Miss Thrifty

Ugg Boots UK – coming your way! Well, I thought that with the weather suddenly turning so rotten, it was time for a nice woolly giveaway…

THE PRIZE: a pair of brand new ugg boots worth up to £150, delivered to your house in a box tied with a ribbon.

These aren’t just any old ugg boots. Perish the thought! These are Whooga Ugg Boots: made “with the single purpose of being the warmest, most luxurious sheepskin boots available”. They are thicker and warmer than other uggs, double-stitched by hand for durability and lined with super-soft merino fleece.

If you win, you will have free run of the Whooga Europe online store, choosing the style, colour and size of your prize boots.Men’s and women’s styles are available.

Closing date: 12 noon GMT on Friday 3 September.

This competition is open to all readers in the UK. As usual, a winner will be selected at random from the comments section, using the Online Number Generator.

TO ENTER: simply leave a comment below. Visit the Whooga Ugg Boots website, and then let us know:

a) Which boots you will pick if you win. (Short Violet Ugg Boots? Grey Weave Ugg Boots? The choice is yours.)

b) The price of the boots that you have picked.

c) Your shoe size!

That’s all there is to it. What are you waiting for? Go go go!

Important: One entry per reader. UNLESS you are also a fan of Miss Thrifty on Facebook – in which case, you get to enter twice! Once here, and once on Facebook. All entries posted to the Miss Thrifty Facebook wall will be counted. Good luck.

First things first: I now have a Facebook page for this blog!

This spanking new page has been unveiled for a number of reasons: because increasing numbers of you are using Facebook as your personal RSS readers, because one or two (ahem) namesakes had started appearing over there, and because plans are afoot. Oh yes: I’ll continue to give away books, handbags and other prizes on the blog, but I’ll also be running additional competitions exclusively for RSS subscribers and Facebook likers. I can’t wait!

So anyway, please do come along and give me a little thumbs up if you will: I’m boxfresh and kinda lonely over there at the moment (blub).

This week I was also interviewed by the lovely Shayna, over at the Fabulous Savings blog, for her Meet a Blogger series. You can check out my moment in the spotlight here. Thanks Shayna!

In line with this new-found ubiquity, it has been a busy week for blog carnivals. (more…)

Do you know Yorkshire’s Thriftiest Granny? Perhaps you are Yorkshire’s Thriftiest Granny? If your answer to either of these questions is “yes”, I have the perfect competition for you.

Yorkshire Water has launched a contest to find… yes, you guessed it!

The utilities company is asking for tips, photographs and video clips of the region’s thrifty seniors in action. The prize: a Yorkshire-based family holiday worth up to £1,000.

The competition is open to all Yorkshire Water customers and the closing date for entries is 19 July 2010. Visit the Edna and Mary section of the Yorkshire Water website to enter.

Trust me: there is no shortage of eligible candidates up here. The region has a reputation for frugality: you are not allowed to live here if you haven’t perfected the art of sucking air through your teeth and saying ‘Ow much? in suitably scandalised tones. (FACT.) To my delight, there is even a special Yorkshire word that means to be able to afford something, but to be unable to justify the expense. (more…)

That Cath Kidston discount I blogged about recently ends next week, on Tuesday 15 June. So if you are planning to take advantage of it, do so soon!

On another note… I wondered why I’d had relatively few entries for the Shoo, Jimmy Choo! giveaway – and as it turns out, there was a problem with the Miss Thrifty RSS feed. Oh, how irksome! This has now been fixed – and if you are one of my lovely subscribers, please accept my apologies for this glitch (and for the little bunch of posts that has just landed KERBLAM onto your computer).

Shoo, Jimmy Choo! is a great new personal finance book, and if you haven’t yet entered the competition, I recommend that you check it out. A free copy will be going out to one lucky reader, and the closing date for entries is Saturday 12 June…

Image credit: eyeseenicee.

“SHOO, Jimmy Choo! is your ticket to becoming a rich girl once and for all!”

SHOO, Jimmy Choo!: The Modern Girl’s Guide to Spending Less and Saving More, is the thinking shoe-lover’s guide to financial security. Author Catey Hill, the money editor for the New York Daily News online, is out to help you evaluate why you spend, tweak your spending habits, get you out of debt and create a savings and retirement plan that allows you to splurge sometimes.

The publisher kindly dispatched copies from the Big Apple – and I have a copy of SHOO, Jimmy Choo! to give away to one lucky Miss Thrifty reader. Details on how to enter, plus an extract from the book, are after the jump… (more…)

I have been obsessed with these MBT shoes for years, but they are too spendy for me – even when they are on sale, they go for around £80 – £100 a pair – so I was pleased to chance upon this new competition today. Three pairs are up for grabs, and you can enter the draw online.

For the uninitiated:

MBT stands for Masai Barefoot Technology and the shoes were invented by a Swiss engineer called Karl Müller in the early 1990s. He noticed, on a visit to Korea, that walking barefoot over some soft paddy fields alleviated his back, knee and Achilles tendon problems. He also discovered that the Kenyan Masai tribesmen don’t suffer from back pain and are famous for their perfect posture. Putting these two pieces of information together, Muller reasoned that this was because they walk across ground that yields underneath their feet. Walking on hard surfaces, such as pavements, that don’t have any “give”, he concluded, has done our backs in. Not to mention our knees and ankles.

Muller decided that the answer was a shoe with a curved sole, effectively with no heel, which mimics the rocking motion of a foot walking on soft sand or grass. (The Independent)

(more…)

Whew! Thanks so much to everyone who entered the win a handbag competition. Three hundred and sixty-seven of you got your entries – and your handbag essentials – in before the deadline. Now it’s time to pick the winner! So here goes…

Here is the random number generator that I use. I asked it to pick a number between 1 and 367.

And it picked comment number… (more…)

Win a handbag – yes siree. See this one here. You like it? It’s up for grabs.

This competition prize has been donated by ThisHandbag: a new site that stocks one handbag at a time, and sells at heavily discounted prices. The bag on show measures 29 cm by 26 cm, and is available from the website for £9.99 plus £1.50 postage.

To enter, simply leave a comment below, listing one item that you keep in your handbag and couldn’t do without. Apart from your purse or wallet, of course. (For me it’s a notepad: I’m always scribbling things down.)

The closing date is 5 pm GMT on Tuesday 23 February. I’ll pick the winner using an online random number generator.

UPDATE: The competition has closed and the winner has been picked! See here for details.

Best Western Hotels is giving away two-night hotel breaks every 30 minutes for 24 hours, from 8 am on Tuesday 9 February. The prizes include dinner, bed and breakfast in a UK Best Western.

This is a Twitter comp. I’m seeing more and more of these; of course, if you’re on Twitter already and you aren’t following me, I demand that you do so immediately! Those who have yet to succumb, however, can enter via Best Western’s Facebook page.

How it works: follow Best Western on Twitter (@bestwesterngb) or on Facebook. Every 30 minutes a question about Best Western will be announced. Find the answer and @reply on Twitter, or submit the answer to the Best Western wall on Facebook. The winner will be selected at random, from all the correct answers submitted within 15 minutes of the question’s announcement.

In case you were wondering, that is indeed a Best Western hotel room pictured above. Earls Court, apparently.

NB. I am not sure if you get to choose your hotel. Let’s hope so, eh?

Thanks to all who entered the How To Look Good Naked…Can Change Your Life book giveaway. Congratulations to the two winners: Emma (commenter #6) and Julie Sutherland (commenter #13)!  The winning numbers were picked out of Photo Matt’s virtual hat.

I have a stash of spanking new books to give away in the New Year, on subjects ranging from frugal cooking to frugal gardening. So if you weren’t a winner this time, please keep heart – and keep your eyes peeled.

Thanks also for all the great tips about looking good and feeling good. It struck me that perhaps in January, when everybody is feeling dumpy and miserable, perhaps I could compile them in a special post for Miss Thrifty readers.

Merry Christmas all. Plenty planned for next year, including a complete site revamp – and I think we’re going to have a ball.

Miss T x