Hi, friends!
Well, I was away from the blog world for over a week! That’s the longest I’ve been gone from LLL in many months. Crazy! I appreciate you all understanding my need to step away, though. I feel like a lot of people don’t realize how much work and time blogging takes, so it was nice to know you all understood!
Hopefully I’ll be back to blogging normally this week. It’s my goal, at least!
To start the day off on a positive note, I need to take care of some award business. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been nominated for three awards by some awesome bloggers!
First up, I was nominated for the Liebster award by the lovely Miss Polkadot of Let’s Get Living! Thanks so much!
So, this is going to seem like a huge cop-out, but as I’ve been nominated for this award before, I’ll just answer the questions provided. I feel bad doing that, but I’m still in the midst of a massive time crunch, so I hope you’ll forgive me! 🙂 If you do want to know more about me, please click on over (here and here) to the other posts I wrote for this award!
- What is one of your favourite childhood memories? I have so many amazing childhood memories. I think some of my absolute favorites, though, are of Christmas. My family knows how to do Christmas right. 😉 Plus, who doesn’t like that season??
- Name the three most-worn items from your closet. This is a good question! I’d say my skinny jeans from American Eagle (I think they make the best jeans!), my black track jackets (my first was from Target, and my most recent from Old Navy), and my workout capris (from Kohls).
- Who’s your biggest inspiration in life? Almost anyone in my family. They’re all such great, caring, selfless people. I’m glad I have been raised in this family, because hopefully their traits have passed down to me.
- Is there any book you’ve read multiple times? If yes: which? Oh Lordy, the Harry Potter books are definitely my most read. I’ve read the first four 8 times, the fifth 4 times, and the last two 5 times. SO GOOD. My other most read book is The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly. I love that book, too.
- Where is your happy place? At home. I am such a homebody. Like, it’s ridiculous. I’m 21, almost 22, and I feel like I “should” be out partying, but honestly, I’m happiest at home.
- Tea or coffee? Wellll I love coffee but it doesn’t love me. What I wouldn’t give for an iced mocha right about now…And generally, I hate tea, but I do like Green Tea Lemonade!
- What’s your ideal way to start the day? I admit, I do love to start the day slowly. I love to sleep in (which, by the way, is like 7:45 now. Ha.), take my time making breakfast, and read blogs or a book before I even start anything productive. In reality, though, I wake up way too early, exercise, eat, shower, and then I’m off. That’s not too bad, either, really.
- What are some of the words or phrases you use most often? “Oh my gosh.” “Oh geez.” “Fail.” ( <– I think the kids I babysit picked up that one from me! Oops!)
- Are you a planner or a spontaneous person? Defffffinitely a planner. I do NOT do well with spontaneous.
- Would you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert? It’s weird, because even though I’m going into teaching and love talking with people, I consider myself to be an introvert. I’m really only *close* to a handful of people, and like I said above, I’m definitely a homebody.
- Which famous person would you like to spend a day with and why? Ooooh. Paul McCartney. Because I love him. Or J.K. Rowling. Because she’s a genius.
Thanks for the interesting questions, Miss Polkadot! I’d love it if any of you would want to answer these questions below! 🙂
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Next up, the lovely Sarah from Slices of Sarah Pie nominated me for the Sunshine Award! Thanks, Sarah!
I’m going to do basically the same thing with this award…sorry! Here are Sarah’s awesome questions:
- One food you cannot live without? It’s hard for me to answer that question, because I feel like there are many foods I hate living without, but have to because of my allergies! Right now, I’m really missing pizza. Gosh I love that stuff.
- Favorite type of music to start the day? It’s funny, I don’t usually listen to music in the morning. It sometimes stresses me out. However, sometimes I’ll listen to classical music or soundtracks on my way to work.
- Ice Cream or Frozen Yogurt? Oooh tough choice. I like them both! Frozen yogurt is much more fun, though. All the toppings…yum.
- Book or Movie? Another tough question! It totally depends on my mood. I love both so much, but I do love the interpretation that comes with books.
- If you could only shop for food at one store for the rest of your life which store would you choose? Hmm. I feel like Meijer has the most variety, but I love stores like Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and TJ’s for their variety. I’m going to go with Meijer.
- Number one favorite thing you own? Ella. 🙂
- Your favorite post on your blog? Oh interesting question! I love any of my posts recapping my study abroad experience of two years ago. I miss Kingston and London so much!
- What’s your favorite way to relax after the worst kind of day? Coming home and just sitting. Not doing anything for a while is so nice. At other times, talking through the day with someone is the best therapy. It just totally depends on what happened to make it such a bad day!
- Biggest social media addiction? Bloglovin’!
- Best thing you’ve ever made? Oh good gosh. I think the most exciting thing I’ve ever made was my Egg-Free Frittata, but I can’t decide on the best thing I’ve ever made. Contestants do include my Amazing Chocolate Cupcakes and Triple (or quadruple!) Chocolate Cookies. Can you tell I like chocolate? 😉
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Finally, Sheila of Sweet Baked Life just recently nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award! Thanks so much, Sheila!
One of the requirements for this award is to share 7 random things about myself. Because Sheila didn’t have to make up any questions, I’ll go ahead and share some things…
1. I wish that fall was a longer season. I love the weather, the colors, and the festivities, but I just hate how short it is! If we could have a good 3-4 months of fall (and like 1 week of winter) I’d be a happy camper.
2. In general, I’m not a fan of big dogs. There are some that I like, and most are super sweet, but I just don’t like how in-your-face they are. Arguably, I could say the same about Ella but at least I can pick her up! 😉
3. I am also soooo not a cat person. When I was little I loved them, and I got one when I was 6 years old. Whiskers was the cutest, coolest cat, but unfortunately he died two years later. After that, my love of dogs grew and I’ve been a dog person ever since!
4. I love garlic in and on everything. BUT I *hate* the smell. I hate how it lingers, how it’s all you can smell on someone after they eat it…it’s not fair! Why does such a delicious and healthy ingredient have such stinky side-effects??
5. I have extreme anxiety about driving during bad weather. Like, the other day, it was raining, and I was literally shaking while on my way to the school. It was bad.
6. I’m afraid to update the software on my iPhone. Has anyone done it? I don’t like the way it looks, so I just really don’t want to do it! I’m weird like that, I guess.
7. My least favorite household chore to do is the dishes. I hate washing them, I hate drying them, and I hate putting them away.
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Thank you all again for your nominations! I feel special to be elected by such great bloggers. 🙂
For each of these awards, I’m supposed to nominate a certain number of bloggers, but instead of that, I’m just going to nominate any and all of you! All of you are such great bloggers, so I can’t choose a certain number. Feel free to take these awards and put them on your sites, or just answer some of the questions below!
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This just in: WordPress is not allowing me to upload any pictures. Even though I paid for a GB increase a year ago. The increase expired a few days ago, so now I can’t upload any pictures even though I had a ton of GBs leftover. GRRRR. Looks like I’ll be spending the rest of the day figuring out what to do…
Does anyone have/know of a good self-hosting website? I had a whole bunch of good posts planned for this week, but until I get this whole picture thing sorted out, looks like they’ll have to wait! To say I’m peeved is an understatement.
Well, I guess I’m off! Have a great day, everyone!
P.S. I’m linking this post up to Katie’s MIMM. Thanks for hosting, Katie!
Liv Lives Life 
No need to apologize or worry. Blogging -does- take a lot of time – admittedly more than I thought at first, too. I’d be happy to read your posts again but don’t stress about getting back before everything has settled again. And thanks for doing the survey! I enjoyed reading more about you and finding out how much we have in common :). Like you, I’m feeling most comfortable at home despite thinking I ‘should’ be out partying. But why force ourselves to go out if we don’t actually enjoy it?
Sorry to hear about your WordPress hurdles. Unfortunately I can’t offer any advice but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you!
now I just want some froyo… and it is 7:45 in the morning. haha. Love all of this and glad to see you are getting back at it. finding a routine is tough
Welcome back!!! Now you’ve got me excited for Christmas and craving fro-yo 😉
GREAT survey! And yay for Christmas… now I’m excited for it!!
Mmmmm those cookies. And I’m totally re-reading HP now!
Argh. Sorry to hear about your troubles with uploading pictures! I’ve been looking into self-hosting for awhile now and I think the one that I am eventually going to go with his HostGator. GoDaddy is another cheap option but I’ve heard that they’re not always super reliable.
Christmas! I can’t wait…Just a few months away now 🙂
We shop at Meijer a lot too. I never understood growing up why my grandma was so obsessed with it (I find Meijer shoppers to be pretty strange and crazy compared to those at Walmart!), but now I totally understand. They had Kabocha, Buttercup, Butternut, Acorn, and Delicata squash all at ONCE! Oh, and they have their own organic line too which I think is pretty awesome.
Hope you figure out the whole picture thing! Keep us updated on how that goes… I can learn from you 😉
To get over the WordPress space issue I’d recommend reducing your image size – you can get free resizing software online if you don’t have an image editing programme. The images only show up at 640 pixels wide on the page and yours are over 3000 wide, so if you cut them down they should go from 3MB to about 300Kb. Going back and redoing a few should sort you out for space for a while (I learnt this the hard way when I started blogging and have resized all my images!).
Great tip! That’s very good to know. Thanks for sharing!
You take all the time you need because blogging is hard work. Sometimes I put so many hours into it, it might as well be a part time job. It’s fun and I love doing it, but it’s also takes a tremendous amount of time and when you’re already busy with pets, a real job, life, it can be rough fitting it all need. Plus, I think it’s a good thing to take a break every so often. It lets you recharge your batteries so to speak.
My site is self hosted through Go Daddy. I’ve had really good luck with them (other than one incident), and their support people are always accessible. They also make it easy to renew everything and pretty much do it for you once you give the go ahead, which means it couldn’t be easier.
I’m such a planner too and I struggle when plans deviate. Eek.
I hope your acid reflux is getting better so you can get back to pizza again soon. Maybe you could have a tomato less pizza and be ok. It’s worth a shot right?!
back when i was on wordpress.com and not self-hosted i had to pay for the image space upgrade too! lovely $$ blog problems. hope you get that sorted out!
i like that this post is so fun and varied and lets me learn more about you. that is one gorgeous christmas tree! i love the question about the 3 most worn items in your closet. what a unique one, that has got me thinking. a book i have read a ton of times is my favorite childhood novel, ‘ella enchanted’ by gail carson levine. but i’ve definitely read each HP book at least twice! deciding between ice cream and froyo is hard. i love the toppings like you said but ice cream is richer and more satisfying! how about ice cream with froyo toppings?! oo la la
#1: That’s a gorgeous tree! I can’t wait for Christmas! 🙂
#5: Me too. I’m a homebody. 🙂 I love staying at home. 🙂
1. You’re fro-yo is making me hungry
2. I’m sorry to hear about your continued tummy-acid problems ( I agree with Meghan above that tomato-less pizza might be a good start)
3. I’ve said this a million time but the HP books are easily my most re-read books as well (closely followed by Pride and Prejudice and The Hobbit)
That should be YOUR fro-yo (I’m not trying to call you fro-yo… stupid phone…)
Hahaha! That’s funny. I knew what you meant. 😉
Never apologize for stepping away from blogging for however long you need too. You’re right, blogging does take up a lot more time than people realize. I think it’s great that you gave yourself that time away to rest & refocus for your upcoming posts.
Congratulations on all the nominations, Liv. You are such a sweetheart & deserve each one.
Have a fabulous week
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Oh my gosh that fro yo looks like heaven. Btw I use HostGator to self host and then blog through WordPress- hope that helps! ❤
Such a cute little pooooch 🙂 And those cookies? Holy moly!!
Those cooookies. And yes to spending a day with J.K. Rowling ;). Also sorry about your wordpress troubles!! Hope it gets sorted soon