A Whole Lotta Love on a Friday -Encore Performance

The crowd are chanting and stomping their feet in a demanding way. There’s no time to catch your breath. Get out there and pelt out a couple more tunes. You will go down in history as legends. Of that, I am sure.

This is the final set and Charles is first to take to the stage. He is a true legend in every sense of the word and can rock this joint all on his own. I’ll let him take the mic now; that is if all the Windemere characters will let him get a word in.

The rules are as follows;

1.The Nominee of the Wonderful Team member Readership Award shall display the logo on his/her blog.
2.The Nominee shall nominate 14 readers they appreciate over a period of 7 days, all at once or little by little.
3.The Nominee shall name his/her Wonderful Team Member Readership Award nominees on a post or on posts during 7 days.

Over a period of 7 days (1 week), the Nominee shall nominate a number of readers that he or she appreciates – this can be done at any rate during the week. It can be all on one day or a few on one day and a few on another day, as most convenient to the Nominee.

The Nominee shall name his or her Wonderful Team Member Readership Award nominees on a post or on posts during the 7 day (1 week) period.

(I’ll do my nominations at the end of this post).

I am sure the spotlight will love Kimberly as much as she used to love being in it. She’s all pumped waiting in the wings so without further adieu I’ll let her strut her stuff. She might perform a tanka or a haiku tonight. She makes music with her words and paints pictures with her poems.

Patty is ready to make magic with her poetrics and the image and light show to go with it will astound you.

Thanks so much for this award. I need some sunshine right now as we head into Winter. As I’ve already received this award please check out Words for JP if you need the award rules.

It will be a bittersweet ending as the night comes to a close. There’s two more fabulously awesome people doing a duet for the last tune of the night. Time to raise those lighters high into the air as John and Kira close out this cast of brilliant artists.

The words will flow and the clarity of the message in this song will speak for itself. All you need to do is listen to the words from within.

The Rules:

• Thank the Super Sweet Blogger that nominated you.
• Answer five Super Sweet questions. (see below)
• Include the Super Sweet Blogging award image in your blog post.
• Nominate a baker’s dozen (13) other bloggers.
• Notify your nominees on their blog.

The 5 Super Sweet Questions:

1. Cookies or Cake? Mmmmm Cookies. Num, num, num, num.
2. Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocaholic
3. Favorite Sweet Treat? Fudge, that’s a hard choice.
4. When do you crave sweet things the most? Right before bed which is a no-go.
5. Sweet Nick Name? Telly.

And the nominees are:

Get Me Rewrite

 Kori Miller

 Sonya Monica

  J T Weaver

  Naomi Whitacre

 Sterling Arthur Leva

 Emma Newman

Victoriablt

 Discovering Dimes

 Starlarosa

 The Jogging Dad

  Urban Wallart

Reaching Utopia

Phew! That was phenomenal.

Ok guys. I think that’s the end. It was absolutely mind-blowing. I think I’m all rocked out. Please don’t invite me to another concert for a while. I’m afraid I’m getting too old for this.

Kelly ♥

My Dream Lover

Sweet dreams, my love.

Dreams can be fun. They can also be heart-pounding scary. Others are hallucinations of sorts. Dreams where you are falling are supposed to be bad. Some are a wake up call and others should be given no heed at all. The worst is when you’re in the middle of a really good one………..BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Time to wake up.

I have had a dream. It wasn’t as awe-inspiring as Martin Luther King’s (whose speech I love and I wasn’t even born when he delivered it). On Saturday night I dreamt that Steve, my husband of 7 years, was gone. Not gone as in ‘not here anymore’ but gone as in ‘had left me’. Now I’m not a big dream analyst and I haven’t even Googled it to see what it might have meant (dreams are sometimes really not about what they’re about at all). To me it was clear that my subconscious was sending me a message through a megaphone.

This, combined with reaching a milestone got my brain ticking in overdrive.

It ticked right back to the beginning of this adventure. Not my journey through life. I love to talk but not that much. But here’s just a little history to unveil the mystery of me:

• I am an almost-40 wife and mother of two boys. I am a teacher, sister and aunty.
• I am a recovering perfectionist, perpetual clean freak and don’t like hats but wear many virtual ones.
• My home is in South Australia and I love where I live.
• I’m an ideas person until I pick the crap out of them and realise it won’t/can’t work long-term.
• I suffer from the S.A.D.S (seasonal affective disorder/syndrome). Winter gives me the shits. I am a heat seeker that must have a vitamin D deficiency.
• I LOVE to laugh and do nowhere near enough of it.
• I stay away from bad news on TV. I’m a fairweather friend of news reports who finds it difficult to process all the bad things in the world that I can’t fix.

I am also a lover of words. English, specialising in children’s literature, was my major at University. I.T was my minor. I crave to write like a druggie craves the next fix.

I am a visual person too. My first love was Art, particularly Design. I wanted to ‘be a Graphic Designer’. Teaching was my second choice (yeah, I know-‘those who can’t do, teach’).

So I packed my bindle and off I set. I know it’s not a big deal but I am autodidactic by nature. Someone who seeks out new things to teach themselves. Free Little Words began on January 1st this year after I’d thought about starting one for nearly 12 months. It has been awesome, to say the least. I have learnt bucket loads and it won’t stop here (this isn’t a goodbye speech).

I am coming full-circle back to the dream nightmare now. Change is called for by me (these next two paragraphs are a bit whingey if you’d like to skip them). This blogging stuff takes a lot of time. We all know that. Anything worth doing can’t be completed in a jiffy. For me, I know I need to streamline the way I do things to ensure it takes as little time as possible while still doing a fantastic job. I don’t start something and not finish it to the best of my ability.

I don’t want to lose my husband (he assures me he’s not going anywhere) and I don’t want to take time away from my kids (after their bed time is the usual time reserved for all things bloggable). The other day I spent six hours looking for the right image for a post. I know, six hours. Ridiculous! Did I find it? No, because it didn’t exist. So I made it myself because it had to be right (I did say I was a recovering perfectionist). When I started my blog I did all my images myself. That was the time consuming part. Here’s the perfect example. I used to let the image do the talking as I wasn’t sure what to say. I pumped out 54 words on that post. Like when meeting a new friend, I was shy and hung back. Now I find it hard to keep under 400 words. All of my images have come from the internet now for quite some time but I have lost that sense of uniqueness. And all of that is just to complete my post. One must not forget the importance of the Reader, commenting, replying to comments, finding the next awesome blogger you wanna hang out with and please don’t let a negative word escape my lips about the time taken to complete awards.

So I’m going to go back to where I started, where the enjoyment was. The only difference this time is I’ll be drawing them not photographing. I love taking a line for a walk as you never know where it will take you. I’m going to take baby steps and do one a week.

I’ve got other plans I want to implement but I’ve word bashed everyone enough for now so I’ll leave it there.

 P.S Heartfelt thanks to Teacher 2 Mum who should understand why and Making It Through Monday who made my Monday Tuesday.

Dream a little dream of love.

Images from: here and here.

Love in Da Club

I’m feelin’ the love in the club tonight.

The night club days might be over but this club I’ve joined doesn’t involve a hangover in the morning. For the bloggers who know the ‘me’ I have revealed here on WP the love for my boys will be back soon. Just for a short while it’s going to be all about me and you. If you’ve stopped in here for the first time I’d like if you’d check out a couple of older posts to see what normally goes on around these parts.

I was excited to join the ‘200 club’ this week thanks to those individuals recognising that I have/had written something worthy of reading. It left me posing more questions than having answers though. Soon after reaching this milestone I began thinking about the next one. How many followers would I like before I was happy? Then I read this post called The More at Linda G Hill’s blog. Reading this and other ‘direction arrows’ had me driving to an unknown destination and got me thinking….

Today I felt as if I was following the ‘signs’ but I didn’t know where I headed. I did a lot of thinking today, not much reading and no writing until now. I had to get a handle on all the new stuff that was going on in my head. Then Kira at Wrestling Life reminded me of another reason why I’m here. In her post about a type of Welsh poetry, I commented, ‘Words that don’t come out through my fingers end up coming out of my mouth. They’re the ones that get me in more trouble. That’s one of the reasons why I write.’

And finally there was this post from The Evolving Dad where he talked about not trying so hard and that some of the best posts are the best just because. The flow from the fingers and don’t involve as much thought and planning. I know someone who does this amazingly well. Her name is Kimberly and she was one of my first followers. Her poetry paints pictures, neither of which I can do. Words for JP is where she resides if you’d like to join her there.

And finally for tonight is a plea to all the you Fantasy readers out there. Charles over at Legends of Windemere has his first book on Amazon. You could go and have a look at his site first or go straight here to buy the book for Kindle or in paperback.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another post that is off-topic but is something I need to do before I can choose where it is I am going from here.

Once again I would like to send a big thankyou to each and every blogger who works tirelessly to ensure that their content is king (I’d send flowers but unlike a ‘thank you’ they would end up in the bin).

I’ll be playing catch up tomorrow on my reader and comments. I haven’t forgotten you!

Blogging love to all.

Kelly

Images from: here, here and here.

Loyal Love

Love is loyal.

Loyalty should be rewarded and that is why I would like to thank Kim at words4jp’s blog (again) for including Free Little Words in her list of blogs/boggers that ‘show a strength of resolve’. Some days it does not feel as if I’m deserving of this title but strength is something I find daily in other blogs, like Kim’s, which inturn strengthens my resolve.

Continuing the Dragon’s Loyalty Award traditions I must now:

• Display the Award Certificate on your website.
• Announce your win with a post and link to whoever presented you with the award.
• Present 15 awards to deserving bloggers.
• Drop them a comment to tip them off after you have linked them in the post.
• Post 7 interesting things about yourself.

7 interesting things about me might be stretching the truth a little but here goes:

1.  I am afraid of heights but have skydived.

2.  I am an aunty on my side but not my husband’s side yet.

3.  Purple is my favourite colour but I can’t wear red.

4.  I was born with chocolate brown eyes but they changed to hazel.

5.  I live in the suburbs but it feels like a little slice of country (quiet, rural outlook, sheep at the back fence).

6.  I have had a koala walk right past me while sitting outside at night but didn’t have my camera handy.

7.  My mum named her children with the same starting letter. My sister continued the tradition with her kids but I broke it with mine.

Now the part that I love the most-nominating 15 other blogs. I’ve chosen to nominate 15 blogs that have shown loyalty to my blog. When I take a gander at my stats I am constantly amazed that only three months in and I have nearly 200 followers! It astounds me that people value what I tap onto the screen each day. So here’s to many of my ‘loyals’-some visit me every day-thank you for helping keep me strong.

Laurie’s Notes
Teacher to Mum
GAME4LEARNING
Biljanazovkic
M & A’s World
Mama Bear Musings
Inside My Glitching Mind
Parenting and Stuff
Magical Mayhem
Miss Marzipan
South Forty Rocks
valeriudgbarbu
Ray Ferrer-Emotion on Canvas
Humanity777
Cruising Through My Life

Of course, do what you wish with your award. Some of you have stated you are no longer passing on awards. That’s cool but I think it is still important to acknowledge your blogging efforts.

Love to you and your loyal followers,

Kelly.

A Versatile Kinda Love

I just love the word versatile.

I would like to thank Kimberly at Words for JP for my 6th award this month. If you haven’t popped over to Kim’s please wander in and be prepared to stay a while. This lady renders me incapable of speaking with her poetry. I don’t comment often because I wouldn’t know what to say other than ‘wow’ and that would get redundant after a short while. If there was a ‘like’ button that was in caps I would click it every time.

The requirements for this award are as follows:

• Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
• Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy — if you can figure out how to do it.
• Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
• Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to this site.
• Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

7 things about me you may not already know:

1. Faced with an entire block of chocolate to myself I’d still only eat a few squares.
2. I am surrounded by three very strong males: Bull (Taurus), Lion (Leo) and a Ram (Aries). My star sign is Sagittarius-The Archer.
3. I am the least funny of all my friends but they are true friends as they still laugh at my jokes.
4. My family and I live in the southern suburbs of South Australia.
5. I plan never to post photos of my children on my blog (which I’ll go into in a later post).
6. I love creating of any sort: art, craft, music, dance and writing but am no good at some.
7. The spotlight and I are not comrades.

This may be a little controversial but I do not intend on following the guidelines to the letter. This is the part where you’d normally see the list of 15 blogs I would highly recommend you go and take a gander at. ‘Er, where’s the list, you say? Please read on.

I’d like to extend a warm invitation to all bloggers who visit this page to add a blog of their choice in the comments box. Whether it’s your first time round these parts or you’re part of the furniture, please feel free to suggest away. It could be your own or one that you would highly recommend to me. Add multiple blogs if you wish. This is open-ended time wise and not limited to the normal 15. All I ask is that you put in the link instead of just the blog name so I can link straight to it.

I assure this is not a case of lazy blogger syndrome. I would love nothing more than to further my reading in as many corners of WP as possible. Once I have visited a blog I can create my list and do a pingback to each site. So I will be doing what the award asks-just in reverse order this time.

Gee, I really am versatile!

Lots of love

Kelly

Best Moment Award-Love the ‘Like’

Awarding the people who live in the moment,

The noble who write and capture the best in life,

The bold who reminded us what really mattered –

Savoring the experience of quality time.

RULES:

Winners re-post this completely with their acceptance speech. This could be written or video recorded.

Winners have the privilege of awarding the next awardees! The re-post should include a NEW set of people/blogs worthy of the award; and winners notify them the great news.

RESOURCES:

• What makes a good acceptance speech?
  • Gratitude. Thank the people who helped you along the way
  • Humor. Keep us entertained and smiling
  • Inspiration. Make your story touch our lives
• Get an idea from the great acceptance speeches, compiled in MomentMatters.com/Speech
• Display the award’s badge on your blog/website, downloadable in MomentMatters.com/Award

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

I would like to thank Stacie at MingoMomma for including Free Little Words in the list of blogs she deems worthy of this award . I’m not sure if any of my ‘moments’ would be classified as ‘the best’. I think this award should be claimed by my kids who give me material to work with every day. I’ts taken nearly a month for me to get to this award (6 awards and counting this month) so fear not if you’re a winner and you don’t do it immediately.

I’ve decided to do things a little differently this time around. I’ve compiled a list of 15 blogs I have NEVER visited. They have taken a moment to come and see what mine is all about and left their mark (like). So if anyone would like to join me, I’m off to broaden my horizons and see what else takes my fancy and maybe has me veture out of my ‘normal’ reading circles.

THE WINNERS OF THE BEST MOMENT AWARD ARE:

Other Shoes

Kandy Sparks

A Blog about Life, Technology, News…

Breathtaking Memories

Daily (W)rite

Love Protection

Rantings of an Amateur Chef

Live simply, travel lightly, love passionately & don’t forget to breathe

Happy Faces Blog

Bunny and Pork Belly

The Right Hue

Five Little Monkeys

Angworld

Pocketful of Sugar

Tutor Doctor

Don’t forget to celebrate with your followers! Tweet your success with hashtag #MomentMatters. Congratulations, winners!

Kelly.

Liebster Award. SWEET!

Liebster=sweetheart, beloved person, darling.

I would like to thank Kim at words4jp’s blog for including Free Little Words in the list of blogs she deems worthy of this award . She visits my blog daily and comments almost as often. I really do feel loved.

The Liebster duties:

1.  Post 11 facts about myself.

2.  Answer the 11 questions posed by the nominator.

3.  Pass the love to 11 other bloggers &

4.  Pose 11 new questions for the newly ‘loved’ to answer.

So to start with I’ll answer the questions that sweet Kim has posed:

1.  what was your first job? Holly’s restaurant inside KMart serving food to lovely people who used to leave dirty nappies (diapers) on their food trays.

2.  favorite subject in school (lunch and gym do not count:) – Art and Maths (the former I loved but wasn’t very good at and the latter I didn’t love but was very good at).

3.  If you had to pick your last meal ever – Prawns with fresh squeezed lemon and thousand island dressing

4.  first pet (a rock or imaginary pet will qualify) – A guinea pig whose name escapes me (I must have truly loved it)!

5.  girls – one piece or bikini / boys – trunks or Speedo-At my age one piece for girls and never ever speedos

6. the one place in the world you want to see before you die – Egypt

7.  most famous person you have ever met – My 5 y.o. (well he’ll be famous some day)

8.  to explore the depths of the ocean or the galaxy – Galaxy absolutely. I’m a star gazer.

9.  do you prefer the first 3 Star Wars films (the original 3) OR the 2nd three Star Wars films – Neither as I’m not a Sci Fi fan AT ALL. I can hear the boos now.

10.  your ultimate wish for all of mankind – No more wars or bomb building.

11.  prefer winter weather or summer weather- After the heatwave we’ve had (8 days in a row over 30°C) give me some snow. We don’t get snow at all here so that seems like a nice idea. I’m sure all the snow dwellers suffering through blizzards will disagree with me here and think that I’m living in a tropical paradise.

Since having my last award bestowed upon me I have made it my goal to search, seek out and find blogs that are outside of my beginning reading preferences. Some of these blogs I am new to and hope that they will accept the love that is being offered.

Now the sweetest part of all-nominating 11 other blogs which show and share their love of live and all things bloggable:

On the Fence
Field Notes From Fatherhood
Squarehead Teachers
AllAboutManners
Have Fun With It!
Wine and Cheese (Doodles)
BumpyRoadToBubba
Momisms-My Moments in Motherhood
Plan B-each
Poke N Grits
inspirationenergy

If you’d love to sweeten someone’s day and show them what a darling you think they are have a look-see over at one or more of these blogs that are, in my opinion, all worthy of the beloved (Liebster) title to me.

And finally the 11 questions for these awesomely amazing people to answer and give us a little insight into their psyche. Hang in there till the end. They start tame but then……..

1. Toilet paper over or under and are you a scruncher or a folder?
2. Are you a cat or dog person?
3. What chore do you absolutely hate doing?
4. If you could choose to stay a certain age forever, what age would it be and why?
5. What is something you learned in the last week?
6. Which celebrity do you get mistaken for?
7. What’s one thing your parent/s did that you swore you would never repeat with your own children and you have followed through with?
8. If you could have a room full of any one thing, what would it be?
9. What do you value most in other people?
10. If you could only see the world in black and white plus one other colour, what colour would you choose?
11. Do you believe ‘half the fun is getting there’?

Love and virtual hugs to everyone

Kelly.

I Love Bloggers’ Awards Act Two

Please remain seated as we move into Act Two.

With sincere appreciation to Desiree of Moms and Monsters for putting me at No.2 on her love list.

So, here are the rules:

1. Display the logo on your blog
2. Link back to the person who nominated you
3. State 7 things about yourself
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award
5. Notify your nominees by linking to their blogs so they get notified by ping-back.

The opening scene for this act is for me to tell you 7 things about me. Hopefully they’ll not bore you to tears or have you nodding off in the front row.

1. I am the first one in my family, on both parents’ sides, to graduate from high school and attend university.
2. I used to be a consultant for Tupperware and Enjo-not at the same time.
3. The little voices in my head ARE real until 7:30pm rolls around and then they go quiet.
4. Both my boys are blankie kids. They’ve both had a favourite since early on in life and I’m sure they’ll disintegrate (the blankets that is) before they’ve grown out of them.
5. I don’t like starting a job/task and then leaving it only to have to finish it later. I lose my mojo in between and it’s a lot harder to restart.
6. My toilet roll always has the paper coming over the top and dangling forwards not at the back of the roll. Hubby delights in replacing them the other way around. It’s like a game of cat and mouse but the pattern is supposed to face the front, right?
7. On my wedding day I arrived early which is probably the first time I have ever been early in my entire life. Only problem was I had to wait for hubby whose limo had neglected to pick up two of the wedding party.

Scene 2 and now you’ll be sitting on the edge of your seats. And the nominees are:

1. It Goes Without Saying
2. Susie’s Little Inspirations
3. Ricey’s Wifey
4. Words 4 Jp’s Blog
5. Sarcastic Mummy
6. Prego and the Loon
7. Writer Mummy
8. Mum Plus Two
9. Lost in Twins
10. Diary of a Struggling Domestic Goddess
11. The Jiggly Bits by Teeny Bikini
12. Mrs Smith
13. The Legends of Windemere
14. Teacher to Mum
15. M and A’s World

My sincere apologies that I haven’t written something inspiring about each of these blogs but over the last two days I’ve had to nominate 22 blogs for two different awards. Frankly, it’s eaten up quite considerable weekend time with my family and I’d rather share the love equally. So that’s the end of this performance. Now I’m off to play with lego in the cubby house and yell as I run around the backyard with a towel for a cape.

For the encore you might like to check out one, two or all of these blogs.

Much love to all,

Kelly.

I Love Bloggers’ Awards

I’ve been here in Bloggersville for two months now and was pretty darn chuffed to receive, not one but two, blogging awards this week. So without further ado I’ll get on with this one first.

With much gratitude and thanks to Mama Bear Musings for sharing the love.

Following the guidelines, here are 7 things about me:

1.  I have a wonderful husband who has the innate ability to lose his car keys.

2. Aside from being a mum, I am a relief teacher (substitute teacher) and wanna-be speed reader.

3. I cannot do one thing at once and I find sitting still and doing nothing difficult.

4. I don’t like things ‘in my face’. You know, things thrust towards you that stop millimetres from your eyes. You can’t see them because they’re just too close to focus on. Makes life fun with two under 6 and my profession.

5.  I have one wonky tooth and should have listened to my parents when the option of braces was on the table.

6. Wherever I sleep, it is always closest to the door. That way I can be first out the door if there’s a fire or other calamity.

7. I crave solitude.

And now onto the most important part (drumroll please)…….

Seven sisters who may not have known they wanted this award until they got it:

1. Momtactics
2. Mom In The Muddle
3. Laurie’s Notes
4. Trying to Be a Yummy Mummy
5. Grandma Says
6. Life with Pink Princesses
7. Metal Angel

I hope you love receiving your award as much as I did.