Gratitude, a good way to end the year

Companions on a journey

#4 on my list of Things To Do While I’m Not Feeling Well:  Say thank you.

Some of my fabulous blogmates have gifted me with the honor of a blog award or two.  For once I think I might actually follow the rules.  Well, sort of.  Kind of.  Maybe.

I have been gifted and honored with the Versatile Blogger Award as well as the Seven Links Blog Award.  Here are the rules for the Versatile Blogger Award:

1. Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass this award along to 15 recently discovered blogs you enjoy reading.
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

The Seven Links Award requires me to go through my archives and come up with seven of my own blog posts that I’d like to feature under the following categories:

1. Most Beautiful
2. Most Popular
3. Most Controversial
4. Most Helpful
5. Most Surprisingly Successful
6. Most Underrated
7. Most Worthy of Pride

Then I’m supposed to tell you about seven bloggers I think you should visit.

There is also the Leibster Award, but since the rules overlap I’ll just stick with the two awards above for now.

Thank you so much (in no particular order because you are all fabulous) Stefan, Pat Bean, Dana, Kathy M, Jane Tims, Kathy from Reflections from a friend, and anyone I might have forgotten.  If I did forget you, please accept my apologies and let me know so I can thank you and add you to the link love list.  I am grateful for the honor and recognition.

Ripples and reflections

Thank you to all of my visitors.  You have helped to make this a fantastic year of blogging.  I’ve met a lot of new bloggers and made some wonderful new friends.  Thank you, thank you, and thank you.  Thank you to WordPress for PostADay2011.  It’s been an interesting, often fun, year.

The After Christmas Tree

And now, seven things about me that you may or may not know:

1. I have a high tolerance for pain, but not for illness.  I want to be well.  Now.  This current bout of illness is teaching me a lot about patience.
2. My favorite scent is lavender.  It goes well with my favorite color which is purple.
3. I have been blogging in some form since 1999 when I joined an online quit smoking community that used a diary format.  (The site no longer exists, but some of us keep in touch and have formed our own little community.)
4. My favorite kitchen tools are my hand blender, salad spinner, and Microplane.  Cooking is one of my favorite activities.
5. The Outdoor Challenge I completed this year has made a profound difference in my life in ways that I continue to discover and unwrap on an almost daily basis.
6. I recently had my hair colored, allowing my stylist to pick the colors.  She decided on reds and said she used every red she had on hand.  Before the color started to fade a bit, my hair was a very festive selection of reds.  I almost regret not asking her to add a green streak or two to give me Christmas/Yule colors.
7. When asked the question, “As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?” I can come up with only one answer:  A nun.  I’m sure I must have wanted to be the usual ballerina-astronaut-nurse-doctor-President, but I don’t really remember.  I have no idea why I wanted to be a nun.  Must have been the cool outfits and my fondness for penguins.  (There is some sort of joke about a nun being a woman who is trying to become a penguin through habit.  Go ahead and groan.  I didn’t say it was a good joke.)

Self-portrait taken a day or two after I had my hair colored (December 20th or thereabouts). You can sort of see the reds I mentioned.

I am passing these awards on to anyone who would like one.  I think all of my blogmates are worthy of an award so please help yourself to one or all.

You may have noticed I didn’t include those Seven Links to some of my past blog posts.  I’m going to skip most of that part of it for now.  This is post number 1,472.  That’s a lot of blog posts to cull through.  However, I can tell you (thanks to the stats page) that my most popular post was A visit from the Green Man (because it was one of two posts I’ve had Freshly Pressed) and that my most controversial was The Anvil Restaurant (you’ll have to scroll down to the comments on that one to find out why).  As for most beautiful, I like Morning Jewels but that was after a quick look while going through my stats.

The photos used in this post are leftovers from the past few weeks.  The weather here in the Bogs today is rainy and gray, but warm.  It’s supposed to turn blustery later this evening.  Snow is in the forecast starting tomorrow night and continuing through Wednesday.  Someone has decided to turn on the Lake Erie snow machine so maybe we’ll get an appreciable accumulation this time around.

That’s it from the Bogs for today.  Thank you so much for joining me on my walks and travels, and allowing me to join you on your walks and journeys, over the past year.  I look forward to exchanging more visits and journeys with you in the new year.

Goodbye 2011.  🙂

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