The Taking Care of Children Giveaway

Today’s giveaway is for those of you who have children in your life. And again, it’s a two parter!

Last week I talked about frugal childcare, and AuPair Care contacted me with a fantastic offer for Almost frugal readers. As a side note, I used to be a nanny, and I have friends who have aupairs (both in the US and in France) and I think that, if you have the room, having an aupair can be a wonderful way to expose your kids (and yourself) to different cultures, while getting childcare relatively inexpensively.

AuPairCare would like to take this opportunity to offer all readers with the chance to apply for our services for free-that’s a $350 value! Childcare is a growing cost for parents, and we want to spread the word on how affordable hosting an au pair can be. Choosing an au pair for your childcare needs is often less expensive than daycare or nannies. Particularly for families with multiple children, it is the biggest bang for your buck as the au pairs work for a fixed cost that does not increase by the number of children they are caring for.

The second part of our giveaway comes from yours truly. I mentioned in my post on earning extra money that I have an Etsy shop, Babycat Goods. I’m giving one reader the choice of any one item they would like from the shop- no price limits, and I’ll ship worldwide.

As always, here are the rules:

• Leave a two part comment, stating which product from my shop you would like to win, and tell us if you have ever, or would ever hire an aupair and why.
• Tweet about the contest on Twitter, mentioning @AlmostFrugal, AuPair Care and including a link to the post.
• Subscribe to my feed (one time only please!) by RSS or email and look for the special code word at the bottom of each post in the feed. Then email me at almostfrugal at gmail dot com with the special code word in the subject of the email. There’s no need to write anything in the bottom of the email, as it won’t be read.
• Write a post about one or all of the contests, linking back to each contest you write about. No need to let me know you’ve written the post- there will be an automatic trackback to each entry.
• Sign up for the Almost Frugal blog network or fan page (one time only please!) on Facebook. Then email me at almostfrugal at gmail dot com with your user name so that I can recognize you and record your entry.

You can do this for each of the contests, and don’t worry about remembering all of this- the contest rules will be repeated at the end of each post! Now for the technical bit.

Each contest starts at 12 noon GMT the day the post is published and each contest ends on April 21, 2009 at 12 noon GMT. The contests are open to international contestants, unless stated otherwise. Each contestant can enter multiple contests, but may only win one of them. I reserve the right to disqualify contestants for any reason.

Good luck!