The Beautiful Blogger Award

I was writing a nutritional research paper for school when I heard the familiar “ding” come from my phone – I’ve got mail!  Most of the time, it’s just spam.  However, this time, I received a message from the wonderful Kate at callmekatecooking.  The message said that she nominated our blog for The Beautiful Blogger Award!  Wow!

I discovered that The Beautiful Blogger Award is awarded for creativity, originality, and overall contribution to the blogging community.  What makes this award special is that it’s awarded by your peers.  It’s incredibly humbling to find out that what you have to say on a daily or weekly basis is appreciated by others.  So, thank you Kate!  And a big thanks to Stacey!  Her recipes are fantastic – MUCH better than I could ever come up with.  They’re also the most popular hits on the blog!

So, how the award works is that you nominate others for the award (I’ve seen anywhere from 12 – 15), and write 7 things about yourself.  Unfortunately, I can’t nominate Kate as she already won the award.  Also, this blog is pretty new, so in all honesty, I couldn’t come up with 15 blogs.  There are a lot of great blogs out there.  So, I would like to nominate 3 blogs that I find myself going back to time and time again.

1) Cocoandtea – Katie calls her blog “just another lifestyle blog,” but it’s more than that. She passionately writes about health, fitness, cooking, education, politics, art, culture, entertaining and her travels.

2) AllThingsHotPink – Molly is passionate about preventing and supporting research for cancer. Her goal is to enlighten people about what they can do to better their health and to prevent cancer from affecting their lives. It’s a noble cause.

3) GlutenFreeGus – Everytime I go to this blog, I get hungry! Pam has all kinds of yummy recipes for those who need or want to eat gluten-free. For anyone with Celiac disease, this site is a must.

7 things about JoJo:

1) I’m a workaholic.  I love to do a LOT of things.  I’m into fitness, nutrition, volleyball, knitting and designing knitwear, cross-stitch, needlepoint, music, gardening, movies, reading everything I can get my hands on, and loving my 3 cats.  I have more hobbies than I have time.  Yet, I still keep trying to fit it all into a 24-hour day.

2) I love to learn.  I have more degrees than anyone needs, but I love to learn new things.  My parents keep asking me when I’m going to stop going to school.  The answer is… probably never. There’s still so much to learn!

3) I love to be creative.  I’ve tried to start my own knitting business with Bluegrass Fiber Arts. However, school keeps me so busy that I haven’t really gotten the business off the ground yet.  I love starting with a ball of yarn and creating something useful from it.  When school ends in April, I’m committed to moving forward with this idea.

4) I love my gardens.  When I bought my house over 20 years ago, there weren’t many gardens on the property.  Over the years, I changed that!  It takes me an entire week to plant and groom my gardens every spring.  My favorite is my edible garden – I have strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and all kinds of herbs plus my tomatoes and green peppers so I can have fresh, organic foods in the summer.

5) I’m something of a slob.  My mother is a neat-freak and just doesn’t understand, but when I think of all the things I want to do in a day, cleaning just isn’t one of them.  When it gets too bad, I go on a complete cleaning frenzy.  Of course, with 3 cats, it gets dirty again pretty quickly.

6) I studied in Madrid for a summer.  One of my degrees is in Spanish, so when I had the opportunity to study in Spain, I jumped at it.  While I’ve had a lot of great experiences in life, my memories of the summer I spent in Spain are the ones I think about over and over.  (Btw, Stacey – I can’t roll my R’s, either!)

7) I’m also a screenwriter.  Have you ever watched a movie that was so bad that you thought you could do better?  Well, I did it!  Turns out, screenwriting is a lot harder than it looks.  Plus, it’s a difficult industry for film writers.  What you wrote is probably not what ends up on the screen.  I give a lot of respect to working screenwriters.  Its a tough job.

From Stacey:

I am incredibly humbled by this nomination!  It is truly rewarding to be picked out of a sea of blogs by other wonderful bloggers.  Thanks to Kate for nominating No Excuses Health for the Beautiful Blogger Award, as well as JoJo and of all you lovely ladies and gents for letting me share my love of life and healthy cooking with you every Friday!

7 Interesting Things About Stacey:

1) I grew up an extremely shy child.  Seriously, I was won’t-go-in-a-store-alone-for-a-pack-of-gum shy.  When I was in eighth grade, my homeroom teacher suggested that I run for class president, and after four years of being involved in several extracurricular activities and student government, I emerged extremely outgoing.  I doubt I’d be where I am today if I hadn’t been silly enough to take her advice!

2) I am a music fanatic, through and through.  Some of my favorite memories revolve around or involve music.  Furthermore, I am a complete band geek.  I can play seven instruments and was voted “Most Musical” in my high school’s graduating class.  Bonus factoid: I have been to band camp somewhere around ten times. (Cue your American Pie inspired jokes here.)

3) I have been a bit of an environmentalist since a very young age.  For example, I organized a boycott on my middle school cafeteria once when they started using Styrofoam plates and used to make my family time their showers.  Admittedly, there are several photos of the adult me hugging trees.

4) I couldn’t take Spanish in middle or high school because I cannot roll my R’s. I just can’t do it. So, j’ai appris à parler français.

5) When I moved to Cincinnati a few months ago, a new good friend of mine introduced me to roller derby and she inspired me to learn how to roller-skate for the first time in my life – – at the age of 26. (More on this tomorrow!)

6) I LOVE peanut butter.  Maybe too much.  I view most other things as mere vehicles for peanut butter.

7) In the sixth grade, I was given an award entitled, “Most Likely to Have an Interesting Story.” I hope that you guys think that was a title well-deserved. 

Thank you Kate and everyone who follows and reads this blog!  A big cyber-hug to you all!