giveaway

Giveaway: Alaska aurora calendar.

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As I noted recently, it’s high time you started any holiday shopping you plan for the year. Due to supply chain/pandemic issues, it’s going to be harder to find what you want and it will almost certainly cost more than you hoped. 

Here’s one solution: Win your gifts!

I post those e-gift card giveaways from Savings.com whenever I hear about them, in the hopes that one (or more!) of my readers will luck out. Regular readers also know that I give stuff away myself fairly often.

Lately I’ve been trying to focus on locally made items. This week’s giveaway is the Aurora 2022: Alaska’s Northern Lights calendar from Fairbanks-based Greatland Graphics. 

Who’s in?

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$1,500 in gift cards up for grabs from Savings.com.

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Once again Savings.com is putting some gift cards up for grabs, and once again I’m hoping one (or more!) of my readers will win. This is a pair of quick-turnaround giveaways, so please take 60 or so seconds to enter them right now.

Here’s what you have a chance to win:

Four $250 e-gift cards to Home Depot are the prizes in the #WinterPrepWithHomeDepot giveaway. Follow the link and enter before 11:59 p.m. PDT Thursday, Sept. 16.

What would you do with $250 worth of buying power? Home improvement projects, holiday decor, yard care items, e-security stuff like a doorbell camera? Note: Home Depot also sells furniture, linens, cookware, dishes and other home items.

Your second shot at free scrip is with the #SaveAtSamsClub giveaway, which will award $100 gift cards to five lucky winners. Again, enter through that link by 11:59 p.m. PDT Thursday, Sept. 16.

The possibilities at Sam’s Club are pretty wide-open: food, toiletries, pet care, furniture, clothing, towels, sheets, shoes, books, vitamins…If you’ve never been in a warehouse store, you’ll likely wind up a bit dizzy. And if there’s no Sam’s Club near you, just order online.

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Lowe’s, PaperMart gift card giveaways from Savings.com.

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Savings.com has two quick-turnaround giveaways going on right now. Why not throw your virtual hat into the ring?

The big-ticket drawing is two $250 e-gift cards at Lowe’s. The #GetOutsideWithLowes giveaway could be fun to spend at the end-of-season clearance sales, or as a head start on  outdoor displays for Halloween and/or Christmas. Since Lowe’s sells a lot of furniture and housewares, you could also use the gift card on a housewarming gift, or to feather your own nest.

The second drawing is smaller, but intriguing: Savings.com is giving away 10 $20 e-gift cards to PaperMart, a store that specializes in packaging. Winning the #SaveAtPaperMart giveaway would give you the chance to buy everything from ribbons and bows to shipping boxes. This could be the year when you put some super frou-frou wrappings under the tree.

How to enter these drawings? So glad you asked.

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Monday miscellany: Social media shopping edition.

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Last week I did something unprecedented: social media shopping. Specifically, I succumbed to a Facebook ad. While I can’t say too much about this, on the off-chance one of the two recipients is reading, I can say I think the gifts I purchased will be a hit this Christmas.

This was new to me, but definitely not to everyone. According to a CreditCards.com survey, nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of millennials say social media affects their buying decisions. By contrast, only 45 percent of my own age group copped to this kind of impact.

Ana Staples, an analyst with Bankrate.com, says it’s pretty easy to be influenced. In fact, she recently had to put herself on a “book-buying ban” after watching too many TikTok videos about reading. Staples realized she had months’ worth of reading material already stashed.

“Not my proudest moment,” she says.

To help the rest of us avoid impulse buying – and, maybe, Internet scams – Staples offers the following tips. 

 

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Enter the Savings.com $8k giveaway.

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The Savings.com coupon website is giving away $8,000 worth of gift cards over the next four weeks. Nope, that’s not an extra “0” added by mistake. It’s Eight. Thousand. Dollars.

Although this #BTSSAVINGS promotion is technically for back-to-school shopping, there’s no rule against entering even if you don’t have kids at home – or have kids at all. Three of the four e-gift card types are pretty egalitarian in terms of who could use them.

Each week through Aug. 23, Savings.com will give away eight $250 e-gift cards from the following brands:

JC Penney  – where you can get clothing, housewares and more along with school clothes

HP – for school tech, or personal tech

Old Navy – which isn’t necessarily just for the kiddies, by the way; that’s where I found the light cotton, deep-pocketed summer slacks I needed for visiting my daughter in Phoenix

The Children’s Place – okay, this one is definitely just for the kiddies, but even if you don’t have children you could buy stuff to donate to a family shelter

Click on one (or all!) of the above links to enter. (Full disclosure: I receive a teeny-tiny finder’s fee for entries using these links.) If you’re unable to use one or more of the gift card types, just skip that particular merchant’s link. In other words, you won’t receive a card you don’t want. 

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Giveaway: Starbucks gift card and reusable straws.

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It’s brutally hot in the Lower 48 right now and I so wish that I could send some of the Alaska coolth down to guys. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. But I can offer up a brief respite, courtesy of a Starbucks gift card and some reusable straws.

Whoever wins this can purchase $15 worth of their favorite cold beverages: stuff like Blended Strawberry Lemonade, Pink Drink, Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew, Iced Chocolate Almond Milk Shaken Espresso, Iced Peach Green Tea Lemonade, Iced Guava Passionfruit or even a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino.

That last one sounds more like a dessert than a drink, which is where those reusable straws come in. They’re not just reusable straws – they’re reusable spoon straws. You can scoop up the thick cold drinks or the bits of fruit/cookie crumbles that might otherwise get stuck in the straw.

My niece recently became a Pampered Chef consultant and I attended a virtual party out of a sense of auntly duty. But I have to say that some of that stuff looks pretty awesome, and I wound up buying one item as a Christmas gift and one item for me* along with the spoon straws. #SupportingTheFamilyEconomy

It’s a set of four (see illustration), so you and up to three family members/friends can all feel eco-friendly together. The little cleaning brush helps you sluice out those cookie bits, and the carrying bag (not pictured) keeps it all together.

The Starbucks gift card is a good match, I think. While I’m not a coffee drinker, I have to say that Starbucks has at times saved me from melting down during summer travels/conferences. Usually I ask the barista, “What cold drink would you recommend to your mom if she were very overheated and not a fan of coffee, or even mocha?” And they always surprise me with something that I might never have chosen on my own. 

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Giveaway: “Homeschool Hacks” and a $25 Amazon gift card.

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This was the year for homeschooling, all right – whether parents liked it or not. My friend Linsey Knerl had her book, “Homeschool Hacks,” in the works before COVID started, however.

And I’m willing to bet that Zoom classrooms and homework evenings would have been sooooo much easier had parents across the country gotten their hands on “Homeschool Hacks: How to Give Your Kid a Great Education Without Losing Your Job (or Your Mind).” [As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a small fee for items bought through my link.]

But don’t take my word for it. Listen instead to Lela Davidson, author of “Faking Balance: Adventures in Work and Life,” “Who Peed on My Yoga Mat?” and “Blacklisted From the PTA”:

“For anyone serious or merely curious about homeschooling, this is the perfect first read.”

Who am I to argue with someone who wrote a book called “Who Peed on My Yoga Mat?”

More to the point, I would never second-guess Knerl’s expertise: She has six kids and has homeschooled them all. Knerl learned what she knows by being a successful homeschool parent (along with her husband), which she does in addition to having a career as a freelance writer.

This is a two-part giveaway: I’ll be sending “Homeschool Hacks” to some lucky winner along with a $25 Amazon gift card. The scrip can be used to buy a few things for your own homeschool classroom. (Or for anything you like, really.)

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Two big gift-card giveaways.

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Savings.com (the parent company of Sivan Social) has two big gift-card giveaways running at the same time. Starting today, you can sign up to win one of five $100 e-gift cards to J. Crew Factory and/or one of five $100 e-gift cards to HSN.

Both would be great for summer fun: bathing suits, barbecue grills, shorts and rompers, garden supplies, pool toys, fire pits and lots more.

But they could also come in handy later on. I’m thinking birthday presents, holiday giving, charitable donations or maybe even filling blank spots in your own wardrobe/kitchen/garden/rec room/whatever. 

You get to decide. If you win, that is. And you can’t win if you don’t enter.

 

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Giveaway: Alaska-made chocolates.

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The other day I learned about a most, um, interesting confection: a dark chocolate bar (70 percent cacao) with Alaska sourdough and Alaska bee pollen.

I am not making that up.

Haven’t sampled it yet, but I will soon: DF and I plan to take it over to our beekeeping neighbor, thinking it will intrigue him as much as it did us.

What I did try was a unique specialty at Chugach Chocolates: “bean to bar” chocolates, made with single-source cacao beans from Vietnam, Fiji and Madagascar. The tasting took place after a tour to see how this small-batch chocolate company cracks, roasts, grinds and tempers its beans before flavoring and molding them into smooth, rich, delightful sweets.

This was dark chocolate unlike any I’ve previously tasted. I’m not sure I have the vocabulary to explain the different flavors, but I’ll give it a try: earthy, fruity, ever-so-slightly spicy and, mostly, dark. It made me think of the Mayans and how they drank their chocolate without sweeteners.

Not that this chocolate is bitter! It’s just that the reigning flavor was intensely chocolatey, rather than sugar-with-chocolate-added.

I’ve featured Chugach Chocolates before in my “support the local economy” giveaways. Now I’m ready to do it again, because I learned that they use ice packs and insulated covers to keep their delightful products safe for summertime shipping.

Wanna win? Keep reading.

 

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Giveaway: Alaska soap and such.

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My friend Linda B. and I took a field trip today, to a small store called Blue Market AK, where the motto is “Refill, not landfill: Unpackaged for a healthy planet.” (Just FYI: “AK” is the postal designation for “Alaska.”) We prowled among shelves full of oils, honey, salsas, spices, organic produce, soap and other personal-care products, non-toxic household cleaners and other interesting items.

To be honest, I felt like I was back in the ’70s. In a good way.

The vibe was friendly, caring, healthy-but-not-insufferable-about-it and, more to the point, intensely Alaskan. About 45 percent of the shop’s vendors are from the Last Frontier, and all of them focus on reducing the environmental impact of producing their delightful products.

The store offers free space for “local makers” to do pop-up sales each week, and donates 1 percent of proceeds to Alaska groups that emphasize sustainability.

With all that emphasis on Alaska, it seemed like a great way to keep my “support the local economy” giveaway streak alive. Consider it a belated Earth Day giveaway. Here’s what you’ll get if you win: 

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