It would be great to be at the beach right now. I’ve never been myself, but I plan on going as soon as we get the money.

I’m not much of a swimmer, but I like to wade. When I was young we lived about 20 minutes from a sandy lake, and my big sister took me there often during the summer. I had a blast splashing around in the water and playing in the sand. I also loved to build sandcastles.

Beaches Resorts has a fun little website on which you can build sandcastles online. I’ll bet Pumpkin would have a ball with it if she weren’t sleeping in this morning. I’ll have to show it to her and let her play with it later.

In the meantime I made the sandcastle above for her. You’ve got to try this out. It’s easy, and so much fun. First you choose from one of their breathtaking beach settings. Then you can build your very own sandcastle, complete with color, shells, flags, and other beach accessories. There are even peaceful beach sounds playing in the background. It’s quite relaxing.

If you’re busy and broke like me and can’t make it to the beach right now, you can have a little piece of the beach right on your desktop. It would also be a good way to keep the kids busy for a while.

The Internet is full of giveaways and contests. The problem is that to get that “something for nothing” you usually have to sign up for paid offers, give your email address (which will of course be spammed to death), or give them your firstborn. For that reason, I have traditionally steered clear of them.

Whogets.com is a new sweepstakes site that is looking to turn all of that on its head. Members can enter contests for prizes such as video games, DVDs, gift cards and more with no strings attached. Then seven entrants are chosen at random to tell the world why they should get the prize. The community votes, and the person with the most votes wins.

This looks like it has the potential to be huge. I plan on giving it a whirl myself. If I make it to the finals, be a pal and vote for me!