Wow! When I began blogging at the beginning of this year, I had no idea I’d be nominated for ‘Blog of the Year’! I figured I’d have to blog for years to be recognized like that! Thanks to Roger over at Writing Is Hard Work, I feel so honoured! I am so excited! Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, Roger! 🙂
Over at The Thought Palette, you can find all the details as to how this award works. Apparently it has a star system whereby you can be nominated up to six times. I have already linked back to Roger, who nominated me. I also have to nominate some blogs. There are quite a few that I follow consistently, so I will pass this on to . . . . drum roll, please!
J. Keller Ford – Jenny is a talented writer who is inspiring and supportive of the writing community. Go see how wintry her blog is, at the moment, and you might even find a dragon or two!
Jennifer M. Eaton – Jennifer likes to blow things up and she is sharing ‘Write A Story With Me’ for all the world to see. It’s a great story with many authors. You might even see the Blue Mars Lady running around there, sometime.
C. B. Wentworth – C. B. is a writer, crafter and photographer. Her blog always has some fascinating and inspiring content and her photographs instill a wanderlust for those who have a yen for traveling.
Hey Look A Writer Fellow – Mike has been getting rave reviews about his children’s book ‘Sarah Gives Thanks’ about the woman who advocated to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. He is also quite the comedian and an artist in his own right.
Wanton Creation – Matt’s a young writer with many interests, especially in the comedic department. He gives great book reviews, movie reviews and a lot of other content. Rarely do I leave his site without a smile on my face! 🙂
Lake Superior Spirit – Kathy is another blogger who makes me smile. Her tales of the woods south of Lake Superior are always enjoyable and sometimes makes you appreciate the beauty of nature and friendship.
Diane’s Story Site – If you like reading short stories and serials, this is the site for you. In addition to her writing, Diane also writes children’s stories which she loves to share, so if you have a young one to whom you’d like to give an e-book, this is the place to check out.
Although Roger only nominated 5 bloggers, I could not restrict my list to less than these seven. There are many others that are just as worthy, but I regret that I don’t have room to nominate them all.
For those of you who are going, “What?” the word liebster comes from the German word lieb, or love. It also means cute, lovely, sweet or kind and forms the stem of the word lieben, to love. Liebster(s) is an adjective meaning favourite, loved, or dear or it can be used to refer to a person as a sweetheart or darling. If you’re still saying, “What?” then I will clarify.
I was nominated for the Liebster Award by Wings of Wonder. Thank you so much for thinking of me! The blog’s creator is a wonderful artist and always shows such beauty, both physically and in spirit on her blog. Please drop by for a visit.
As with most of these awards, accepting it requires a few rules – thank the person who gave it to you, answer the questions the nominator created, create 11 more questions, select 11 people/blogs along with links and notify the recipients but you cannot nominate the person who nominated you. Wings of Wonder ‘cheated’ a bit and did not create any more questions for me to answer. She simply nominated blogs and then told us things about herself. I think I’ll follow in her footsteps, since today will be a busy one, so here are some tidbits about me:
1) When I was about 8 0r 9, I was hanging upside down on the ‘monkey bar’ of our swing set and must have hit a nerve in my knees for they suddenly straightened and I landed straight down on my head. I’ve had back problems ever since and cringe whenever I see kids hanging upside down.
2) I started babysitting kids other than my younger brothers when I was 12. I think that’s where my love of young children was born – as long as I didn’t have too many to take care of at one time!
3) Around the age of 15 or 16, I got a part-time job at a toy & craft store. Being an arts & crafts type of person, I loved getting the 10% off all crafts supplies!
4) For the summers between the ages of 15 & 18, I worked at the grocery store in the beach resort where we had a cottage. I got to sell lots of candy to kids back when it was truly ‘penny candy’. It was amazing how much you could buy with a quarter, when Mojos and licorice whips were 5 for a penny!
5) The summer I turned 19, I got a job in the canteen at a nearby golf course. I learned I hated sardines. We had a regular who always ordered a sardine sandwich and the smell of those things used to turn my stomach!
6) Between the ages of 16 & 19, I realized I never wanted to be a banker and I never wanted to work retail again! I hated working with money because my Math dyslexia (self-diagnosed) made it scary to give out change – and this was before we had cash registers that told the cashier how much change to give back! I also had nightmares about serving customers until the wee hours of the morning. One night, I even woke up to find I was actually sitting up in bed as I served customers in my sleep!
7) When my daughter turned 8, I enrolled her in Brownies and, in order to help out the Brown Owl, I became her assistant, Tawny Owl. I loved doing crafts with the kids and taking them camping.
8) When my daughter turned 9, Brown Owl retired and no one wanted to take her place, so I volunteered to keep the pack open for Daughter. I was the Brown Owl for the next two years until my daughter moved on to Girl Guides. The last year became rather tedious as I had no regular helper and was often left with 12-15 little girls to keep an eye on – and I had one boy-crazy 10-year old who insisted on slipping away to watch the boys play basketball in the school yard!
9) I learned I never wanted to be an accountant after fundraising for the Brownie pack and trying to make the books balance at the end of each year. I’d get so stressed out working on making things balance. One year I actually thought I was out a hundred dollars! Fortunately, Hubby is a wizard at Math and helped me realize I had put some things in the wrong column. Whew!
10) After working with the Brownies, and later Girl Guides, I found I liked camping out and roughing it. A lot of my ideas for my stories came from those experiences. 🙂
11) Despite my love for roughing it and camping, I don’t ever want to sleep on the cold hard ground ever again. My back just could not handle that!
So we’ve come around full circle and I will leave it at that. On to ‘sharing the love’. These are blogs I’ve been following regularly for a long time because I just love them. There are many more that I have started following recently, but these I have been following the longest. Oh, and if you haven’t checked out the ones I nominated for the Booker Award, yesterday, you really should go visit them, too!
While I was trying to think about what to post, today, I noticed that I had been nominated for the Reader Appreciation Award, by wantoncreation. I want to thank him very much for the honour! He has an amazing blog with a variety of interesting topics and always makes me smile. I can’t help but comment on his content, so I guess that’s why he nominated me for this award.
Isn’t it pretty? It’s perfect for today because we finally have some sunshine!
Apparently there are several variations on the rules of acceptance, so I will follow Matt’s lead and tell you about what I have been up to lately. As you may have read, yesterday, I finally had my root canal done on my  broken tooth. It’s still a little tender, but I think I’ll survive! 🙂
This morning, I was preparing for a wedding shower/roast for the daughter of our close friends. I’ve known the girl since she was born, so have a few stories to tell. One of the things I loved about her when she was little was that she looked like she had just stepped out of an Eloise Wilkin picture. If you’ve never seen an Eloise Wilkin illustration, here’s an example. As a matter of fact, I bought this book for the bride-to-be when she was about 3 years old because the character looked just like her!
Another thing I was doing this morning was going through some old photos of the street where I grew up and the friends I had there. I’m hoping to meet with a woman who used to live across the street from us. I haven’t seen her in a very long time, so thought I would bring along a bunch of pictures to jog our memories. Here’s one of me taken on the street when it was still brand new.
Here’s what the street looks like now. It’s amazing the difference 50+ years makes!
Other things I have been doing, lately (besides blogging), are working a little more than usual, and partaking in many social events, such as the shower mentioned above. Last weekend, I went to a baby shower, played with my grandson and celebrated our anniversary with friends. I try to get to Tai Chi when I can and have lunch with friends when I’m not working. I recently started Twittering and last night I signed up for Goodreads. I still have a lot to do to get the site up and running, but at least I’ve started it and plan to add an author’s page to it eventually.
I apologize that there hasn’t been much about my writing lately, but I’m hoping that will change once the summer break arrives at the end of June. Tomorrow, I will be starting a new post ritual – interviews with other writers. My first one will be with someone who interviewed me for her blog. I’ll mention more about that when I know when she will be posting it. In the meantime, I know there are many writers out there who have been following my blog so I will be asking each of you if you would be interested in being interviewed for an upcoming blog post.
Now I should proceed to mention those readers who I appreciate. I have enjoyed and appreciated every comment ALL of my followers have made in response to my posts, but I will try to restrict the list to those who comment most frequently. In order not to overwhelm those I would have mentioned here that were already nominated by wantoncreation I will not nominate them again, but will direct you to their blogs so you can check them out: Green Paw-paw, Diane’s Story Site, Eternal Domnation, Storyteller in the Digital Age, Roshrulez’s Weblog, Friffle Thoughts and Easyondeyes, J.Keller Ford.
Here are the others who have most frequently commented on my posts:
Earlier this week, The Other Watson at wantoncreation nominated me for the Beautiful Blogger Award and Rebecca from frifflethoughts (I love the name of her blog!) nominated me for the One Lovely Blog Award.
If J. Keller Ford had not already been nominated for the Beautiful Blogger Award, her blog would be on my list, too. Her blog is truly beautiful (it even has dragons!) and Jenny herself is a beautiful person. Click on her name if you want to see her responses to the award and two others that she richly deserves!
Both awards are very pretty and I want to thank them for thinking of me. There have been variations on the rules accompanying the acceptance of the awards. Some have just told 7 random thoughts or insights into their lives, others have discussed what they think is beautiful in the world, as well as the usual nominating other blogs they think fit the bill. I think I’ll try to combine the two – random thoughts about beauty.
1) The media displays society’s ideal of the perfect man (some buff, tanned, musclebound ‘hunk’)Â and the perfect woman (some anorexic supermodel who needs a ton of make-up to bring out her ‘inner beauty’). What about that ‘inner beauty’? Kindness, compassion, sensitivity, loving disposition, an ‘I’ll do anything for you’ attitude – these constitute a beautiful soul. It doesn’t matter what kind of package it comes in – tall or short, thin, muscular or wide, blonde, brunette, or redhead – it truly is what’s on the inside that counts the most!
2) A child’s laughter is such a beautiful thing. It reflects unfettered joy at life’s little adventures. Whether it’s discovering what’s hiding under the blanket or hearing a grown-up make funny noises for their amusement, their laughter is so contagious, one cannot help but smile at their giggles. Case in point:
3) The sight of a bird in flight against an azure sky is enough to carry my imagination soaring to new heights. I often wonder what it would be like to have the ability to fly wherever the wind carries me. I even dream about flying!
4) The plethora of colour in a perfect garden always reminds me of my grandmothers and my mother. All three women had marvelous green thumbs, unlike myself, who can barely keep a cactus alive – and they don’t need to be watered very often! My father’s mother had a huge yard and was what I always considered to be the perfect English Garden. It was her pride and joy. My mother’s mother had a significantly smaller yard but she tended it with the utmost care. What space she lacked in her yard, she made up for in houseplants. African violets on every window sill and flat surface in her two-story house, including the basement where she had set up a table with grow lights where she nourished the seedlings. My mother planted gardens at our house in the city and our cottage. When she passed away, the gardens went into disarray and made me sad to see them so empty.
5) Walking through a library or bookstore gives me the most wonderful feeling. I love to wander through the aisles, taking my time to read the book spines searching for the perfect book. The smell of the pages, especially a used bookstore, is like no other and no story on any e-reader available can match it.
6) Exploring new spaces and old is so much fun for me. I love to travel, but haven’t been able to do as much as I would like. I started local. You’ve probably heard me rattle on about Lower Fort Garry (a local site) and its history. I’ve visited many other historic sites around the city, which I absolutely adore. I’ve also been to the west coast of Canada, traveling cross-country several times and the beauty of the mountains never fails to amaze this prairie-born girl. The smell of salt air is so much different than the smell of the ‘inland sea’ where our cottage was situated. Taking a ferry across to Vancouver Island is always fun because you never know if you might see whales or seals crossing our path.
7) The joy I feel when I meet like-minded people is very intoxicating. Blogging has been such a wonderful experience because I’ve been able to meet so many interesting people from all over the globe, sharing a love of books & writing, music, the trials & joys of parenthood, and beautiful works of art, not to mention their unique views on the world and how it affects them. It amazes me that today’s technology is able to connect people like this!
There are many other things that I find beautiful, but these will have to do for now. Below is a list of beautiful bloggers and their blogs. They each deserve both awards, but they can choose which one they would like to accept. Please take the time to check them out. 🙂
tracikenworth has a lovely blog, with book reviews guest authors and all kinds of great stuff!
cbwentworth creates wonderful journal pages and her travel pictures a gorgeous!
My First Book enjoys showcasing other writers and has a lovely blog site.
Sky Diaries has a wonderful way of describing moments in her life in such a beautiful way. Her ability for imagery is astounding.
mywithershins 