.

From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PST the site will offer a sun-and-sand-themed giveaway of games and codes totaling 36 points. I’ll post any that I find on Surviving and Thriving’s Facebook page. 

Those of you who haven’t joined yet should consider joining through the above link, because it gives you a shot at that bonus. If you earn 1,500 Swag Bucks between now and April 19, you’ll automatically get 500 extra SBs.

Those 1,500 points can be earned through searching, watching video, shopping, answering surveys or any way you like. And the points can be used to buy gift cards, electronics or the various other items in the Swag Store. You can even donate them to charity if you like.

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A midwinter’s tale. (Okay, a digest.)

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thThe snow is clean and new, the temperature is 18 degrees, daylight is increasing (we get 9 hours, 43 minutes today) and the annual winter carnival known as “Rondy” (short for the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous) is underway. When I lived here before, February was always the month when winter turned around. Still is, even though it’ll be months before we can garden.

The carnival includes a three-day dogsled race that starts and ends downtown. As I’ve noted before, Anchorage is the only city I know of that puts snow on the streets. And they’ll do it again on March 1, when the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has its ceremonial start downtown.

Yep, it’s a weird place.

I haven’t posted anything particularly deep lately due to having first a virus and then a head cold (still got it, yay), and also having accepted a magazine assignment and been in negotiations with another magazine editor. The latter involved a long phone conversation and then sending a fairly lengthy outline on a very personal subject, only to be told this wasn’t specific enough: What did it feel like?

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Gift Card Exchange Day: A chance to fix Christmas.

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thShow of hands: How many of you have received an inappropriate gift card at Christmas?

Maybe it’s a steakhouse card from the grandparent who doesn’t understand what “vegan” means, or a gift card to a store where you’d never willingly shop.

Or perhaps a well-meaning pal sent a movie theater gift card, but your new apartment is an hour-long bus ride away from that particular chain.

The easy answer: Sell the gift card on the secondary market.

The best day to do it: Dec. 26, aka Gift Card Exchange Day. 

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Coupons.com wants to give you a $100 Amazon card.

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XMAS_BLOGGIFT_MOM_FINA couple of dozen bloggers were given the chance to participate in the Coupons.com Holiday Sweepstakes. I’m happy to be among them because of the possibility that one of my readers will be chosen as the winner of a $100 gift card to Amazon.com.

The contest is designed to call attention to the site’s holiday gift guides, which offer ideas for presents for moms, dads, teens and younger kids. This being Coupons.com, online coupon codes are included with each gift idea.

Among the four Coupons.com holiday gift guides, my favorite is – naturally – the mom page. That’s because it includes a class of gifts I hope to see under the tree: skin-care items.

It’s cold and dry here in southcentral Alaska, which is hard on the skin. Looking at the moms’ gift guide I see a three-pack of fragranced body butters from Sephora. The  accompanying coupon codes bring free shipping and a gratis “deluxe sample” item. (Hint: Those small sample items are obviously good for travel but they also make very nice last-minute stocking stuffers.)

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Interested in a free gift card?

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thLooking to save money during your holiday shopping? Gift Card Granny can help. The aggregator site finds the best deals among the many discounted gift card resellers.

Shopping with a discounted gift card is like having a coupon without an expiration date. You can save anywhere from 2% to 20%, and sometimes more, depending on the retailer.

Gift cards are available for special purchases but also for everyday wants and needs such as groceries, gasoline, toiletries, vitamins, fast food, pet supplies and movie tickets. (My midnight movie jaunts — and their attendant buckets of kettle corn — are a bit more affordable this way.)

I shop with discounted gift cards all year round. Just about any time you check my wallet you’ll find at least one card; right now I have three (Walgreens, McDonald’s and Cinemark). However, these cards are particularly useful during the holidays — and Gift Card Granny is sponsoring a giveaway of a $25 gift card, to help defray your shopping costs.

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