Hello belles and beaus! This is a special post in honor of Cristina over at Grace Like Rain, who nominated me for the Liebster Award. Y’all may remember Cristina…her stunning bridal portraits were recently featured on the blog! Apparently, the Liebster Award began in the blogosphere sometime around 2010 and is a way for bloggers to share other’s blogs so that ultimately, everyone is discovering new blogs and sharing the love. Well, you know how I feel about love…I’m all in!
Before I share a few of my own favorite blogs with you ladies (and I’ve got a fun spin on that, believe me), Cristina has asked me to answer a few questions about myself. This should be a fun chance for readers to get to know me just a bit better!
1. What inspired you to start blogging?
I have been writing since way before blogging was ever a thing. As soon as I learned how to spell, I was spinning stories. I still have piles on piles of notebooks of short stories I wrote as a child. Most of them were about young-horse-enthusiasts-turned-equestrian-extraordinaires, which of course I myself planned to be one day!
I’m not sure what precisely inspired me to start blogging, but sometime in late 2010/early 2011, I started a personal blog. How embarrassing that I can’t even remember the name of it! I deleted it when school and life got busy and I no longer had time to keep up with it.
I started this blog in late April 2014. I had been dreaming of this blog for months (possibly even years), but knew that I didn’t have the time for it during graduate school. Coincidentally, my first post was published not long after the due date of my final MSW paper.
My inspiration for this blog came from my own sheer love for love. I had long been gathering wedding ideas on Pinterest (and before Pinterest, in a file on my desktop!) and thought it was a shame that they weren’t getting shared with others who might benefit from them. Hence, a blog was born!
2. Coffee date with your favorite author– how do you take your coffee, who are you sitting with, and what are you discussing?
How do I take my coffee? I don’t! No, no….my favorite author Celia Rivenbark and I will be drinking mimosas or margaritas while discussing any number of important things, including but not limited to the unbelievable bad etiquette we witness in our daily lives, the amazing food we Southerners have the privilege of partaking of, and how we truly feel about exercising.
3. What do you enjoy most about where you live right now?
I am a 5-minute drive from downtown and all of the good food, entertainment, shopping, and mischief that comes with it.
4. Your boss calls to tell you that you need the day off; you’ve been working too hard lately. What do you do on your spontaneous day off?
Oh boy, oh boy. My favorite kind of day. I would probably sleep until 10:00 or so, get up and eat breakfast and somehow waste a few hours doing more or less nothing, then run errands and get caught up on household chores. Then din with Wes. Not an ultra-exciting day, yet satisfying and productive.
5. What one possession do you cherish most?
Probably my e-ring. Not only because it’s stunning and Wes proposed to me with it, but also because my parents and my late grandmother helped pick out the center stone when I was a little girl!
6. What’s your ultimate travel destination? Money is not an object.
Greek Isles. I’m dreaming of white sand, turquoise blue ocean, delicious food, gorgeous men…oh wait, already have one of those, better scratch that off the wish list…
7. What five things make you the happiest?
SO many things make me happy!! Without thinking too hard about it: 1) Love (I know, I know, I say it all the time, but by golly people, it’s true!); 2) Spending time with my friends and family; 3) Dessert – any and every kind, haven’t met one yet that I didn’t like; 4) Summertime; 5) Puppies and/or lemurs – cute factor.
8. What does the world need more of?
Ubuntu.
9. Favorite recipe?
Oh my word, so difficult…I’m going to choose one I can link to since that’s more fun: these Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. Actually, I can’t even believe I just gave y’all the link and ruined my secret to what are by far the BEST chocolate chip cookies ever. Seriously. Every time. The best. I grew up with my mom making them and haven’t ever found a better recipe. They are excellent in cookie or bar form. But, for the love of all that is holy people, omit the nuts, okay?
10. Describe what you have been learning from a spiritual perspective, recently.
During premarital counseling with Wes, our pastor challenged us to pick a biblical verse to be a sort of “theme” for our first year of marriage. Super clever idea. Not to be outdone in the cleverness department, Wes and I put our own little spin on the challenge and decided that each year, we would take a segment of 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 (THE most beautiful passage about love of all time, so please don’t tell me it’s a cliche because I just won’t hear it) to be our “theme” verse of the year. Well, y’all know how it starts…”Love is patient.” A perfect “theme” verse for the first year of marriage, I think. Anyone who knows me well knows that patience is hardly one of my best virtues. And so, I have found myself learning on a daily basis lately just exactly what it means to love someone through patience.
Okay, that is quite enough about me. Now it’s time to introduce y’all to some blogs! I am putting a wedding-themed spin on this one that channels the old wedding adage “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” That’s right, I am introducing you to four blogs, one old, one new, one borrowed, and one blue (but not all of them are wedding-related!):
Something Old: Save the Date (via Glamour). Seriously, this is probably the first blog I ever started following. This may not be an “introduction” for some of you since this blog is sponsored by mega-magazine Glamour, but hey, that’s why it’s the “something old,” right? I just love how the articles are short, fun, and diverse–there’s everything from advice columns to style inspiration to news stories about celebrities’ extravagant-awesome weddings.
Something New: Bitchless Bride. I just discovered this blog a few days ago but am already in love. She is just so sassy! Be prepared for a few curse words, some off-the-beaten-path ideas, and a whole lot of honesty.
Something Borrowed: How Sweet It Is. Because I borrow all of her recipes! Seriously, we like all the same stuff. I feel like we would be best friends in real life.
Something Blue: Preppin’ Postgrad. This blog is written by one of my dear friends from college, Jessica, and features not one, but TWO different shades of blue on the website layout. Jessica posts lots of fun fashion inspiration, book recommendations, and other fun little tidbits. Go follow!
Hope you enjoyed this little detour from the norm, belles and beaus 🙂
xoxo Laura