A Blog Award (and I Tell You Some Random Things About Me)

In all the hubbub right before Thanksgiving, Melissa over at Shabby Love showed me some blog love by passing along The Versatile Blogger award.

How nice, right? Thank you, Melissa! :)

I just learned about her blog in October when I ran across her ingenious pallet cabinet at a blog party:

Made out of salvaged pallets. then whitewashed - beautiful, rustic perfection!

She has since drawn me in with her love of burlap, industrial elements, and vintage items like blue mason jars, ironstone, and anything with a farmhouse feel.

And girlfriend is, like, seriously crafty, too. But her crafts all have a rustic, country feel to them, which of course appeals to someone who writes a blog with the word 'country' in the title and lives in a log house.

Nature-Inspired Christmas Wreath

Rustic Tree Topper Tutorial

Bi-Fold Doors Turned Shutters - with a delicious chippy paint job!

Kindly pay Melissa a visit at the lovely Shabby Loveif you haven't already!

So, now I have to share seven things about myself.  Let's see if I can make this good:

1. My most graceful moment ever:  senior year in college, my roommates and I are living in an apartment in Chapel Hill.  My roommate, Claire, has friends visiting from out of town. They're a married couple, a little bit older than us, and super cool.  Like she talked them up so much I must have been nervous about their cool factor. Anyway, we're sitting around eating Mrs. Smith's Blackberry Cobbler (best non-homemade dessert EVER), having a perfectly normal conversation, and I go to put a bite of cobbler in my mouth.  But I miss and stab myself in the nose with the fork.  In my embarrassment, I quickly stand up to go to the kitchen to hide my mortification under the pretense of needing to wipe my face, and instead proceed to run smack dab into the kitchen door frame.  Thank God I didn't give myself a bloody nose or a black eye--that would have topped it all. But my friends still like to remind me of that incident a decade after the fact.  I blame my mother for my clumsiness--it's definitely genetic.

2. My favorite color is green and instead of wearing a traditional wedding band set, I wear a green amethyst ring on my left hand.

3. I love to visit cities and travel whenever the opportunity arises, but something inside of me would be very depressed if I actually had to live in a city for any length of time.   My soul requires grass underfoot, open spaces and not many people around me.  Remember that Dixie Chicks song Wide Open Spaces?  Yeah, that sums up how I feel.

4. I'm a Cancer through-and-through: hard shell, soft interior; intuitive; creative; ruled by my emotions; not always wanting to let go of the past, a lover of old things, etc., etc. One of the main aspects I identify with as a Cancerian, though, is the desire for one's own home. After years of living in dorms, then apartments, a missing piece in me was found when my husband and I moved into our house in 2007.  It was my first house home and I've loved decorating it and knowing it is mine. I feel grounded in this abode and it gives me peace and security.  

5. I struggled through a decade of disordered eating in my 20s, specifically emotional eating. With therapy and much practiced awareness (and relapses, plenty of those, too), I believe I've made it to the other side.  I highly recommend the writings of Geneen Roth for anyone battling emotional eating and overeating.  She is brilliant and writes about the truths behind why so many women share in this despair about their bodies and their relationship with food. Her Women, Food and God was a revelation in my path to healing.

6. One of my top five favorite moments in life?  Standing on the rail at the finish line at Santa Anita Park in California, watching Zenyatta win the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic in 2009.  For non-racing horse racing fans, let me just say it's a rare thing to see true greatness any more in this sport.  Zenyatta was the queen of the sport of kings. I will never forget the sight of her running by in deep stretch, or the electricity of the crowd as it erupted when she prevailed.  I won't lie, I cried.



7. My guilty pleasure is reading gossip blogs and my hands-down favorite is Lainey Gossip. 

Whew!  The final step in this award, share an eclectic list of 10 blogs I've particularly enjoyed of late:

A Nourishing Home
A Sort of Fairytale
Cindy's Fractured Fairytale
Cottage (Tinkered Treasures)
Derfwad Manor
Happy At Home
HenHouse
Inspired By Charm
Jason Good 365
Tales From the Coop Keeper

Thanks, again, Melissa!

Give me a few more days and I'll be back in the regular swing of blogging again. I had a bunch of other commitments to attend to since Thanksgiving, but now they're done and I can cruise 'til Christmas.

And speaking of Christmas, I have most of the Christmas stuff out, and tomorrow we're getting our tree, so stay tuned for the obligatory Christmas decorating posts!

-Erin