My First Two Journal Contests

Maybe I am scrapping the bottom of the barrel here and with my last few and next few planned posts but in this post I am going to mention what passes for exciting news in my world. LOL.

Today, before Toastmasters, I went to the public library to do some photocopying of some belated Valentines that I gave out to my fellow club members. It was a little more than a page of cute saying about love by little kids that I may have mentioned already on the actual date.

Only two people stuck around to receive their "valentines" from me on the actual Valentine's Day though (the meeting was actually on Feb 14th). So I gave them out at Xentel and planned to make new copies for today (last week's meeting was cancelled for Family Day) which I did.

It was after doing this that I did the highly exciting thing I was talking about at the beginning. I entered a contest. Well, two actually. I almost missed out on them completely due to my bubble-headedness. The only reason I remembered, literally just under the wire was due to...

... sheer luck. The second of the two contests I had heard about on the same day (Saturday) in the Edmonton Journal was for a local restaurant week. It was only because I happened to be passing a participating restaurant on the way to the library that I remembered to enter.

The closing date/time on both contests (the first one was for approximately $115 worth of jewelry) was Monday (today) at noon. My Toastmaster meeting starts at noon. I left the house shortly before ten. I had the valentines to do. So you can see how close I cut it.

More so because, you had to register with some participating site that runs the Journals contests and send an email to them. As usual, I got that "pop file" or whatever nonsense and because it was a library computer I couldn't send it directly anyway.

So I had to print out the address and go back to my email. Extra steps when I was short of time as it was. The prizes were certainly worth it however. As mentioned the first contest was for $115 in jewelry - a necklace and bracelet set.

The second, was for either one of two $25 coupons for specific local restaurants or a third coupon for $40 at a restaurant in the Hotel MacDonald. The good part - the $25 coupons were the basic price (not including tax or tip) of the set price lunch meal for this "restaurant week" promotion.

The $40 one didn't quite cover the $50 set price of dinner but still wasn't too shabby. It was for the Hotel MacDonald after all. Not a place that I would generally think of going to on an "average outing". So $10 plus tax and tip isn't so bad if you are lucky enough to win.

So what makes this worthy of a post. Well, if any of you remember, I did talk about my Chinese New Years resolutions back around Chinese New Years. One of them, if I am not mistaken, was to emulate my grandmother on my mom's side who was a veritable contest maven.

Now two contests do not a modern day maven make but it is a start. Also, it should be a lot easier to just knock out the entries now that I'm registered. Not that you can enter more than once per contest. But anything that makes it easier to do it last minute is appreciated.

I intend to keep my eyes posted for any more Journal contests (specifically in the Saturday Style section where I found these one after the other). But I'm also on the lookout for any and all contests to enter, especially local ones. So fellow Edmontonians, pass the word when you see one.

Wish me luck and more to the point wish me follow through that I continue keeping my eye out because this is probably one of the easier resolutions I made in that 50 item laundry list of Things To Try To Do in The Year Of The Rabbit.

Carmen