Aw.... Shucks!

Well my blogging friends… I was flattered and humbled last week when I discovered that someone had given me a blog award. Very sweet, and very unexpected. So, today, I want to thank CHERI for this gift. Cheri – you are awesome. Thank you so much for the award and for also visiting my blog and commenting regularly. You make my day whenever you comment and you made my weekend after seeing that you had award me this piece of bloggy honor. I know I don’t post nearly as many comments on your blog as you do mine, but trust me… I read every new post you put out!

It appears that there are rules that go along with this particular blog award… so, let’s take a look at them, shall we?

1. Thank the person who nominated you for the award.

2. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you for the award.
4. Share seven interesting things about yourself.
5. Nominate your own seven Beautiful Bloggers.

Well… let’s get a move on… there are people to thank and people to award here.

#1 – I have thanked Cheri up above… but again, Thank You.

#2 – The award is the photo above… very charming. I will also be placing it in my sidebar… it will hang on my “wall” for all time.

#3 – Cheri’s blog is called Scrap Dreams. She posts a lot of digi content, which is absolutely foreign and fascinating to me. In addition, she has recently been posting some of her life (weekly) goals and her progress. Very cool. Check it out, because she’s got a lot of fun stuff over there! By the way, you can click on her name anywhere throughout this post to get there quickly, or click on anywhere I have stated the name of her blog (Scrap Dreams). How easy is that?

#4 – Really? Interesting things? Isn’t that a bit subjective? I mean, what if things that are enormously interesting to me are ho-hum boring for you? I wonder, do I have seven? Let’s see… hmmmmm…well, here goes nothing: 

• I have two different thumbs. I discovered this in high school when a friend of mine was doing a study on thumbs for her genetics/biology class. She asked me to hold up my thumb and I asked her “which one?” She said it didn’t matter, so I held both of them up. She raised her eyebrows and said, “That’s weird” and then wrote something down on her paper. As if I hadn’t enough other things in my teen world to be self-conscious about. One of my thumbs curves backward (toward the nail/knuckle) and one is straight up-and-down. I guess you’re only supposed to have one of those two kinds. Yep, I belong in a circus side-show. Well, at least my thumbs do.
  
• I have unequivocal proof that The Hokey Pokey is a dangerous dance and should be outlawed. The proof is in the form of a prominent scar on the left side of my forehead. Don't worry, thanks to my sisters, all of the fish survived. 
  
• I now use Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker as a direct result of reading The Pioneer Woman’s blog. I don’t know why. It just happened.
  
• I have an odd love-hate relationship with paper. I love it so much (the texture, the smell, the feel – any paper, not just scrappin’ supplies) that I hate to use it… because I’m afraid I’ll ruin it. I have to get over this. I believe this is just one of the reasons why my scrapbooking is so slow.
  
• I prefer driving a manual shift (stick shift) car over an automatic. Even on hills. Especially on ice. But only if it’s built for a short person to be able to press the clutch all the way to the floor. My favorite thing to do is let the car drift backwards when I have an unsuspecting passenger (usually a kid of mine)… who then flips out. I’m so bad.
  
• I harbor a secret and super-wild fantasy that I will be a successful published author someday on the same level of J.K. Rowling, Laurel K. Hamilton or Stephenie Meyer. Except I don’t want to write about wizards, vampires or were-animals. I want to write about my life experiences, only rolled up in a pastry with some lemons and sugar with all names changed to protect the innocent (or guilty)… and I want to call it fiction.
  
• In another life (well, in my younger life), I used to make my own cards out of construction paper, write poetry, read several books at once, participate in plays (acting and behind the scenes) in the theatre, and swim long distances in a relatively short time. Nowadays, I write about my every-day life (here), flip through magazines and read other people’s scrapbooking journaling, watch movies on TV (with commercials) and sit. I sit a lot.
  
  I still make my own cards.
  They’re cuter now.

Ah… but enough about me. Let’s talk about some other bloggers who I find wildly entertaining, in no particular order:

#5 – Bloggers I'm awarding this Beautiful Blogger award to:

• The Pioneer Woman. She started out just blogging simple every day things to keep her family informed and now she’s pretty darn famous with a best-selling cookbook. I love her tongue-in-cheek and often slight off-center posts… her photography inspires me to do better and learn more about Photoshop… and her life makes me thankful that I don’t live around cows. I LOVE her. Other than the photography… this blog is completely UN-scrapbooky.
• My Paper View by Nancy Doren. Nancy’s an “Inside Out” girl, and I love stopping by her blog to see what’s going on in her daily life. She always has a photo or layout (or both) to post, and has started a separate blog to celebrate her love of art. I like how open Nancy is in both her posts and her layouts, and I must admit that she is one of “those people” that I would love to emulate.
• Mary’s Musings. I “met” Mary when taking Shimelle Lane’s Blogging for Scrapbooker’s class last November. Mary splits her blog into posts with poetry, posts about every day life and posts with layouts. Sometimes all three in one post. I also love that Mary is “across the pond”.
• 15 Minutes. This blog by Chksngr is full of fun daily life and scrappin’ interpretations. I’m particularly fond of (and in awe of) her Monday Muse and her Fun with Monday Muse posts. She will post a photo or object on Monday to throw out for people to get inspiration from, and then she will post how she would use that inspiration in a layout. Posts like these make me realize how UN-artsy I am, but I am so appreciative other people are out there to point things out and give me ideas!
• I Speak Melsh. I have been a reader of this blog since joining Blogging for Scrapbookers back in November, but (bad me!) have rarely posted a comment. This blog is full of tongue-in-cheek humor and scrappy goodness. Another blogger from “across the pond”. I learn so many new things from this blog and Mary's (above).  I live such a sheltered life here in the US.
• The Bumpy Ride. I met Paige through SFTIO and we have so much in common. Her blog is one big story-time. Sit back, grab a cup of cocoa and read some of the adventures of “The Queen of Everything”.
• Last, but most certainly not least, Scrap Dreams by Cheri. I explained why I love to visit Cheri’s blog in #3 above.

All of these bloggers (and numerous unnamed others) are beautiful bloggers in my book. I started really focusing on my blogging after Shimelle’s Blogging for Scrapbookers class… and I’m SO glad I participated in it. I STILL haven’t caught up on all the class participants’ blogs… but I so intend to. My Google Reader is beyond full! I bounce around every day to one or two and hope to get to all of them someday.  When I do, some of them will surely say… Blogging for what? What are you talking about?!

Anyhoo… thanks so much Cheri. I hope everyone else bounces around to see you and the bloggers I have listed and find some new inspiration and fun reads, like I have.

Remember – you have until 9pm Tuesday night to enter my giveaway… enter a comment on the post below.

And please, if you have a blog you think I should visit (because I love checking them out)... leave it in a comment.

Happy Tuesday!