n Cindy Pitts

Staff Writer

Is your child the cutest in the county? If so get busy and start entering them today as The Cutest Kid contest kicks off.

A new contest brought to you by The Newberry Observer, Stokes-Trainor and Lindsay Furniture will give parents and the grands the bragging rights to the cute kids as we go live with it online and officially open the first-ever Cutest Kids contest.

Stokes-Trainor is the lead sponsor of the newspaper’s latest online offering, which will allow individuals to enter children, ages birth to 12 years, in a competition that provides voters an opportunity to select the cutest children in age brackets and then choose an overall darling who will be named the Cutest Kid.

The contest goes live today, which is when people can begin entering children’s pictures. Voting begins at midnight on June 1 and continues through 5 p.m. on June 15. Winners will be announced later that week — both online and in print.

The interactive, dynamic and fun contest will let readers submit photos from May 13 until June 15 of their cute children at www.newberryobserver.com.

Just go to our home page at www.newberryobserver.com and click on the link to the contest on the middle right side of the page to register and start entering your children.

Participants may submit more than one photo, but no child may win more than one prize.

More than one child can be entered but children have to be entered into their age category. Entries are divided in to categories based on the age of the child - the age of the child at the time of the contest not at the time the photograph was taken. Categories will be: Newborn (0 months to 12 months), toddler (12 months to 24 months), two to four years old, four to six years old, six to nine years old and nine to 12 years old.

The kids getting the most votes in a host of categories from birth to 12-years-old will get prizes.

The person submitting photos must be a relative, parent or guardian who has the right to submit a photo of the child in question.

Readers can then encourage friends and family — both locally and worldwide — to vote on their child starting June 1.

Like the overwhelmingly popular Pet Contest from late 2010, the Cutest Kid Contest is free, both to those registering and to those casting votes, and allows as many entries as a person chooses to upload to The Observer’s Web site at www.newberryobserver.com.

As part of the contest, Stokes-Trainor has signed up to be the lead sponsor and Lindsay Furniture will be an age group sponsor for the 2- to 4-year-olds.