UPDATE: Competition extended until Monday 22nd June.

Are you expecting or planning a baby? Perhaps you know someone who is?

Ebury Publishing has kindly offered 10 copies of Christine Hill's Pregnancy Guide to give away in a competition for Glamumous readers!

Christine Hill has over 25 years experience with ante and post-natal classes and has worked with over 5000 mothers during her extensive career. She is London's most sought-after pregnancy guru and as a mother herself, she knows a lot about the concerns, anxieties and questions asked by expectant mothers during pregnancy.

After reviewing this guide for Glamumous readers, I can honestly say this is the most reassuring and informative book about pregnancy that I have had the pleasure to read. Christine Hill's Pregnancy Guide is like having a medically-qualified best friend who will explain the truth about your pregnancy in a straightforward, easy to understand manner; she dispels myths and cuts through the fog of information overload to offer the answers you really want to know.

The book is divided into fourteen short chapters which cover everything from your reactions upon discovering you are pregnant to ante-natal classes, possible medical issues and what really happens during labour. There is even a chapter specifically for fathers which assists understanding of how our men can help us through pregnancy and birth!

How to Enter

This competition is offered as a prize draw for all UK-based Glamumous readers (sorry I'm unable to offer these prizes to those living outside the UK).

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment below with your name and a link to your blog/website or your email address (so I can contact you if you are one of the lucky winners).

Only one entry per person please! Multiple comments by the same person will count as only one entry.

Entry to this competition will close at 8pm BST on the 22nd of June 2009.

Winners will be drawn at random from the names submitted in the comments (complete with photographic evidence to ensure impartiality) and will be announced here on Glamumous on the 22nd of June. I will contact each winner personally for more details so we can send out your free copies of this excellent guide.

Guidelines 

Feel free to comment using any identity you choose (such as your Google profile, Open ID, Name/URL or Anonymous).

Please be sure to leave your name and blog/website URL or email address in your comment so I can contact you if you are one of the lucky winners! If you don't have a website (or means of contacting you through your site) please leave your email address in the following format (or similar):

Do not simply type your email address in the regular way (such as myname@email-account.com) as this could leave you susceptible to spammers collecting your address!

More information

Christine Hill's Pregnancy Guide will be available from all good book stores, direct from the publisher, and from Amazon.co.uk from the 11th of June 2009.

To learn more about Christine Hill and this excellent pregnancy book, please visit the official book page or read through my comprehensive book review.

Please help spread the word!

If you know of anyone else who may be interested to win a copy of Christine Hill's Pregnancy Guide, please let them know about this competition. I'd be very grateful for any Tweets, links or social media votes to help others find out about this prize draw!

Wishing the best of luck to everyone who enters!

With Father's Day only a few weeks away (the 21st of June), I thought I'd let you all know about a great deal from BonusPrint (in conjunction with The Mirror) which enables us to get a free personalized Father's Day card that includes a photo upload and personalized message.

This offer is for the A5 sized card (not the smallest) and carries only the charge for postage: 50p.

To get your free personalized Father's Day card, simply head over to the Bonusprint offer page which contains the promotional code for this offer (write it down as you'll need this during checkout).

Be sure to choose the A5 size card to qualify for the offer, then upload your photo and personalize to your liking. There is a selection available to add a border around your image, which helps the design look more like a Father's Day card (choose Border>Father's Day and select from the two available alternatives).

Until you reach checkout, it will appear that the total cost of your card is £1.50. However once you've filled in your details you'll be able to enter your promotional code to reduce the total cost (including postage) down from £2.00 to just 50p.

This is a time sensitive offer which ends at Midnight on the 9th of June!

I've just created a special card from our youngest to her Daddy - she explained exactly which photo we should use and what she wanted to say in the card to make it a truly personal one :)

Hope you will enjoy this free offer too!

Thanks goes to MoneySavingExpert for news about this offer.

Image credit: renaissancechambara

The Debenhams Beauty Club is a new loyalty scheme offering points-based discounts and freebies exclusively for it's members. Debenhams isn't a place I would usually visit for my beauty products, but after seeing a feature about this scheme in yesterday's You magazine (with the Sunday Mail) I decided it was worth a second look.

How it works

The Beauty Club offers points on your card whenever you make a purchase in-store in the Debenhams Beauty Department.

These points can then be exchanged towards money off credits - in increments of £5 - against future purchases in the beauty department.

At present, points can only be collected and redeemed in-store. Online purchases cannot collect points, nor can points be redeemed when shopping online.

The Beauty Club also offers exclusive freebies for it's members and a regular email newsletter featuring the latest beauty news.

How to collect and redeem points

Points are collected according to the amount you spend on each transaction in-store on products from the beauty department:

• For purchases up to £25, you will earn one point per £1 spend.
• For purchases over £25, a more generous three points per £1 spent are earned.

Transactions can include more than one item in order to earn these points. For example, if you were to buy a Touche Eclat at £23, this would net you 23 points on your card. However, if purchasing a YSL Touche Eclat and  a Mascara Volume (value £21) in a single transaction, totalling £44, this combined purchase would earn 132 points in total.

Rewards are calculated on a monthly basis, in lots of 500 points. Each 500 points rewards you with a £5 discount against purchases, which can be redeemed as part payment.

This means that you need to earn more than 500 points in any given month to qualify for a £5 discount. If you earn 1000 points, you would earn a £10 discount, and so on.

Points can be carried over from month to month, and rewards are given in the month following that where enough points were accumulated. For example, if you earn 200 points in May and 300 points in June, your £5 reward will be credited in July.

To earn enough points for each £5 credit, you'll likely have to spend at least £163 (in transactions over £25 each time). For many mums, it may take a long time to accumulate this many points, though Debenhams assure us that there will be frequent occasions where bonus points will be offered.

Freebies for Beauty Club Members

I'm a sucker for freebies, and must admit that this aspect of the Beauty Club is what I'm most interested in.

At present, Debenhams are offering quite a few freebies for Beauty Club members, some of which are "no-spend" offers (meaning we don't have to spend anything to get them - hooray!).

Here's some of the best offers available right now:

• No Spend - Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream: get a free sample of this cult moisturizer when you ask at an Elizabeth Arden counter
• No Spend - Clinique 3 Mini Lipsticks: when you have a free makeover or skin consultation at a Clinique counter
• £5 worth of points for a £25 spend on cosmetics or fragrance. The website states that this offer is limited to one transaction per customer, per day, so I'm not sure if we can acquire £5 of points each time we spend more than £25, or if this is a one-time offer. Anyway, this offer ends on the 14th of June so be sure to get your points if you plan to buy fragrance or cosmetics this next month!
• Free gift worth over £50 from Elizabeth Arden, with two or more purchases from EA (one to be skincare). I love the look of this gift set, which includes a full-size lipstick and summer make-up pallette. 

Other current offers include a minumim spend/purchases from their relevant departments. Take a look at the Beauty Club events page for more details.

How to join the Debenhams Beauty Club

To become a member, you must visit a Debenhams branch to collect your free Beauty Club card. You can begin earning points straight away, but will need to register your card online for your rewards to be credited and to receive the regular beauty newsletter.

You must remember to take your card each time you make a purchase, as points cannot be transferred after purchase. If you lose your card, points cannot be transferred to a new one.

One good thing may be that friends and family can also help you build up points by borrowing your card when they make purchases too.

Is it worth joining?

In my opinion, the Debenhams Beauty Club is most rewarding for those who regularly purchase premium beauty brands, either for themselves or as gifts for family and friends. As much as I adore my Chanel lipsticks and fragrances, these are purchases I buy only on rare occasions (or receive as gifts), so to earn even a £5 voucher, it would take me literally years to clock up the points I'd need.

The prospect of free gifts and consultations is somewhat enticing; however, in my experience we can receive these without having to join a loyalty scheme. Perhaps the Beauty Club will make these more accessible?

Personally, I will not be ditching my Boots Advantage card in favour of the Beauty Club, since I can earn points on all my purchases from Boots and my points build up much more quickly.

Have you joined the Debenhams Beauty Club (or are considering this)? What do you think of this scheme so far, and how do you think it could be improved? Please feel free to let us know by leaving your comments below.

If you're a blogging mummy (or are considering starting a blog sometime soon) be sure to check out Blogging in Pink: a women's guide to blogging by Michelle Mitchell, author of the popular blog, Scribbit.

This 24-chapter guide gives you tips for organizing yourself, getting started, focusing your efforts and taking things to the next level. Plus you get some pret-ty darn spiffy illustrations to boot.

I've been reading Blogging in Pink all afternoon and am very impressed with Michelle's advice. This really does offer some great advice for bloggers, including loads of information I wish I'd had to hand when I first began blogging, such as dealing with comment spam, which blog host to use and "The Ten Commandments of Blogging".

Did I mention this ebook is completely free to download?

Pay a visit to Scribbit to learn more and download this outstanding guide to blogging, and while you're there, check out some of Michelle's other posts too - she really writes an interesting blog about her adventures in Alaska...

As I'm sure we're all aware, the cost of our family food bills has skyrocketed these past few months! According to the price comparison site, MySupermarket, the average weekly spend for a family of four has increased by as much as 25%.
Shocking, isn't it?

While we have little control over the rising cost of fuel, housing and other household bills, we can control just how much of our hard-earned cash we part with to feed the family. Switching over to supermarket own brands is not the only solution: there are many more ways we can choose to save money yet feed our families healthy and satisfying meals.

I've always considered myself a frugal mum. Compared to my friends and family, our food shopping bills are positively miniscule, and yet we always have food on the table, in the cupboards, stored in the freezer... In short, we are never hungry and I often feel smug in my knowledge of thrifty ways which are helping us survive this credit crunch.

So in response to encouragement from my friends (and all the articles in magazines which seem to teach us nothing new about saving on food bills), I decided to write my own ebook: Fabulous Frugal Food Bills.

This ebook offers useful tips, tricks and a scattering of family-friendly recipes to help you save money on your family food bills. From learning how to organize your food stores for maximum efficiency to saving money at the supermarket and even growing your own, I hope you will find something useful to lessen the burden of your weekly shopping trips.

In the spirit of sharing and of embracing thrifty ways, I offer this ebook for free. No cost, and certainly no advertisements! You can download this ebook in PDF format to read on your computer or ebook reader, or simply flick through the pages in the embedded ebook further down this page.

Licensing

Frugal Food Bills is licensed under the Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial lisense (which is to protect my rights as the author, and to prevent profit-makers from selling this free guide when it's intended to be free!). Feel free to download, share, re-use and redistribute this ebook however you like. All I ask is that you adhere to these simple conditions:

• Attribution: please credit me as the original author of this ebook.
• No commercial use: do not sell this ebook!

Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to discuss this license or any other aspect of Fabulous Frugal Food Bills, and I'll be happy to help.

Download this ebook

This ebook is presented in PDF format. In order to read this offline, you will need to use Adobe Acrobat (or other PDF reader) which you can download free from Adobe.

Share and enjoy

If you like Fabulous Frugal Food Bills, please feel free to share this with others. You can offer this ebook for download from your site, or embed this in your own blog or website using the following codes:

Regular embed code:

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Wordpress embed code:

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Alternatively, visit the Fabulous Frugal Food Bills page on Scribd for even more sharing options.

Read Online

Here is an embedded version of Fabulous Frugal Food Bills to browse this ebook online:

    
 

Feedback

Please let me know your thoughts and opinions about this ebook by sending me an email or leaving your comments below. Your feedback is much appreciated!

Being quite the magazine maven, I shudder at the cost on the covers (and dread to think how much money I could spend on magazines alone each month!). So I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that the Telegraph is offering many of our favorite magazines in digital format which we can download and read for free!

The Telegraph's offer enables us to download three single copies of different magazines in digital format from the following list:

• Esquire
• House Beautiful
• Men's Health
• Runner's World
• Zest
• Coast
• Cosmopolitan Bride
• Country Living
• You and Your Wedding
• Company
• Baby and Pregnancy
• Good Housekeeping
• Prima
• She
• Cosmopolitan
• Bazaar

The digital format of these magazines is essentially the same as what you'd buy at the newsagents, except that it's free and includes no junk leaflets. You won't be able to claim any of the freebies offered on the cover though!

How to get your free digital magazines

Simply go to MagazinesOnDemand and add up to three magazines to your basket by selecting "Single issue". Then checkout and complete the quick registration (no payment details will be required). At the checkout, enter the promo code 3FREEMAG to ensure your magazines are delivered for free.
You'll need to download some special software to be able to read your magazines (named "Delivery"). You can find a link to the download on the checkout confirmation page once you've placed the order for your free magazines.

Once you've downloaded the free mags (and software) you can read these whenever you like, or even forward these on to a friend. Printing is also an option, but you could spend more on paper and ink than the cover price of the magazine!

I've just saved £9.90 by downloading She, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful for free! If you're looking for a free treat for yourself (or even your partner), I would honestly recommend these free magazine downloads.

This offer does end on May 31st 2009, so be sure to grab your magazines before then. Also, the promotional code can only be used once per account (but of course, you could band together with friends and swap your downloads around...).

Four free copies of "The Lady" magazine are also up for grabs

Another "free magazine" offer from The Telegraph is four paper copies of The Lady magazine, delivered to your door.

Already an icon, The Lady is famous for its super-useful classified section and eclectic, fascinating features. After 124 monochrome years, the magazine now features a full colour re-design to compliment the new look. Celebrate her unveiling with an exclusive offer only available to Telegraph readers – claim your four free issues today. 

I have never read "The Lady" but have applied for this free offer to see what all the fuss is about. To claim your four free issues, simply visit this page on the The Lady website and fill in the form (no payment details requested).

The Lady is published weekly, so you'll receive four copies over the course of a month, saving £6 in total on the cover price.

Via MoneySavingExpert.com

Know of any more free magazine offers?

If you know of any other free magazine offers which would interest Glamumous readers, feel free to leave a link in the comments below or shoot me an email and I'll update this post.