The Liebster Award

I am honored to say that I received a blogging award!  Thank you to Sarah, over at All Things Blogs.

German word meaning "dearest or beloved"

The Liebster Award an award for bloggers, given by bloggers.  The special thing about this award is that it is just for an up and coming blog with 200 followers or less.  I certainly have less than 200 followers--and I appreciate each one of them--and I hope that I can be classifies as "up and coming"!  I certainly enjoy blogging and don't have any plans to stop anytime soon.




Now, for a quick pause for full disclosure--I did a bit of Googling (and Swagbucking) to see if I could find the origin of this award.  And I couldn't.  This leads me to believe that it is somewhat of scam or "blogging's answer to the chain letter" as Ruth put it.  Also, as Heck of a Guy points out, "The Award is of recent origin. If each winner required a month to re-reward the Liebster, after one year more than 89762301673555230720 blogs would be flashing the Liebster prize."  Yeah . . . However, I can find no fault in highlighting other blogs that I like who happen to have a smaller following. So I will continue.




Here are the rules for this award:


1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog
2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog
4.  Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed
5. Let them know they've been chosen by emailing/commenting on their blog.


I must admit, it took me a little while to come up with these five.  I read quite a few blogs--my Google Reader is chock full of them--but most of them have pushed past the 200 followers mark.  Most of those that haven't are the more personal blogs of friends and loved ones.  Here are five that I like that are at least close to the parameters of this "award":




A note to awardees--I will not be offended at all if you don't wish to continue this chain, err, present this award to others, but I decided to do it for fun--at the worst it's a little free publicity for you.


Siestas and Sewing
Cindy has some mad sewing skills.  I came across her looking through a crafty link party.  I love that she even makes her kids super cute swimsuits.  

Petals to Picots

If you read my blog at all you know I love to crochet--Kara's blog is a fun place for tips, inspiration, how to's, and a great place to party! 

Pixie Pattern and Sewing

Tiffany has a great list of pattern companies, a page of giveaways, besides being a talented seamstress--just check out this purse!

Schmitty's Soapbox
While Schmitty and I don't necessarily have the same taste in music and movies, we do have some overlaps and I am always curious to see what he has to say.  Besides, you have to love a guy that encourages you to watch The Princess Bride and simultaneously endorses heavy metal.  




For #5, I will mention two blogs by one blogger, Liz.  Frugally Blonde and the only one of its kind, Catholic Deals are both awesome resources for the budget conscientious.  Frugally Blonde is the blog that got me serious about couponing.

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. For whatever reason, I haven't posted anything new in a week!  Shame on me.  I did start a couple of posts, but they are sitting dejectedly in my draft box.  I certainly plan on eventually publishing them, it just is the "eventually" part.
2. Catherine got a little cold this week.  Poor thing.  She seems to be on the mend now.  Sadly, being ill has wrecked her sleeping habits.  One night this week she was up at least once an hour, sometimes more.  She also skipped her (only) nap three days.  I am really hoping that as she gets better so does her sleeping.
3. I changed my Linked In profile.  Finally.  I still had myself working as a receptionist.  Even if I have no intention of going "on the market" any time in the near future, I should still have an updated internet resume!  
4. I think that I will make my version of Curried Carrot soup tonight.  It is based off of Rachael Ray's soup.  I will add some broccoli and celery and a little extra onion because I don't have vegetable stock--I just add water, so the extra flavors are nice.  I also don't add any cayenne pepper and only put about one and a quarter tablespoons of curry powder in it; for me that gives it plenty of kick.  Of course, Peter could go for more, but I have to be able to eat it too!  Oh, and obviously, I switch out the sour cream for mozzarella, because sour cream is yucky.  
5.  For Christmas my wonderful hubby got me a Kindle.  It is so awesome!  I love so much about it.  I've also loved the amount of free books that are available.  Amazon has a bunch that are free; some for a limited time and some seem to always be free.  The library has proven to be an excellent source for material also. Although, they aren't incredibly consistent with their collection.  I've looked into a couple of series and they aren't complete.  I have a post in my draft section about Kindles . . . 
6. I just finished reading "The Help" on my Kindle.  I loved it.  I think that sometime I should dedicate an entire post to it . . . 
7. I finished three of the started craft projects I wrote about last week.  Here is a teaser picture of two of the scarves; one blue and one a multi-purple.

The lighting is really bad.  I am hoping to take better pictures this weekend--when the
sun is up and the hubby can help wrangle the toddler.  That's my hope, anyways!

Check out more "7 Quick takes" here.