I was nominated for the Liebster Award!

And as part of my celebrating at being nominated for this Award, I’ve changed the appearance of the site – hopefully will be easier to navigate (& share with all your friends!)

“Sanseilife” nominated me for the Liebster Award – an Award from Bloggers to Bloggers! Thank you! You can read more about Paula’s journey at https://sanseilife.wordpress.com/

I will answer her eleven questions and give eleven random facts about me and my blog and nominate a few bloggers for this award below.

Paula’s Questions to me:

1. Why do you blog? It started as a way of keeping my family recipes in one place – in fact when I started blogging, for about a month, I didn’t tell anyone and was my only follower, quite happily!
2. What have you learned since you started blogging? There’s a whole world of blogging out there – some brilliant writing and amazing people. I love seeing ‘hits’ from across the world – Indonesia, Germany, Singapore, France, America & Chile some pings on my recent “map of the world”
3. Who or what influences your blog posts? I post what I cook and bake. As I look back through the posts, I realize, not surprisingly, that my mam definitely influenced a lot of my baking. I would love to have a blog from her to read through now.
4. Do you sit down and write your post ready to publish, think about your post for a day or two, make a draft and rework your draft before you post, how do you craft your posts? Some posts are written and posted immediately, sometimes my ‘other life’ takes over and there are large gaps – I find it harder to sit down and get back to it after a break. I think committing to one post a week is the trick. Which is what I’m going to try from now on!
5. Is your blog what you imagined or morphed in an unexpected direction? I had no idea what direction it would take when I started – I certainly didn’t think I’d be here a year later still posting and not even remotely running out of ideas! My earlier posts aren’t great (in my opinion) – I put links in to recipes as opposed to typing them out (when I’d remember something I’d changed) but I’m not going to edit the earlier ones at this stage – just move on and make the new ones better.
6. Do you think media, pictures, drawings, etc. are important elements for a blog? I take all my own photos (I can tell some of you might say!) and they form an integral part of each post.
7. What is one tip you have for the new blogger? Don’t over think it, just go for it. Write about what you know and commit to a blog per week / month, whatever. I also think post towards the weekend, or Sunday morning – posts earlier in the week sometimes get lost in peoples feeds.
8. What is your favorite food to eat at home? Really good Indian food.
9. What is your favorite food to order at a restaurant? Lobster Pot Black Pudding Mousse, Duck, Risotto, good Fish & Chips – this list could go on a bit!
10. What is your least favorite food? Olives, Squid, Kimchi
11. Have you tried sushi? Yes! I make it from time to time – will be in a post very soon. And the kids LOVE going out for Sushi but we are quite rural here in Ireland so have to wait for trips to Dublin or further afield.

Eleven random facts about me:

1. I met my husband on a plane to Kuwait
2. I celebrated my 21^st Birthday in pitch black midday Kuwait, with Oil Fires burning everywhere.
3. I ran Cross Country & Track for Ireland.
4. I am obsessed greatly interested in History / Family History in particular.
5. My son was born in Seoul, South Korea.
6. I coach Athletics, and will watch ANY athletics event live or on TV regardless of where / what it is.
7. I worked as a Security Guard at Wimbledon Tennis in London when I was a student.
8. (I worked at McDonalds also!)
9. I love a really good book – recently converted to Kindle.
10. All my lovely siblings live in different continents – we rarely get to all meet for dinner, which I miss 😦
11. I wait in great hope that Wexford will win another Hurling All Ireland, beating Kilkenny by a point in extra time.

My nominees are:

https://chosesamanger.wordpress.com/

http://thedinnerpartycollective.com/

https://cookingupthepantry.wordpress.com/

https://cookin5m2.wordpress.com/

http://thelittlelibrarycafe.com/

http://bewitchingkitchen.com/

http://goanwiki.com/

My Questions to you:

1. Why do you blog?
2. What have you learned since you started blogging?
3. Who or what influences your blog posts?
4. Do you sit down and write your post ready to publish, think about your post for a day or two, make a draft and rework your draft before you post, how do you craft your posts?
5. Is your blog what you imagined or morphed in an unexpected direction?
6. Do you think media, pictures, drawings, etc. are important elements for a blog?
7. What is one tip you have for the new blogger?
8. What is your favorite food to eat at home?
9. What is your favorite food to order at a restaurant?
10. What is your least favorite food?
11. Whats the most unusual thing you have ever eaten?

 ‘Liebster Award’ rules for the Next Guy/Gal:
1. Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
2. Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
3. Answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
4. Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
5. Nominate 5 –11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)
6. Create a new list of questions for the bloggers to answer.
7. List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!).

Remember to check out the home page to see if anything else takes your fancy.