“The Liebster Award has German origins. The word liebster has several definitions: dearest, sweetest, kindest, nicest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, welcome, sweetheart and boyfriend.

It aims to discover new bloggers and welcome them to the blogosphere. Bloggers award other bloggers.”

My friend over at Love Shack Baby nominated me a loooooooooooooong time ago, but she nominated me all the same – it’s time to catch up! Thank you! I’m flattered and honoured, it’s always good to hear nice things about your blog!  Sounds prestigious right? Well, I guess it is in blogging circles. The award is sort of like a chain letter of the blog world.  (The ‘rules’ are at the bottom of this post)

10 Random facts about me:

1. I am left handed.  I believe that some day, lefties will conquer the world.  Ok, ok, that last bit was for dramatic effect.  Mostly.

2. When I was little, I was published in Bunty Magazine.  I used to collect every issue, I won a bubble Barbie and, if I look really hard in my parents ‘stuff’, I’ll find the issue that I’m published in.  Just a letter to the editor or something, but it totally made my whole year!

3. I want to be a doer of good deeds – on a super hero level.

4. I’m big in to word association.  I often find that when I talk to people, they’ll say a buzz word or trigger a word association that will bring me to a song.  If the person I’m talking to is my husband, I may even burst out in song.  If it isn’t my hubby that I’m talking to, I’ll likely have the song stuck in my head all day.

5. In school, I was a klutz.  Every fall, I’d go back to school and teachers would ask me what bones I’d broken over the summer.  Roller blading, my sister learning Tae Kwon Do, tripping up steps…I was ridiculous.  I’m still klutz-esque, but I’ve hopefully, outgrown the worst of it.

6. Keanu Reeves was my first boy-crush.  I must have watched Speed about 500 million times.  I’m not even joking.

7. My favorite movie is The Mighty Ducks.  All of them.  I cry at the end of the second one, it’s where my obsession with hockey began, I fancied Banks, and Charlie Conway and I can recite a lot of the words from them.  They make me irrationally happy and I can’t wait to share these films with my son!

8.  Two of my favorite friends in life, have already passed away.  One of whom was my first love.

9. I have an overactive imagination.  I can’t read or watch horror stories/films, because my mind runs away with itself.  Like checking behind the door and shower curtain, leaving lights on kind of running away with itself.

10. I’m a lucid dreamer.  I can tend to remember what I’ve been dreaming about the night before.  Pregnancy dreams were hell.

10 Questions from Billi to answer:

1- What is your favorite thing to blog about?

Houston, and Texas.  People tend to slate on Texas, Texas gets a bad rap within the USA.  It’s not seen as a vacation destination, it’s not seen as having much to offer the world – but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Texas is rich in culture and history, it has a wide palette of foods and flavors and the people are polite, welcoming and friendly.  I love exploring our home state, I love discovering things that even Houstonians haven’t seen or heard of, and sharing my amazing experiences with the people both here in Houston and further afield.

Like the train ride we took through the East Texas forest, in November, or the food truck sub-culture.  Texas has something for everyone, you just have to be open to finding it.

2 – What are your feelings about dogs sleeping in bed with their owners?

I don’t really have feeling about dogs sleeping in bed with their owners.  Whatever floats your boat.  When we’ve dog sat, I find they are too hot and territorial and I end up dangling off the end of the bed if they sleep in bed with me.  As a child, we were never allowed to have our pets upstairs, or in bed with us, they weren’t even allowed on the sofa most of the time.

3 – What is your favorite memory ages 13-16?

School plays and choir.  I have always loved singing, our school choir was competitive, fiercely competitive.  We competed in Fees competitions, we competed in the UTV School choir of the year and my school and drama group plays were pretty spectacular for amateurs.  I think back on all of our musical accomplishments, the dancing, the singing, the costumes, the relentless rehearsals, the tonsillitis, with serious nostalgia.  I loved every second of it and miss it!

4 – Could you see yourself as a life coach?

I don’t think so, I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a life coach.  My friend Marie is a life coach and she’s wayyyyyy better at that kind of thing than me.  In fact, I think most people are!

5 – Are you looking forward to anything in particular in 2015?

Yes! Color me predictable, but since we now have an additional family member, I’m looking forward to a lot of things with him.  His first birthday, showing him parts of the world, and all of the milestones in between.

6-  What is a must-have in your kitchen?

Kitchen Aid mixer.  Without a doubt it’s my Kitchen Aid mixer.  Ok, ok, rewind.  A good cooker/oven/stove – I don’t have that.  Our stove is older than I am, it’s awful.  It has a metal element on top and bottom and it over cooks some things, under cooks others and sets parchment paper on fire.  It’s a riot – no really.  If you have a reasonably modern and fully operational stove, then a Kitchen Aid is a must-have, mine is five years old and I use it ALL THE TIME.  Col loves when I use my Kitchen Aid.

7 – Favorite mode of transportation?

Driving, or, being driven.  Preferably in a 1994 black Toyota Supra with the roof off, along the coast of Northern Ireland on a rare sunny day.  Driving is something we both miss here, the scenery isn’t very scenic, the drivers are largely bat-sh*t crazy, and driving is here, is just to get from point A, to point B.  I miss leisurely drives with Col, along beautifully picturesque countryside in a beautiful car.

8 – Have you ever had a nickname that you really hated?

YES! I went through a phase in school of making people call me Lassie, because I hated my first name.  Once that phase of my life was over, I went back to my first name and HATED when someone called me Lassie.

9 – What was your happiest moment today?

Watching my son sit and play happily with four other little infants.  He hasn’t been exposed to many other kids, we haven’t yet found a mothers day out scheme with an open spot for a baby of his age, so it’s normally just the two of us, and occasionally Eloise, or Oliver or an older little person.  Today, today he sat and played and shared his toys and tried to plant open mouthed kisses on the other little boys and girls.  It warmed my heart.

10 – Would you rather decorate handmade cards or cut out snowflakes?

Cards.  Always cards.  I love, love, love card making, I haven’t done it in a while as firstly we were moving country (then not-moving) and then I got sick during pregnancy and was in and out of hospital and then came Lewis, so my crafting time is practically non-existent, but I do love making cards.

My nominees

Lekki at A Scientists Life

Brandie at The Rambler

Liz at Letters to a baby bear

My Questions for my nominees:

1. Name three things that are on your bucket list.

2. Name one food that you can’t possibly live without.

3. What was your favorite toy as a child?

4. Name one app that you can’t live without and why.

5. What is your favorite movie?

6. What is your biggest pet peeve?

7. Why did you start blogging?

8. What is one of your fondest memories?

9. What is your favorite recipe?

10. What is your theme song?

The Rules:

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:

1. Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.

2. Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)

3. Answer 10 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.

4. Provide 10 random facts about yourself.

5. Nominate up to 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)

6. Create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.

7. List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)