Well that was unexpected… (aka, huge news!)

A while back Wayne Goss tweeted one of my reviews of his brushes, and I thought for sure that would be the highlight of my year. As it turns out though, today is hands-down the biggest thing that has happened in my blogging career so far! Every year Allure magazine holds a series of challenges to determine who will get their Beauty Blogger of the Year crown – kind of like the Miss America of beauty blogging? In any case, why yes, that is my face in the lineup:

I was shocked – shocked, I tell you – when I found out I’d been chosen to be one of this year’s ten finalists. Not to mention extremely flattered to be in such good company – some of the faces up there were already familiar to me. It’s a little bit scary and incredibly exciting all at the same time.

So the way this thing works is this. Starting next Monday (the 14th), a challenge will be posted each week. At the end of each week a winner will be chosen by the Allure editors, a guest judge – and you. So this is the part where I plead for you to help me win, naturally. You can vote every weekday for your favorite blogger, which also enters you to win goodies for yourself. At the end of the contest – 5 weeks, with one challenge per week – an overall winner will be selected. That queen of bloggers (whoever she is – but I really hope it’s me!) will get to go to New York, go backstage at a fashion show, attend fancy parties, etc. Strangely enough, I’ve made it through a solid three decades of life without ever going to New York and this seems like a perfect way to start, don’t you agree? You can check out the contest details and all the finalists here, and of course start voting next week.

I’ll be sending out a reminder via twitter/facebook once voting starts, but don’t forget to hang around here too! I’ll be keeping to my regular posting schedule in addition to the challenges. To everyone who’s been following for a while, thank you so much for keeping me inspired to keep writing for all these… months :-) And for new folks stopping by – welcome! If you have any questions, comments, requests or just want to chat, feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

I can’t wait to get started, and best of luck to everyone in the contest!