Rockin' Girl Blogger Awards!

I came back from the long weekend away to find that I'd been awarded a Rockin' Girl Blogger award!




How cool is this?! I don't win a lot of awards. Actually, the last time I won an award may have been when I was 12 and won the MSP award on my softball team. You're probably thinking MSP? Don't you mean MVP?

Nope. MSP means Most Sportsmanlike Player. In other words, the player that isn't the best pitcher or catcher or the fastest runner or hits the most home runs, but the one who sometimes doesn't strike out and sometimes gets safe on base and sometimes even catches a fly ball when she's sitting in the outfield picking dandelions. And she doesn't throw a hissy fit when she gets out or gets benched, but just smiles and cheers on her (much better than her) teammates (while secretly seething inside). That was me. And while it was an honour to win the award and get Orange Crush and ice cream cups to celebrate, it still sort of reminds you that you suck.

ANYWAY, this award totally rocks, and not just because it's PINK!, but also because one of my favourite bloggers, Laural Dawn, awarded it to me! Laural has her own blog, The Misadventures of Mommy Laural , which I just love. I started reading her blog after we bonded in the comments section of my blog over the mystery of the dirty Coach bags, which now, thanks to baby wipes, we've solved.

As part of winning the Rockin' Girl Blogger award, I get to award five other Rockin' Girl Bloggers with the award! Here goes!

Martinis for Milk: I first met Scarbiedoll at a tea party, and her blog was the first I'd ever read when she started it in 2004 when she got pregnant with her first child so that her friends could keep up to date with what was going on in her belly and her brain. Her tagline says it all: Party girl gets knocked up. Trades stilettos for stretch pants. Now she's pregnant with baby #2 and her posts range from hilarious to heart-warming to completely cringe-worthy. This post may be my favourite one yet.


Meg Cabot: You probably know Meg as the author of the super-popular The Princess Diaries series, but I got hooked on Meg's blog after reading the first in her Heather Wells Mystery series (Size 12 is not fat, Size 14 is not fat either and the upcoming Big Boned) for adults. She's written more books than her age (40) and she published her first book when she was 30. That works out to one new novel every 91.5 days. Or one book a season, which seems practically impossible, to me, especially in summer, between sitting on patios having cocktails, eating ice cream, reading other people's books, eating ice cream, tanning (I mean, loading up on SPF 30 and sitting in the shade), and eating ice cream. Still, when I learned that she didn't publish her first novel until she was 30, she inspired me and made me believe that I could still pursue my dream of becoming an author. That, at age 28, it wasn't too late. So thanks Meg.


Sarah Dessen: Sarah's the author of seven YA books (her eighth, Lock and Key out next spring), and I've read them all, and loved each of them, for various reasons, but also because they all take place in summer, which, when you're growing up, is that time when you can forget about school and cliques and frenemies and boys who don't like you and instead, wear flip-flops and hang out with your real friends and eat watermelon and go swimming and read books. Although I wish she'd been writing books when I was a teen, I sometimes think I might enjoy her books even more now, simply because they transport you to that time in your life when summers stretched on forever and each summer was so different from the last. In between reading her books, I get my fix from her blog, which she updates daily, with endearing snippets into her life as a full-time author, a wife, and a mom to a pond full of fish, two dogs, and a baby-to-be.


Megan McCafferty: Megan's the author of the Jessica Darling series for teens (which includes Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds and the soon-to-be-released Fourth Comings). Instead of a typical blog, her (retro) blog shares actual pages from her journals, which she kept for 15 years, until she started writing her first novel. Some of her notes from her past are so honest that they give me that same blush-and-squirm feeling I get when I'm reading my own diary or watching people karaoke. I just love the blog, especially the entries about her days as an editor at Cosmo & YM, a job that sounds so glamorous, but as any girl who's read or watched The Devil Wears Prada, or worked at a magazine can attest, is not always so. She just recently ran out of (retro) blog entries, so a few weeks ago she began posting pages from her writing notebooks, some of which become actual scenes in her books.


John & Hank Green (aka Brotherhood 2.0): Okay, I'm TOTALLY breaking the rules and awarding a Rockin' Blogger Award to not just one boy, but TWO BOYS. I have to. I just love the Green brothers so much (no, I've never actually met them). Whatever. That's just a minor detail because these boys don't drool, they rule, and they're so girly it's like they ARE girls (I mean that as the highest compliment). John is the award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines, and his brother, Hank, is a journalist who runs Eco-Geek. I've been a fan of John's blog ever since I read Looking for Alaska. Then, this year, the brothers decided to put a ban on communicating by email, and they started the Brotherhood 2.0 vlog, in which they correspond daily. Each entry is TOTALLY un-sucky, but since I can't pick my favourite, I'll leave you with this awesome opening credits that one of their fans created...