I Won a Blog Award!

My friend Kacie at Musings of a Farmer's Wife nominated me for a blog award :-) As exciting as it is, most of the blogs I read are big ones that aren't written by friends but by professional bloggers, so I don't know how well I can follow the rules. I'll do my best to keep the spirit of the award going, though! Here's how it goes.

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award and link back to his or her blog.

Thanks, Kacie! I'm honored you picked me out of your long list of blogs. Kacie lived with me for a while when she was in Starkville. She was there when Nathan and I first started dating, and she gave me a much-needed kick in the pants to get things going :-) Her blog is one of the first ones I started reading and it looked like so much fun I just had to start one too. Now she lives with her husband and daughter in the Mississippi Delta and gets to enjoy the slower pace of the South. I'm jealous!

2. Pass the award on to seven other bloggers who have a beautiful blog.

1. Audra at Little Moments with the Laneys. Way back when Nathan and I first got married, she told me I needed to start a blog so people could keep up with our new life. I like reading about her life as a busy mom. It gives me an idea of what to expect in a few (*ahem* SEVERAL *ahem*) years when Nathan and I start a family. I'm glad some of my friends do keep up with us. Now if I could just get my mom to keep up with it, too...

2. My vet school buddy Deborah at Lowcountry Local Foodie. Deborah writes about cooking with and growing local Hilton Head and regional ingredients. I LOVE food blogs. It makes me feel like I'm a better cook vicariously. That's totally logical, right? Right??? No? *sigh* Deborah just married a Captain in the Marines, a pilot named Doug. I wish I could have gone to the wedding. Stupid New York :-(

3. My Swedish big brother from my childhood, Hakan. I'm not even going to begin to try to write his actual blog title here, because, well, it's in Swedish. And my computer lacks the characters needed to type it out. I'll try to make the long story short. When I was four (1988), Hakan was a Swedish exchange student that my older brother convinced my Mom to take in. He lived with us during his senior year of high school and came back to visit once with his younger brother. With the development of the internet, he reconnected with my family through email, and then facebook. I learned that he had a blog and at first it was entirely in Swedish. I finally convinced him that I was a loyal "viewer" but would appreciate bits in English from time to time. Now I get to read about the horses he races and his Dutch Shepherd, Cooper, instead of just looking at their pictures.

4. My favorite fashion/J.Crew blog, jcbellemarie. I found her blog during a Google search for the legendary J.Crew Cherie cami. Maybe you had to be obsessed with that particular blouse to understand, but for many of us who drink the "crewlaid" (I love that word. We're so obsessed with J.Crew that we drink the koolaid. Get it? I'm such a nerd) trying to find one of them in your size was epic. Anyway, once I started reading her blog I fell in love with all the things that she buys that I can't afford. I want a Loehmann's.

5. The Tasty Kitchen Blog. This is the blog section of a fantastic website. They feature all types of recipes and the chefs/bakers/amateur food photographers who have perfected them. They also give away a ton of awesome kitchen stuff, like Kitchen Aid mixers and Le Cruset cookware.

6. Last but not least, Ree Drummond of the now world-famous The Pioneer Woman blog. She's hilariously quirky and puts it all out there for the entire blog world to see. She has tens of thousands of loyal blog followers, but she talks like she knows everybody by name. I think that's why people love her blog so much. She writes all kinds of hearty food recipes for her blog and takes pictures of every step so you can't mess things up. Seeing her photography encouraged me to get my feet wet, too. I'm still working on the whole photography thing, though. She lives on a cattle ranch with her husband, four punks (her word, not mine), and several dogs including a Basset Hound named Charlie. She's been in Southern Living, People Magazine (country edition, of course), on Fox & Friends, The View, and The Bonnie Hunt Show. I'm sure she's been in much, much, much more, but that's just since I started following her last September. Also, the story of how she and her husband met, fell in love, and got married is potentially being made into a movie. She might also be played by Reese Witherspoon. I will be the first person in line to buy a ticket. If you've never read her blog, check it out at least once.

Six is close enough. I made an effort.

3. Notify each blogger of the award.

4. Write seven things about yourself.

- I miss my husband. He's in Afghanistan until March 2011.

- I live in New York (state, not city). Thank you, US Army.

- I have two cats (Kitten and Captain) that are completely worthless, except when they function as lap warmers, purring machines, or laser pointer dot chasers.

- I'm a miserable failure as an interior decorator. I blame it on the fact that since I've been a married woman, I haven't lived in my own (non-parent-owned) place for more than six months. I tell myself that once I find a house here (not a lousy apartment with ugly carpet and plastic baseboards), I'll settle in. I'll let you know how that goes.

- I love to quilt!

- I desperately want some outdoor space so I can plant a garden. Windowsill gardening is not for me.

- If I could do whatever I wanted, I would sew and sell things on Etsy. Too bad I've got all that vet school debt to pay off.

That was an exhausting post to write! I don't know how P-Dub (Pioneer Woman) does it. She writes long stuff all the time.