My Blog is Sunshine-y!

A year ago in April I participated in the My Name is Not Bob Platform Building Challenge led by the fabulous Robert Lee Brewer. The camaraderie was amazing, and at the end of the Challenge the Wordsmith Studio group was born. One of those fine ladies, Melanie Marttila of Writerly Goodness, passed the Sunshine Award to me last week!

Here it is!

What excited me most about this award is that I try to keep the blog positive and fun, and so to get an award called the Sunshine Award... Well, it made me happy. 

Here are rules. 

1. Link back to the person who nominated you.
2. Post the award image to your page.
3. Tell seven facts about yourself.
4. Nominate 10 other blogs.
5. Let them know they are nominated.

My Seven Facts

I've got four dogs, and they're all named Quechuan words because my husband and I loved our time in Peru so much. (Raymi, Killa, Inca and Tumpa)

I have been known to dye my hair wild colors, but lately I'm sticking with auburn to cover my increasing grays.

My great-grandparents immigrated from Italy.

I'm an old/new Dr. Who fan. I loved the 70's version, but became reacquainted with the good Doctor when I was home sick in November. Matt Smith rocks!

Okay, I give up. I can't think of anything else that I haven't already said on other blog award posts. I'm actually quite boring.

My Nominees

My nominees are in my sidebar. I truly enjoy every single blog that I listed over there. Those blogs are some of the most awesome, inspirational blogs on the internet, and they are written by some of the nicest and most supportive people on the internet. I love you all!

A huge thank you, Melanie Marttila, for the lovely award!

Funny Friday Photos

Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a lovely New Years. My entire past two weeks has been a lot of social media creation, editing, and family time. I have a lot of family memories, a new website, Goodreads Author page, and a brand-spankin' new Facebook Fan Page now. If you'd like to see my Facebook page, just click the link! 

We won't discuss the editing, although I've gotten a lot done on it. I just have so much more to do. Thank God for wonderful critiquers who catch all my errors!

Another huge thanks to the many fabulous friends who visited and/or liked any and all social media pages. I have a history of having parties no one comes to, and so I made all these social media sites with much fear and trepidation. It means more to me than anyone can know that people are willing to click that little button and be a part of my writing community.

I neglected to pick a winner for Briane Pagle's book, Up So Down and plan to fix that right now! Diane Carlisle is our winner. Yay! I'll be getting in contact with you this weekend about claiming your prize. On to the photos!

Last week's winner is - Dog Threat!

Here's the new ones!

Our cocker spaniel used to look like that in winter.

There is something ominous about deer. Bambi they are not.

Arrrgh.

That's small compared to the spiders I saw in Costa Rica. The Amazon grows things BIG!

Not quite as cute as John Cusak. Oh, okay. Cuter. :)

This is practically blasphemous, but it really cracked me up!

I think my favorite this week is the snowball dog. 

Which is yours? What's up for you this weekend?

New Year's Wishes

Happy New Year to one and all! 

I wanted to say a huge "thank you" to all of you who have hung around throughout 2012, being good Facebook friends, Twitter-peeps and blog-buddies. You make this crazy writing ride (try saying that out loud) a little less lonely and a lot more fun.

It's been a while since I've anticipated a new year's arrival, but something about 2013 has me excited. Let's hope it's a good sign the year is going to be filled with happiness and success for every last one of us!