An Award and a Nomination!

I was given The Versatile Blogger award a while ago by Bev at My Reader's Block - sorry I took so long to post this, and thanks so much!

Rules of the award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself. 
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...) 
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Seven things about me (I thought I would make this a holiday version, photos all mine):

1.) One side of my family is of German descent, and so we have plenty of German traditions for the holidays. We always have an Adventskrantz (Advent wreath), with 4 candles - 3 red, 1 white. In the days leading up to Christmas Eve, we light the candles (one more each night, saving the white for Christmas Eve) and sing Christmas carols (one on the first night, two on the second night, and so on). On Christmas Eve we light all 4 candles and sing 4 songs, with the last song always being Silent Night.

2.) When I was younger and we lived on the prairies, we used to go into the woods, stomping through thick drifts of snow, to choose and cut down a tree for Christmas. We'd get so freezing cold but eventually we'd agree on one, and then back in the car we'd warm up with hot chocolate and Timbits (donut holes). Now, living in Vancouver, we don't have the luxury of heading into the wild to pick a tree, unfortunately.

3.) My mom bakes up a storm at Christmas. She must make at least 20 varieties of cookies. For Christmas Eve, we pile these large plates full of cookies, chocolates, candies, and fruit, and eat them during the opening of presents and over the following days. (These are called Bunte Teller in German, translating to "colorful plates").

4.) The youngest in our family always gets to open the first gift on Christmas Eve (that would be me :D)

5.) I am lacto-ovo-vegetarian, but around Christmas I admit that I always miss the smoked salmon (with cream cheese on bagels) that we used to have back when we ate fish. It's expensive so we only ever had it at Christmas, and I wish someone would come up with a vegetarian taste-alike!

6.) Another German tradition we have is the Weihnachtspyramide. These beautifully crafted wooden structures spin by the heat from the candles alone. We always set these to spinning as we read the Biblical story, and then keep them going for a little while before the candles burn down too low.

7.) On New Year's Eve, we also have a special tradition. Each person in the family writes down 3 wishes for the coming year. Then we take a big bowl full of water, set the wishes (folded) along the rim of the bowl, and set half a walnut shell with a lit candle inside. Starting once again with the youngest (yes, I did always like that tradition :D), each person in turn moves the walnut boat by creating waves in the water, while never letting their fingers touch the boat. When the shell settles next to a piece of paper (or even catches it on fire, which has been known to happen!) we know that this is the wish we're meant to pick. Then we read it aloud, often to large amounts of laughter if we have gotten someone else's wish. We keep doing this until all the wishes have been taken - it's a lot of fun!

I'm passing this award on to a few awesome bloggers I've discovered:


Musings of a YA Reader
Bookduck
The Darcy Review


And in other news, I found out today that my blog has been nominated for the Best New Blog 2010 category of the Readers' Choice Awards 2010 at Mindful Musings. Thank you so much to whoever nominated me - I'm very flattered to be in such good company with these amazing bloggers!

You can check out all the details and vote for your favorite blogs here!

Oh, and I should add that you can be entered to win a prize if you vote :D

And just for fun...what are some of your holiday traditions?