Breaking News with Maggie: We've Been Awarded

Okay, so maybe it's not quite "breaking" news, since we received this award on August 31st and we're just now getting around to it.  :}

Anyway, this is Maggie Wilson of Breaking News with Maggie with a special report:  our answers to the..."Elegant Blogger Award"?  Seriously?  Elegant?  Couldn't it have been the "Awesomest Blogger Award" or the "Super Cool Blogger Award"?  Who comes up with this stuff?  More Austenites like Tess?

Okay, moving on.  Tess is giving me that look again.

So, we were awarded the Elegant Blogger Award by Rebecca and Kirsten over at Simply Dollightful.  (Thanks, girls...even if I think the award needs a name change.) ;)

Here are the rules:  

-When you receive the award, link back to the original blog and the blog that nominated you.

-Display the award button in the post.

-Answer all 12 questions given in this post (do not make your own questions).

-Nominate 12 bloggers.

-Notify them that they have been awarded.

Here are the 12 questions.  Tess and I will both give our answers for each one.

1.  What made you decide to start blogging?

  

   M:  I wanted to be a journalist and Tess wanted to be an author.  We figured blogging would be a great way to get some writing practice in.  Anything to add, Tess?

   

   T:  Um, no, I think you just about covered it. :)

2.  What is your fashion style?

   

   M:  Fashion style?  Really?  Look, I slap on my trusty hat and wear whatever jeans or khakis and shirt are available.  There's way more to life than preening in front of a mirror.

   

   T:  I love dresses and skirts best of all, and wearing anything old-fashioned gives me a thrill.  I'm also especially partial to cameo jewelry.

3.  What is something that none of your followers know about you?

   

   M:  One of my favorite snacks is carrot sticks with garlic hummus.  I know, I'm weird.  Whatever.  You should totally try it before you judge. ;)    

  

   T:  I'm deathly afraid of spiders.

4.  What are some of your blogging goals?

   

   M:  How about posting with any sort of regularity?  That would be a miracle.

  

   T:  I think if we could perhaps be a little more organized with our posting, that would be splendid.  I would also love to continue with my "Tea with Tess" posts.

5.  Where is your favorite place to shop?

   

   M:  Eh, I'm not really much of a shopper.  I leave that to Mama and some of the others.  I'd rather not waste my time wandering from store to store buying stuff.  Of course, I'm not opposed to Mama bringing me more action figures...as long as I don't have to go with her to pick them out. ;)

  

   T:  I adore antique stores and tea shops. :)  

6.  What would your ideal amount of followers be?

   

   M:  Doesn't matter how many, as long as it's more than Mama's. >:}

  

   T:  To be honest, I never thought we'd come this far.  The fact that we've surpassed 100 followers is still astounding to me.  I'm content with whatever happens from here on out.  :)

7.  What are your talents?

   

   M:  I can make people cry.  Is that a talent? ;)  JK.  I think I'm pretty awesome at reporting.  

  

   T:  I enjoy writing...and...um...well, does reading count as a talent?  

8.  Are you a leader or a follower?

   

   M:  Natural born leader, Baby!  Of course, I wasn't actually born, so maybe it should be "natural made leader".  But you get the picture.

  

   T:  I'm definitely more of a follower.

9.  What is one of your favorite quotes?

    M:  "All that is gold does not glitter,

            Not all those who wander are lost;

            The old that is strong does not wither,

            Deep roots are not reached by the frost."  From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien 

(And yes, all you Tolkien fans out there, I'm aware I didn't finish the poem.  I like the first part the best.)

   T:  "...You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant..."  From "Persuasion" by Jane Austen

(Sigh.  To have someone write such words to me would be absolutely heavenly.) :}

10.  Do you have a favorite book or book series?

   M:  "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy

  

   T:  All of Jane Austen's completed works.  My very favorites are "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility".

11.  Out of all of the synonyms for elegant, which would you describe yourself with:  smart, stylish, dainty, or fine?

   M:  Ick.  What a question.  None of the above, I hope...except maybe smart...as long as it refers to intelligence and not looks.

   

  T:  Well, I would love to be considered dainty or fine, but I wouldn't want to presume and assign those descriptions to myself. :}

12.  What is your favorite flower?  

   M:  I don't really have one.  I'm not much of a flower type.

   

  T:  I love purple hydrangeas best of all.

So that's all of our answers (oh, and it's Maggie here again).  This is probably cheating, but since this award has already been making the rounds, we're not going to nominate anyone.  If you read this and would like to participate, consider yourself nominated. ;)

I'd love to promise you that we'll be back soon with a ton of posts, but I'm too distrustful of our lack of organizational skills to promise anything.  We do still have a giveaway planned, but at this point we should probably call it something other than our "Three Year Blogoversary Giveaway" since it's been over a month.  Maybe we'll come up with some other cool title for it. ;)  

Just know that as soon as we can pull ourselves together, we'll have another post for you.  Until then, this is Maggie Wilson, signing off.  Oh, and Tess Prescott, too.

Breaking News with Maggie: We've Been Awarded!

This is Maggie Wilson of Breaking News with Maggie, here to report that we've been awarded by our friend Reese from Reese's Pieces of Life.

Okay, so it's not exactly "breaking news" since I already mentioned it last week, but just go with it.  I needed another "Breaking News with Maggie" post. ;)

Before I get to that, though, I wanted to mention that I rather stupidly forgot to mention my birthday last week.  It was the 3rd, and Rachel and I celebrated by watching "The Hobbit".  FINALLY.  I cannot TELL you how long I've been waiting to see it.  We watched it in regular 2-D.  Mama gets kind of seasick watching 3-D.  We also hadn't heard great things about the spiffy-however-many-frames-per-second filming that they did, so we stuck with the "normal" version.

I came to the movie with mixed feelings, and after watching it, I felt the same way.  I think there were some parts that were really awesome, but some of it was overly huge and big and epic for a little story that was more of a fun, lighthearted children's book.  Granted, it's been a while since I've read it, so there were some things that might have been from the book that I just didn't remember.  And yes, I know that Peter Jackson pulled extra material from "The Necromancer" and all that (trust me, I know my Hobbit movie trivia!).  Some of the film was great and some of it seemed to drag on a little more than necessary.  And for some of it I was just thinking, "Really?"  (For example, Bilbo running after the Goblin and defending Thorin towards the end of the movie.  Where did that come from?  And who on earth was the weird goblin guy anyway?  I don't remember him from the book!  And while we're at it, didn't the Goblins set the trees on fire, not the dwarfs?  Okay, I'd better move on before I get stuck here forever.) ;)

I will say this:  the Riddle scene was AMAZING!  It was just like I'd pictured it.  Andy Serkis did such an incredible job of bringing the split personality to Gollum.  He managed to pull off a character who was completely creepy one minute and someone to be pitied the next.

I did like the casting of the other characters, too.  Martin Freeman made a great Bilbo, and I did like Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield too.  Even if he was in *gag* "North and South".  I won't hold it against him. ;)  At least he was in "Captain America" too.

And speaking of Thorin, guess what I got for my birthday from Mama?  That's right, my very own Thorin Oakenshield action figure!!

Isn't he cool?  

She found him on sale at Kmart, so she was able to get him for me.  I'm planning on doing a review post later.  I figured if Mama can do review posts on her blog, I should be able to do one on mine. ;)

But enough of that.  On to the best blogger award!

For the first part, Tess and I get to answer 5 questions.  Oh, wait a minute.  Tess says that since it's a reward for our whole blog, it's only fair to have everyone who's contributed answer the questions.  Goody.  This won't take all night or anything.

Here are the questions we're supposed to answer:

1. What is your favorite post that you've ever created?

   I'd have to say that my favorite post was my Avengers Discussion post I did with Rachel.  

   Tess said her favorite was her "Tea with Tess" post (the only one she's done so far).  Just a warning:  Emma and Tess spent this entire post discussing their Jane Austen favorites, so if you're not a fan, I'd skip this one.

   Emma's favorite was her series of posts on her trip with Mama that she recently did.

   Hayden's favorite post was her post about her vacation from last summer.

   Jenna liked her post about Thanksgiving with Papa's family.

   And Rachel and Charlie chose their series of posts on their coast trip, also from last summer.

   

2.  What is your favorite photostory that you have ever taken part in?

   We all particularly enjoy our Christmas posts with the photo stories.  We especially liked the Christmas posts from 2011.  You can see a couple of them HERE and HERE.

3.  Why do you blog?

   Tess and I started blogging to get more writing experience, Tess because she wanted to be a writer and I because I wanted to be a journalist.  Since then, we've continued for the same reasons but also for the social aspect.  It's great meeting other doll bloggers out there. :)

4.  How many followers do you have?

   We currently have 95 followers (just 5 more until we can do our giveaway!).

5.  Do you like being nominated for awards?  

   Um, yeah!  What's not to like?  It's always nice to know your writing is being noticed and appreciated.

And now, we get to nominate 5 other bloggers for this award.  After a bit of discussion, we decided to nominate:

1.  The Bolton Girls from The Bolton Girls Travel Journal

2.  Kiki from Kiki's Corner

3.  Jenny from A Doll's Life

And that's as far as we got.  Many of our favorites had already been nominated (in fact, I think even some of the ones we nominated were already nominated!), and a lot of our favorites haven't been actively blogging for a while.  If you've already been selected and you'd rather not participate a second time, we understand.

Tess wants me to insert here that we were primarily trying to stick to other doll bloggers since Mama also received this award and will be nominating human bloggers.  She also wanted me to be sure to mention that just because we didn't nominate you doesn't mean we don't like your blog or anything.  She always gets really worried about "offending the readers". ;)

I guess that's about all for now.  I've got to get to bed.  We'll be back later with more awesomeness. ;)

Oops, I almost forgot this was a "Breaking News with Maggie" post.  So, to keep it all official, this is Maggie Wilson, signing off. ;)

Maggie's Memos: A Quick Hi

Hey everyone, Maggie here.  So, you're probably waiting for an amazing post or something, but you're going to have to wait a little longer.  Mama's 3 girls have been around constantly this whole week since their school is out for Easter break.  Normally, when Little Gal is the only one home, we can sneak out to the computer during her quiet time.  With all three of them here, though, it's just too risky.  If they discovered we were alive, they'd never leave us alone.  Besides, they're not supposed to know.  Really, it's against doll code even having Mama, Grandmama, and Mimi know about us.

But on to the point.  We've been awarded with the "Best Blogger Award" by our friend Reese and are hoping to get a post up about it soon, but it will most likely have to wait until next week when the older girls are back in school.  Thanks, Reese.  It's nice to know someone appreciates our talents.

It'll be nice to have free reign of the house again!  I'm sick of being stuck in my room, especially now that it's up so high.  Rachel and I are getting a huge case of cabin fever!  

By the way, while I'm here, I just had to give a big thanks to all of our followers...91!!  Seriously, it's about time we started catching up to Mama.  Yeah, I know she has 226 followers.  But just you wait.  We'll catch up to her as the word spreads about our awesomeness...and I'd better leave it at that or Tess will start complaining. ;)

We're planning on doing something special once we hit 100 followers, so keep it up!  Just 9 more to go.  Come on.  Click that "follow" button.  You know you want to. :)

Be back soon with more amazing stuff.  Laters.

Maggie

Breaking News with Maggie: We've Been Awarded! :)

This is Maggie Wilson of "Breaking News with Maggie", relieved to finally be posting again!!

What?  Charlie and Rachel's posts were fine, especially for beginners, but surely you've missed the actual bloggers around here, right?  Just sayin'.

Anyway, Wendy over at Wendy's Life awarded us with the "Your Blog is Great" award (thanks, Wendy!).  Of course, we already knew that our blog was great, but it's nice to know that others recognize our genius as well. ;)

Okay, moving on before Tess feels the need to get on here and apologize for my "shocking behavior".  }:)

So the rules for this award are simple.  You put a copy of the award on your post, you list the rules (which I"m kinda doing in my own lazy way), you list five other bloggers you'd like to reward, and then you comment on those five blogs to let them know they've been awarded.

We've chosen to award:
  1.  Mia of "Mia's Musings" (Hi Mia!)
  2.  Alexandra at "Of Trims and Frills and Furbelows" (Okay, what in the world is a furbelow?  It sounds like a fancy Furby or something.  Can you guess which two of the three of us thought of awarding this blog?  No offense, Alexandra.) :}
  3.  Deb of "Debonair Designs" (Our friend who makes amazing doll sweaters and other nifty items.  I'm a little miffed that Mama hasn't gotten one for ME yet.)
  4.  My Froggy Stuff of...um..."My Froggy Stuff" (This lady is awesome!!  Have you seen her craft ideas?  And all for dolls like me...and even stuff for those of you who are actually into the 12 inchers like Belle of -gag-Belle's Bulletins.)
  5.  Piper of "Pleasant Piper" (Piper's really cool, plus she has really amazing pics on her blog.  Maybe someday Mama will be that good with a camera.) ;)

Okay, I think I covered everything.  Mama told me that this award has been circulating for quite a while now, so if any of you have already been awarded, feel free to ignore it. ;)

Until next time, this is Maggie Wilson, signing off.