My First GIVEAWAY!!! Featuring Purple Trail

Hi Everyone! I am so excited to be announcing my very first GIVEAWAY on Katie's Nesting Spot!!! I recently was introduced to a great new online resource PurpleTrail, and I am so happy to now be sharing it with all of you too. PurpleTrail is an online invitation and party planning service that launched in 2008 and has already grown to hundreds of thousands of users, including me and YOU too I hope!

Use PurpleTrail to send invitations, ecards, and announcements by choosing one of their many designs or, and this is the best part in my opinion, you can design your own customized one and even upload and add your own photo to it! If you want something quicker but still with a customized look, there are many simple options you can do to modify to one of their designs by changing the font, font size and color, and formatting. You can add a picture and link within your invitation's text too. They'll even help you with ideas on how to word your invitation, I don't know about you but that's always the hardest part for me so I find that very handy. Plus you can add photos to share and even video to your event home page. How cool is that? I've never had so much control with any other service!

PurpleTrail also has features that you have access to depending on the level of your plan; you can add them to your invitation as needed such as: music, a poll, map to the event location, create a event fund - which would be great for collecting money for a group gift, a bring along list for potlucks, and you can even sell tickets to your event through PurpleTrail! I might not need those options for most of my parties but I love how I have the option to add them! You can also make invitations for reoccurring events and not have to redo the work each time, what a time saver.

With a pay plan, you also have the ability to send invites via a mobile number if your contacts don't check their emails that often or if you want to send out last minute invites and make sure it's received ASAP. You need SMS credits for that, you get some with each pay plan and can purchase more as needed. It's also possible to share your party link over Facebook and Twitter!

I also really like PurpleTrail, because unlike some other online invitation services, your emailed invitations aren't cluttered up with all those pesk ads. Plus there are so many different categories of invitations available, there's bound to be the perfect one suitable for any occasion you can imagine. Sure they have plenty of birthday themed ones, but if you want to remind people of the next book club meeting, arrange a swim workout date, get friends together for movie night, remind people of next week's pancake breakfast fund raiser, or throw a luau they have the perfect invitation for that too! I think the themed parties category is my personal favorite one to browse.
Besides the invitation service, they also have a great party idea site where you can find all sorts of reasons to party - as if you needed any! There are tips for party planning basics, ideas for a wide range of parties such as everyday, American Idol party anyone? All the major holidays are covered, I really like the ideas for Easter, as well as other celebrations, where you can find ideas to plan events like that upcoming graduation party. There is also an extensive collection of printable party games for all kinds of occasions available to download for a small fee.

You can try PurpleTrail for free or upgrade to their basic plan for $9.95, ProPlan for $19.95, or Premium Plan for $29.95. There are additional features with each level but even the free version is a great resource that everyone should try!

Giveway Details!!!

You can win a year's of PurpleTrail's basic service, a $10 value, for free! This is a great value for the money: you get up to ad free invitations and event page, 250 invitations per event, up to 100 email invitations a month, animated themes for invitations, the ability to add a payment option, quick customer service response, and 25 SMS credits!

To win: Go visit PurpleTrail and then leave a comment telling me your favorite party article at their PartyTrail site. Please leave a link in your comment to the the party article you like the most.

You have until Thursday April 16th and and I'll use random.org to choose a winner and announce who it is on Friday April 17th.

You must do this for your first entry THEN you can earn another entry for each of the following:

~Signing up for a free account during the giveaway time period - come on and do it, it's FREE!
~Making a purchase of a downloadable game
~Twitter about the giveaway for 2 more entries - leave me the link to your tweet in the comment section
~Post on your blog about it for 5 more entries - leave me a link to your post in the comment section

Just make sure you leave me a separate comment for each entry method and for the first two additional ways be sure to include the email you used with the service so they can be verified. If you don't feel comfortable including the email address in your comment you can email it to me directly katiesnestingspot(at)live(dot)com.

GOOD LUCK!!!

PS: There needs to be at least 5 people who enter for the giveaway to go through, so please...pretty please participate and let us give you something!!!

Disclaimer: Thank you to Purple Trail for the giveaway membership, I received a premium level one year membership for reviewing them and hosting this review.