A couple of Blog Awards floated my way

Work is pretty demanding of my time, attention and… well, life, lately, but I finally made enough time (instead of going to bed early), to properly thank and acknowledge the following blog awards which floated my way through the blogosphere.

Thanks a million to everyone!

Given how wonderful the lovely people who awarded me are, it makes me feel especially honored that they felt I deserved the:

Liebster Award  from Catherine Russell of Ganymeder, and Franny Stevenson of dr.franny and mrs.myself.

The rules for passing on the award are quite simple:

• Thank the person who nominated me,
• post 11 facts about myself,
• nominate 11 bloggers + notify them of their award,
• and pose 11 new random questions for them.

So… 11 facts about me, in no particular order.

1. Today, the Chef and I exchanged presents, just because we found two cute (highly perfect for each other!) magnets. Mine says “Keep calm and drink tea”, his says “Keep calm and drink coffee”.
2. I’d like to be able to move to Brasov and live in the “Writer’s Quarter”, right where it borders with “Flowers Quarter”.
3. Usually, clothes shopping for myself happens when/if my mom brings something cute home from the clothes shop she works in and I like said item. I dislike shopping for myself that much.
4. My tea supply currently holds 8 different flavors. The current favorite is Vanilla Caramel. (And I’ll have to try Dandelion tea, since Cathy says it’s sweet!)
5. The best latte I had, while out and about, was at Bibliotheque Pub with my friend Trisha, in Brasov. Crème Brûlé flavor.
6. Love having met one of my online friends in real life in April! She’s an absolute delight <3
7. I still am not rested enough since the beginning of April, since the shop merger thing at work.
8. Melon is my favorite ice cream flavor. And melon-chocolate, my favorite combo.
9. 1 and 8 are numbers which repeat themselves so much in my life. Won’t even go into it
10. This particular green I saw in the shop was never a shade I would’ve consciously chosen for drapes, but seeing it in my room, I just love it! Even upholstered my computer chair and had a decorative pillow made from the remaining fabric.
11. I simply don’t have the energy to reply to Franny’s questions, nor to form new ones myself…

As that last one states, I’d like to ask those I nominate, to please go read and reply to Franny’s questions if you want to; or see the questions she or Cathy had to answer. If not, I’ll happily read the 11 random facts about yourself even without extra questions!

 

The Sunshine Award from Kira Lyn Blue

Here are the rules:

• Include the award’s logo in a post or on your blog.
• Link to the person who nominated you.
• Answer 10 questions about yourself.
• Nominate 10 bloggers.
• Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

And now for the 10 questions:

1. Favorite color – blue.
2. Favorite animal – cat.
3. Favorite number – 81.
4. Favorite non-alcoholic drink – Lime & Mint Lemonade.
5. Favorite alcoholic drink – Coconut Mojito or Piña Colada.
6. Facebook or Twitter? – I would’ve answered differently a year ago, but right now it’s Facebook. I like Twitter nearly as much though.
7. Passions – Reading, writing, photography, creating anything handmade.
8. Prefer getting or giving presents? – Giving. I can get really awkward when receiving them…
9. Favorite City – Siracusa in Sicilia, Italia.
10. Favorite TV Shows – The Big Bang Theory, Pretty Little Liars, The Good Wife, The Flintstones (cartoon), etc.

My nominations for both of these, or the one they haven’t yet received:

Catherine Russell
Franny Stevenson
Kira Lyn Blue 
Tabula Rasa
Mark Koning 
Nessa 
Kenneth Hopkins 
Bellanda Inparis 
Becky Povich 
Janel Gradowski 
Deanna Schrayer 
Rukmini Roy
Laura Besley

Hope everyone has fun with these! Looking forward to your facts and answers

 

PS: I’m generally awful at the whole remembering who awarded me with what around the blogosphere, so I hope I haven’t forgotten about someone/something! Please remind me if so.

Being thankful

Today, I’ll be acknowledging two blog awards.

Funny, it seems like Fall is always coming around with my acknowledgment of awards. And it’s a first here on Life’s a Stage that I don’t leave them hanging for months at a time before I do, right?

During my hiatus, Terri, of Workin’ With What I’ve Got awarded me with The Liebster Blog Award. I approved her nomination comment as soon as I got around an internet connection and would now like to properly thank her.

Thank you so much, Terri, it fills my heart with such joy that you thought of my little corner of the web!

The rules of acceptance related to this award are:

The Liebster Blog Award is an award for blogs with under 200 followers. Apparently Liebster is German for “beloved” and a blog nominated for this award is “worth watching”.

• If you are nominated for the award and accept it, then you have won!
• Link back to the person who presented the award to you.
• Nominate 5 blogs with less than 200 followers who you feel deserve the award.
• Let the nominees know by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Attach the Liebster award badge to your site.

 

The second award comes from Lynn, of Present Letters. We met back when she was doing the A Month of Letters challenge, where she’d hand write a letter a day for a month. Lynn offered to write anyone a letter if they sent her their info. As I was looking to adopt a love letter bundle at the time, I contacted her and asked if she’d write a letter, not for me, but for someone else. Lynn has been so wonderful, she accepted and has been writing a love letter a month ever since!

Thank you for being such an amazing person, Lynn, and also for awarding me!

The rules of acceptance related to this award are:

• Acknowledge the giver of the award and provide a link to his or her blog.
• Copy and paste the award to your blog.
• Pass the award on to up to ten bloggers.
• Notify the selected bloggers of their nominations.

I will compromise with the rules (of how many people to award) for a second here and send both these awards on to five blogs I absolutely love and think are worth watching:

1. Kid Stuph, by Kenneth Hopkins – wisdom from the mind of a grown up kid on various life subjects like travel, writing, nature, photography, etc. Kenneth loves being an artist in an artistic household. There is always something being created, whether it be music, art, poetry, drawings or plays.
2. tabras’s space, by Trisha – a little look at life through a multifaceted lens of introspection, inspiration, and inquisition… a single perspective from a single person that tries to incorporate wider ideas of life, love, culture, perception, positivity, and self realization…
3. Challenging Barriers, by Mark Koning – The scariest thing about facing any barriers in life is keeping the fear bottled up inside. The best way to work through any obstacle in life is to talk about it and to know you are not alone. That is what his blog is all about, opening up, sharing and walking the path of accessibility.
4. Workin’ With What I’ve Got, by Terri – a series of freewrites, though, as the blog progresses, they’re no longer derived from stream-of-conscious writing. Terri has written for publication some twenty-plus years and her artwork has been exhibited for almost as long, currently offering classes and coaching.
5. Present Letters, by Lynn – writing in her favorite form of writing, epistolary, Lynn loves hand writing letters to people. She also love to cook, garden and do anything creative.

Hope you guys will accept the awards and if you have one of them already, just focus on the other

Writing Love Letters for Our Adopted Bundle

We’re past step one — we’ve committed to writing at least ten love letters for a bundle we adopted from MoreLoveLetters. We’re actually up to sixteen love letters which thrills me beyond measure. Thank you again everyone!

Step two is all done as well, as I have signed us up and have just received the love letter request from Hannah.

Now it’s time for step three, my playing Juliet and passing on the info to all of you wonderful letter writers:

Your Letter Request:

Texas

Requested by Brandis’ Best Friend

“Brandis is a very loving, caring, and sweet woman who was my first friend when I moved to Texas for my new job. I had no family in Texas and she immediately opened her home and her heart to me. Just recently, she discovered her husband was being unfaithful and now her life is cracking and crumbling as a divorce is pursued while she tries to care for her two young children and battle ill-health. Brandis is stronger than she knows, but now she is feeling unloved, unwanted, and very alone. Please help me show her that she is loved, wanted, and needed in this world. It would be a darker place for many of us without her in it.”

If this is your first time writing a love letter like this, I suggest dropping by and reading this Starter Kit Hannah has put together. It’s filled with all the info you need to turn your love letter into an emotional art form.

Step four is up to all of you individually, write your love letters to Brandis <3

Please be intentional with your love letters. We want to be able to gift someone else with the best looking letters of the bunch. Handmade cards, stationery are a plus! Ribbons, bows, confetti, etc. will score you extra brownie points with the MoreLoveLetters team!

I’m adding step five, because I’d love love love to see all Your letters! So make sure to take a photo of your letter and send it to me at estrella [dot] azul20 [at] gmail [dot] com . I promise to make something beautiful with the received love letters and then share it/them here on my blog with the whole World Wide Web!

Tweet and Facebook the MoreLoveLetters team, they want to report all our love letter progress! The team is also encouraging everyone to snap photos that they can feature on the site, and are also open to video blogs and guest posts! If any of you are interested in guest blogging about the experience, please e-mail me and I’ll get back to Hannah for all the details.

And then as step six, since we can’t mail them all together, please mail your love letters, by the end of February, to:

Brandis Bundle

More Love Letters
PO Box 2061
North Haven, CT 06473

Make sure to include an extra, loose, stamp with your letter (or if you’re feeling extra generous like one of our letter writers has already, include a book of stamps). If you have more than one person in your household writing letters, you can include them all in one envelope.

Step seven: Spread the word! MoreLoveLetters currently operates under the pocketbook of its founder, Hannah Katy. The team will so appreciate you reaching out to friends, family, and social networks to tell everyone about the Bundle we are putting together and encourage them to support the Postage Stamp Drive: Without raising funds, they cannot continue to keep MoreLoveLetters up and running, so drop by IndieGoGo and help. Any support is so appreciated!

~~~

For any of you reading this blog post who haven’t volunteered, but would like to, please feel free to do so in the comment section below! The more love letters, the better <3

 

The nitty gritty P.S. kind of stuff…

This month, Love comes in the form of letters

I already took a step toward the month of love letters by finishing up handmade/handwritten cards in September and sending out not fewer than fourteen letters to some of the people I love all around the world (Hungary, Australia, Brazil and the US) on October 1st.

I’m not sure how snail mail got on the back burner. But this month I’ve sent more letters than I have in the last four years. I’ve never turned up at the post office with a stack of envelopes as massive as the one below in photo I took of them.

I felt terribly guilty about not being able to reciprocate sooner some of the love I’ve received at the end of last year and during 2011. Things somehow didn’t fall in place until now. But finishing up all those letters and sending them felt nothing short of amazing!

And you know what? The best part of sending these love letters and small tokens of my affection are actually the responses I got/will probably get. 

By today, I already got six e-mails/FB messages/Twitter DMs and mentions, thanking me for the little surprise to people’s days. (twelve, by October 31st) 

I’ll definitely be sending more snail mail from now on

 

PS: For part two, join me here next Monday

In lieu of a love letter

Life’s a Stage won a few awards this year and I’m sooo late in properly acknowledging them. Again. I know. Sorry about that!

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t (and still am!) excited to be considered worthy of them, so I’ll finally take a minute to thank Mari and Patsye for loving me and my blog!

Starting off with the most overdue award (oh my gosh, how did February turn into October like that?!), I’m so grateful to have received these pretty flowers from Mari.
Thank you, Mari!

I’m sending them on to:

1. Patsye, at Whimseytopia - for her warm friendship and wonderfully crafty blog which I fell in love with from the first visit.
2. Becky Sain, at First pages – for continuously inspiring me with her lovely writing; no matter when I happen to drop by her place.
3. Cindy Fasset, at Wings and Arrows – for always trying to be present and choosing a road to learn all about Love; and then sharing.

And last, but not least, one of the best surprises these past few weeks (I’m only two weeks late on this one. Right?), the Crow Worthy Award, which came from Patsye as a way to say thank you, she likes me, and she hopes I keep writing my wonderful posts.
Thank You, Patsye, you have truly touched my heart!

I’ll pass along this award to a few people I would like to recognize with the following words:

* I have enjoyed your blog and want to say thank you.
* Your photographs and writing have brought me great joy.
* I have subscribed to your blog and will recommend you to others.
* I believe you exemplify the spirit of blogging and what it means to share.

1. Mari, at Mari’s Randomities
2. Kenneth Hopkins, at Kid Stuph
3. Trisha, at Tabula Rasa’s Space

Thank you again!

6 degrees

This Friday, I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming Kenneth Hopkins to Life’s a Stage. Kenneth has quickly become one of my favorite people on the web and an amazing friend whom I can’t wait to meet in person one day.
I think he feels the same way, so give his guest post a read and let him (well, us really) know what you think of these 6 degrees of…

6 degrees

Today as I stepped outside, I saw my neighbor washing his car. Running around him were his 2 small children. As the father rinsed the car, the children got drenched, and by all appearances, they loved it. They ran and danced and smiled with the water pouring over them. Then they helped their father wash the car, and repeated the water dance. It was fun to watch.

This made me reflect on one of my last posts on Kid Stuph. Truthfully, I wasn’t all that taken by my entry. It was what was in my heart, but I was having such a hard time writing, that I didn’t think it would have any effect or influence on anyone. That is, until Milli from Fear of Writing commented on the post. In her comment, I saw something very striking – just how connected we all are. Milli’s comment was prompted by my post, which started when I read Estrella’s post, highlighting J Clement Wall’s writing about her publishing journey, which was posted on, of all places, Milli’s Fear of Writing blog.

Six degrees of separation. According to this theory, we are only 6 introductions away from every person on the planet. I find it interesting that the theory is named for “separation”, rather than connection. What I saw with the kids, and with my post, was connection. Little things that bring us together, often in big ways. I imagine that when my neighbor and his kids reflect back on their life, they will for sure remember the big events – first dates, graduations, etc, but they will also remember little things, like dancing in the water…

Estrella and I discussed the pictures for her banner, and I was immediately taken with the dandelions. I remember as a young boy picking dandelions and using them as “wishing flowers” – making my wish and gently blowing on the dandelion to cast my wish to the wind. How easily the seeds are shaken from their home to be planted and produce in some other place – the same way the actions and intentions of others do for us. My initial thought of dandelions (as well as my words) was that they were too small or insignificant to be charged with so great a task as making the impossible happen. Yet, when I consider them, I see that they are designed to move, to plant, to produce. Our words, our connections, our influence, they are designed in the same way: to not stay inside of us, but to move out, to get planted in others, and to produce, even the impossible.

I think it was no more than a day or two after our conversation that I had come up with a quick poem about dandelions. I haven’t written a poem in years, but the connection with Estrella and the discussion about dandelions produced something in me that caused the poem to be born.

Thinking about the theory, Estrella and I were not connected a year ago, and we were truly within those 6 degrees of separation, but a series of connections with J and Milli caused a connection in us. The dandelions of our lives drifted from their base, and landed in each other’s lives producing both friendship and creativity. The seeds that started our connection were not major, but little things. A comment here, an appreciation there… even the conversation about the dandelions started rather simply, and grew into a much deeper conversation and appreciation of each other and our creativity.

I can’t remember if any of my dandelion-borne wishes were granted, but I imagine that there were many dandelions born because I was willing to help them fulfill their purpose. Similarly, we help each other fulfill our life purposes by being willing to share, letting the dandelion seeds of our life drift into their yard. The good thing is that we are both better for it.
6 degrees of… connection.

Do you wonder where your next connection will come from?

 

Kenneth Hopkins is new to blogging over at Kid Stuph, but not to writing. He started creating stories when he was 5 and had the privilege through his life of writing for some pretty great friends.
Kenneth has the honor of preaching the gospel, and loves cooking some pretty unique and exotic dishes in his free time.
He is currently working on his first novel, a story with intrigue, twists and turns, and a nice cast of characters. His goal is to have the book ready for prime time by the end of the year.

 

Thank you for guest posting on my playground, Kenneth, it’s an honor having you over!

Loving Love Graffiti

June, according to J’s Love Project, was the month of love graffiti, a month to leave behind little love notes and messages for others to find.

Since my phone camera is mostly for show, and vehemently refuses to take good photos unless it’s outside in sunny weather (although it keeps a selective mind even then), I didn’t take a photo of every single love message I’ve left, nor where I left them since my frustration with poor quality photos would’ve drawn attention to my sneaking around to leave said love notes.

So, to go with what I have proof of, this past month, I’ve left post-it messages to say there’s an endless supply of hugs in my room. To state beauty and lots of love. To wish bon appétit & yummy food to go along with the appetite; a sunny day; and a lovely day such as the person I was wishing it for. To send millions of kisses; and hugs. To say thank you for a walk and for turning my afternoon into a lovely one.

I also found this love graffiti downtown as I was walking home in the rain (for the Nth time).

 

And while I was at it, leaving love behind, I was more attuned to noticing how love didn’t always come in written form.

It came in the form of: a walk that turned out to be longer than both of us expected (but oh-so-fun), recipes printed out and stuck in my mailbox after I mentioned to a friend my need for some new rice recipe ideas, apples and cinnamon flavored micro popcorn in the mailbox (talk about unusual mail), paw print patterns – kitty love, real/virtual hugs and kisses, a statement that I didn’t look as awful as the rain actually did made me look, a cool new mug for the occasion of our semi-renovated house, conversations, prompts, sharing tech-savvy-ness as technology hated me more than usually this week, emails expressing love, links to (love (computer love)) songs, lending stuff/help/time, a plate of yummy cherries magically appearing on the counter. And so on.

Now I’m curious: what was your month like spreading-love-wise?