Versatile Blogger Award {And Giveaway Winner!}

Ok guys, I'm back. The last few days have been very hard, and the loss has weighed incredibly heavy on my heart. No one should lose a child, and the world is a little darker without our Andrew. 

With death, many times we mourn for the living, not those who have passed on to a better place. At the funeral, a poem was read about children born with heart defects. The children were reluctant to leave Heaven, so they left half their heart in heaven, and brought half of it down to earth. This is very true. Now he has a healthy, happy heart, and is strutting around Heaven in his fireman uniform, putting out fires as they come.

After a lot of crying, a lot of talking and maybe more than a few margaritas, I'm back to the blog. I have missed reading everyone's posts, and am ready to rejoin the world of the living.

I must be doing something right, because I received two blog awards on the same day! Today I'm posting about an award I received from Bonnie at MiniMe Style and Ada at Elegance Personified.

I am beyond flattered and can't believe people are even paying attention to what I put up on here, much less liking it enough to award it! Here is how this award works:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you.

2. Write 7 random things about yourself.

3. Spread the love to 5 more bloggers.

Seven Random Things... Here we go.

1. I ate a PB&J sandwich every day from 1st grade until my senior year in high school.
Why I did that is really still a mystery to me, but I still have a fondness for them, and can only eat them in this combination: JIF Reduced Fat Peanut Butter, Bama Grape Jelly, Grant's Farm Whole Wheat Bread. No strawberry jelly, no white bread, and definitely NO crunchy peanut butter.

2.  I invited Betty White to my wedding.

After my grandmother passed away when I was 15, I always longed for that grandmotherly figure in my life. We were very close, and would watch her favorite sitcoms together late at night when I stayed over. Our favorite was Golden Girls, and I always identified those four women as parts of my grandmother. When I got married, I felt like she had been such a part of my life for the past 10 years, that I felt it was right to extend an invitation and a letter explaining why, even though I knew she wouldn't come. Plus, I want to be her someday if #4 doesn't pan out.

3. I have never eaten at McDonald's.
People always scoff when they find this out, but I'm not much for fast food or soda, and my mom was always so vehemently against us eating there, so I never developed the taste for it. To this day, I have never eaten a french fry, chicken nugget or anything else from that place.

4. My biggest life aspiration is to become a mermaid.

Nieman's has a Christmas catalog every year that features extravagant, over the top Christmas gifts for that person who has everything. One year, they featured a $10,000 silicone mermaid tail that was customized to your body. It came with lessons to learn to swim with it, as well as care for and store it. Oh man. I begged and pleaded with my mom for that tail. It was beautiful, and if I had that, I wouldn't need a car. Mermaids don't drive.

5. I was once in a tornado

I was driving home one weekend my freshman year in college and had no choice but to drive through a terrible storm. About an hour away from home, I hit a mud storm. For those of you who don't know, a mud storm is essentially a dust storm that happens right in the middle of a rain storm. As I sat blinded by mud, I heard what I thought was a train passing through. Well, it was a tornado, and that tornado pushed me and my car down an embankment and into a fence. Scared the living daylights out me, but luckily my car took most of the hit.

Photo via

6. I was completely bald until I was two.
That's right. No hair to speak of. A mother of one of the children in my church nursery suggested to my mom that she use KY Jelly to stick bows to my head, so people would know I was a girl. Thankfully my mother left me lube free, and a head full of curls sprouted a year later.

7. I still sleep with my baby blanket. 
I know, lame. But she (yes, and her name is Gambolee) stays tucked in my pillowcase and now serves more as a head rest than anything else. At 26 I know it seems ridiculous, but for some reason, she has stuck around and I don't foresee her going away any time soon.

I would like to nominate the following bloggers:

Lauren at Clean Up Nicely
Whitney at cheerios and beer
Krystin at Suburban Faux-Pas
Sara at the Hinton Hookup
Megan at Freckled Italian

Also, check out my guest post on thrifting at The Mrs. and the Momma!

**The winner of the blog design giveaway is.... Yi-chia of Always Maylee!**