Mother's Day supermarket-free stylee

Okay, so, thanks to my year without supermarkets, my mum has been a pretty experimental recently, and following on from the success of the tofu I decided to push the hippy boundaries this Mother's Day. Yep, while other mother's will be enjoying bunches of flowers and boxes of chocolates today, my mum is going to be presented with a pot of semi-solid smelly goo.

It's her own fault really. She asked me a few weeks ago where I'm getting my toiletries from and I told her about how much I'm loving Lush, and how much their products would actually suit her too as she has really sensitive skin.

"Hmmmmm," she said, doubtfully.

The reality is, Lush is just a tiny bit "out there" for my very mainstream mum. She likes The Body Shop and Neil's Yard. She asked for a bottle of bubble bath for Christmas that cost me a whopping £20. But she does rather like her smellies to look traditional, and Lush stuff is anything but.

So I decided to give her a helping hand by popping into the branch in Derby and finding her a suitable product to get her started. And I asked one of my favourite shop assistants, Tor, who uses the same shampoo as me and likes horses, to give me a hand.

"I need a nice little gift for Mother's Day," I tell her. "But my mum has got really really sensitive skin so it needs to be totally organic and natural."

This request immediately throws Tor into her element. Lush products, she tells me, are ideal for those with sensitive skins, and there are a number of things that would be perfect. 

Before I can say "sounds good" I yet again find myself up to my elbows in fizzing water, which seems to pretty much be an obligatory part of shopping in Lush. Tor is giving me a demonstration of the Butterball bath bomb, which is made with vanilla and cocoa butter and is preservative-free, making it one of the shop's most gentle bath products. We both agree it'll make a nice treat for Mother's Day.

Then she takes me over to a shelf full of pots and we debate the merits of body butters vs shower creams and moisturisers.

We settle on a shower smoothie called Dream Wash which was actually designed as an almost medicinal product for sun burn, eczema and psoriasis, so is brilliant for sensitive skin. It's made with cooling calamine and soothing aloe vera.

Sounds perfect, but there's just one problem....

"The thing is," I tell Tor. "This might be a bit far out for my mum - it looks so unlike shower gel."

"My mum's the same!" answered Tor. "It took her ages to get into Lush stuff because it just looks so different."

We both smiled and made 'confused mum' faces at each other.

"She loves it now though, she always nicking my stuff."

So with this in mind I decided to take the gamble and get my mum a pot of the Dream Wash as well as the bath bomb - especially because she can always take it back into any Lush branch and exchange it if she doesn't like it.

I think she might pull one of her "not impressed" faces when I give it to her. Or maybe even one of her "pretending to be impressed when actually not impressed" faces. So as an afterthought I also grabbed her a packet of her favourite tofu.

Mum's gift. Wonder what she'll make of it....

So that's what my lucky mum will be getting this Mother's Day - a pot of goo, a bath bomb, some tofu, and a card that was actually chosen by Neil because after spending so long in Lush I ran out of shopping time!

And that's just from me. My brother is in Bahrain so the chances of him even remembering Mother's Day are slim to none. 

Happy Mother's Day to my long-suffering mum!