I'd like to thank the Academy

I got my first blog award!! Oh my gosh, I feel like such a winner today!! Charmaine from Beautiful Things to Share gave me the, I love your blog award! Thanks Charmaine! Go check out her blog, she has some seriously gorgeous photos on there, I don't know where she finds them, or finds the time to look for all of them, but I'm glad she does, cause then I can go to one place and oogle them all.

I'm supposed to pass this on to 7 blogs that I truly love reading every day. I'm a new blogger but not a new blog reader, so here they are in no special order:

**Happiness is...** She's so sweet, and she always posts the cutest pics and most interesting things.

A Beautiful Mess She has pink hair, and she likes to knit and be crafty, enough said.

A Practical Wedding No I'm not getting married now or any time soon, but Meg has some of the most profound things to say not just about marriage but relationships, things that need to be discussed, and man has she started some discussions. I respect a girl that can light a fire.

East Side Bride cause she's honest, brutally honest, in a good way.

Grace's Birdcage Her blog is just so darn cute, and she cracks me up.

A Lovely Morning I have been reading this blog for a really long time, and I still can't get enough. Plus she's always putting up these vegetable photos from her garden that make me just plain jealous and want to go outside and plant stuff immediately. And she's an NPR junkie like me.

Sparrow's nest She has really great decorating ideas and how to's and they're right up my alley.

And now, the 7 things about myself...

1) I am just learning how to cook, and instead of starting out with little things and moving upward, I am tackling the gigantic, overly complicated, take a day to make meals. This being just the way I approach life, I always start at the top and work my way down. Working out? Oh I'll start my first day by lifting weights and running 20 miles on the treadmill. This makes for some serious frustrations in life but also so pretty funny stories to go along with them. Nothing is simple for me.

2) I am kind of a clean freak? I didn't think I was but now that I find myself walking around always picking up after people and rearranging things just to my liking, sweeping the floors everyday and cleaning the counter tops every morning I decided to just embrace my psycho clean nazi status. This however, does not mean I don't appreciate a good mess, or even make my own on a regular basis.

3) I adopted a dog a year ago and she's just about the most awesome thing ever. She's a half lab, half terrier, so she is basically a black labrador with a white beard, the beard is what sold me. She's my buddy and she makes me laugh all day long. I seriously have full on conversations with her, the boy thinks I'm nuts, but I don't care. Riley gets me man. She's the best.


4) I went to college preparing to go to medical school straight after. I took the MCAT, didn't like my score, wanted to take it again, had an epic panic attack, decided after wanting to be a doctor for more than half of my life, I would change my mind and reinvent my goals. This was VERY hard for me. Having spent more than 10 years defining who I was by what I wanted to do, I had to reevaluate who I was and who I wanted to be. It was humbling to say the least. But I feel good about the direction I'm going, I just wish I could get started with school like RIGHT NOW.

5) I am a shopaholic. Aside from coffee it's the only thing I can't say no to. It's a serious problem. I go in a store, just "to look" and leave with bags in my hand. When I was in highschool I even got a job working as a sales girl in a kitchen shop so I wouldn't spend my paychecks on everything in the store. Everything I use in my kitchen now I got while working at that job. I bought entire sets of everything and I couldn't even drive yet, much less own a kitchen. I love shopping in my favorite vintage stores for all my special finds. A lot of the clothes in my closet are from consignment shops, I love that I have a one of a kind piece that no one else can have. I like being unique.

6) I'm an NPR junkie. Like bad. I started listening to it after I graduated college cause I felt after being in school and studying every day of the week to doing hardly no heavy thinking at all that my brain was going to mush. I could listen to NPR all day. I love Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered and especially This American Life. I even listen to it at the gym. I wouldn't bat an eye if I saw Paris Hilton walking down the street but I'd be so excited to meet Terri Gross, or Ira Glass. I just seriously geeked myself out.

7) I started this blog because I lost my job as a biotech researcher for the University of California in August and I thought it would be a good way to distract myself or stop me from sitting aroung feeling sorry for myself. I am an opinionated girl, and I have a lot to say and a blog seemed like the perfect way to do it. I also wanted to spend the time I'm looking for another job, applying for my PhD and waiting to go to school trying to do things I had always wanted to do and once I go back to school will probably never have the time to do again, ie cooking, crafting, gardening and volunteering. I was thinking I would start to embrace this "domestic diva" status, so far it appears I'm more of a diva than I am domestic, to nobody's surprise at all. But I'm learning new things I can add to my arsenal of experiences.

Thanks for the blog award, and now I'm passing it on!