Back in action...

After taking some time out and going through some changes, it's time to get back to blogging once more. Subscribe to Sweepstaking Dreams for continuing coverage of contests, sweepstakes, and anything related!

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As spring approaches, our thoughts begin to turn to yard work and flowers and all of the beautiful things we can do with our landscapes throughout these next few months.

If you feel your front yard is in desperate need of help to get there, DIY Network is offering a great contest to get you up and running. Upload a video of 10 minutes or less, or some photos of that desperate yard to the America's Most Desperate Landscape contest and you may get the chance to compete against other finalists on the Today Show for a landscape makeover!

This contest ends May 3, 2010. Be sure to read the official rules thoroughly before submitting, as judging will be tightly adhered to!

Good Luck!

The Baltimore Sun is sponsoring a Contest with one prize drawing every business day for the entire month of January, 2008. The daily prize will include two round-trip airline tickets from Baltimore to Orlando, and two nights at the "Nickelodeon Family Suites by Holiday Inn" while you're there. Each prize is valued at $800. Open to legal U.S. residents of Maryland who are at least eighteen years of age.

Enter for this or a number of other contests sponsored by the Baltimore Sun HERE.

The Houston Chronicle is currently offering the "Pro Football Weekly Scoreboard" where local area car dealerships make predictions for the weeks NFL football games. Contestants choose the car dealership they think could have the most correct predictions. Correct answers will then be entered into the monthly drawing for one $250 check. Two drawings currently remain on January 17, 2008 and February 14, 2008. This contest is open to U.S. residents eighteen years of age or older, excluding employees of the Houston Chronicle and certain other restrictions. The entry deadline is February 1, 2008. Find this and other contests HERE.

Vancouver 24 Hours is offering readers the chance to win brunch for the winner and winner's co-workers, along with Vancouver 24 Hours Swag. The total prize value is $450. To enter, send a picture of you and your co-workers reading Vancouver 24 Hours to win@24hrs.ca along with your full name, company name, and the number of people you work with. Be sure to put SHARE in the subject line. The picture must be in JPEG format as an attachment to your email. This contest is open to residents of British Columbia who are nineteen years of age or older. Entry deadline is midnight January 18, 2008. Find more information through this LINK

With the holiday season quickly closing in, gift-giving is on the forefront of most of our minds. Here is a list of inexpensive gift ideas for the sweepstaker in your life:

Basic supplies:

Someone who enjoys sweepstaking by postal mail will always enjoy having extra supplies such as pens, plain white 3x5 cards, plain 3x5 notepads, #10 envelopes, stamps, and standard size postcards (available at your local post office). For a more personal touch one could create a kit that would contain all of these items in a hand-decorated box for easy storage. This could be done for less than $20.

Fancy #10 Envelopes:

Decorated envelopes, either pre-printed (readily available through your local printshop), or ones you have decorated yourself, will be a welcome gift. Also stickers, or other simple embellishments for envelope decorating, will do nicely for those who enjoy this aspect of the craft.

Sweepstakes Newsletters

Many sweepstakers will enjoy newsletter subscriptions as gifts... (it's the gift that keeps on giving). Some of these would include Sweeping America, Best Sweepstakes Newsletter, Rags to Riches, Winning Ways, and more. Many are available in an online format as well as the usual paper format, with subscription prices starting at about $15.

Return Address Labels

Always handy when contest rules allow them, these are time-savers as well as decorative and functional.

Gift subscription to Club Pogo

I recently received my special edition four year badge for being a member of Club Pogo, started in quest of winning prizes, and continued for love of the site. Pogo has a wide variety of games available, ranging from word games, to card games, to board games, casino style games, and more, with many awarding tokens for playing. Tokens can then be used in exchange for entries into drawings for cash prizes of $50 daily, $250 weekly, and $1,000 monthly along with drawings for various other prizes. Tokens can also be used to "purchase" items for your Pogo "mini" (a character that is displayed along with your screen name that can be personalized in great detail), and for various other purposes, such as playing the slot machines and some of the other casino-style games. Many of the games will also award a jackpot spin after reaching a certain score, from which you can win tokens, Pogo merchandise, and progressive cash jackpot prizes of up to $4,999. Other features too numerous to mention abound throughout the site. Subscription prices are $5.99 a month, or $39.99 a year, with a free-trial offer available.

Text to enter sweepstakes are a fun way to enter sweeps when you are on the go. Though these sweepstakes are still free to enter, standard text messaging charges may apply from your cellphone provider, so be sure to check your cell phone plan before entering.

Here are some quickie text-to-enter sweeps...

Matt Blatt Text to Win Sweepstakes

Grand Prize of one Apple 8g iPhone, valued at $600, OR one Sony Playstation 3, valued at $600. Monthly prize (one left for the month of December) of an iPod Nano 2G, capable of holding up to five hundred songs.

To enter: Text the key word MATTBLATT to MYABC (69222)

Enter daily, ends December 31, 2007. Void where prohibited.

SITV's Music Madness Sweepstakes

Offering a Grand Prize of $1,000 (awarded in the form of a check) which may be used towards enjoying the concert of your choice.

To enter: Text the key word MUSIC to GOSITV (467488)

One entry per person/mobile phone number per day. Ends December 14, 2007.

High School Rock-Off Text2Win Sweepstakes

Begins January 11, 2008, and ends January 31, 2008.

Six winners will be chosen in a random drawing to win two tickets to a "mutually determined Live Nation concert". The high school band with the most votes will win a Motorola Motorizr phone (valued at $229.99) for each band member.

This sweepstakes is open only to legal residents of Ohio who are thirteen years of age or older, though some areas may be ineligible to enter.

To enter: Text the number of your favorite Ohio High School Band to 74974 (though the numbers are not listed in the official rules, you might be able to find this information out from the high school you wish to vote for)

Nascar is currently co-sponsoring several contests and sweepstakes, all with great prizes.

The Holiday Inn - Stay Under Green for Life Sweepstakes

This one offers the opportunity for a life-time's worth of stays at the Holiday in, calculated to be one hundred and sixteen nights. The sweepstakes can be entered through booking your stay at the Holiday Inn by November 15th, 2007 using the "Best-4-Breakfast rate" and paying with your Visa card, or by sending in the official entry form which can be printed out from a link at the bottom of the entry page. This sweepstakes gets four stars, due to the unique form of entry. which will be likely to reduce the number of entrants.

Castrol GTX Garage Kings Contest

This contest calls for you to nominate your favorite mechanic for a $25,000 garage makeover, and win $5,000 for yourself! Twenty second prizes will also be awarded. Entrants must submit an original essay of up to two hundred words telling why they think their mechanic deserves the title of "Garage King". Entries will be judged 50% on "Why you trust your mechanic", and 50% on "originality, creativity, and relevence". This contest ends October 30, 2007.

Nascar Cooks!

This is the last week to enter your great tailgate party recipes in this contest, which stops taking entries August 26th. They are offering one Grand Prize of a trip for eight people on October 7, 2007, to the Nextel Cup Series race in Talledega, along with a $2,000 travel voucher and other amenities with a total estimated retail value of $10,000. Other prizes will also be awarded.

You can enter these and other contests HERE

The African Association of State Lotteries came together in 1981. The association meets regularly to provide training, and to exchange information and experience. There are currently about twenty-five countries that hold membership, with fifteen of these participating on a regular basis. They are looking to expand their membership of countries in order to provide a unified group with strength and credibility in a worldwide community.

The association states their duty as:

"Our duty in The Africa Association of state lotteries is to gather all the lotteries and state- run betting systems and create among them strong links of solidarity and understanding, it is also creating a mutual assistance, a share of informations and synergies for the management of the lotteries as well as the systems and operatting technology among the companies of games of chance in Africa."

The organization is funded by contributions, grants, subsidies, and member fees.

Some of the countries included in the association's current membership are:

Algeria

Ethiopia

Gambia

Guinea

Madagascar

Morocco

Niger

Tunisia

and more.

The majority of the currently participating countries focus on equestrian betting and scratch tickets.

Some facts that you may find interesting about Africa are:

Africa is the second largest world continent, covering about twelve million square miles and accounting for about twenty-two percent of the world's land mass.

South Africa actually has a colony of penguins

There are over 800 languages and dialects spoken by African inhabitants

The smallest butterfly in the world, the Blue Dwarf with a wingspan of only 1/2 inch, lives in South Africa

an estimated 3,000 African children under the age of five die each day from malaria

Find out more about the African Association of State Lotteries HERE

This sweepstakes begins on August 16th. At that time, you will want to enter daily, when you can. Also beginning August 16, and continuing to September 27th, to coincide with the start of the sweepstakes (or vice versa), the Do-It-Yourself Network will be airing a special series on the building of this cabin at 9pm Eastern Time on Thursdays. If you enjoy the HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes, then this is another one you're just going to love.

Set deep in the Woods of the North Carolina mountains, specifically at Cable Mill at Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (a place of breath-taking beauty), designed by its viewers, this three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath log cabin home could be yours!

Earlier this year, viewers voted on the design of the blog cabin, with the following results:

Floorplan: Greenbriar, with two dormers and a covered porch, perfect for relaxing on the rocking chairs that come as part of the furnishings.

Roof Style: Tin, reminiscent of the backwoods cabins in the Canadian wilds.

Fireplace: Stone hearth and surround, styled with a modern appeal.

Window Design: Double Hung Windows

Flooring: Casa de Colour Aztec Cherry Oak

Cabin Railing: Round (with the log look, of course)

Kitchen Cabinetry: Country, Rustic, yet still elegant

Bathroom Tile: Natural

Kitchen Tile: Granite

Bathroom Fixtures: Modern Slate Walk-In Shower, Don't look, you'll want to walk in!

Interior Wall Finish: Single-color, eggshell finish

Front Entryway: Wormy Chestnut Door

Yes, I'm sorry, but this one will have a tremendous amount of entries, I'm sure. There were four million viewers voting for these preferences, so for the sweepstakes, you can be sure there will be more.... However, you will have as good a chance as anybody if you just enter!

I do give this sweepstakes the five-star rating, because it comes from a reliable source, it is a recurring sweepstakes that one can enter every year, the prize is outstanding, it has good entertainment value and viewer participation. Along with this it has educational value in offering the opportunity to learn more about log homes and do-it-yourself work, and for those who have not yet had the pleasure of being there, the surrounding area of the smoky mountains.

You can vote to name the blog cabin, find out more information, and view pictures of the cabin and surrounding area HERE.