Sunshine Blogger Award

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see an email telling me that Valerie at Living Lighter in Atlanta nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award!  I may have had some other ideas for this week’s blog, but I thought it would be fun to stray from the beaten path and answer her questions.  It may also help me reintroduce myself to some of my newer followers.  With that in mind, thank you so much Valerie!  I hope I do your questions justice!  I really enjoy reading Valerie’s open and honest blog about her life, so please check her out as well!

I did look up the rules for the award, and they are as follows:

The Rules:

• Thank the person(s) who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog
• Answer the 11 questions sent by the person who nominated you
• Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions
• List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo on your post and/or on your blog

Valerie’s Questions

1. What are three activities that bring you happiness? Gardening, reading, and spending time with my family.  I am definitely an old soul; I would have made a wonderful turn-of-the-century housewife!
2. When you are feeling down, what kinds of things do you do to try and lift your spirits? Gardening, reading, and spending time with family again!  I also like redecorating and reorganizing (sometimes to my husband’s chagrin) our home.  I find that the work of a new project coupled with the newness of a space will get me out of my funk.
3. What are some of your favorite funny movies (comedies)? Clueless, Mean Girls, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pretty Woman, Sixteen Candles, St. Elmo’s Fire, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink. I’m basically a closet Romantic Comedy fanatic, and if it has Molly Ringwald or Julia Roberts in it I am sold!  Bonus points for the whole Brat Pack!
4. Who is your favorite comedian, and what do you like about him/her? Mitch Hedberg; I’ve listened to his old recordings hundreds of times, and I still laugh!  His one-liners get me every time.
5. Does money buy happiness? Growing up we never had a lot of money, but there was always a lot of love.  I think love and happiness go hand-in-hand more than money and happiness do.
6. Were your parents happy when you were growing up? Why do you think they were/were not? This question gave me a lot of cause for contemplation.  My parents, like most people, had a lot of demons to contend with.  While I can’t say that they were always happy while we were growing up, they always tried to be for us.  However, they have both found their own personal happiness within the past several years, and for that I am eternally grateful.
7. What makes you laugh out loud? Conversations between my 5 year old and 3 year old boys!  Their imaginations are out of this world – literally and figuratively!  And my husband; he has always had the power to make me laugh, even on my darkest days, and usually at his expense!  Haha!
8. Does the weather affect your mood?  I suffer from seasonal depression, so the answer would be a resounding YES.  The sun can make me so energetic and full of motivation!  Winter usually leaves me very blue, which is made harder by living in WI where our winters are long and unforgiving, and sunny days are very few and far between.  On the upside – spring should get here any day!
9. What in your life are you currently looking forward to? Spring planting!  We are greatly expanding our gardens this year to allow us to offer our first CSA box!  It will be a very limited-supply for family and close friends, but it means we are getting so much closer to our farmstead dreams becoming our financial means.  I can’t wait to get my hands in some fresh dirt!

Here are the blogs that I nominate (and you should check out!):

1. Seeking His Plan For Me
2. Aiming Flamingo
3. Farm Life 226
4. Healthy.Nappy.Nerdy.Mommy.
5. New Garden Homestead
6. Hot Mess Homesteading
7. Ang and Mae
8. Red Dirt Farm
9. Truthful Child
10. Cooking Without Limits
11. Blissfully Brittany

Here Are My Questions:

1. If you could only eat one flavor of ice cream for the rest of your life, what would it be?
2. What music do you listen to when you need motivation?
3. What was your favorite childhood toy?
4. What is your idea of the perfect date night?
5. What is your favorite part of blogging?  What is your biggest obstacle to blogging?
6. If you could redo any room in your home without a budget, what room would it be and why?
7. Wine or beer?
8. What one book could you read over and over?
9. What is your favorite holiday and why?
10. How did you come up with the name of your blog?
11. What do you hope is your lasting impact on the world?

Thanks again to Valerie for including me, it was lots of fun to answer your questions and come up with some of my own!

I’d love to hear from my readers what some of YOUR answers to my questions would be!  Drop me a comment down below or catch me on IG as @tacklemayhem_susan.  Until next time, have a beautiful and blessed day!