The Liebster Award for new bloggers

Thank you to MummyBexM who has nominated me for this and has given me the following 11 questions to answer.

1. When and why did you start blogging?

I’ve probably blogged in one form or another for about 10 years. My first blog was just a space for me to reflect about the world. My second blog, started in May 2008 and was in response to a writing challenge to write exactly 100 words per day and I posted regularly until my daughter Jessica was born in September 2011 when I focused my attention instead to her blog which was created to keep friends and family updated with her heart journey. I started my current blog in April 2014 as I wanted a space for me to be able to reflect and record my own thoughts without feeling limited to a particular word count as I had done with my previous blog.

2. What recently read blog post have you enjoyed?

I think my favourite blog post I’ve read so far this year is ‘To the Momma of a Critically and Chronically Ill Child’ by Scribbles and Crumbs – it’s a post that really resonated with me as a heart mummy and captures the struggles of seeing your child desperately ill in hospital and having to make difficult decisions.

3. If you could learn a new skill, what would you like it to be?

I would love to be fluent in at least one other language. I speak French well enough to get by without a phrasebook on holiday (and I dream in French whenever we spend time in France too!) but I still have a long way to go before I’m anywhere near being fluent.

4. If you could have any 5 guests over for dinner who would they be and why?

It’s an eclectic mix:

• Jesus – I’d love to know what his view really is on the issues that Christians get so hung up over plus we wouldn’t need to buy any wine!
• Michael McIntyre – to make everyone laugh with his brilliant observational comedy
• L.M. Montgomery – my favourite author – I’d love to know more about her life in Prince Edward Island and how it inspired her writing.
• My mum and my dad – because getting to have one more evening with my dad would be the most amazing thing ever and of course it wouldn’t be right without my mum there too.

5. Who is your favourite fictional character?

Anne of Green Gables

6. What question would you like to ask the Queen, if you could?

If you could have a day off from being the Queen, who would you want to be instead?

7. If you won the lottery, what would your first 3 spends/buys be?

If I won the lottery, I’d buy a bigger house, a bungalow for my mum and make a donation to some of the charities that have supported us on our heart journey.

8. Which is your favourite film and why?

I’m a huge fan of musical theatre and my favourite musical film is West Side Story – it has so many amazing songs and the choreography is fabulous.

9. If you were a biscuit, what type would you be?

A jammie dodger – the one with the red heart in the middle.

10. Where in the world would you like to go/visit?

I would love to go to Salzburg and do the Sound of Music tour. I could just see myself jumping up and down steps whilst singing Do-Re-Mi. Funnily enough, hubby isn’t too keen…!

11. If you could be in any film, TV or book which would it be and why?

I would love to be Mary Poppins – jumping through chalk pictures would be such fun and how amazing would it be to be able to tidy the house just by singing and clicking my fingers?!

 

Here are 11 random facts about myself:

1. I love genealogy and have traced back my family tree on one side to the late 1400s.

2. I have a flying phobia which has been mostly conquered although hubby’s love of watching ‘Air Crash Investigation’ does not help with this!

3. I have been lucky enough to play the lead role in a musical twice – playing Victoria in ‘Follow that Girl’ and Laurey in ‘Oklahoma’

4. My first driving instructor told me I would never pass my test. It took me seven years to pluck up the courage to try again and I passed first time (albeit in an automatic).

5. I was my twin sister’s midwife when she gave birth to her youngest daughter (although have since given up midwifery to become a full-time mum).

6. I wrote my first novel when I was 17. Other than one or two magazine articles since then, I have never had the confidence to try and have any of my writing published.

7. I costumed the show ‘42nd Street’ whilst at university which involved making more than 50 dresses. It was my first experience of dressmaking and was quite a baptism of fire!

8. I took on the challenge to read the Bible in a year in my last year at university and managed to complete it although Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were very tough-going!

9. I taught myself to swim aged 11 after being humiliated by entering what I thought was a non-swimming race at my primary school’s swimming gala only to find everyone else swam it whilst I walked across the pool.

10. I became an auntie at 3 months old and a great-aunt when I was 23.

11. I love playing Scrabble but hubby doesn’t like playing against me because I always beat him. I hate playing him at Monopoly for the same reason.

 

Nominating the following blogs with less than 200 followers (according to Bloglovin):

• What Katy Said
• Tiny Footsteps
• Hope from a Butterfly
• Blog by MummyBio
• El and Baby A

Here are the questions I’d like you to answer:

1. What do you enjoy most about blogging?
2. What was the last blog post you read?
3. What was the last book you read?
4. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
5. If you could build your dream home and include anything you wanted, what would you include?
6. What is your favourite childhood memory?
7. What song would you choose as your personal theme tune?
8. If you found a genie and were given three wishes, what would they be? (And you can’t cheat and ask for more wishes!)
9. If you could swap lives with someone else for a day, who would you want to swap with?
10. What is your favourite children’s TV programme?
11. If you could sum up parenthood in three words, what would they be?

Looking forward to you joining me! The rules of the Liebster Award are as follows:

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 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
4. Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
5. Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have less than 200 followers.
6. Create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.
7. List these rules in your post. 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!)