Month: December 2016

We’ve been working on this new holiday Pinterest contest that is awarding four $250 certificates to Hotels.com., one per week. The Dream Holiday Contest from the folks at Tokio Marine HCC – Medical Insurance Group. I wrote about an earlier promotion this same group ran back in October called the The “Choose Your Travel Adventure” Sweepstakes which offered the winner their choice of three different destinations, Reykjavik, Sydney or Florence. Haven’t heard yet what destination the winner is going to.

For this new contest, participants are invited to create a board titled “Holiday Travel with Tokio Marine HCC – MIS Group”. The Board should contain at least 10 pins to the theme of “My International Holiday Travel Dream Vacation”. At least 3 of these pins must come from the Sponsor’s website, and they recommend their travel blog which provides the most relevant content. Each pin must include the hashtag: #DreamHolidayContest. Here’s a sample board that the sponsor created.

Once their board is complete, each participant must go back to the Sponsor’s promotion webpage,, where they will need to fill out and submit all the required fields on the entry form along with a link to their Holiday Travel Pinterest board. They must also answer the following questions: 1) Are you planning to travel internationally in the next 12 months? If yes, then enter the trip’s start date. 2) What are you most excited about this holiday season?

The contest started Nov. 28 and goes to Dec. 21, 2016, so there were four chances to create a winning board, with two of them still left. At the end of each week the judges are using the following judging criteria to review the boards: 1) Overall board theme 2) Variety of pins 3) Variety of sources 4) Striking imagery 5) Number of board followers.

Here is the board the winner of week 1 created by Marie A. in which she chose Finland as her destination. She really did a very nice job. You can click on the image to see the entire board. They haven’t posted the week 2 winner yet. So pick a destination and create your Dream Holiday Vacation board.

Stitch Fix contacted us regarding running a sweepstakes this December and I had never heard of them. I didn’t understand what a “fix” was so they had to described it to me to help me understand how this promotion would work. So I checked out their website www.stitchfix.com and was pretty intrigued by the whole concept.

Now I’m not what they call a “fashionista”, but I do like to look stylish while being comfortable. I had just went through my closets and cleaned out so many clothes that I haven’t worn in years. So my wardrobe definitely was in need of some updating.

How Stitch Fix works is you create an account to start and then go through a series of questions to help your “personal stylist” get to know you a little, what your style, size and price preferences are. Once that is done you request a “fix” which is five hand-selected pieces of clothing delivered to. You buy what you like in your fix and can send any items back at no charge or shipping fees.

So I thought I’d give it a try but not sure if I would keep any of the items. I did tell my stylist that I had a wedding coming up in December that I would be attending. Sure enough, there was a knit lace dress in my fix. It probably would not of been an item that I would have picked myself, but I tried it on and love it.

My fix also included some drop earrings to go with the dress, a navy pullover sweater, a winter white cardigan and a printed blouse. The fix comes with a personal note from your stylist, in my case it was Shannon, describing the items she picked for me. Plus a print out of each item shown with other items that would go nicely with them.

I ended up keeping all five items and have been happy with them all so far. The wedding is this Saturday, so I’ll see if people comment on my dress. If you keep all five items you get a 25% discount off the total prize. They will send out a new fix every other month, but you can cancel at any time or ask for the delivery time to be changed. So I’ll see how I like the next fix is in January.

Now back to the December promotion. Stitch Fix is running the Season of Style Sweepstakes and Instant Win Game now through December 31. For each fix that a person requests they will automatically receive one entry into the Sweepstakes and one Instant Win Game Card will be sent to them with their fix. The game cards include a scratch off area that reveals if it is a winning card of a $50 Stitch Fix gift certificate. There are 725 gift certificates that can be won. We had to include a method of entry without purchase, so people can also mail in a request to receive a game card and a sweepstakes entry.

We’ll do a random drawing once the sweepstakes has ended of all those that received an entry to award the grand prize winner with a year’s worth of Stitch Fix valued at $5,000. So check it out and if you decide to request a fix, please tell them that Donna sent you. Here’s a referral link: stitchfix.com/referral/9923580.