One Lovely Blog Award
I’m very excited to let you guys know that last week, Marjorie of Kyrosmagica nominated Bookin’ It for the One Lovely Blog Award. What a great surprise, Marjorie, and I thank you so much! So pleased you thought of me. Please stop by Kyrosmagica and say hi to Marjorie, a really nice lady with a cool blog. You’ll enjoy looking around there.
The rules for this award are:
1. Thank the person nominating you and link back to them in your post (See above! 🙂 )
2. Share seven things about yourself
3. Nominate fifteen or so bloggers you admire
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know
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Here are Seven Things About Me which you probably never knew. I’m sure you could get along fine without knowing them now, but I thought it would be fun to share them with you, anyway. 🙂
1. I’m tall. Nearly 5’11”. That’s close enough to six feet to look most men directly in the eyes, and to look down on a few of them, too. (Not that I’d ever REALLY look down on them, of course. At least not most of them.) But being that tall back in the day was an interesting way to grow up. I was in high school before I had to relinquish my status as the tallest person in the class…including the teacher. (I mean I was 5’5″ in 3rd grade!)
2. I have a head full of useless trivia, and I love learning just for the sake of learning. I like Latin names for plants and animals (though I don’t know vast numbers of them…yet), and I like knowing word origins. I like reading dictionaries. (If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I’m a wordy, wordy person.)
3. I’m a Florida native. (There’s me, and some guy up in the panhandle.) This makes it difficult for some to understand how much I hate the heat. Hate. It. I far prefer the cold, and yes, I’ve lived in it before. In Pennsylvania, Indiana, and even Alaska, though that’s TOO cold, even for me. (I have a theory people keep longer in cold climates…sort of like storing prime beef in the fridge.) My actual dream home would be situated on a remote mountaintop in the Blue Ridge Mountains, somewhere near Asheville or Chimney Rock, North Carolina. (If it weren’t for my hubby who wants to stay here, I’d already be there, but he’s winning this battle. So far.)
4. I’m obsessively fascinated with nature, particularly reptiles (though this secret is out of the bag for any of you familiar with my latest book, Swamp Ghosts). I pretty much love all animals except sharks and hairy-legged spiders. I don’t like too many teeth…or too many legs…coming at me all at once. Snakes, yes. See, NO legs. 😀 Tarantulas, NO. Not on a bet. (Perhaps I was a fly in a former life.) And I believe cats are the ultimate animals, and know the answers to questions we humans aren’t even smart enough to ask.
5. I love beachcombing, but mostly in the winter. (That heat thing, again, plus I don’t do SUN.). I’m very fond of sea glass, shells, and small creatures that live in the seaweed and tide pools. My favorite colors remind me of the beach in winter. Pale teals, blues, greens, aquas, and sandy off-whites.
6. I love vintage things. Old dishes, Fiestaware, cobalt blue bottles, chippy painted furniture, vintage signs, Coca-Cola ads, and sepia photos. I’m also a Christmas fanatic, and collect Santas (over 300 of them, currently), mercury glass ornaments and candle holders. I have a large Wizard of Oz collection, too. You can see how in touch with reality I am, when you consider my two favorite men in the world are Santa Claus and The Wizard of Oz. Throw Harry Dresden in the mix, and you’ve pretty much got my ideal man.
7. I’ve been a painter nearly all my life, and taught tole and decorative painting for years. If something sits still around me long enough, I’ll paint hydrangeas on it. My most recent ventures included commissioned pet portraits done digitally with a Wacom table and an electronic pen. (Not to be confused with photo manipulation, though that’s fun, too. These are done one line at a time, exactly like wet art). Had to give it up, though, because it was painstaking work that caused me some repetitive stress injuries. So, I finally went back to my original love of writing. When one door closes…….
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Here are fifteen blogs you really should check out, for wildly varying reasons. Some are informative and educational, some are beautiful to look at, some are hilariously funny, and ALL are worth a visit. So, instead of my usual Sunday Blog of the Week, I present to you my nominations for the One Lovely Blog Award. Enjoy!
1. 23 Thorns
4. Sharechair
10. Green Light Lady
11. Practical Historian
12. Storyshucker
13. Miss Mustard Seed
14. Desert Cities Mysteries
15. Elise Abram
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Thanks again, Marjorie, for including me in your list of very interesting blogs. I’ll be proud to display this award on Bookin’ It!
Bookin' It 
Wow! So many things I did not know about you, Marcia Meara! Great post with the Meara ‘touch’…
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Thanks, Celeste! I’m full of surprises. But not if you’re around me more than 10 minutes, probably. I blab them all! 😀 Glad you enjoyed the post, and I hope you’ll participate on your blog, too. Looking forward to learning more about you. 🙂
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Thanks Marcia, for linking back to me so sweetly. It’s so nice to find out all those things about you. We share some common interests by the sound of it, beachcombing (though I’m more of a sun worshipper). I’m a cat enthusiast, and I just love learning, if I could be a perpetual student I would! Oh, and of course we both love to write. 🙂
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Hi, Marjorie! I’m the one to be thanking YOU for nominating me for this fun award. I do appreciate it very much. Sharing common interests is fun, isn’t it. Beachcombing, yes…sun on my skin, no. I’ve already had about 15 skin cancers removed, all from damage done to my skin as a child growing up before sunblock. So the sun and I aren’t friends. But otherwise, I do really love the beach. I don’t SWIM in any body of water that isn’t enclosed in turquoise concrete, but walking along the edge looking for curiosities is fun. 🙂
I have four cats, btw. Have had as many as nine at once, but that was long ago. I’m trying to get down to a more affordable TWO. Between the four cats and the two dachshunds, vet bills are ridiculous! Even just flea and heartworm meds are far too costly. Eeep.
Yes, learning new things every day, and writing are the BEST!! Thanks again for this award, and as soon as I can figure out how to display it in my sidebar, it will be there. I’m trying to do what I did before, following along on the widgets, but it isn’t working yet. 😦 I’m persistent, though. I’ll get there!
Have a great day!
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Hi Marcia! You sound like a fun person to know–although the legless bug thing…Anyways, I’m not sure what to do except “thank you,” I guess, go to my blog, and follow the rules! Hope to hear more from you! Please check out my website at http://belindamiller.me on WordPress.
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Hi, Belinda! I do my best to have some fun every day. It’s the only way I know to survive! 🙂 Glad you enjoyed the post, however, I’m just a little bit confused by your thanks. I’ve never been to your blog before, though I’m happy to know about it now, and my worry is that you might be thanking the wrong person for nominating you. Lots of this stuff is interlinked, so I want to be sure you don’t give me credit that should go to someone else.
At any rate, I’ll be checking out your blog soon, and I’m happy to meet you, no matter what. Hope you’ll enjoy looking around here. 🙂 Have a great day.
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Thank you for the nomination! We are truly honored-Long Awkward Pause
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My pleasure! I haven’t had time to visit as often as I like, but every time I stop by your blog, I enjoy it. Hope lots of others will, too.
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Thank you!
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Congrats! And thanks for nominating me! 🙂
I did a bit of beach combing myself recently, I like to find the interesting colored shells, though I’ve stopped taking them home with me, mostly. They seem happier on the shore.
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You’re welcome, Caitlin. This is strictly voluntary, of course, but if you find time to accept the award, it will be a lot of fun to read your post! 🙂 I don’t mind taking a reasonable amount of seashells, but I long, long ago gave up collecting live shells. (Collectors back then did that, so they’d have perfect shells that weren’t faded and worn. Of course, you have to get rid of the occupants to do so. Eeeww. 😦 ) I haven’t actually gone beachcombing in a long time, though I did pick up some broken bits of this and that when I went to visit Erin in Destin, last time. Just 2 or 3 broken scallop shells, really. 🙂
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Thank you, Marcia, for the kind mention and nomination. I admire how you didn’t waste time mourning over a closed door (in #7) and simply entered an open one.
Blessings ~ Wendy ❀
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You’re welcome, Wendy. If you find time to take part, I’ll look forward to reading your comments. And time is far too precious to waste fretting over things you can’t do anymore, isn’t it? I say move on to something new. Painting was always a substitution for writing, anyway, which I’d allowed others to get in the way of. (And I don’t mean when I was raising my kids, or anything. Just that my path was selected for me when I was young, and I didn’t have enough sense to stand up and choose for myself.) So…now I’m on the course I feel I was always meant to be traveling. Late, but hey…I’m having a heck of a journey, anyway. 🙂 Blessings to you, too!
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I loved, loved, loved finding out more about you.
It seems absolutely perfect that you turn out to be a tall drink of water!
You do have a way with a lot of words. LOL *said with cheer and genuine admiration*
We have a lot of similarities in our likes, Christmas, the sea edges, mountain country – although I will trade you all snakes for the spiders. I appreciate their eating of other bugs that bug me.
Thank you so much for the nomination. It means quite a bit that you think of me for your recommendations. I’ll see what I can do to follow up, but I get caught up in the following up of the recommendations to read. I have got to get out from behind this laptop one of these days!
Lovely, as always to see you BFF!
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Hiya, BFF! Great to see you here! I’m a tall…and now WIDE…drink of water. 😀 Fun to see what things we agree on, isn’t it? I don’t kill spiders, btw. If they are in my yard doing their job, they are safe. If they are in the house, Mark catches them and puts them outside. However, I must point out that snakes are every bit as valuable. Vermin would completely overrun us without them. I’m always happy to see my black racers, in particular. They are wicked good at catching mice and rats. And some of the smaller yard snakes even eat roaches. UGH. Talk about something I can do without! Besides, snakes are just so beautiful and graceful. I love watching them, and used to work with some when I was a docent at the Central Florida Zoo.
You are welcome for the nomination (well-deserved), but I understand the time constraints most of us live under. If you are able to take part, I’ll enjoy reading your post, but it is strictly voluntary. If you can’t make it happen, I still hope this post helps some new people discover your blog.
Lovely to see you, too! Have a wonderful week!
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Congrats on the nomination! 😀
I think having useless trivia is one of the best things to have. Great fun facts about yourself 🙂
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Hi, Mishka! If only I got paid by the POUND for all the useless facts in my head! I could buy my own mountaintop in North Carolina, somewhere! 😀 Glad you enjoyed the post, and nice to see you here, as always. Have a great week!
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