• Thank the blogger who nominated you
• Write a post to show your award
• Give a brief story of how your blog started
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers
• Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to
• Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them, and provide a link to the post you’ve created

The Story of My Blog:

I had a free blog with blogger for the longest of times and my initial blog started out as my spot for my R&R – you could interpret it in its traditional full-form or my very own ‘Raving and Ranting’!

To Niche or Not To Niche?? This is a question I ask myself often. But I know I will truly be me only if I write about all the varied passions and interests I have.

So in my first blog, I wrote about books, reading, travel, parenting, and shared recipes, tips, my attempts at poetry and art/photography, among other things.  A little over a year ago, I decided I needed to get my own domain and this blog was born with the tagline – a blog(ful) of niches!!

I hope you, my readers – who come to my blog either by chance or because you love to – leave happier and smarter, and with a desire to return again and return soon because it feels like home!!

My Two Cents:

First I need to say, I loved Marcia’s advice on her Award post – to actively engage with the community and to totally enjoy what we are doing as bloggers. I agree with her totally (and that reminds me that I have a lot of comments to respond to right here on my blog as well as catch up with bloggers who I have not for a while in this past month of writing everyday)

And my two cents of advice (that I need to keep in mind as well!):

Don’t Give Up – Hope Springs Eternal! So keep doing what you are doing, learning each step of the way, and you will find yourself farther ahead than you were before!!

Pause When You Need to and Stop to Smell the Roses – Just what it says. When you need to take a break, don’t feel guilty about it. Just step away, smell those roses that were waiting for you, and you will return refreshed, reinspired!

And here are the awardees!!:

For those of you who have been nominatedawarded earlier (for this or other awards!), oops, I did it again! And for those of you who I have not visited for a while or commented on posts, please forgive me and do know your writing inspires me everyday.

For all of you, thank you for the inspiration and the support, and here are my nominations, awardees,  in alphabetical order of their first names!

• Alana at Ramblin’ With AM
• Amalia at The Opinionated Reader
• Amanda at The Limit of Books Does Not Exist
• Caryn at Caryn’s Thoughts
• Cherry Ann Carew 
• Christina at Recipe and a Read
• Colleen at Loose Leaf Notes
• Doug Jarvie at Where Do You Want to Go Today?
• Gayathri at Elgee Writes
• Indrani at iShare
• Jennifer at JenChaos Reviews
• Luci at Sweetie N’ Salty Shoppe
• Martha at The Martha Review
• Megan at Mapping Megan
• Roy at Cerebrations
• and so many more wonderful bloggers who all deserve recognition and accolades:)

As I wrote this post, I also had a peek into my previous awards (here and here) and bloggers who I nominated then, and realized it has been a while since I visited some of them 🙂 so I will be spending the next few days interacting with friends (old and new) from the blogging community..