Diamonds are a girl's best friend...how to win some whilst supporting a fabulous charity

As many of you will know, in four weeks' time I will be running the London Marathon. I am raising money for Coram, the oldest Children's Charity in the UK and I have a target of £1750 to raise.


Coram are such a well respected charity by many professionals and they do so much with disadvantaged and underprivileged children. Some of the services that they offer include running an independent adoption service, using a variety of creative therapies to help children from complex and traumatic backgrounds, supporting parents who are having difficulties in caring for their children and offering health, well-being and drug education in schools.


We all have demands on our resources all of the time and there are so many fantastic causes, so I hope that you don't mind my plea for help. However in return I hope that I am able to offer something that may bring a little happiness to you, or a loved one, or another charitable cause. So here goes...



Back in February of 2014, I entered a competition to win a gift card for £1000 to spend at 77 diamonds, who are recent winners of the 2016 UK Wedding Awards. I had to blog about what made my best friend so special.

Diamond Studs - oooh yes please!

For anyone who is interested, you can read the post here. Anyway, incredibly, I won and I've decided to put the £1000 Gift Card up as a competition prize, hoping that along the way I can raise money for Coram.

Eternity Rings - rings are definitely some of my favourite things

So, this is how it will work:

1. Please make a donation to my page http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BethGoodrham  (obviously it can be as little or as much as anyone would like to donate and  I promise that the money isn't for my private shoe fund, but for Coram);
2. Please email me at mail@bethgoodrham.com and your name will be put into my metaphorical hat (which is seeing a lot of action at the moment)!
3. The competition will be open until midnight on 31st May 2016, with the winner being notified by email on 1 June 2016;
4. The winner will be put directly in touch with 77 diamonds who will arrange for the £1000 Gift Card to be sent to the winner;
5. For anyone entering, if you felt able to mention the competition on your social media sites, or if you could spread the word amongst your friends and work colleagues, I should be so grateful. 

And that's it really. Hopefully many of you will see it as a great opportunity to win a fantastic prize whilst at the same time supporting an incredible charity. Ultimately I would love it if, between us, we could use that £1000 gift card as a competition prize time and time again to raise as much money as possible for as many charities as possible. There are so many wonderful causes to raise money for and with a bit of teamwork I think that it might be able to rustle up a few pennies for a few different charities. 

Engagement Rings -  do we hear the sound of wedding bell(e)s?

On the other hand if whoever won the Gift Card fancied treating themselves, or if a someone was about to make a marriage proposal and this enabled them to get a wonderful engagement ring, or if it was used to celebrate a long standing anniversary, how fabulous would that be too?  We all love a feel-good story. It would be great to share on here how that Gift Voucher is spent, or where it ends up.

Before I sign off, I would like to thank 77 diamonds for their support in helping me to use the Gift Card to run the competition in this way. It is very much appreciated - thank you. And Good Luck to everyone who enters!  

Diamonds really are a girl's best friend (especially if you win some)!

It's really weird because when I'm sitting at my kitchen table, or I'm sat on the floor on the landing whilst the youngest is in the bath, or perched with the laptop on my knee whilst watching TV - all whilst writing the blog, I never imagine that anyone actually reads it - ever! Well apart from my Mum and a few friends of mine. I didn't start it thinking that anyone would ever read it and until it was short listed by Marie Claire for its fashion blog of the year award two years ago now, only about 40 people a day did read it, even though I had been writing it for a while.

But that was fine.  I wrote it because I loved doing it and that was my sole motivation, which was just as well because most people would probably have given up by that stage!  I suppose I started in the relatively early days of blogging and naively I had no idea that PR companies would approach me, that I would get invited to press days and all sorts of exciting events and that I would get the opportunity to write for, and work with, different brands. But perhaps that was a good thing because it was unexpected and nice when it happened but had it not, that too would have been fine.

All of that sounds a bit odd because now that the opportunities which come the way of a "successful" blogger are more widely known about, a lot of blogs are started with the aim of getting them as big as possible as quickly as possible - and good on those bloggers for doing that and for taking advantage of those opportunities.

Sometimes I get frustrated that I don't have the time to use social media to its full advantage and I struggle with the fact that I don't get the time to read and comment on the fantastic blogs out there but (like all of us) I have to remember that there are lots of demands on my time so I just have to do the best that I can.

So, when I found out that I had won the competition which I was invited to enter by 77 diamonds about what makes a best friend so special - and even more so when I saw the photo on their blog of Tobias, the co-owner, reading my post (see above) - it all felt a bit surreal. At least now I know that one person read it - on one day at least! And I'm delighted that Tobias liked what I wrote about my friends, who do all mean so much to me.

As yet I haven't decided what to spend the £1000 prize on, or how best I might use it to benefit someone else but when I have, I will let you know.  If in the meantime any of you have great ideas as to how I could do that, I'd love to hear them.

For anyone who wants to read the post about the competition, you can find it on the 77 diamonds' blog here