Weekend Winners

This week I’m featuring prizewinning stories with a ‘home’ theme! And it just proves you don’t have to have the most beautiful Instagram-friendly set up to win prizes…

Kate won a £1000 BHS gift voucher in a creative competition with House to Home.

“You had to send a photo in of a room in your house that you felt needed a make-over, however I went that extra mile and wrote a blog post on it, showing how I would revamp the room using the prize if I won. There were 3 of these up for grabs and I never did find anyone else’s entry so I have no idea how many people entered. It wasn’t promoted very well so I always knew I was in with a fairly good chance! As the weeks and months passed, I almost forgot about it, when one day an envelope arrived that needed to be signed for. Knowing I wasn’t due any post, I got a little excited (as us compers do!) and when I opened it, out dropped 2 £500 BHS gift cards. I was gobsmacked! I hadn’t been informed that I had won via email or anything, so it was a complete surprise! As you can imagine, this has bought me many things! I stocked up with their gorgeous bed linen, clothes for my summer holiday from the Dorothy Perkins section, gifts for birthdays. I even bought a gift experience voucher with it and got a 2 night stay in Derbyshire! I’ve got very little left now but it certainly went a long way!”

Read Kate’s blog post at aworldfullofprettiness.blogspot.co.uk – and here’s the brilliant photos of the offending room that needed making over!

Which brings me to Sue’s competition entry. She got more than she bargained for when she entered a photo of her spare bedroom in the Time4Sleep messy bedroom comp!

“I knew I had a room which fitted the bill! A couple of weeks later I discovered that there was a story about the competition running in The Telegraph with photos of some of the entries – upon checking, to my relief my photo was not included!  The story was then in the other tabloid papers …the local paper contacted me to ask for an interview, followed by the local radio station.  What a day!  I did a live radio interview and made a video for the online edition of the paper.  By this time I had got over my initial horror and was treating the whole thing as a big joke.  I didn’t win the bed but Time4Sleep awarded me second prize and sent me a £50 Love2Shop voucher which was rather nice.  My video still pops up every now and again online when I Google my name and I have a little smile to myself about it.  But it taught me an awful lot about privacy and publicity.  Would I do it again? Do you know, I believe I would!”

Sandra‘s boiler win with 24/7 Rescue was perfectly timed…

“I won a £3000 central heating boiler just before Christmas. In the space of one week I made the video entry on Wednesday, received the winning phone call on Monday and had the boiler fitted on Wednesday! I had to nominate someone who was the heart of our home, with a 30 second video & this was my winning entry:

Here’s the winning #heartofthehome video from @SandraC0206 she’s won herself a brand new @ViessmannUK boiler #xmas pic.twitter.com/6vKlXRp8Hn

— 24|7 Home Rescue (@247homerescue) December 14, 2015

I spent all afternoon writing a verse and reciting it whilst I cooked tea. Fortunately we did the video on the first take and I didn’t forget my lines! This really was a prize I wanted as we had been worrying about the boiler giving up and, as fate would have it, the night after my entry it did start going faulty“

Klara told me that she’d focused on winning appliances for her home last year – with success!

“Usually I enter all sorts of comps, from creative to just ‘send your details in’ type, but when I started to search for specific prizes, I won a KitchenAid blender (with Onken yogurt), a Sage Juicer, a Kenwood smoothie maker for my mum (with Wamo) and an Indesit dishwasher !”

Jamie told me all about his first year of comping – and what a year it was! He won tons of stuff for the home…

“2015 was my first year of comping and a successful year it became. 189 wins totalling £13,236! The obsession has well and truly set in. 

The most memorable wins were those items on the wishlist that we wanted, but were unlikely to shell out for. A Kitchenaid was on that list. I saw someone post on MSE that they had just bought some Onken, entered the hourly comp and won – so I went to Tesco, bought two pots, entered on two consecutive days and on day 2 – I won. There were 4 prize pools – I won pool 3, with the Kitchenaid Mixer. We had been to the Ideal Home Show and also saw the ‘Vitamix’ blender – it was a dream product – but at £550 – was a luxury too far. So when I saw a lot of blog comps for an alternative brand (the Froothie worth £429) I just had to enter them all. Every one of them was a LONG Rafflecopter – but I entered them all meticulously. When the winning email came through (I was driving home at the time but I saw the email come up on my watch) I bet other cars on the motorway could hear my cheers. That was a good day – I also got a Facebook message from Legal and General winning a £550 Weber gas barbecue!

The biggest win? A Wattbike professional exercise bike worth £2200. I’ll admit – I haven’t used it as much as I should. Too much comping! Finally, there was the sprinkling of tech prizes. As a big tech and gadget fan, this makes me very happy. The £300 bluetooth speaker, the £200 wireless headphones, a couple of iPads and some Sonos speakers. I LOVE Sonos, so to extend my setup for free was amazing!”

What a haul! I hope you enjoyed this week’s stories – more next Saturday!