honest scrap award

File under 'really nice things': my new blog-friend, the vivacious Vik of Magpie Girl, has tagged me for my first ever blog award!

How this works: tell your readers ten things about you they may not know, but that are true. Then you tag 10 people with the award. Finally, let all the people you've given the award to know they've gotten it. Don't forget to link back to the person who awarded you. I'm not really good at this usually so rather than hesitate I'm going to just dive right in & not look back:

1) We have an adorable chocolate brown half-Burmese cat named Tigger, but who we call Pooh because he is the spitting image of our previous cat, named Pooh, who died on or about the day Tigger/Pooh was born. This is true: we have a reincarnated cat.

2) I have never coloured my hair. Even with shampoo-out colour. I don't know anyone else, including my sister & mom, who can make that claim.

3) As a result, my hairdresser says I've got 'teenage hair', altho I am nowhere near a teenager.

4) I'm a real pack rat and have a lot of trouble throwing things out. Which comes in handy with clothes, as whenever something appears on the catwalk, or a trend bubbles up from the street, I can fish around in my closet & save a ton of money.

5) I am happiest submerged in water, preferably warm & turquoise & outdoors in a beautiful place.

6) I love snorkeling, but find the fins & masks a real hindrance & am happiest simply swimming bare footed, with goggles. I can go a long time without surfacing. To this end, I have come to the conclusion that I was either a mermaid in my past life, or will be so in the next.

7) My parents didn't give me a middle name - I didn't even know other people had one until I was in school - and when I confronted them with this fact my mother said 'well since our last name is Carin, when you get married that can be your middle name.' Even at the time, I could see this ploy was intended as an incentive to get that ring on my finger.

8) I love my family so much it hurts. It was really hard as a teenager to rebel against such cool parents, but I did my best.

9) There are still so many places on this planet I desperately want to see before I die. Especially the Seychelles, Maldives, Thailand, Tahiti, Micronesia, Philipines, and the Great Barrier Reef. And I'm longing beyond words to return to Ponza, and the Baths in the BVI, but especially, Long Island in the Bahamas where my family have some land.

10) Because of a conversation with my dad in a Chinese restaurant when we were kids, I now consider anything pistachio to be significant of something highly spiritual. I also love the colour and flavour.

Now the hard part: coming up with ONLY ten blogs that I love, & am grateful to: for either their support when I started out a few months ago, or they're starting out & are great & could use some support, and/or I'm grateful for their friendship & continuation in the conversation.

In no particular order:

the sleekgeek
everyday curator
lips of london
the trendy dwarf
pret a porter p
thumblina fashionista
style odyssey
culture shock
karla's closet
noelle chantal