Playpennies

I want to share a response to this post over on Mummys-tips. On Sunday, we blogged about their site. Sian wrote a post which raised some points about post-natal depression, and we thought it was a really important topic to share. As Sarah wrote in the Playpennies post, it wasn't her usual type of content, but she thought it was pretty important to highlight and share with Playpennies readers.

Since then, we've been accused by Sian of stealing the whole blog post without permission. We quoted 178 words - clearly shown as a quote - from a potential 1099 words in the original post. None of us here at Playpennies would ever copy a post and attempt to pass it off as our own content - the very idea goes against the basic moral and ethics of any blogger.

All of us who write here at Playpennies are proud to be part of the mummy blogging community and linking to other bloggers we love and respect is an essential part of blogging and sharing who has influenced or touched us. We are horrified that Sarah's recommendation has been taken the wrong way and we are obviously incredibly apologetic. To make sure there's no misunderstanding about the quotation we've removed the few sentences we highlighted here and wanted to apologise for causing offence.

Emma

*** Contest now closed - prizes went out to robertssophie, clairetiptop, bethymorg, elaine73,  slbhill ***

The lovely folks over at Hallmark are giving us a little pressie this week, they've offered 5 of their Story Buddies to the PlayPennies parents! The Story Buddies are worth £19.99 each. If you win, you can choose from 3 styles, Cooper, Watson or Jingle (he's the Christmas edition). The story buddies are interactive soft toys that come with a book too - I think they're pretty cute! I watched the video of Watson in action. You read the story, and Watson responds with appropriate comments at certain points. Quite fun!

Well, if you would like to win one of these toys for your little one this Christmas, just answer this question for us:

What type of animal is the Watson story buddy?

Leave your answer in a comment below please. Make sure to leave a valid email address too, so we'll be able to get in touch if you win one of the 5 story buddies (Please note that first time commenters may be placed in the moderation queue for a little bit).

For a bonus competition entry, subscribe to the daily PlayPennies email updates.

For another free competition entry, tweet about this contest on Twitter and put the link or your Twitter username in the comments below. Remember to end your tweet with @playpennies so we'll see it on our Twitter feed. :) They sometimes run more comps on the Hallmark Twitter feed too, so feel free to follow them while you're there.

If you don't win one of the Story Buddies in this competition, and you're wanting to buy one online from Hallmark instead, the last day for Christmas delivery is the 20th December 2011.

Rules:

• Competition ends on 30th November 2011
• Open to UK residents only
• 1 type of entry per household
• Must complete email verification when subscribing
• Must include a valid email address if commenting
• Admin’s decision is final in all cases

*** RESULTS ***

Announcing the winner of the Halloween costume comp to win a £50 Amazon.co.uk gift voucher - the prize goes to claireabelleh for the cutest little black cat! We'll be emailing you soon to sort out your winnings.

Honourable mentions to almostwitty  for dressing up the baby boy as the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison for those of you not in the know) and to DiCoke  and her little mummy!

I am sure there are lots of PlayPennies parents and their families that will be getting dressed up this Halloween. If you are doing so, then why not snap a picture, and we may just give you a £50 Amazon voucher for your trouble!

All you have to do is get yourself or your kids dressed up, put this PlayPennies competition image somewhere in the scene, and take a picture. Upload your picture to an image hosting service like photobucket, imageshack or flickr, then post the link in the comments here on this PlayPennies thread.

We'll be sharing all the eligible images on the PlayPennies flickr feed, so you can see the entries as you go along.

Rules:

• UK entrants only
• 1 entry per household
• Ends 1st November 2011
• Must include the Halloween competition image in your photograph (no photoshopping)

We'll bump this competition post on Halloween as a reminder, next week. And for those of you who might be interested, there's a similar competition running on our sister site Dealspwn.com, and they're giving away an Xbox 360 package for those fancy-dressers with a video game related theme!

Good luck everyone, and Happy Halloween!

Hello PlayPennies parents! The eagle-eyed mummies and daddies will have noticed that we've just had a site update here on PlayPennies. It's no huge overhaul, but we've added some things we think you might like.

You can now create a PlayPennies account or log in with your existing username and password from the HotUKDeals network (Your Mobot or Dealspwn login will also work).

We've added a little discussion forum. It's a bit sparse right now as we've only just opened it, but feel free to use it any time you want. If you have any burning questions about family life, or even want to give some tips to your fellow PlayPennies parents, please feel free to post in there. Even if you just want to vent about something, go ahead!

As a fairly new parent myself, I've lost count of the amount of times that I have googled questions over the last year, relating to my baby. What are those red spots on my baby's face? How do you wean a baby?  How do you teach a baby to spoon feed? And I have also asked many questions about poo... but I won't go into them. Anyway, I plan on reaching out in the forums when I have queries, so I hope you do too.

Another addition is the featured posts section along the top, and it extends down the right hand side too. We'll be highlighting the articles written by our authors, so you can read these at any time. We felt that the deals pushed these articles down the page very fast, and they deserve to be shown a little extra love.

And check in with us over the next week or so, we plan on giving away some free Amazon vouchers to celebrate our new site update!

We're excited to let you know the results of the recent iPad 2 competition here on PlayPennies, iSave, iWrite, iPad. We had over 50 entries which we were quite excited to see, as it required a bit of creative thinking, rather than just sticking your name into a hat.

There were a number of entries that stood out, but we were only able to choose one winner. It is:

• Mad House Family Reviews with Make Do And Mend

Congrats Cheryl!

Here are some words from an excited competition winner, Cheryl:

I was over the moon to discover an email waiting for me when I got home from work today telling me that I'd won the iPad ! I never dreamed I'd win in a million years so I was absolutely delighted ! My 9-year-old daughter has already asked if she can have it (er, sorry but no !!) and started telling me about all the great things you can do on it (she obviously knows more than me !),  then my husband got in from work and pointed out it's his birthday in a fortnight ! I can't wait to discover all the great apps I've heard about online. I've been told that even really young kids can manage to unlock the screen and find their fave apps so I'll look rather silly if I don't manage it !! Lots of fun on the cards this summer when I'm lazing by the pool or on the patio !! Thanks so much, I think I'm still in shock!

Thanks to everyone who entered, and we hope to have more great competitions on PlayPennies in the future!

Sorry for the delay on announcing this one guys, things have been hectic here! We've chosen a winner for the recent Halloween dress-up competition to win a £100 Amazon voucher. Here it is!

PlayPennies mum Tracey has won the prize by sending in this picture of her girls Charlie and Keira dressed up for Halloween. They even dressed up Meg, the toy cat! We've sent Tracey a £100 Amazon voucher, hope she spends it wisely!

Hi folks! This is just a little reminder about our PlayPennies Halloween competition to win a £100 Amazon voucher.

You can read all about it in the above thread, but if you'd like to win, just snap a picture of you or your family when you are in fancy-dress over the weekend. The full rules are in the above thread.

Good luck!

Time for a little giveaway on PlayPennies! We're going to give one lucky PlayPennies parent a £100 gift voucher to spend on anything they want from Amazon.co.uk.

Read on for details on how to enter, it's really simple…

How to enter:

• Subscribe to the PlayPennies email updates (1 entry)
• Leave a comment in thread below (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet a link to this competition, leaving your twitter link below (1 bonus entry)

Rules:

• Contest ends Wednesday 12th May 2010
• Open to UK residents only
• 1 person per household may participate
• Admin’s decision is final in all cases

From time to time, retailers and PR companies may offer us products to review and write about on the PlayPennies blog. While we'd love to hoard all these freebies for ourselves, we thought we'd share the love and offer some to you guys too! The products could be anything from maternity wear to toys for the kiddies… we never know what we're going to get.

If you'd like to be on the Parent Panel for product testers, please email PlayPennies with details of your family size, specifically if you're pregnant, with the gender and ages of your children. This way, we can tailor the items to suit your family.

Once you receive one of the products, we just ask that you use it in your home. Then, you fill in a little questionnaire with a bit of feedback on the product, and one of our lovely writers can use the information in a featured article.

Hope to hear from you!

*** Expired ***

In order to celebrate the launch of PlayPennies, the new blog in the Hotukdeals empire ;-), we're going to give away a super shopping spree at Amazon.co.uk. One lucky person will get the chance to choose anything they want from Amazon, up to a value of £200.

If you'd like to know a bit more about PlayPennies, why not have a read of our welcome post here.

How to enter:

• Subscribe to the PlayPennies daily email updates (1 entry)
• Leave a comment in thread below stating what product you really want from Amazon (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet a link to this contest and leave your twitter link below (1 bonus entry)

Rules:

1. Contest ends Friday 18th December 2009
2. Open to UK residents only
3. 1 person per household may participate
4. Must complete email verification when subscribing
5. Must include valid email address if commenting below
6. Admin’s decision is final in all cases

P.S. We'll do our best to get you your prize in time for Christmas, but we are at the mercy of Amazon's delivery policies.

To all the mums, and mums-to-be: welcome to PlayPennies.com!

PlayPennies Aim:

I think we all know how expensive it can be to raise a young’un, so we’re going to try and help you cut down on those costs a little bit.

PlayPennies Content:

There is such a wealth of Shopping Deals available to mummies and daddies. So many big companies are willing to give out Freebies and vouchers to try and get your repeat business. We’re going to be sharing all these fabulous finds with you on a daily basis. You’d really be surprised at how much baby stuff you can get for free, without even spending a penny on your little babe!

The PlayPennies team will be scouring the internet for all the best deals from all the big stores which you know and love, from Adams to Zavvi. These kind of stores sometimes offer excellent voucher codes, which can be used to bag yourself some mega bargains. We’ll be posting deals related to pregnancy, young babies, and toddlers.

Additionally, we’ll be doing special featured posts for money saving parents, in our Family Money category. These featured articles will give you tips and hints on specific areas, designed to save you a few quid.

Every few days, we'll let you know about all the coolest Free Competitions for mum and dad, where you could win anything from baby gear to family holidays! And we'll also be doing a few giveaways ourselves.

And finally, as a bit of fun, we're going to do a few posts to keep you up-to-date with the latest Celebaby news.

Keeping up with PlayPennies

If you like, you can just pop onto PlayPennies and read it when you have some free time. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds in the reader of your choice, or you could even sign up to the daily PlayPennies email updates.