Friday 6 January 2017

The Day I won the holiday of a lifetime!

As it's exactly a year to the day, I thought I would write a blog post about my experience of winning a Disney World trip to Florida.

So first of all let me tell you about the competition:

It was a creative photo entry with Heart radio called #facesforflorida.  You had to go online to the heart web page and print off Jamie Theakston and Emma Bunton's face masks and use them in a photo showing a reason why you deserved a holiday to Florida.

Now when something like this pops up and there's a hashtag involved, the first thing I do is see what other people are entering.  I do this to make sure my entry isn't similar and to give me the edge on originality.  The next stage was to think outside the box, like really outside the box....what followed next were two sleepless nights going over different scenarios of photo's in my head..honestly, ask my husband.  It's normally the first thing he tells people!

Well it came to me in a half wake sleep sort of state..so my thought process went like this, you need a holiday in the sun, why the sun?  hmmm because you're ill, generally when you see people who are sick in comics etc. they have the measles, hmm measles, measles, measles and then WHAMMM "Mickey Mouse Measels" was born!! lol 

The next step was to print off some heart logos to add them into my photo, go shopping for a doctors kit and a nurses outfit.

I convinced my husband to let me crayon Mickey Mouse shaped measles on him with a some facepaint sticks (you know the really oily ones, that are incredibly difficult to get off)  I dressed my 10 year old daughter, Jess up as the nurse (Emma) and my husband as the patient (Jamie).  I then proceeded to put them into various poses, see the next series of pictures:




 
 
Ok, I thought these aren't too bad.  Now how am I going to get the message across with needing to go on holiday because of the "Mickey Mouse Measels"  I went onto my phone and looked up how to add captions/speech bubbles to photos and found a great app called "Comic Caption Creator"  it cost about £3 or £4 I think to get the features I wanted.  So I played about with the pictures for a bit until I came up with a catchy strap line and this was my final image that won my family and I the Holiday!! YAY!!
 
 
I had a phone call the day before I won, to ask about my photo, my family and a few other details.  They said they liked my photo and that I had been "short listed" as one of a few winners.  The guy on the phone wanted to make sure I would be available to take the call the following morning "if" they called.  So at this point I was excited but not too excited because I didn't know if I had won or not for sure.  But then I did get a phone call the very next day. 
 
Here's the recording of my reaction:
 

 



We went on our fabulous holiday 4-11th November last year.  Which took in both my birthday and our youngest 1st birthday.  I will do another blog post about our holiday another time.  We had the most amazing time away and we'll all be forever great full for the day Heart radio chose our photo on the 3rd day of last years competition.

I am happy to report that Heart radio are running the same promotion this year.  To find out more about it and how to enter click here:  http://win.heart.co.uk/visit-florida/ and don't forget to double check the T's and C's here: http://www.heart.co.uk/london/terms-conditions/heart-london-faces-for-florida-2017/.  You can also check out Di Cokes blog here for her top tips on entering this competition: http://superlucky.me/2017/01/heart-faces-florida-back/  things are slightly different this year, but head over to Di's post and she'll explain all.

Finally, Heart got in touch with me a few days ago to talk about how it was winning.  You can listen to my little radio interview here:





What are you waiting for?  go win yourself a holiday!! :D