Boots Party Face

What an amazing day I've had. I wrote a blog post about 'winning Xmas' and then I receive an email from Boots saying that I am a runner up in their Party Face competition and have won 100,000 Advantage Points. That equates to goods from Boots to the value of £1000! I think that should pretty much cover all my present requirements. Suddenly I go from being very disinterested in the whole Xmas shopping experience to being - "Where's the biggest Boots store near me - I want to get pressies for all the family". I can probably buy the wrapping paper too to make everything look lovely.

The entry I submitted for the competition was a video showing me applying my "party make-up".

As a teenager in the eighties, I loved experimenting with outrageous make up like my idol Toyah Wilcox. Nowadays, it is quite rare for me to do more than a little bit of mascara and often I don't even bother with that but when the occasion arises and I do make the effort, I love it. I have lots of gorgeous cosmetics which I arrange in a very exact manner in my bathroom cabinet, and even when I am not actually using them, there is a certain joy of ownership that I immerse myself in.

My parents' 55th wedding anniversary party weekend in the Lake District was an occasion that warranted a touch of glamour so I packed my make up bag with everything I could possibly need and a lovely new set of brushes that I had bought from my friend who is setting up as an Arbonne consultant. It was while the whole family were together in our elegant manor house accommodation that my sister told us about the Boots competition she had found on Facebook. She was planning to use the setting to video her 'party face' and suggested that anyone else who wanted to should have a go too.

My mum, who has always fancied herself as something of an amateur thespian, jumped at the chance. I videoed her as she commentated her way through the whole make up routine and we did laugh when she couldn't get the lid off her moisturiser and when she nearly used lipstick instead of a similarly packaged concealer to cover a scar. My sister and my daughter, Ivy, both did their faces and I did mine.

I felt quite awkward doing mine. I am always more of a 'behind the camera' sort of person than an 'in front of it' but I thought I'd be missing out on an experience if I didn't a least give it a go.

When we got back from our weekend, I set to work editing my video footage and helped mum with hers. Video editing is very new to me - I am still working out what iMovies on the Mac is capable of - but the more I do, the more I love it. It was a real challenge editing the raw footage down to something short enough to be below the 20 MB limit for uploading onto the site. I nearly gave up but I am so glad I didn't. I put a lot of effort into helping my mum because it seemed to mean the world to her. She kept saying, "Who'd've thought that I'd being doing something like this at my age!"(She is 77 years old).

I do thank my sister for encouraging (bullying?!!) me to upload mine as well. I will make sure that I buy her something extra special for Xmas out of my prize.

Ivy's video never made it as far as the competition but my mum was absolutely thrilled to find out that she was also a runner up.

My Mum