My Summer Holidays thanks to ING DIRECT’S Wave and Save Promotion

The ING DIRECT Wave & Save Promotion has since wrapped up, but for more information about their Orange Everyday Bank Account, or Internet Banking in general visit the ING DIRECT website.

My Summer Holidays: ING DIRECT was kind enough to provide $1,000 to fund my experience, all opinions contained within this post are of my own, and not that of ING DIRECT.

I’ve been blogging for one and a half years now, and I find it is my calling. Yet as a blogger I still have to maintain a side job for some income. I work at a casino as a croupier, part time and it’s true the casino is open 24 hours 7 days a week. And as part of the job, I have to work the public holidays and sacrifice the time spent with my friends and family – doing some of the worst hours there.

For the month of December, I was rostered for Morning Shift – a shift that starts at 4am and ends at 12pm. So you could imagine my sleeping patterns, I sleep from 6pm to 2am and thus I miss out on important holiday events.

Yet, I am always determined to make the most of my holidays and using the ING DIRECT VisapayWave card I was able to do just that. ING DIRECT has a great promotion going on: For the first 30,000 customers to sign up for an ING DIRECT Everyday Account (Orange Everyday) and activate their Visa PayWave card, they can enjoy an exclusive offer. By using the PayWave card, customers will receive a 5% cash back upon contactless purchases (under $100) until 30^th June 2013. The 5% cash back gets processed quickly and is put back into your account after the transaction is settled!

With this is mind, it made my (summer) Christmas and New Year’s Holidays super special. Here is an account of how I made the most of my PayWave experience!

• I brought myself a Fujifilm Instax Mini Polaroid Camera with film from JBHIFI. As a blogger, photography is a passion so to capture moments so instantly and in a cute form was just a delight.
• I found myself in Typo (a cute stationary store) and using PayWave, I bought a set of floral lanterns to hang on my bed and a tin of mini wood pegs to clip my new polaroids creatively.
• For Christmas, I headed into Coles to purchase ingredients for festive Star Cookies (from the blog post here) and I, for the first time, baked and iced my own cookies. I packaged them in cute gift bags I found in BIG W and gave them to my friends for Christmas.
•  I bought three presents for my friends from The Body Shop, each of my best girlfriends receiving a gift box with delicious scents: Cherry Blossom, Shea Butter and Coconut.
•  On Christmas Eve, my friends (or second family as I like to call them) went Christmas Light Hunting along Dulwich Hill, Five Dock and Ashbury (as seen in this post). Afterwards using PayWave, I treated my second family to a feast at McDonalds (40 chicken nuggets to be exact!) and we were full and merry.
• Here in Sydney, it’s never really a white Christmas, it’s usually a searing hot one. I always head to the beach during this time – so I needed some summer essentials. I love the smell of LeTan’s Coconut range so I stocked up. I purchased the coconut sunscreen and oil for the beach to tan safely.
• ·With me and my boyfriend working shift work and being awake when others aren’t we needed to provide our entertainment. I treated my boyfriend to watch The Hobbit (purchasing was so easy with PayWave) and afterwards I needed to read the book so I bought one from BIG W. And... I forced my boyfriend to watch some Rom Coms on DVDs from BIG W since he once made me watch Game of Thrones and I needed to make take revenge on him.
• I baked Gingerbread Men Cookies and Red Velvet Chocolate Cupcakes for my friend’s Christmas Dinner. It was another first for me and they proved excellent gifts for my friends.
• And last but not least – for New Years, I had a quiet one because I knew I was working at 4am on New Years Day. I wasn't prepared to go to work tired and partied out. I was sorry to miss the midnight fireworks with my friends so I treated them to a traditional Aussie BBQ at my house. I headed into Coles and bought the works. Prawns, potatoes, sausages, chicken wings, fresh fruits, chips, chocolates, haloumi cheese (for my solo Greek friend), salsa and salads. It was an amazing day with my second family, and we all cheered to ING DIRECT for a great experience!

For my Summer Holiday Season this year, ING DIRECT’s new Wave and Save promotion really escalated it to be the best holidays ever. I’ve discovered many more stores that now operate with PayWave (like David Jones, Adriano Zumbo Patisserie, Din Tai Fung and BIG W) and it made my shopping experience more fun. If you’re interested, check out all Wave& Save Merchant Locations.

Although I worked really random hours in the wee night, I found myself cherishing my limited time with my friends and family and boyfriend more gratefully. With the 5% rebate from all my purchases, from $1000 I was able to receive $50 cash back. I’ve vowed to treat my boyfriend with a new video game. He has been there throughout my whole blogging experience and patiently taking all my photos. Bloggers’ Boyfriends’ Appreciation Day is in order and I think it’s now long overdue! I’m sure my boyfriend will be very happy to hear that. Thanks ING DIRECT for a perfect holiday.

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