GREENFIELD – A Greenfield couple is puttin’ on the ritz — literally.
Cindy Carver entered a Super Bowl contest on X (Twitter) and ended up winning a prize package from Ritz Crackers to create a man cave perfect for watching sports.
Now, after months working with a third party vendor to pick out the colors and types of furniture they want, Cindy and Dave Carver – self-described homebodies – are enjoying every minute of it.
“She has a habit of winning stuff you don’t think she’d ever win,” Dave said. “She’s one of the luckiest people I know.”
Cindy spends time every day entering online contests, and over the years has won plane tickets, dart boards, and even a year’s supply of Tootsie Roll products.
The Super Bowl is one of the most popular nights for companies to promote giveaways, she said, and when she saw the “Ritz Blitz” sweepstakes to get furniture, all she had to do was re-tweet a phrase.
An email notification that she was a winner sparked her interest, but she didn’t know that she had earned the grand prize until weeks later.
“I screamed at work,” she recalled. “’What’s wrong, what’s wrong,’ (my coworkers asked). I said, ‘It’s good, it’s good, it’s good!’”
The grand prize features a new modular couch with speakers and charge ports; a 75-inch TV, refrigerator, sound bars, dart board, ping pong table and a few decorations with the Ritz logo.
The couple transformed their master bedroom into a new space to enjoy their favorite sports and concerts like Taylor Swift and Coldplay. “Top Gun,” one of the first movies they watched together as a couple more than two decades ago, was their first movie night in the Ritz room.
They won a few gift cards to complete the look with home improvements, and even two boxes of Ritz Crackers (which didn’t last long).
They laughed together, recalling the day the couch arrived – 26 boxes dropped off in the driveway. It took them all day to put it all together.
The Carvers are both former public servants. Cindy recently retired from dispatch work, while Dave has served as a police officer.
“We’ve been hopelessly middle class our entire life – we would have never done it,” Dave said of the room transformation.
“Now I can’t watch TV on anything less than 75 inches,” Cindy joked.
“It’s like sitting in front of a drive-in movie screen,” Dave added.
The football fans watch sports regularly, and both have served as ushers at Pacers games. They’ll decorate the walls with family sports memorabilia, and they’re looking forward to having friends and family over to enjoy the room too.
Pretty much the only thing they’ll do to complete the look is add the Carver family logo. They plan to put the phrase “Family First, Team Always” above the TV.
“I’ve kind of gotten used to it, but sometimes I’ll look around and say, ‘This is the coolest thing ever,’” Cindy said.
