The Beautiful Blogger Award.....who me? Yes, but maybe you too!

I am just so surprised and excited by this award. My dearest new blog stalkee friend Josey at My Cheap Version of Therapy has not only offered me someone to commiserate and feel hopeful with, but she has also bestowed upon me a Beautiful Blogger Award! I can't believe it! First of all this girl is amazing. So you need to go check out her blog! And Second, I better get to fulfilling my requirements for this award. You can participate too! Give this award out to those you think deserve it and here are the steps.

1. Thank the person who nominated me for this award. - Josey YOU ROCK! Thanks so much.
2. Copy the award & place it on my blog.- the only way I could figure out to do this was to right click and save it to my pictures and then plop it in. There might be a better way, but I am a newbie at this blogging stuff.
3. Link to the person who nominated me for this award. - See Above
4. Share 7 interesting things about myself. - Hmmm this could take a while...interesting you say? And it should probably be something I haven't already written about....yikes
5. Nominate 7 other beautiful bloggers. - Okey Dokey

7 "Interesting" Things About Me:

1. As an architect (soon to be licensed....I can do it!) and an addict of HGTV, TLC, etc. you would think that my own house would just rock your socks off. But the "interesting" thing about me is that I am SOOOO indecisive when it comes to my own space. If you come to me and say "Natalie what would be a good color to paint this room"...or...."I need help picking out furnishings and arranging this space"...or even "what should I do with my back yard" or anything that has to do with ANY aspect of your home, office, dog house, etc. I would come up with at least three awesome ideas and help you figure out the one that you would absolutely love the most. But if you came over to my house, you would be sorely disappointed by my obvious lack of progress. Don't get me wrong I have one or two rooms that are semi- coming-together...hahaha....do you see what I am saying? But the majority of the house is in "transition". I think the main problem is that 99.5% of our furniture is hand-me-downs. If we had the money to buy furnishings of our own, then the rooms would be easier to pull together.

2. I am a compulsive fabric buyer. You know how most people struggle when they pass the candy bars in the check out aisle? Well I can ignore those no problem....well errr most of the time...darn you York Peppermint Patties!....but when I walk into a fabric store, there needs to be someone behind me with a tranquilizer gun. For example, I went into Joann's to buy 2 yards of fabric to make a gift for a friend's baby shower and I walk out with 4 extra yards of these other fabrics I loved....you know there is a problem when the fabric cutter lady says 'ooo what are you going to make with these' and you say 'I have no idea, but they are so pretty!'. Seriously I have a problem. I must have at least 80 lbs of fabric in my sewing room that is just waiting for my attention. I keep getting distracted by gifts for people....mainly baby gifts because they are so much fun to sew and turn out super cute!

3. I am horrible with names. Like seriously horrible at remembering them...unless your name is Emily because I know so many Emilys that would be easy for me to remember another one. But I have an internal GPS system, or so Andy likes to call it. If I have been somewhere once, even if it is dark out....there is a heavy fog and nothing is visible (well okay some stuff has to be visible)..I can easily remember how to get back to that spot. It is second nature to me. I still know my way around every place we have ever lived and every place I have ever traveled too. I can actually picture the places in my head when I think about them and remember the path I took to get there. So why can't I remember a simple freakin' name? Weird.

4. I have decided the name of our next Pit Bull (which we have already decided will be many many years from now. We plan to wait until we're just down to one dog before we get another one....oooo don't think about it...starting to well up) will be Waffle! I know what you are thinking. 'Natalie why on earth would you name your dog Waffle?'. Well first because it is an awesome and adorable name! And second because it would be a Pit Bull named Waffle. Come on people you have to see the funny aspect of that. Imagine you are walking down the street with this tough looking muscular dog and a passerby apprehensively decides that you look like a nice enough person not to have a dog that would eat them, so they ask you 'aw can I pet him?...what is his name?' and you say "waffle". It is like an instant heart warmer. I know you can see it.

5. I am really scratching at the bottom of the barrel here to find new stuff about myself...these are far from interesting, so sorry. I like to ride horses and am still searching for a way to do it for free. We had horses growing up, something I will forever be grateful to my mom and dad for supporting me in joining Pony Club and then buying a horse so Mom and I could be horsie girls. Our first horse was named Rex. I didn't name him, but that does seem like something I would name a horse. hahaha. He was wonderful! I miss him even to this day. Obviously getting married, moving to California, and then moving to New York did not facilitate the taking of a horse along with me and mom was getting too sick to ride and take care of them. So we gave Rex to our cousins in Missouri and her horse, Dilemma (appropriately named), went to some family in eastern Colorado. Well since I have moved back and am no longer working full-time and going to school full-time, I started reigniting my lost passions for things. Horses being one of them. I started taking lessons at this saddlebred farm in Parker and then when I decided to be all grown-up and responsible (yuck) I decided to sacrifice the lessons in order to invest in a Roth IRA.....seriously there is nothing worse than that to realize you are too grown up for your own good. Anyhoo, my friend Bret (pictured with me in my profile picture...where we were faux-smuggling sopapillas out of Casa Bonita by putting them in her shirt, in case you wondered what was going on there... no I didn't really put it down her shirt. And if you are wondering why we considered doing it, it is because they are yummy and we were too full to eat the rest of them, and they don't give you boxes to take them home....wait actually I am not sure if we asked for a box...maybe they do give you boxes....well it was funnier this way...wow this aside has gone on far too long!) volunteers at the Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center up near Longmont. And so she inspired me to do the same thing. It is a way of getting in some horsie time (although not by riding :( ) but I am helping others as well. Eventually I want to find a barn to help exercise at. There has to be a college kid or two that wants someone to work their horse out while they are away....I just need to keep looking.

6. Ugh these are getting long. I am going to keep the last two short and sweet. My brother and I were born 3 years and 3 days apart. He was born at 6:06am and I was born at 8:08am. This could have something to do with why I love palendromes. hahaha.

7. I have a passion for photography...I don't necessarily have a lot of time to do it right now, but I love it. In fact, I think once my kids move away and Andy and I start getting older, I see myself opening an art gallery, which will mostly contain works by other people hahaha, but may have a few of my photographs in there as well.

Whew! That was tough. Okay now for the nominations, which is easy peasy! Actually it is only hard because I love so many bloggers. To narrow it down is tough!
And the Winners for the Natalie's Beautiful Blogger Award go to:

1. KATIE! at Little Bit of Love, which I realize I link to all the time, but that is because I love her. Katie is one of my lifelong friends who is responsbile for me joining the blogging world. I love reading her blog because she is not only extremely interesting: she is an RN and a Hypnobirthing coach (and hopefully someday she will be my midwife..hint hint!) and an amazing cake maker/decorator, and a scrapbooker, and when we first met her wardrobe was peppered with Playboy bunnies (you didn't think I would forget about that did you?). In fact I am not sure I knew there was Playboy bunny adorned clothing until I met Katie....but she is also an awesome blogger, a loving and caring mother and wife and friend, and just one of the coolest people ever, okay, just trust me.

2. CRYSTAL! at The More or Less Weekly Camel! Crystal and I went to Cornell together. She was in City and Regional Planning and I was in Historic Preservation, but it is such a small department, we ran in the same circles....err circle, there was just one basically. Anyhoo, when I found out she also lives in Colorado I was super excited....although technically we haven't had the chance to see each other yet....we'll work on that. She is a very busy lady these days since she just had TWINS! She is the first person I have ever know to have twins and I just absolutely love her style: her style of living, her style of writing, her style of mothering, all of it! Love it.

3. TERESA! at More Excitement from the Howes. Okay so Teresa doesn't always have the time to blog, she is such a busy girl what with three little ones running about, but she is awesome! I met her through Katie back in 2002 when Katie and I decided to join Mary Kay. Yep I was a Mary Kay lady...and a pretty terrible one because I am a horrible "girl". I hardly ever wear make-up and I am lucky if I remember to wash my face more than once a day. That's another story though. So check out Teresa and her adorable little red-headed nuggets.

4. GUCCI MAMA! at Mama Still Wears Gucci. I LOVE this woman. She is hilarious, her posts are great and I just LOVE her. Not to mention she was my first "follower" who wasn't a close friend and following me out of obligation.

5. MAMA M.! at My Little Life. Mama M. is an awesome blogger. She has so many good stories to tell and she doesn't hold back. She has 5 kids! Wow! That in itself keeps me reading because I can barely handle taking care of myself...refer to previous statement about washing my face.

6. KRISTINA! at Sweetfern Handmade. I just "met" Kristina through a blog hop, but I love reading about her life. AND she lives very close to where we lived in "central" New York (everyone in NYC calls anything outside of the city "Upstate" but apprently the people from this area get super mad if you call it "Upstate" because it is "central", FYI).

7. CHAR! at Crap I've Made. I don't think Char follows my blog, but I am addicted to hers! Her blog is the first crafting blog I found and I LOVE IT! She was definitely my gateway drug to so many amazing bloggers. She has soooo many wonderful projects and I love seeing and reading about them (and hopefully when I have time, making some)

Thanks again to Josey for this award and Congrats to all my nominees I can't wait to see what your seven things about you are!