MORE new competitions!

Today I have more new competitions for you!

First of all, a chance to win a special Jubilee themed Healthy Back Bag

It's worth £49 and fits in well with the current fashion for all things patriotic. Simply enter your details at http://www.thehealthybackbag.co.uk/comp/win-a-jubilee-healthy-back-bag by the closing date of June 30th.

Now an opportunity for anyone who lives in the North West of England. I'll let the promoter tell you all about it

Enter the North West's biggest photo competition!
Win a £1,000 family holiday or £500 ballooning experience.
Upload your best picture to our website at http://photos.yearofhealthandwellbeing.org.uk
We're celebrating the North West Year of Health and Wellbeing, part of an NHS North West initiative to help us all live well and feel better!
Show us what 'Wellbeing' means to you.
Entry is open to residents in the North West of England.
Closes 30th September 2012.

Although this year the competition is only for those living in the North West, if it is a success they may be able to open it up to more of us next time. I don't live in the North West now, although that's where I'm from, and as many of you know I've been up to Golborne (that's just outside Wigan, for those of you who don't know it) to look after my Mum, so here is a photo of her garden

You can see more photos from her overgrown but still beautiful garden on my husband's blog over at Mark's Veg Plot

some new competitions for you

First of all, you'll need to be quick with this one as it closes on the 4th of June. Hey U Guys, in association with Music Room,  have a boxed set of the complete Batman movies - six films - to be won. To enter, visit their website  and tell them Which comic book superhero or villain you would be and why in no more than 100 words.  I'd love to hear who you would be - I'd rather like to be Wonder Woman but I really don't have the waist for it!


Here's another creative competition, closing on June 5th.  Thanks to Economy Car Hire, The Movie Blog is giving away two £25 Amazon vouchers. The task this time, again in no more than 100 words,  is to tell them What's your favourite car chase and why. Fill in the entry form here. My own favourite is from the original version if "The Italian Job" - in fact I'm humming "This is the self preservation society....." as I write this.

After all that thinking, you might need to rest your brain for a while, so here is a competition that is much easier to enter. Best Mobile Contracts are giving away an iPhone 4S. The entry form is on their home page  and you can get extra entries for liking and sharing on Facebook and following and tweeting on Twitter, so depending on whether you already like/follow them you can enter up to 5 times. This competition closes on June 30th.

Finally, the new monthly competition is live on the Grape Vine website. The prize, as usual, is a 6 months subscription to my monthly magazine and the very popular mid-month update. This too closes on June 30th.

Win a £50 Bella Italia gift card

Bella Italia are about to introduce a new menu, and their chefs and restaurant managers have been designing their own pizzas. They would like US to help them choose which one will feature on the new menu by voting on their Facebook page and one lucky voter will win a £50 Bella Italia gift card so they can sample the new menu.

I'm having a hard time choosing my favourite - but I'll probably vote for the "Alternative Four Seasons".  I'm always undecided about pizza toppings and having four on one pizza helps me to make my mind up. And when I make home made pizza, I never go to the trouble of making four different toppings, which makes the Four Seasons one even more of a treat for me!

It's going to be quiet for a while.

Regular visitors to this blog and my food and crafting blog, Onions and Paper, will know that my mother has been ill recently and has been in and out of hospital. This week she is due to come out again, and I am going away for a while to spend some time with her, getting her used to being back home and arranging the support services she will need help from. 

Mum doesn't have any internet access and getting any mobile signal involves dangling hopefully out of an upstairs window, so I'm afraid the blogs won't be updated for a week or so.

The June Grape Vine is almost ready to go to the printers, so when I get home all I'll need to do is squeeze in any new competitions I find while I'm away,  but as I warned you in the update, a combination of my absence and the extra long bank holiday weekend mean that it will inevitably be a little late.

Compers- it's time to show an interest in Pinterest!

What is Pinterest?
The best way I can think of to describe it is "a visual bookmarking system". You can "pin" pictures from wwebsites or from other people onto your "boards" which you can divide into categories of your choice. Then when you go back to the board to look at your pins, you can use the picture to find your way back to the place you originally pinned it from, to see if there is anything new to interest you there.
Just like other social media sites, you can make friends with people,  like things, comments on them and, by repinning them,  share them with your friends.

How do I sign up and get started?
Register at www.pinterest.com   - it can take a few days for your application to be accepted. Once you are signed up, do feel free to follow me if you would like to.
When  you have your account, you will find several boards already provided for you. You can start pinning things to them straight away, or if you feel some of the boards on offer  are not for you,click "edit board" at the bottom of the board and either change the name to something you prefer or use the delete button to remove it completely - you can always add new boards whenever you need them.
If you are planning to enter competitions using Pinterest, you will find it handy to add a "Pin it" button to your toolbar. You can find out how to do this using the option in the "About" menu at thetopif the page. Pinterest will recognise which browser you are using and give you instructions specific to ut, along with a helpful video showing how it is done.

If you would like to see if you are repinning correctly, go to my Grape Vine board and repin any image (there are only three to choose from),  replacing the comment with "Hello Jane". if you've done it right, I'll get told by email and I'll pop over and say hello back.

Now you are ready to GET COMPING!

There are two main types of competition on Pinterest, Pin it to win it and Create a board.  (OK, OK, there are also "most likes" and "most repins" competitions but you probably all know my feelings about those on Facebook, I'm not going to even give them the dignity of being called competitions when it comes to Pinterest. If you don't know why, read Super Lucky Di's article about  cheating on Facebook)

Pin it to  win it
These are very simple to enter - a promoter will publish a picture and all you have to do is repin it to one of your own boards, by hovering the mouse at the top of a picture and clicking on  Repin. But do make sure you are repinning from the promoter's own Pinterest page and not that of another comper. Pinterest sends out a daily digest summary of activity, and the promoter will see from that who has entered as long as it is their own pin that you have repinned  If you've repinned it from somebody else, that other person is the one who gets the email. I  am already seeing this happen in my own daily emails, with compers repinning my entries - and I'm sorry folks but I'm not giving anything away on Pinterest...... YET. Think of it like Twitter, where you don't get entered into a competition by retweeting another comper's  tweet.
By going to the original board, as well as being able to enter the competition properly, you may well be able to see any terms and conditions relating to it - is it open to the UK?  When does it close? Not all businesses running Pinterest competitions have got the hang of including T&C yet but it's always best to have a look for them.

Create a board
These competitions  can be time consuming - and addictive - but fun. You are given a theme and asked to create a board relating to that theme. Make sure you read the instructions very carefully before you start your board. Some promoters will give you a specific name you must use for it, some may say you must follow them before you start to pin, and almost all will give you a way to contact them to tell  them you have entered. This may be

• email them a link to your finished board
• repin a particular pin from their board to yours
• tag them with a special hashtag
• tweet a link and hashtag to them via Twitter
• post a link to your board on their Facebook wall
• comment on one of their pins  with a link to your board

Some board-creating competitions running at the moment are listed below. Where possible, I have given you a link to the full instructions rather then the promoter's Pinterest page, to help you to see exactly what you need to do.

Super Lucky  win a £50 gift from Amazon. Closing 15 Jun.
Ocado win a tote bag of Orla Kiely goodies. Closing 31 May.
The Athaeneum win afternoon tea. Closing 10 Jun.
Harrods and Bikeminded win £150 worth of Harrods vouchers. Closing 27 May.
Atom Books win a cupcake decorating class for two. Closing 07 Jun.
Nixie Clothing win an item from their  Vintage Clothing collection. Closing 16 Jun.
I Love Gorgeous London children's books and dresses.  Closing date not given.
Festival Place a £100  gift card (note that this will have to be spent in Basingstoke, and Festival Place winners are usually required to collect their prizes in person). Closing date not given.
Boden
Tights Please a £100 hosiery gift bag. Closing date not given.
John Crane Toys £150 worth of toys. Closing 30 Jun.

A final note ...... TAKE CARE. Already the scammers are starting to try to pull the wool over compers' eyes. Luckily for us in the UK, they are still mostly confined to the USA but they appears as Pin-to-win comps with outrageously generous prizes to lure you into survey scams similar to the Facebook ones I blogged about recently. Always bear in mind - if something looks too good to be true it probably isn't true at all.

Do you love quizzes?

The BBC are looking for people to take part in a non-broadcast pilot for a new TV quiz show.

It is a quiz show based on answering multiple choice general knowledge questions; however there is also an element of tactics and quick-thinking. They are looking for people who are a good judge of character as well as being able to tell when another contestant might be bluffing.

Here is the full inforamtion I was sent, including how to apply to take part.

"YOU DON’T NEED TO HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS; YOU JUST NEED TO BE SURE THAT YOUR OPPONENTS DON’T HAVE THEM!"

We are looking for confident, out-going individuals with a good level of general knowledge to take on the challenge of this exciting new

BBC quiz show pilot.

Can you balance good general knowledge with good judgement?

Do your bluffing skills match your powers of persuasion?

To request an application form please email us at BBCquiz@bbc.co.uk, and include your name, age, telephone number and nearest city.

We will be holding London auditions in the next few weeks so get in touch today!

All applicants must be 18yrs or over and residents of the UK.

It’s the ultimate game of choosing the right question at the right time…!

Win while you shop!

Shopping Prizes gives away £4000 in cash prizes to UK shoppers

Shopping Prizes (http://www.shoppingprizes.com/), the UK's newest incentives destination for internet shoppers, has given away £4000 in cash prizes in its first two months trading. Featuring 3,000 retailers, Shopping Prizes offers a brand new concept for internet shoppers looking to get value back from their internet shopping, offering monthly prize draw entries for shopping done via the website, and also allowing prize draw entries to be traded in for cashback if shoppers prefer.

Top prize winner for April Michelle Oom, who won £1000 in cash, said, “I was really surprised when I received an email from Shopping Prizes saying that I had won first prize. I plan to spend the money online using Shopping Prizes from where I have won this money. It is an amazingly good site!”

Isabel Mcdonald won £200 and said, “Can't believe I won on the monthly draw, THANKS!”

Graeme Glendinning was delighted to win a £50 cash prize and said, “I've never won anything ever and was told by a fortune teller I would never win money, so I was thrilled to receive this £50 prize. Quite apt as I'll be 50 in a few weeks time!”

Debi Gillard and Connie Fisher also each won £50 in the latest prize draw. Debi Gillard said, “I was amazed how quickly the £50 appeared in my Paypal account. Thank you – I shall be spreading the word.” Connie Fisher said, "Thank you! I am putting the money towards a new phone.”

Offering an extensive database of retailer voucher codes and offers Shopping Prizes also gives shoppers the information they need to make sales, clearances and special offers to grab themselves a bargain online. Web User magazine has awarded the site four out of five stars.

Shopping Prizes is set to pay out again in two weeks time on the 31^st May 2012 with ten lucky members due to win the current prize pot of £2,000.