Share Your Love at Festival Place

Festival Place shopping centre in Basingstoke is spreading the love this February with their special ‘Share Your Love’ Valentine’s competition. Launched on Saturday 6^th February, the campaign invites customers to share photos of themselves with loved ones on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with #FPValentines for the chance to win big prizes. I went along with my Mum on Saturday to see what it’s all about!

The first thing you come across in the space outside Marks and Spencer and Costa, is a giant silver heart, decorated with roses and fairy lights. For anyone that was around Festival Place last year, this is the same heart that was used for the ‘Lock Your Love’ campaign, which raised an amazing £1,402 for The Ark Cancer Charity, but I think the pastel roses make it look even cuter! The Breeze Radio were also there, injecting some music and chatter into the mix.

A deep purple sign directs you to a ‘selfie spot,’ where you are encouraged to donate £1 to charity and take a selfie in front of the heart, with a friend or loved one. You then upload your photo to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, including #FPValentines for a chance to win a whole host of amazing prizes.

Including the hashtag enables them to print out a Polaroid picture, which you can then peg to the giant heart for everyone to see. If you’re not on social media then don’t worry, you can still join in! Simply email your photo to marketing@festivalplace.co.uk or bring one along on the day and pay your donation to the Festival Place Information Desk. Photos can be taken at any time, but they will only be available at the printing station outside Marks and Spencer on Saturday 13^th and Sunday 14^th February.

My Mum and I decided to have a go, so we positioned ourselves in front of the heart and snapped a few selfies. After choosing our favourite, I uploaded it to Twitter, including the #FPValentines, and as if by magic, we were presented with a copy of our photo to peg on the heart. They also very kindly printed out another one for us to take home, so that is now pinned to the fridge!

There are some fantastic prizes on offer, including Vue Cinema tickets for two, a Pandora bracelet and a Festival Place £100 Gift Card. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the gift card, although to be honest I’d be happy with any of the prizes! As well as the campaign being a bit of fun, Festival Place is also hoping to raise lots of money for local charity Dreams Come True. They are a national UK charity, based in Liphook that work hard to make dreams come true for children and young people with serious and life-limiting conditions.

While I was taking some photos, Mum and I noticed a queue forming next to us. After some confusion, we realised they were handing out free Krispy Kreme doughnuts! My Mum quickly made her way to the back of the (ridiculously!) long queue, and some time later returned with two boxes of 24 glazed ring doughnuts! It turned out Krispy Kreme are opening a new store at Festival Place on 24^th February at 10am, so were giving out 500 free boxes of their original doughnuts. We were definitely in the right place at the right time!

I’m not really a fan of Valentine’s Day, but I enjoyed finding out more about the ‘Share Your Love’ campaign. I think it’s a lovely way to share some love with friends and family, whilst raising money for a good cause at the same time. It’s great the way Festival Place come up with so many new fun ideas year after year, and I’m looking forward to hearing how this particular event went (and maybe winning a prize in the process!)  

Will you be going along to Festival Place to ‘Share Your Love’ this week? Do you have any plans for Valentine’s Day, or are you more of a scrooge like me?!

Follow me on Bloglovin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

South East Bloggers Circle Meet Up - The Raffle and Goody Bags!

Before Christmas I wrote this post about the blogger event I organised. For anyone that doesn’t know, I run a group called the South East Bloggers Circle, which is made up of bloggers (of all genres) from the South East of England. Our main hub is our Facebook group where we chat about all things blogging, post links to our posts/videos and generally just support each other. We also sometimes organise little meet-ups, but last November I held the first ‘official’ meet up for the group. It took place at Pizza Express in Festival Place, Basingstoke, and was attended by nine bloggers (after a few had to drop out unfortunately). We had a fantastic time, which you can read all about in my previous post, but I promised you I would talk to you about the raffle and the goody bags!

I’ll start with the raffle, which went down really well with the other girls. We had a number of prizes donated to us by some really lovely companies and all the money raised was for the charity Mind, who support people all over the UK with mental health problems.

The following prizes were donated for our raffle and we made an amazing £50 for Mind:

·      Bill’s - A hamper of edible goodies

·      Illamasqua - Mystery selection box

·      Pacific World Cosmetics – Sensationail starter kit and 2 LAB2 brush sets

·      Paul’s Boutique - £100 credit to spend on their website

·      Jilly Jilly - £20 Gift voucher

·      Bee Good - Box of goodies

Our goody bag tote bags were kindly donated by Life Tonics and came with this awesome slogan on them, perfect for the event!

I also had a bag of Lush goodies that I bought separately

Inside each goody bag were the following items (some items were slightly different in each bag, but all from the same brands):

·      Life Tonics - 2 bottles of Hydration Plus Coconut Water in different flavours

·      Bee Good - Cream Cleanser sample

·      Lush - A couple of Christmas bath bombs

·      Witch Skincare - Overnight Clearing Serum and Gentle Exfoliating Face Wash

·      Bill’s - Jam (variety of flavours)

·      Champney’s Guildford - Each blogger received a full-sized product from their range

·      Dream Dots - Discount voucher

·      Cheerz - Voucher to create one of their products

I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the companies that helped us make the event such a success, and for all the bloggers who came along and joined in!

If you’re a blogger in the South East of England and fancy joining us, you can find our group on Facebook, Twitter (@SEBlogCircle) and Instagram (@SE_Bloggers) – it would be great to see you! If you’d like to be added to our database to hear about future events, please drop me an e-mail on jaffacat44@gmail.com

Have you been to any good blogger meet-ups? Are you in the South East and fancy joining us? What sort of meet-ups would you like to see?

Follow me on Bloglovin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

January Blues Giveaway! - CLOSED

I don’t know about you, but I always find January a really difficult month. The excitement from Christmas is over, all the pretty lights and decorations have been put away and it’s usually dark, cold and wet most of the time. Not very inspiring really! To help myself get through the cold winter months, I like to plan lots of little treats that I can look forward to over January and February. I’ve actually found this really helpful, because by the time the beginning of March is approaching, the days are getting lighter and a bit warmer and I’m already looking forward to the upcoming summer.

So, with this in mind, I thought it would be nice if I could do the same for you guys, and give you a little treat to look forward to. I’ve been doing a bit of shopping in the sales since just after Christmas, and have managed to accumulate a nice little stash of prezzies for one of you to win. A couple of bits are more Christmassy, but I didn’t think that really mattered, as you can still use them all now, so hopefully you will enjoy pampering yourself with this bundle of goodies.

Bundle of prizes - cushions not included

Ghost fragrance set

Lush Christmas Candy Box

Cath Kidston Essentials Collection

Benefit Cheeky Sweet Spot

Rimmel Rita Ora nail varnish collection

Aromatherapy Associates Star Gift

As you can see, there are quite a few nice bits that you can win, so I hope this can be something you get excited about! Just to go over a few rules before we get on to the actual competition – I’m afraid this giveaway is for the UK only, as it’s going to be pretty expensive to post and it was all bought with my own money, so unfortunately I can’t stretch this time to posting internationally. The giveaway will run for roughly two and a half weeks, with it finishing on Sunday 8^th February 2015. To enter, all you need to do is complete the tasks set out by the Rafflecopter below. Some you can only do once, whereas there are others you can do to enter every single day. Obviously the more ways you enter, the more likely you are to be picked as the winner. There will be one winner, and they will be picked at random by the Rafflecopter. I will be checking your entries and if you haven’t completed the task properly I’m afraid you will be disqualified. I will announce the winner on my blog and also by e-mail, and you will have one week to get back to me with your address, otherwise a new winner will be picked.

Right, I think that’s everything! All that leaves us with is for you to enter on the Rafflecopter below. Have fun and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Are you entering my competition? What videos would you like to see me do over on my YouTube channel?

Follow me on Bloglovin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

Southampton Blogger Meet-up

A couple of weekends ago I travelled down to Southampton with my friend Sophie, so we could attend a Bloggers Meet-up, organised by the lovely Catherine. It almost ended up being cancelled, as Catherine wasn’t able to make it, but thankfully a lovely lady called Alice stepped in and pulled off a brilliant day.

We all met in a place called The Orange Rooms, which were just as the name suggests, incredibly orange. Unfortunately due to the colour, it was absolutely impossible to take a decent photo, so I apologise for all my photos being tinted in orange!

Sophie and I arrived a little late, as the traffic getting into Southampton was awful (we realised after that Southampton FC were playing at home). We came into the private room Catherine had booked and found it full of fellow bloggers chatting and eating in a large semi-circle.

It was a great location for a meet-up and our room had lots of comfy seating, a bar and separate booths, which some of the companies had taken over.

While we waited for our lunch to arrive, Sophie and I headed over to the Lush table, where two lovely ladies from their Southampton store greeted us. They had lots of their products laid out on the table, and while Sophie chatted to one of the ladies, the other gave me the most amazing hand and arm massage I think I’ve ever had! I couldn’t resist buying a couple of their Halloween products and had to stop myself buying any of their Christmas bits!

After sitting down to eat our lunch, we then went over to the ESPA Skincare table, which looked so cosy and relaxing with their beautifully scented candles burning. We filled out our questionnaires and were then given goody bags to suit our specific skin needs, and also a voucher to go to their Southampton counter in John Lewis for a facial.

The final company we spoke to were In Situ Cosmetics who believe in personalising their skin care to suit each individual customer. We got a little goody bag with a few bits to try and an email with £20 off our first purchase, so I’m interested to look into that.

It was then time for the raffle, and I was lucky enough to win a prize from Silver Tree – a gorgeous Vivienne Westwood ring! Unfortunately, as time was getting on, Sophie and I had to say our goodbyes and weren’t able to see the last company, but we were both feeling pretty unwell and had reached our energy limit! We both left weighed down with goody bags and Lush purchases and I had a great time when I got home rooting through all my bags.

So, all in all, I had a fantastic day at my first ever blogger meet-up! For a while now I’ve been planning a meet-up a bit closer to home in Basingstoke, and am in talks with a few companies to find the best location. I’m now even more excited to get something organised, so if you’re in the Basingstoke/ South East England area and would like to hear more, please drop me a message!

Have you been to a blogger meet-up before, or would you like to in the future?

Follow me on Bloglovin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+