Better late than never!

First off, I MUST apologize that it's been over two weeks since I last blogged! Isn't it crazy how time seems to get away from us? I can hardly believe that it's nearly October. In the two weeks since I last blogged, however, Mr. C and I have accomplished a lot as far as our move is concerned. In addition to getting the move paperwork done (fingers and toes crossed that it all goes smoothly when December arrives!) we also took a brief trip out to San Antonio to see the city and to find a place to live. Neither of us had ever been to Texas before, let alone San Antonio, so we were both really excited to see if it lived up to the hype. We both really loved the city, and are now even more ecstatic to move in December! We decided on a townhouse that is walking distance (on a nice day, if you feel like some exercise!) to a new shopping center with restaurants, a movie theater and shops! The area feels really safe and friendly, and we can't wait to make it our new home! It seems like everything with the move is coming together quite nicely, so now we just wait until we're a little bit closer to December so I can start packing things up! Mr. C has also started school, which means I will have a lot more free time on my hands to blog and take on a few projects that I've been wanting to do. I'm sure yall will get to hear all about my latest endeavor of making all of our Christmas cards by hand! There are sure to be some good stories that come out of that, since I'm not the most crafty person in the world. Thankfully a dear friend here in Pensacola is a Stampin' Up demonstrator and will serve as my fearless mentor and ensure that I don't burn the house down as I try to emboss for the first time!

Anyway, I know that in my last post I said I would introduce you to the fabulous world of couponing! I promise I'll get to that tomorrow (yes, it really WILL be tomorrow... not three weeks from now!) but today I want to blog about something else, so bear with me. How many times are you in a store, at a festival or perusing online and you see advertisements to enter a sweepstakes or drawing to win some sort of fabulous prize? How often do you think to yourself, "nobody ever wins those... all that's going to happen is that I'm going to get a ton of junk mail and solicitors!" Well, I'm here to tell you that's not entirely the truth.

You see, I've never considered myself a super lucky person. I would occasionally enter sweepstakes but never won anything and pretty much thought there was no point in entering. Well, enter Pensacola and me having lots of free time on my hands to peruse the internet and all of its vast knowledge. I found a website all about people who earn their livings by entering sweepstakes! Who knew? After a fleeting moment of envisioning myself sailing around the world in my yacht, with my private butler and fabulous wardrobe that I had all won by filling out some online forms, I crashed back to reality. However, I was intrigued. If people are out there winning cars and boats and thousands of dollars, why not give it a shot? So I did. I'll share with you what I've learned and how you may be able to go sailing around the world in your yacht, or at least get some free groceries!

First, I learned that some contests are way more "winnable" than others. For example, if it's a highly advertised contest that's open to the entire country with one grand prize and nothing else... you're probably not going to win. However, if it's a contest only open to residents of a few states or only open to people attending a certain festival, and there are lots of prizes to be won, then you have a pretty good shot! The key is to focusing on these contests, and entering as often as you're allowed to. For example, Publix (our local grocery store chain for you non-Floridians) constantly has online contests going on that you can enter daily. They often give out hundreds of Publix gift cards, with the grand prize often being thousands of dollars in free groceries. Well, I started entering these daily (or at least whenever I happened to remember!) a couple of months ago, and I've already won a $50 Publix gift card and yesterday I checked my mail to find a $100 Publix gift card! That's like $150 in free money, since goodness knows Mr. C and I spend a lot of money already at Publix! The blog "I Heart Publix" has a listing of various Publix sweepstakes going on that you can find here.

The second thing I learned is that it's a good idea to create a separate e-mail address just for entering contests. I'll be honest, I very rarely receive any spam in my "sweepstakes" e-mail address, since most sweepstakes you enter will give you the option of not receiving any e-mails from the company. Regardless, it does help give me peace of mind about giving out my e-mail knowing that I'm keeping my personal e-mail address safe. You do usually have to give out your address and phone number so you can be notified if you win, so it's important to make sure you're entering a legitimate sweepstakes. I make sure to only enter contests from companies that I know are legitimate and that are hosted on the company's main web page. Just use common sense, and if it seems fishy or too good to be true, it probably is! The website Sweeties Sweeps is run by a woman who enters sweepstakes as a hobby and has won everything from trips to cars to cash and everything in between. She posts a list, called Sweeties Picks, of sweepstakes that she deems to be most "winnable" based on the number of prizes, etc. It's a great place to start if you're feeling lucky and want to try your hand at this whole thing!

Now, I know this may sound like I've gone a little bit crazy, however I wouldn't be telling you about all of this for no reason. Just in the past six months, I've won $150 in groceries, various other gift cards, coupons for free products, a lot of random other things, and what really inspired me to write this post is that this morning I woke up to a phone call telling me that I had won a $200 gas card that I entered to win at the Pensacola Seafood Festival this weekend! Who doesn't love free stuff, especially if it's free money?! Trust me, after all of this, I'll be making sure I enter every local contest and sweepstakes I find, and even give some bigger ones a shot too! Who knows, maybe my dream of sailing around the world will become a reality!!!

Have any of you won anything great in a contest or drawing?