Chez Spud

Anyone fancy an all expenses paid family trip to New York at Christmas? Including a free photoshoot with world renowned photographer Steve McCurry? Read on…

Hotpoint are currently running a European Family Portrait competition and the prize is, yup, an all expenses paid family trip to New York at Christmas to include a free photoshoot with Steve McCurry. Take a photo of your family, upload it to the Hotpoint competition site here before 10 October. Vote for your favourite shots until 15 October for a chance to win Hotpoint products of your choice up to the value of 1,000 Euros.  One lucky winning family from each country included in the competition (Italy, UK, France, Russia, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine) will get to go to New York. Exciting!

Alas I can’t enter as I’m one of the judges for the UK competition but if anyone from the winning family wants to adopt me I’m totally open to that.  I get to review the top 100 UK ‘most voted for’ photos and select my top 10. But Steve gets to pick the winner… see a short video of him here explaining the competition.  So get snapping, get uploading and then get voting!

GIVEAWAY

As a thank you for being a judge, Hotpoint have sent me a wonderful lomography camera kit (the Diana F+) which includes the totally cool retrotastic looking camera, a flash, coloured gel flash filers, hardcover Diana + photo book, instruction manual and Lens cap plus a roll of film and a battery (the latter two thoughtfully added to the kit by Hotpoint so the user can get going straight away). See here for examples of what the Diana F+ can do…so so cool. Hotpoint said I could either keep the kit or offer it as a prize on my blog. After a little bit of an internal debate (!) I’m offering it up as a giveaway and, because I feel sad that the non-European readers are being left out of the competition, I’m happy to send it worldwide.

Leave me a comment here and I’ll pick a winner out of the hat on Wednesday 7 September.

Most Commented Posts

• To my boy on starting school…
• Happy Blogoversary to me…and a little giveaway
• Lurkers…DELURK!
• FINALLY…Secret 30…I am a Big…Fat…Liar…
• Fantastic competition: win a family trip to New York! And a giveaway…a cool camera

1 September and, though the sun has shone and it’s been unusually hot today, I can feel the summer slipping away. The way the light moves around the house has noticeably changed in the last few days, the evenings come to a close quicker and the heat of the day slopes off with surprising abruptness. The glut of early summer veg is long gone, leaving a bounty of tomatoes ripening faster than we can eat them, a couple of sugar sweet melons, some stubbornly unripe peppers and chillis and a pumpkin patch which is threatening to take over the garden. We’ve just harvested the last of our main crop potatoes, and planted our seed spuds ready for Christmas Day. Last week’s holiday to Cornwall seems like a month ago, and the deliciously pure ‘fresh’ light in my photos seems like something from a lifestyle magazine rather than how it really was. Whichever way you measure it, summer is slipping away.

I’m fending off the back-to-school glums. It’s been a glorious summer holiday, gone all too soon…how I will miss my little chums. Only 5 more sleeps until my baby starts school and my big boy goes in to Year 1. Hardly seems like a minute since Bertie started school and, yet, here we are and Digby is about to join him. Having resigned, I have no job and no plans at this point. I’ve been waiting for inspiration to strike but nothing beyond a vague desire to feel ‘successful’ has presented itself. My measure of ‘success’ is also rather ill defined at the moment. I’m sure it will all muddle itself out for the best.

For now I’m clinging on to the last few days of the holiday, trying to erase the mental image of Diggy in his school uniform and wondering where the time has gone. Let me get through next week, Bertie’s 6th birthday and the eight (yes, eight) birthday parties in the calendar and then I’ll re-group and Make A Plan.

Really? My baby is going to school? Not right, not right at all…potters off quietly, shaking head.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• Photo A Day: my work here is done
• Career Clinic
• Like mother, like son
• The Gallery…Mother Nature
• Poppy Power