Awards time!

In the last few weeks my blog received three awards! It’s so nice when people think of me and my blog when handing out awards! It boosts my blog’s self-esteem a lot!

So, here they are:

One lovely blog award

From Sarah, at Sarah Reads Too Much, I received the One Lovely Blog Award.

The rules for accepting this award are:

1. Accept the award. Post it on your blog with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2. Pay it forward to 15 other bloggers that you have newly discovered.

3. Contact those blog owners and let them know that they’ve been chosen.

Now, 15 is a bit much! I’ll pass this on to three other deserving bloggers:

• Suzanne from Bibliosue whom I’ve been following for quite some time now. I love the books she reads and reviews!
• Sabrina from Thinking About Loud. I like her blog and especially her recent series about her visit to London.
• Chris from Chrisbookarama. I’ve only recently discovered her blog, and I love the Princess Bride read-a-long that she’s organised.

Cherry on Top Award

From Sabrina at Thinking About Loud, I received the Cherry on Top award.

It comes with a few rules:

1. Answer this question: If you had the chance to go back and change one thing in your life, would you, and what would it be?

That is a very difficult question. I think: nothing! Honestly, I can’t think of one thing that I would have done differently, if I had the chance. I probably would do some things differently, just because I’m a slightly different person now than I was when I was younger. But there isn’t anything that I would like to change, looking back.

2. The second thing you have to do is, pick 6 people and give them this award. You then have to inform the person that they have gotten this award.

Again, I will stick to three:

• Jennifer of Reading with Tequila. I like all the special features she has going, like choosing her next book to read, or guessing who recommended a particular book. It’s one of the few blogs that I like to read even though we don’t have many books in common.
• Carin B. from A Little Bookish, for her Book Read Round the World feature and her very well attended Friday Coffee Chat.
• Amanda from Desert Book Chick. I just like reading her blog. More or less every single post!

3. The third and final thing is: thank the person who gave you the award.

Thanks, Sabrina, for this lovely award!

Versatile Blogger Award

Thank you Weekend Reader of Too Many Books, Too Little Time, for the Versatile Blogger award.

Here are the rules for the award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award.

See above.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

Seven things? Hmm, here we go:

• I recently joined Bookmooch, and I’m loving it! I’ve sent off several books that I didn’t want anymore but that I liked someone else to have, and got some back. If you want to friend me, I’m “boekblogger” on Bookmooch.
• Even I am a bit intimidated by the length of The Passage (almost 1,000 pages). Fat tomes usually don’t throw me at all, but this one… It’s good, so far, though.
• I have a constant fight with our garden. It’s too messy! I’ve vowed to fill (to the brim!) a large bin (we call it Kliko) every two weeks with cuttings, branches and weeds. If it’s ruins my garden, I don’t care. It’s too much of a jungle at the moment.
• I hardly ever play computer games lately. I used to play a lot of games on facebook but I’m totally finished with that. Other games (on Xbox etc.) I leave to the boys of the family.
• I don’t like eating sandwiches for lunch much. Although that is the standard thing to eat here in the Netherlands, when I’m at home, I often cook something simple instead, just for me.
• I’m doing a giveaway this weekend! Yay!
• One of my favorite foods is crackers with spicy cream cheese (we have a type of cream cheese that has sambal in which I love).
• I’m addicted to Cup-a-Soup mustard soup. I eat it at least once a day. My family hate the smell. But do I care!

I think you can tell it’s lunch time, from my answers!

3. Pass the award on to 10 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic.

Aw, I think I won’t. I have just awarded some other awards (see above) and I think it’s enough.
4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

So, no.

Thanks, everyone who awarded me. I always feel honored to get an award. And if you haven’t noticed, I put the award buttons on my side bar, towards the bottom you can see them.

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Awards: Things That Make Me Happy

My friend Novroz from Novroz Favorite Things tagged me with the Happy award. Thanks, Novroz!

My task is to write down 10 things that make me happy and pass on the award to fellow blogger(s). Let see – in just any order, really:

1. Not having to get up in the morning and waking up to find this out! The alarm clock is off but I wake at the usual time. No, it’s OK, I can go back to sleep. Ah, lovely!
2. Cooking with my sons (13 and 11). They really enjoy making food (special food, not standard evening meals) and I only need to guide them a little, they do the rest.
3. Turning my computer on in the morning and finding that many people have checked my blog (and left comments, the best part!).
4. A nice cup of tea and some plain chocolate (or plain with hazelnuts) – yummy!
5. Sitting around with my friends and some coffee. Just talking about this and that and not having to go anywhere.
6. Going for a cycle ride with my husband in the country side. Wind through our hair, sun on our face, the smell of grass and trees.
7. Putting my books in our new book cases. Well, this will happen in a few weeks, when the book cases arrive. Looking forward to it!
8. Shopping in IKEA. I like IKEA for having modern furniture and accessories, and because it’s so cheap, I can always afford buying a few things.
9. Dancing on 70s music (Abba, Bee Gees, Aretha Franklin).
10. Sitting in the bath with a good book. With the water level increasing as I keep adding hot water.

I’d like to pass this on to two other bloggers. I won books from both of them recently. And this actually also made me very happy. I love to win and I love books!

• Rikki from The Bookkeeper. I just love her blog! She has more than just reviews and that makes it varied and interesting.
• Amy from Amy Reads. She reads even more than me, and often books that I didn’t know about, but that look like I might enjoy them.

I also won the Versatile Blogger award, from Laurel-Rain Snow. Thanks, Laurel-Rain!

The award comes with some rules, which are:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them when creating the award post.
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Pass the award on to 15 recently discovered blogs.
4. Contact the bloggers to let them know about the award.

Seven things about me, after having just shared 10 things that make me happy? OK, there’s more….

1. I used to live in a pig sty. Yes, before it was rented out to students, the room I lived in was a pig sty. It had a very low ceiling which isn’t handy for someone who:
2. is 1.82 m or 6 foot tall.
3. I lived there for about 7 years. Six years of study plus part of a year after that.
4. I have an eternal fight with the weeds in the garden. We have a small front and a larger (but far from large) back garden. Because of all the recent rain, the weeds are winning.
5. I have no book cases in the living room. There is no evidence for a visitor that I read… unless they go to the attic, where several old (IKEA!) book cases are brimmed full of books.
6. But soon (see happy #7) I will be the proud owner of proper (non-IKEA) book cases. They take 10-12 weeks to arrive as they are made on order.
7. I really don’t like the Dutch way where hardly any furniture is in stock. We had to wait 16 weeks for our sofa. I mean, what were we supposed to sit on in the mean time?

Now, I’m not going to pass this award on to 15 other bloggers, but to a selected few. They are:

• Sabrina from About Happy Books, who celebrated her 2nd blog birthday this week, but her blog is quite new to me!
• Lydia from The Literary Lollipop, who I only discovered very recently but her blog looks very interesting.
• Dominique from Coffee Stained Pages, who reads and reviews a variety of books.

Congrats with your awards! I hope you will pass them on.

Award-Winning Blog Wins Again!

Dear readers,

Your blogger Leeswammes, already the proud owner of two awards (Award_1 and Award_2), has in recent weeks received awards yet again!

I received the Oh My Blog! award from Rikki at The Bookkeeper. She deservedly received this award herself, and was so kind to name my little self, as well as my good friends Carin B. from A Little Bookish and Zee from Notes from the North as new award holders.

Now, there are a few things I need to do in order to accept this award:

1. Get really excited that you got the coolest award EVER!
2. Choose ONE of the following options of accepting the OMB award:
   (a) Get really drunk and blog for 15 minutes straight, or for as long as you can focus.
   (b) Write about your most embarrassing moment.
   (c) Write a “Soundtrack of your childhood” post.
   (d) Make your next blog a ‘vlog’/video blog. Basically, you’re talking to the camera about whatever.
   (e) Take a picture of yourself first thing in the morning, before you do anything else (hair, make up, etc) and post it.
3. Pass the award on to at least three, but preferably more, awesome bloggers. Don’t forget to tell them.

So this is what I did:

Yes, I am excited! This is a very cool award. In fact, the coolest award EVER! ~ that should do it ~

Early Morning Picture

I choose option (e). I never get drunk, so option (a) would result in disastrous consequences, possibly including the health of my laptop. My most embarrassing moment (option b), let me tell you, there have been some VERY embarrassing moments in my life, but I have chosen to forget them and while I remember feeling exceedingly embarrassed on occasion, I cannot for the life of me remember what exactly it entailed. The soundtrack (option c): I’m not much into music, although BeeGees and SaturdayNightFever should tell you enough about my youth, and vlogging (option d) is not my style either (yet), so this leaves me with no choice but to go with option e: a picture of myself first thing in the morning.
This was not as daunting as it may seem at first, given that Rikki also chose this option and produced a picture of a quite reasonable looking woman. Whether the same can be said for my own early-morning picture, I leave to you, my readers.

Now, for the bloggers who also deserve the Oh My Blog! award:

1. Tes from Tes at Home who has the most delicious and inspiring Thai recipes on her blog.
2. Amanda from Desert Book Chick for her great posts on improving blogs and for living in Alice Springs.
3. Kristin from Peace, Love and Muesli for her thought-provoking posts on healthy eating (her thoughts are not always mine but that leads to interesting discussions).

I received the prestigious Versatile Blogger award from Zee at Zee’s Wordly Obsessions. It was the first time she got an award so I’m chuffed she chose me as one of the people to receive the award next! Thanks, Zee!

The rules for accepting this award are to pass it on to 15 other fabulous blogs that I have just discovered. I also have to link back to the person who gave me the award (as done above) and say 7 things about myself that you wouldn’t otherwise know…

Now, 15 blogs I find way too much. I think 3 blogs will do just fine. We have to keep this a distinctive award, don’t we?

Here are 7 things you may not know about me:

1. Like many people, I would love to be a novelist. I used to write stories when I was young (and young-ish) however recently I have decided that I have no real talent, so I should leave writing well alone.
2. I wrote my first poem at the age of 7, using a word (transl. “to seem”, Dutch: “blijken”) that I had only just learned. I was so proud of it. However, I don’t like poems much (to read or write) these days.
3. I have a PhD in Experimental Psychology.
4. I prefer reading to watching tv although I do like a good movie every now and then. And you can wake me up for Masterchef on the BBC!
5. For a long time, I’ve been researching my family tree. For the last 2 years I’ve not done much about it, but I have a website full of ancestors that people like to browse.
6. I am allergic to honey. It gives me stomach ache.
7. I run a book group of friends and friends of friends which meets every 2 months at someone’s house.

I would like to pass the award on to:

1. Charlotte from The Book on the Hill for her great features “French Friday” and “Book Blogging around the World”.
2. Nicole from Endless Adventures in Reading, whom I’ve known on Shelfari for ages and I recently found her book blog!
3. Daisy from Daisy’s Book Journal, who has such a lovely blog – and interesting books too!

I hope you’re all as chuffed as me for receiving an award. You deserve it!

Bodacious Blogger Award

Anna Marie from Anna Marie’s Corner awarded me with the Bodacious Blogger Award! Thank you so much, Anna Marie, it’s nice to be appreciated.

Here’s how it works:

If you are given this award you must first accept it by leaving a comment on the post you were nominated on. Then copy and paste the post and add it to your own blog.

Make a list of the last 5 books you read and pass the award on to 5 other bloggers (no backsies!). Please also identify the blog from which you got the award and don’t forget to tell your picks that they have a blog award!

I had to check what bodacious means exactly. Wikipedia says it means “remarkable, courageous, audacious, spirited“. Sounds good to me!

The last five books I read were:

• Under the Skin by Michel Faber, a book that starts normally but becomes odder and odder as you read on.
  
• Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, a detective story about pictures.
  
• Hässelby by Johan Harstad, another book that starts normally but getting odder and odder, too.
  
• The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, dystopia and philosophy.
  
• The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, dystopia for YA.
  

Five Must See Bodacious Bloggers:

• Rikki at The Bookkeeper (her posts are very varied and always interesting)
• Rachel at And the Plot Thickens (well-thought out posts, a variety of topics)
• Iris at Iris on Books (her posts are on novel and interesting topics)
• Carin at A Little Bookish (she’s sending books on a world tour!)
• Boof at The Book Whisperer (interesting reviews alternated with other posts)

Go forth and make new blog friends.