Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, February 7, 2008 2:01 pm

First of all, thanks so much for all the get-well wishes I received. I am quite touched! I am feeling much recovered from my last illness thank you. Unfortunately however, I now seem to be developing a cold. I guess we’ll be sharing that at our house soon too. Oh well!

It’s a good thing that human viruses can’t be passed along via the internet (not yet at least), but I have noticed a lot of blog awards flying back and forth out there lately. I am excited to report that another one has landed on my doorstep! Christine of Fruit in Season has very kindly passed a “Blogging with a Purpose” award on to me. Christine writes a lovely blog about homeschooling, family, and life in general. Plus her blog has recently had a beautiful remodel which makes it a real pleasure to linger there. Thank you so much Christine!

This award is especially nice since sometimes I feel I have a purpose, and sometimes I feel like I ramble along aimlessly. Now however, when I see this award on my “Thank You” page, it will be a nice reminder that perhaps there IS a purpose to all this time I spend working on my blog.

The award originated here and the rules are the following:

Rules:

1. Awarded parties must nominate five people who have not received the award.

2. The blogs that receive the award must serve some purpose.

3. In their post about the award they need to link back to this entry.

4. Awarded parties must post the award banner on their site. The banner must remain linked to this site.

That’s it!

So, now it is my turn to pass this along to 5 bloggers who “blog with a purpose.” With that in mind, I nominate:

+ Mimi Lenox and her Peace Globe Blog: BlogBlast for Peace. Mimi has created a project called The Blog Blast for Peace whose goal is to unite bloggers from around the globe in speaking out for peace. Two days a year, all the participants blog about peace and fly a “Peace Globe.” This is a huge effort and Mimi works tirelessly at this project. If the creation of world peace isn’t a “purpose” then I don’t know what is! Thanks for your hard work Mimi!

+ The next two recipients I will put together in the same paragraph since they are both blogging toward the same goal: eliminating, or at least reducing, unethical marketing targeted at children: Lisa of Corporate Babysitter (aka. Parents for Ethical Marketing) and Amy of Shaping Youth. Thank you both for all your hard work and research, and especially for having the guts to voice your opinions despite ruffling some powerful, corporate feathers. You are intelligent, strong women. Thank you for sharing your discoveries and insights with the rest of us!

+ I also must nominate Lara Gallagher of The Lazy Organizer for inspiring me to be more organized. Her blog actually makes organizing and tidying sound fun! For me at least, an organized house leads to an organized mind, which leads to a happier me, which leads to happier kids! Thank you Lara for making us all tidier and happier!

+ My final nominee is MC Milker of The Not Quite Crunchy Parent. I feel that MC and I share very similar world and parenting viewpoints. Her blog is a great resource for parenting information, green living, marketing to kids, toys…a lot of the same stuff I like to write about at Unplug Your Kids. If you like Unplug Your Kids, then head over to The Not Quite Crunchy Parent because I think you’ll like that too!

I have no idea if any of you have this award already, or if you even like receiving awards. But I pass this along nonetheless as a thank you to you for bravely “blogging with a purpose.” I appreciate all your hard work!

Comments (8)

By Mom Unplugged, February 2, 2008 10:09 pm

I have some overdue thank yous to send out today! (I feel like I am accepting an Oscar!)

First, I must thank Becky of Boys Rule My Life for passing along an “E for Excellent Award.” Wow! Thanks so much! Just when I begin to wonder why I am putting so much time and effort into this blog, a really nice comment, email, or award comes along and makes it all worthwhile.

If you haven’t stopped by Becky’s blog, you should. She writes about the ups and downs of life with three boys (well, four, if you include her husband!). She is also a very active supporter in the fight against ALS (aka. Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and I am fortunate to have “met” her. She has become a beloved blog friend, one of those bloggers that I wish I could meet in real life.

Thank you Becky!

I guess I am supposed to pass this along to 10 bloggers, but since I pass my next award on to half the blogosphere (keep reading), I think I’ll just nominate:

Andree of Meeyauw for being another good blog friend that I would enjoy meeting in real life. Andree is a math teacher in beautiful Vermont. She has a very diverse blog where she mostly writes about Vermont, nature, cats, math, and “techie stuff.” Andree has been a weekly Unplugged Project participant since the early days and likes to try and get a math-related project out of the theme. Her creativity astounds me and I always look forward to seeing what she has done with the week’s theme (OK Andree - math and pipecleaners on Monday? This will be interesting!)

and:

Jenny of Wildwood Cottage for being such a nice blogger, nice person, and wonderful mother to her 3 year-old daughter CJ. I am so pleased to have met Jenny (and again, would love to meet her “for real”). She and I share an interest in high-quality children’s books, although she is more active than I in finding new ones and posting about them. I think she should make a printable weekly library list because whenever I find myself confronted with endless shelves of children’s books at the library, I always wish I had taken detailed notes from her latest blog post.

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Next is an award that came a long time ago and that I missed due to my December/January hiatus.

I didn’t even notice until a few days ago that Mimi of Mimi Writes (aka. the famous Peace Globe Mimi!!) awarded me a “Thank You For Being My Friend Award.” This is what it means according to its creator (Mel at Monday Morning Power):

“There is something very special and unique about blogging friendships. In “real” life we all have to first get by the physical and superficial aspects of each other before we can get into who we are, really. In “real” life there is so much bull shit that we have to put up with, that sometimes developing true friends becomes very difficult. I feel that with blogging friendships there are no superficial aspects to it; the barriers do not exist. We open up in our writings as to who we really are. We bare ourselves and say “this is me.” For many of us this is the only way that we can truly express ourselves, our opinions, our strengths and our fears. I have also discovered a level of INTEGRITY amongst bloggers that I have not found in “real” life.”

Unbeknownst to me, she passed it along way back in very early December. I am so clueless and late, but tremendously grateful nonetheless!

If you have never heard of her, Mimi is the founder of the blog Peace Globe movement. You can find my Peace Globe in one of my sidebars (left at the moment, but I move it around). Twice a year, June and November, she hosts a “Blog Blast for Peace” during which bloggers can create and display Peace Globes, and then all participants get together and write about peace on a certain day. I did it last June and November and intend to continue. I hope any other bloggers out there will join us next June! I’ll post details as I learn them, but of course the most up to date info can be found at Mimi’s peace blog.

Thank you Mimi!

I would like to pass this one along to everyone who has ever joined in with the weekly Unplugged Project. The first time I proposed the idea of a weekly project, I fully expected to be doing it alone, yet six brave souls showed up at the party:

Tamara of Mama Tamara

Becky of Boys Rule My Life

Amanda of The Rowdy Pea

Jenny of Wildwood Cottage

Kate of Homeschooling in the Garden State

Suzanne of 3-Foot-Tall Diva

Since that first week we have had the following bloggers join in:

Andree of Meeyauw

Courtney of I Couldn’t Possibly Make This Up!

Heather of Homeschooling Fun

Jules of Andamom.com

Daphne of Adventures of Plenty

Cheryl of A Day in the Life of our Homeschool Journey

Cloudscome of A Wrung Sponge

Maria of eKleKtiKos

Claire of Raising the Next Generation

Heather of Celtic Mommy

Amber of School-n-Such

Yasmina of Yasmina Green

Jenny of Little Acorns Treehouse

Christie - no blog, joins in via Flickr photos

Tracey of Eclectic Charm

Soo of Looking for the Answers

Mom and Kiddo of Mom and Kiddo

Warillever of Reprehriestless Warillever

Jess of Jess Atkinson

Coastalgirl of Coastalgirl

Hopefully I didn’t miss anyone who has ever participated in one of the Unplugged Projects. I am grateful to all of you for joining me in this endeavor, and I happily pass this along to each and every one of you (even those of you that I don’t really “know” so well).

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Finally, I just discovered that some time ago, someone nominated Unplug Your Kids for a Bloggers’ Choice Award, two awards actually - in the categories of Best Parenting Blog and Best Shopping Blog! Thank you so much whoever you are!!!

As I come up on my one year blog anniversary I am amazed at how far my blog has come. A year ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was! Thanks to everyone who reads. As I said above, it really makes all the time and effort (and it is A LOT of time and effort) completely worthwhile.

I am no Hillary, Obama, McCain or anyone else, so I have no campaign speech to give. But if you enjoy Unplug Your Kids and feel like voting for it, you can do so here for the Parenting category and here for the Shopping category. You don’t have to have a blog to vote.

(I have updated the URL with the Bloggers’ Choice people to reflect the new location.)

Thanks to all and I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!

-NOTE: At the moment, I am displaying all my awards and blingy stuff on my Thank You page. -