I'm sure you are wondering where the what I won in September post is. Well I didn't win much last month so it don't really warrant a whole post. I did win a lovely Wisteria from Ben's Plants on Facebook and a book called Genesis on Twitter with Crime Monthly though. I have also been in contact with P&O Cruises concerning the cruise I won with them. We were trying to find out how much it would be for my Mother In Law to be added on to the trip never really expecting that she would be able to afford it. They came back with she can be added for free and they are upgrading our room. How amazing is that! Not only do I win a once in a lifetime prize but they are adding to it which increased the value of the prize by a further £1500. It just goes to show you don't know until you ask. I haven't won anything yet this month, but hopefully by the end of October I will be back with another what I have won post. I thought I would just give you a quick update on where you can find me on social media and what content I am posting where. So here goes - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/justhollymarie/
This account was made for comping so all you will find on my profile page and story is competitions that I have entered and that you can enter too. If you fancy giving comping a go add me as a friend and all of the competitions that I share should show up in your feed. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/justhollymarie/ On my Instagram feed all of my posts are personal or updates on what is going on over here on the blog. I only post competitions to my story if I can help it. It would be handy to follow me on Instagram to keep up to date with the blog and again take a look at my story for competitions to enter. Twitter - https://twitter.com/JustHollyMarie My latest blog post will always be pinned to the top of my page so if you follow me on twitter you are sure to never miss a post. The rest of my page again is full of the competitions I enter so take a look. Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@justhollymarie I have only just ventured into this world and I am still finding me feet so I could do with a little follower support over there. The content is a little different I have just started using Saxenda a weight loss medication so I am doing short daily videos at the moment to share my journey and gain more confidence. Being in front of the camera feels weird to me but i'm getting there. I am thinking of doing short videos on comping and what I have won, but that won't be for a little while yet. Just Holly Marie
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Hey everyone! I hope you have all had a really lucky August. I have been really committed to comping this month. Randomly entering competitions on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram throughout the day and sitting down in the evening working my way through Competition Database and the closing soon section on Loquax. The month started of slow. My first win wasn't until the 11th which was £25 with Sky Bingo over on Twitter. They run this competition weekly and I have won three times so far. So if you win don't stop entering because you can win again. You have the choice to withdraw the money or use it on their website which is what I usually do. It's a chance to win more money. I didn't win this time, but hey ho you win some you lose some. I enjoyed playing and it gave me the motivation to keep on comping. My next win wasn't until the 22nd and it was a win over on Instagram with Booths Country. It was 6 tubs of Haagen dazs ice cream. Yummy! We love ice cream in this house so we are patiently awaiting our prize. Other than winning a couple of £1 off vouchers with Old Jamaica Ginger Beer I thought it was going to be a pretty slim month for winning until...…. I received an email from P&O Cruises on the 27th. To say I was In shock was an understatement! I tried to keep it a secret from Chris until I confirmed it was legit, but I couldn't keep it in. He was just as excited as me and later that day it was confirmed. I had won a seven night cruise for two in a balcony room to the Norwegian Fjords in May next year!!!! This is my biggest prize to date and I have been comping on and off for many years. It just goes to show if you put the effort in with a little luck you can win the big prizes. Within hours of winning that prize I won another from Holland and Barrett over on Twitter. It was a £50 voucher. This is also a weekly competition that they run. What a day I don't think I have ever been on so much of a high. I have already won my first prize in September which I will tell you about in next month's what I won blog post. I am on a major roll. I would be interested in hearing from you if you have any comping questions. If I can help I will or at least send you in the right direction. Also comment your wins down below. I would love to see them big or small. Thanks for reading my blog post. Just Holly Marie January was quite a slow month for wins, but I sort of expected it as I hit the advents hard then struggle to get back into my normal comping routine. However I have won £178 worth of goodies which isn't something to sniff at so here is what I got. My first win of the year was this cute Pooki toy. Super cute and a perfect pressie for one of my nieces. Yes the Christmas haul has started already! LOL. This was a surprise win and had no note with it so I couldn't even begin to tell you how I won it, but a brilliant first prize. Next to arrive was this Balneum dry skin and itch relief lotion. Again a complete surprise with no note. I'm not 100% sure this was a win and not a freebie, but I thought I would add it in anyway just in case. This is a great win for my daughter who suffers with Eczema we are always on the look out for new products that might help her. One of my most quirky prizes the Muller Rice bear! I have seen many people with these which isn't surprising as they were giving away 5000. This again just arrived I didn't receive any notification until it had been here for 3 days. To enter for this one you had to buy a Muller Rice product and enter the code from the packaging to find out if you had won or not. When I did mine it told me I hadn't won, but I got one anyway. This win was pretty handy as my partner Chris is gym obsessed and this will save us quite a few pennies. I won the Grenade bars with Idooka XS Items on Facebook and it was a simple like and share entry.
Finally I won £50 on the set for life lotto. Only one number away from winning £10,000 a month for a year! I'm not complaining though i'm £50 richer this week. Hope you have a very lucky February Just Holly Marie So Christmas is nearly upon us and it's usually my favourite time of year, but I just can't seem to get into the festive spirit. I have a lot going on with one drama or another and after much thought I think it's time I did something to cheer myself up and focus on something I love doing again Blogging! I started this blog at the beginning of the year and lost sight of why I began it in the first place. So as a new year is coming here i go again...
We are coming towards the end of Comping Advent and although I haven't done amazing this time round with the amount I have won, I am happy with the quality of prizes I have managed to get my hands on. A saucepan set from procook worth £69.99 and a Radley handbag worth £149.99. Two things that I never would have purchased myself. I don't know about anyone else but I havent got £149 floating around to spend on a handbag. One of the highlights of my comping hobby is experiencing things and owning products I could never otherwise afford. We are not at the end of the Advent season yet so i'm keeping my fingers crossed for some more fab prizes. Just quickly for those of you who haven't a clue what comping advent is it's what compers wait all year for, the month of December! The month when companies give prizes away everyday. To some it is overwhelming because there are so many competitions avaliable to enter that they don't know where to begin, but to me it is pure bliss. I started comping when i entered a competition through boredom and actually won. It was £500 to spend with Laredoute and I havent looked back since. I don't know if you would call it a hobby or competition addiction, but i love it. Over the years I have got more organised with it, but it is all about luck some months are better than others win wise, but for me it's all about the enjoyment of it. When it stops being fun i'll stop entering. I'm really looking forward to recording my comping journey and other parts of my day to day life. Thanks for visiting my blog Just Holly Marie x x x It's Monday again and the school run is going a lot better thanks to some of the tips I told you about in my last post "The Dreaded School Run". We are still working on it, but it's so much less stressful already and that's a win for me. I promised you some posts about my amazing comping hobby and I thought I would start at the beginning with some of the basics. So here goes...……. What is comping? Comping is entering giveaways and competitions in the hope of winning some amazing goodies. If you are a "comper" it is something you do on a regular basis and can be an amazing hobby that doesn't have to cost you anything other than your time. Where can I find these competitions? Competitions are run in numerous places and some are easier to find than others. It goes without saying that the competitions that are harder to find have less entries therefore you stand a better chance of winning, but I will leave that for another time. Here are some of a few different places competitions are commonly found -
There are also websites that list all the competitions that others have found and where you can contribute with competitions you have found. This would be a great place to start especially if you haven't joined any comping groups and have few or no friends that enjoy the same hobby as you. It's very easy to register and you can even flag them as marked when you have entered or ignored if you are not interested in that particular competition. Here are a few that I have been using for years and trust - Finding comping friends and getting involved in the community You could do this on your own without connecting with anyone in the comping community. My first win came ages before I joined the groups and found some like minded comping buddies, but it won't be as fun and will definitely make it more of an uphill struggle. The easiest way I have found to find these types of groups is on Facebook. There are so many! Just type competitions or giveaways in the Facebook search bar and click search. In these groups you will find many other people that enjoy comping and you can add them as friends to tag in competitions. Plus any competitions they enter and share will appear in your Newsfeed meaning you can enter too. The groups are also a good source of advice and support. I have found that the majority or compers will help where they can so it is always nice if you can return the favour by notifying them if you see any winning posts with their name on or come across a competition that someone has said they are looking for. How long will it be before I win something? One of the greatest misconceptions is that you enter a few competitions here and there and you will have wins rolling in. This is not the case. If you put little effort in prepare to get a little or nothing out of it. I can enter hundreds a week and still get no wins by the time Sunday rolls around. However there are weeks when the wins don't stop coming! It's all down to luck and you have to be in it to win it so what are you waiting for? These are just some of the basics to get you started on your comping journey. If this post has peaked your interest and you want to know more I will be writing a #WinningMondayMotivation post every week so come back and check that out. For some additional inspiration why not pop over to my Win Gallery and take a look at some of my wins. Good Luck and if you have any questions big or small click here for my contact details and send me a message. I can't promise to know the answer but I will do my best to help you out as others have done for me. Thank you for visiting my blog
Just Holly Marie x x x It's another win for January and my fantastic hobby. I won this great set of Jack Dash books by Sophie Plowden from Parents in Touch on twitter. My son was overjoyed when I gave them to him today and I paid the massive price of £0 to see that smile. All it cost me was the time I took to retweet the post, a couple of seconds. I am a massive fan of reading and have a full and varied bookcase to show for it but I also think it is massively important for children to read. Not only does it improve their imagination, and educate them it helps them to focus and this is a challenge that my son Connor deals with on a daily basis. He has ADHD and struggles to focus among other things. Reading is something we have found helps him to focus and interests him enough to be an alternative activity to his video games. I have been trying to cut his tech time down. He owns a PS4, Xbox One and A Nintendo Switch. His ADHD makes it harder for him to focus on things but when it comes to video games he has an amazing attention span. We got to the point where a day out at the zoo was miserable for him and us because all he wanted to do was be at home playing his consoles. That's when we knew we had a problem on our hands. We decided that we would set him an hour a day for tech time while still be able to watch tv a little bit throughout the day. We had some major resistance at first temper tantrums would be an understatement, but after a while improvements in his behaviour were beginning to show. He was more polite and didn't have as short a fuse as usual and he also wanted to go outside and play with his friends instead of being cooped up in his room. This was a few years ago and since then his tech time has been increased to three hours a day, but Connor knows that if he his behaviour goes downhill the time he has can be decreased at any point.
As a parent it is hard to know where to draw the line and as a parent of a child with ADHD it can be even harder. It's a battle to discipline and do the best for them without punishing them for something that is out of their control. There is no right or wrong answer everyone knows what is right for their own child and in my case I got lucky and perseverance won the day that's not to say it always goes right lol! If you are experiencing a similar situation take a look at this article on Psychology Today I found it helped me to understand why when my son could focus on nothing the video games became a way for him to escape. Another Web find that I found really usual was this article on WebMD a guide to disciplining a child with ADHD. Thank you for visiting my blog Just Holly Maire x x x Today I have sat down and made my winning competition wishlist for 2019. This is a list of all my competition aspirations and goals for the year ahead and the beginning of the challenge to tick off everything before 2020 when I will start all over again (best hobby ever!) .
Here's what I have so far...……………
Ambitious or not I am going to give it my best shot and it's definitely not impossible. Some of the things I have seen other compers win are amazing. Why not make your own list and give yourself some inspiration! My first win was six years ago £500 to spend with La Redoute. It was a competition that I entered with Glam magazine online as I was surfing the internet. A month later and I nearly deleted the winning email with the rest of my junk mail. From there my crazy competition addition was born and I had so much fun scouring the catalogue for anything I wanted. There is nothing like the excitement that comes from winning things. After the recent rush of advent competitions things are a bit quiet but I have already won the Nella toys from Friendlings magazine and as soon as I get another win I will share. If you are interested in entering competitions or already comp and are just looking for some tips and tricks look out for my blog posts in the coming weeks. I'm not an expert but I know a thing or two. Thank you for visiting my blog Just Holly Marie x x x So yesterday was the first day on the school run. The uniforms were in the kids rooms ready to be put on and my alarm was set for 7:00am. What could go wrong? Everything! I snoozed my alarm (twice!), discovered that Mia had had an allergic reaction to the cream for her Psoriasis which left her looking like a beetroot and this would all be before battling Connors ADHD in a fight for his attention long enough for his school uniform to be put on. I'm running out of breath just thinking back to it all. In the end Mia stayed at home for a visit to the doctors and Connor was only five minutes late for school which isn't bad for me. It all went much better today :) Really it's no wonder I didn't wake up on time. I have found a new game to play called HQ Words where you can win money live for right answers and I love it. The only downside is that it is based in New York so it's not on till 2:30am in the UK hence me dragging myself out of bed in the morning. There are ten questions where you are given a subject per question and you have to guess the answer Hangman style, three wrong letters on one question and your out. I have got close but haven't won yet. I recommend giving it a go it's so much fun and you can win money. If you are looking at the time that the game goes live and know you will never be awake there are other more time friendly options. HQ Trivia, Q Live and Woosh. On these games there are 12 trivia based questions that come with a multiple choice answer. Although I mainly play on my own everyone in the family can play together on their own phones making it more fun and giving you all a better chance of winning. Let me know how you do. Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog. Just Holly Marie x x x So it's 2019 and I have just turned 30. While grieving for my youth I realised that 30 didn't have to be so bad. Just as it's the beginning of a new year it's also the beginning of a new decade of my life so how can I make it productive and fun? So along with the usual boring New Years resolutions of being more organised (i run late for everything!) and stress less about the little things (i stress about everything!) I am starting my blog Just Holly Marie. Not only is today special because it is the launch of my blog but is also my son Connors 10th Birthday! He is having a great day and feels much older because he has just hit double digits. I on the other hand as well as being proud of the handsome young man he is growing into can't believe he is 10! Where has my little baby gone? If you don't already know I am completely addicted to entering competitions. I have won so much and I have fun doing it. I enter competitions on the school run, while i'm on holiday, in waiting rooms and even if I can't sleep in the middle of the night. You might say it's a problem I would say it's the best hobby in the world :) We are only six days into 2019 and I have already won a bundle of Nella the Princess Knight toys from Friendlings magazine and all it took was an email with the answer to a question. 10 seconds of my time. Head over to my Win Gallery if you wants to see pictures of my wins and other comping bits and pieces. Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog. Just Holly Marie x x x |