Forget the Golden Globes! I Won a Liebster!

What, you may ask is a Liebster Award? Glad you asked! The Liebster Award is given to blogs with less than 300 followers as a way of making them more well-known. I did some research to see if I could find out more about the origins of the Liebster, but didn't come up with much. Liebster means "dearest" in German and, according to this blog, the earliest mention of the award in a blog title was back in 2010 by a German blogger.

As an aside, I enjoy that a nice phrase like, "you are my dearest" can sound ominous and terrifying if spoken loudly in German. I just said, "Du bist mein liebster!" to the children and the Girl asked why I was going to eat her liver.

The rules of acceptance are:

1. Visit and thank the blogger who nominated you 
2. Acknowledge that blogger and link back.
3. Answer the ten questions posed by the blogger who nominated you.
4. Select three to five bloggers for the award.
5. Pose ten new questions to the new nominees.
6. Post the award on your blog.

So, first and foremost, thank you to my friend and fellow blogger, Erica at EricaFinds for nominating me for the Liebster. Erica has tips and deals, primarily dealing with fitness and healthy living. Check her out!

Here are the questions that she sent me along with my answers:

1. What was your first blog post about and why? My first blog post was just entitled "Welcome!" and it introduced people to me and my goals for the blog. I wrote the first post on a total whim because I had been working on a novel (because I am a cliche) and was getting depressed about my progress, the subject matter, and the isolation of the writing process. I felt like I needed some feedback on my writing, but I wasn't ready to have anyone read the novel, so I started the blog.
2. When I'm not blogging, I like to ___________. Sleep. I also like to read, spend time with my family, and shoot dice.
3. What do you want to be when you grow up? I would like to be better at what I'm doing now and actually make money doing it.
4. What are your three go-to websites that you visit every day? In total honesty: People Magazine, Us Weekly, and The New York Times. I surprised you with that last one, didn't I? I get ideas from all three and they surprisingly inform each other in unexpected ways. I also check Facebook and Pinterest, both of which I love irrationally. They are like a boyfriend who destroys your self-esteem by making you feel fat, stupid, and untalented, but is also charismatic, popular, and fun to be around. 
5. If I put your ipod on shuffle, what would I likely hear? You would probably hear nothing because your head would explode from the pure randomness of the selections. Since the K's music, my music, and the children's music is all in one library, you would likely hear selections from Todd Snyder, Johnny Cash, NWA, Laurie Berkner, the Chipmunks, Beyonce, Madonna, Britney Spears, and They Might Be Giants.
6. Fiction or non-fiction? Fiction.
7. Salty or sweet? Sweet.
8. If I could visit any place this year it would be___________. Germany, to track down the origin of the Liebster award.
9. And I would take______________. The whole family so that the Girl would learn that "Du bist  mein lieber" doesn't have anything to do with eating liver.
10. What should I look forward to reading about on your blog this year? Particle physics. No, just kidding. I don't even know what that is. So, I think you might read some of my fiction. I'd like to finish the aforementioned novel which is probably a piece of poorly-written crap, but so are the entire "Twilight" series and the "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy so there's hope for me. *Note to self: add bondage and vampires to novel. 

So, my next task is to select three to five other recipients of the Liebster award. This is hard because most of the blogs I follow probably have more than 300 subscribers. I guess that I'm just a lemming. My choices are:

1. Maureen at Blue Mopheads
2. Sarah at Mama Esq.
3. Elizabeth at Scheduling Spontaneity

Maureen is my local blogging friend, so we do what we can to support each other in this endeavor. Unfortunately, neither of us really knows what we're doing, so we end up just asking each other questions and Googling to find the answer. Sarah is a friend of Sister's and has just posted a handful of times, but she is funny, funny, funny. So, if you go over to see her encourage her to write more. Elizabeth and I are on the same mom listserv and she's got some interesting and funny things to say about being a mom in graduate school. 

Here are the ten questions for them to answer:

1. If you could have any super power, what would it be?
2. What has been the proudest moment in your life so far?
3. If you could go to any point in history, what would it be and why?
4. Did you have an imaginary friend as a child?
5. What is the best thing about blogging?
6. What is the worst thing about blogging?
7. People would be surprised to know that I ________________.
8. What is your favorite movie?
9. Beach or mountains?
10. Cats or Dogs?

Could you tell that most of these question are cribbed straight from a Pinterest pin called, "20 Date Night Questions"? I kind of think that if one resorts to looking up questions on Pinterest to ask one's significant other, things might not be going so well in the relationship. 

Congratulations to Maureen, Sarah, and Elizabeth, the three newest Liebster award recipients! Use your power wisely.