Sunday, March 14, 2010

Happy Birthday and Amazing Grass Giveaway Winner

Happy Birthday, blog! :-) When I started this blog (AWN) a year ago, I had no idea that my little “online journal” would enrich my life as it has. I started AWN to focus on living a healthier life and to truly take care of myself. It’s so easy to put others first and to forget about your own needs. But I think you can only truly enrich others’ lives if you take care of yourself first.

AWN helped me to focus on taking me time and on making daily exercise a habit again. It also helped me to tackle some emotional eating and portion control issues. AWN also helped me to focus on some of the positive things that are happening in my life (it’s so easy to focus on the negative too much…).

Finally, I love having a collection of my recipes (have to update my recipe page again…), and the teenager actually commented recently that it’s cool that he’ll be able to recreate my meals when he leaves for college in the fall…

For the first couple of months of this blog, I pretty much did my “own thing” and didn’t read other blogs or comment on them. Once I “discovered” other blogs and the blogging community, I really got into it. I’ve been learning so much and really enjoy reading your blogs! Thank you for reading mine, for commenting, emailing, and for writing posts yourselves (those of you who have blogs).

Over the course of the last year I have also struggled with keeping a blogging/life balance. I guess like any hobby, blogging can take over your life, and if you have your own blog, I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about… When things get overwhelming, I remind myself that blogging has to be fun and shouldn’t feel like a chore… 

In honor of AWN’s birthday, I dragged hubby shopping with me yesterday. Isn’t he lucky? It was quite cold, and he didn’t wear enough clothes, so he was very anxious to go into any store to get warm. Big mistake as he agreed to go into Anthropologie… I usually go straight to the sales rack, but it’s never cheap… I found a dress that was 50% off (but still far from cheap…), and it just had to come home with me. It certainly is a special, rare splurge… I hope AWN likes her gift… :-)

Dress
Okay, and now on to why you are really here: the winner of the Amazing Grass Giveaway. As always, I hired the toddler. Unfortunately, he was much more interested in eating his ice cream bar than in drawing a name, and my photos didn’t turn out very well… Oh well, we still got a winner…

Winner 01
Winner 02
And the winner is
Winner 03

Congratulations Marisa at Loser for Life!

Marisa, email me your address at andreaswellnessnotes[at]gmail[dot]com, and I’ll forward it to Amazing Grass, who will send the bars directly to you. A huge thank you to Amazing Grass for doing this giveaway with me to celebrate AWN’s birthday!!!

Question: How long have you been reading blogs? Do you have your own blog(s)? If yes, when did you start your blog? Any thoughts on blogging/life balance?
 
Be well,
Andrea