I have been matched betting now for more than two years.  See my other blog posts on My Matched Betting Journey, Matched Betting Two Years In and My Matched Betting Top Tips.

If you are thinking of starting matched betting you don't need much to get started.  Here are the things that are essential to get started:

• Laptop or tablet or just a mobile phone.  I find it easier to use my laptop, but other people are happy using tablet or mobile phone.  Some offers are only available on mobile, so you may find you have to use your mobile as well.
• Internet connection, after all it is mostly done online!
• Profit accumulator to find all the offers for you and provide software and support.
• About £100 to £200 to get started.
• Notepad and pen, to keep track of the offers you do.  Not a problem for me as I am a bit of a stationery addict!

I have also found the following very useful as well:

• a separate bank account, so you know you aren't touching your day to day money.
• the Profit Accumulator forum, this comes with your Profit Accumulator membership and is very useful for tips, advice and help.
• a spreadsheet, great for recording the offers, the profit you make and keeping track of where your cash balances are.
• an extra screen.  I decided very early on in my matched betting journey that an extra screen would make it much easier to compare the odds on bets.  I started off using laptop and tablet for the two screens.  I now use a computer monitor attached to my laptop with an internet browser open on each screen.  See my messy desk above!

Finally it is also helpful to have some motivation! What is your motivation, what is going to keep you going with the offers? Why have you decided to do it? What do you need the money for?

It is not my passion, I do it for the money. It has enabled me to pay for all those extra things which come around without worrying, for example holidays, school trips, days out, birthdays and Christmas.  The list goes on!  It has really helped me out when emergencies happen, for example when I had a big car repair bills last November and December!!  And it has paid for treats like a new laptop and recently some gorgeous new shoes!

If you would like to get started but want to know more then take a look at the Matched Betting tab, and if you have any questions then please contact me.

Love Teresa x

Thinking of You Week is an initiative by the Greeting Card Association to promote the benefits of sending greetings cards.  In the UK the average person sends 33 cards a year and the UK greetings card market is worth £1.75 billion.  So is this just a marketing ploy to get me to send more cards I hear you ask?!!  Maybe.....but have a think.

• Sending someone a card helps you to stay connected with them, especially if you haven't seen them for a while.  A physical card has been shown to have a stronger emotional response than a text, a message or an email.
• Receiving a card creates a feeling of well-being and makes you feel that someone cares about you and is thinking about you. This also helps you to feel less isolated.

I know my Flamingo Paperie cards make people happy, its part of the reason I love what I do!  I see it every time I do a stall or a pop-up shop.  People browse my card stand and the cards make them smile.  They smile because they have seen a funny card, or because they have a seen a card which is perfect for a certain person or they have seen a card which they can relate to.  Even if they don't buy I am happy because the cards have given them a smile.

​I think that Thinking of You Week is a great way to promote the mental health benefits of sending and receiving greetings cards.  ​If it makes you feel nice to send a card and it makes the person feel loved to receive the card then send away!! #sendacarddeliverasmile

Here is more information from the Greeting Card Association:

Here are some fantastic blog posts on Thinking of You Week if you would like to read more. 
https://www.blueeyedsun.co.uk/blog/thinking-of-you-week/ and https://www.pgbuzz.net/ukg-begins-the-countdown-to-thinking-of-you-week/

Here is some great news from Flamingo Paperie.  Every year there are charities selected to receive donations from the sales of our Christmas cards.  This was happening in the days of Phoenix Trading and has continued with Flamingo Paperie.  As Flamingo Paperie partners this year we got to choose from a selection of charities which ones we would like to give a donation to.  Here are the results!

​In previous years partners were able to put forward their own nominations for small donations.  I was delighted to nominate Birmingham Children's Hospital and the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust and both of them received donations in previous years.  I am hoping that we will be able to do this again in the future too.

Love Teresa x

It is tradition to mark the coming of Christmas with advent calendars, advent means coming in Latin.  Advent calendars are traditionally a large rectangular card with windows to open, one each day until the last one on Christmas eve.  These days there are many different versions of advent calendars and we have some gorgeous ones at Flamingo Paperie!

We have advent calendars and advent calendar cards. Starting with the advent calendars, my favourite this year is the Winter Village advent calendar.  Instead of doors to open it has characters to slot in each day to build up the scene during December and is just such a beautiful design!

My best seller for a few years now has been the Reindeer Stables advent calendar, and I am delighted to see it in the range again this year.  Again you slot in a character each day to create the full picture of the stables during advent.

Whilst I was at an event last week I opened up and set up two of the advent calendars for my display.  They always sell well when I have some opened up on display and people can see what is inside.  The Reindeer Stables was one, and I also set up the Nativity Stable advent calendar.  This one is a bit different again as some characters you slot in and some characters are free standing at the front of the advent calendar.  I had a fantastic time arranging the characters to create the Nativity scene!

We have three more advent calendars on the range.  The last one I am going to look at here is the Tower of London advent calendar.  This one often catches people out as there are some characters to slot in but also some doors to open too!

To view all of the gorgeous advent calendars visit teresa4cards.co.uk.  They are £9 each and can be used year after year.  We are on our 3rd year of the ones we have at home!

We also a beautiful range of advent calendar cards, and at just £2.75 each they are excellent value for a special card to send.  And at 6x6 inches they will post as a standard letter.  Just remember to send it early in time for the start of advent!  Here are some of my favourites!

That's all for now, I hope you have enjoyed looking at some of the advent calendars.  For more Christmas goodies, join my online shopping evening by clicking the button!

​Love Teresa x

In my blog post before the summer holidays, I posted about how to still get some work done even though the children are home from school. So did I follow my own advice? And how did this summer go for me?  This is a brief review of my summer and how I got on.

Let's start with what went well!  Firstly I knew I was going to be able to work less so I asked for help.  I chose not to do many fairs over the summer with the Flamingo Paperie cards so rather than my stock being sat under my desk I asked people to take baskets of cards for me, thank you to everyone who helped!  This worked well as the cards were out earning me money without me being there!

Secondly, I took my work on holiday with me! I was staying with family for a week and yes I know I should have had a break, but I get bored in the evenings!! We had days out with the kids and I spent a little time in the evenings, usually just an hour, quickly working through some matched betting offers. I took my laptop and notebooks with me and did as much or as little as I felt like doing.

The power hours definitely worked well for me. A short period of focused work really helped me to keep the money coming in from the matched betting offers and to keep my teresa4cards business moving forward.  I will be doing this again next summer.

And here is what didn't go so well! I had an online pop up card event organised but I just didn't have time to do all the planning for it and I ended up having to cancel it, I was very annoyed with myself.  I have now re-scheduled the event for the end of September and it has become a Christmas launch event. Click the button to join in!

​Lots of things were delayed or put off until September!  None of these were urgent, but at the time I was cross with myself for not getting them done.  I had to take a step back and remind myself that this was what I was expecting to happen and to let it go!  I also needed to schedule more social media posts than I did and this is definitely a priority for the next summer holidays.

I had some very productive days, see my recent blog post Working From Home in the Summer Holidays, and some less productive days.  I also had time to think about the Christmas period coming up, and do some planning for that, and I did some thinking about my card business generally on how to move it forwards, and how to improve the fairs I do.  This then generated my September to do list.  I started September with a to do list as long as my arm, but I was ready to get started and get stuck in again!

Overall I was very happy with how the summer went. I had lots of fun with the family and work went pretty much to plan, in fact I probably got more done than I had expected back in July!

I hope your summer went well too!
Love Teresa x

Summer holidays is all about having fun with the kids for me.  But I cannot drop my work from home activities for 6 weeks, so I applied some of my tips from my recent blog post.  Whilst we had some time away on holiday, when I did no work, there were plenty of days at home when I actually got a fair bit done.

So here is what one of those days looked like!

We started the day slowly, or at least the children did! I was up and ready and slipped in a power hour of work before the kids were even dressed.  I concentrated on the matched betting offers that were available to me and I quickly did as many as I could.  An hour later the kids were starting to get ready and I was done with the offers I could do.

I packed a picnic, loaded up the car and off we went to the woods! We had a great time walking, exploring, den building, eating our picnic lunch and enjoying an ice cream.  It was really nice to go somewhere peaceful and completely away from any technology!!

We got home a few hours later and the kids were more than ready to settle down to something quiet after tiring themselves out in the woods!  So I took advantage and squeezed in a bit more work.......I booked in an event for September, started preparing my new Flamingo Paperie brochures, planned some blog posts and scheduled some social media posts.  I even had a little help with my brochures!!

I had an extremely productive day that day, I even did some more work when the kids had gone to bed, this is unusual for me as I am usually knackered by then!! Not all the summer holiday days were as productive!  Even when I wasn't away on holiday there were days I didn't get very much work done, some of these were due to full days out or having other things going on.  But I didn't feel guilty as I was enjoying these times with the children.

Chipping away at chunks of work on a regular basis really helped to both bring in some money from the matched betting offers and to keep moving my Flamingo Paperie card business forward.  Fitting work in around the other things I am doing is something I do all the time, there is just more other things going on in the Summer Holidays!!

Have a look at my next blog post on a review of my working summer!

To know more about my Flamingo Paperie card business, click here and see my blog here.
To know how I earn extra money from home using matched betting, click here and my blog here.

Love Teresa x

If you are on my postal mailing list the latest Flamingo Paperie brochure should have arrived with you now.  The brochure has Christmas in (sorry if you aren't ready!!) plus our everyday best selling cards.  You can also still order from the main everyday brochure I sent out earlier in the year, let me know if you need another one sent!

​In amongst the Christmas items we have a new range of gift tags, which actually are not just for Christmas!  ​​There are 12 different colours of tags and they all come in packs of 5.  They look great with our everyday range of wrapping paper!

​They also look fantastic with our selection of individual sheets of Christmas wrap.  There is unfortunately no Christmas roll wrap this year as we just cannot source this from a UK supplier at a competitive cost.  So we have focused on some beautiful individual sheets for those extra special presents! We also have some beautiful Christmas tissue paper hidden away on page 21!

​I hope you enjoy browsing the brochure, an online copy is below. I have received my Christmas stock from Flamingo and the cards are beautiful!  We will look at some of the gorgeous advent calendars in another blog post coming soon!

That's all for now! Take care
Teresa xx

It's September and the kids are back to school.  I am finally getting settled back into a work routine and with my Flamingo Paperie business, it is all about the build up to Christmas!  Oh no too soon I hear you say......yes me too I am a last minute kind of Christmas shopper!!  But many people like to or have to spread the cost of Christmas or are just super organised and start thinking about it much sooner than me.

Flamingo Paperie launched the Christmas range this year on 20th August.  I have brochures and new Christmas goodies in my hands and they are selling already!  Actually, many of my Christmas fairs have been booked in since the start of the year.

So what do we have this year? Beautiful designs of Christmas cards, advent calendars, advent calendar cards, gift wrap, gift tags and new colouring in items.

All of our Christmas cards are charity Christmas cards and this year all of us Flamingo Paperie partners got to vote on which charities would receive donations.  They will be Together for Short Lives, Alzheimer's Society, and MacMillan Cancer Support.  As well as the packs of cards, we also have a small range of individual Christmas cards, which I think will be very popular.

My favourite Christmas items are always the advent calendars and advent calendar cards. They are just beautiful and always make customers and visitors to my stall smile!  More on them in another blog post soon!

If you would like a 'real' copy of the brochure to browse and would like to join my mailing list then click the button to keep up-to-date with all my Flamingo news.  Or you can find me on social media too!

​Love Teresa x