Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Awards and Announcements

First off, thank you to everyone who provided feedback on my WiP excerpt.  I will leave it up through today with the hopes of drawing more reactions, so vital to my writing process.  After today, I'll take it down, as it is the first draft of a current project.  Click here to read it :)


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carbon neutral coupon with kaufDA.de


Help celebrate Earth Day tomorrow, April 21 by neutralizing your blog's carbon emissions. How? By participating in a joint effort by "Make It Green" and "Arbor Day Foundation." It couldn't be simpler:

1. Click the Leaf Logo above, taking you to a website that explains the program.

2. Copy the HTML code for one of the buttons (like the one above)and paste it on your blog's sidebar. Blog about the program to increase awareness and boost participation.

3. Email your blog URL to CO2-neutral@kaufda.de

4. For your blog, one tree will be planted in Plumas National Forest in Northern California by “Arbor Day Foundation” our partner in US for the “My blog is carbon neutral” initiative!

How will planting a tree in California help reduce a blog's emissions in, say, Georgia? Here's what initiative organizers say: "We plant trees, both in Germany (in the upper Harz region) and in Northern California. Why are we doing this? Because the reduction of carbon emissions by planting trees has the same effect, regardless of where in the world the trees are planted. It involves all of us to give something back to our environment." (Read more HERE)



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Thank you to Courtney at Southern Princess and Lola at Sharp Pen/Dull Sword for the Sweet Blog Award! I love both these blogs, so check them out if you haven't already!!

I'm passing it along to:

Jade @ Chasing Pavements -- She has a published short story, check it the link from her post yesterday!
Michelle Teacress
Mary @ Play off the Page
Angie @ Answering the What If
Ellen @ Pink Tea and Paper



Sweet Dominique at En Violet passed me the Beautiful Blogger award.  Please be sure to visit her today!

This one asks me to share 7 things about myself.  In the spirit of keeping things lively (and I think I've shared all the fun facts about me already!), I'm going to share seven things I did yesterday to make my day a success:

1. Ate a mixture of Shredded Wheat and organic granola for breakfast.
2. Ran three miles on the treadmill.
3. Lifted weights: super set of Smith machine squats and Sumo squats; super set targeting biceps and triceps
4. Wrote 3,000+ words of chapter four.
5. Emailed an old friend from college.
6. Cheered my daughter and her team to softball victory, pulling ahead 16-14 in the bottom of the last inning.
7. Renewed Catching Fire at the library and promised myself I'd finish it by this weekend.

I'm passing this award on to:

Shannon McMahon
Alexandra @ The Publication Follies of Alexandra Shostak
Wendy @ On 'n' On 'n' On
Tiana Smith
Laura @ Wavy Lines



Thank you to the most awesome author/blogger Wendy Ramer at On 'n' On 'n' On -- Because a Writer Always has Something to Say for the Butterfly Award.  Wendy's blog always puts a smile on my face.  Check out her site today!

This award goes to:

Jessica @ The Alliterative Allomorph
Harley @ Labotomy of a Writer
Lilah Pierce
Jenn Johansson
Tory @ Head in the Clouds



I'd like to thank Cherie at Surrounded by Books for the Blogger BFF award.  Cherie's multi-talented and her blog is wonderful.  Drop by today!

This award goes to:

Anne at Piedmont Writer
Shelley at Stories of the Ordinary
Summer at ...And This Time, Concentrate
DL at Cruising Altitude
Simon at Constant Revision



And, thank you to the warm and hilarious Roxy at A Woman's Write.  If you don't read Roxy every day, I encourage you to start!

I'm passing the Awesomesauce award on to:

Sarah at Falen Formulates Fiction
Crimey at Crimogenic
Terry at Gardner West, Private Eye
Amber at Musings of Amber Murphy
Roland at Writing in the Crosshairs





Noelle Nolan's 150 Followers Contest!












Update!!  Here is the response I received after emailing the "My Blog is Carbon Neutral" Initiative this morning (email address is above in this post):

Hi Nicole,

thank you so much for participating in our initiative and making your blog carbon neutral! Your tree will be planted this month by the Arbor Day Foundation. The scheduled start plant date was Monday, April 19 and the trees will be planted by a contracted crew. The roads are being plowed, all contracts solidified, and twelve shipments of 150,000 seedling each are being assembled. We thank you for the support!

There are still some trees looking for a sponsor. So if you know some people who have a blog or website, pass it on and we'll make their blogs carbon neutral too!

Best,
Christin 

Very cool!  Come on, go green today!

40 comments:

Hilary Wagner said...

Yay to your winners!!! So awesome!

xoxo -- Hilary

Summer Frey said...

Wow, your list from yesterday makes me feel incredibly lazy, but in even more awe! :-)

Thank you for the award, and I'm going to check out a few of these contest links I'm unfamiliar with.

Have a good one!

JE said...

Is this awards week, or what? ;-) It seems like everyone is giving out awards. I'm totally going to hoard mine for awhile. LoL.

Thanks for the contests updates!

~JD

L. Diane Wolfe said...

You've been hoarding awards!

Unknown said...

Congratulations on all the awards and Yay to all the winners!!

I loved your story it was really great!!!

Ooo I need to do the green blog thing tonight! Leaving myself a note now!!! Thanks for the reminder!

Sarah Ahiers said...

awww thanks!
I'm sitting on way too many awards...

Jaydee Morgan said...

Wow - a busy day and productive to boot! I've got to try harder. No excuses. Congrats on your awards and to the recipients!

Matthew MacNish said...

Awesome wealth of information; thanks as always Nicole.

I've seen those carbon neutral buttons before but you laid it out much simpler than anyone I've seen before.

Going to try to figure it out now.

Patti said...

That's an interesting concept. I'll try to remember to do that tomorrow.

Ellen Brickley said...

Congrats on all your awards Nicola, and thanks for passing one on to me :) I'll pass it on soon, that makes two awards I have pending. I'm such a lazy cow sometimes, is there a blog award for that? :)

Lindsay said...

Congrats on all the awards and yay to the winners. More blogs for me to discover:)

Matthew MacNish said...

Argh!!!!

I can't get it to work. I'm an HTML noob. Can you help Nicole?

The only way I can get it to show up is in the bottom corner of my blog, but I want it on my left sidebar under my about me, like yours.

Talli Roland said...

You are one super-energetic woman! I am SO impressed. You certainly deserve all those awards and more - congratulations! And thanks for the Earth Day reminder.

Wendy Ramer, Author said...

Thank you so much, Nicole - for the award and for the great shout-out! You'll have to give me some time to prepare my acceptance speech. ;-)

Lydia Kang said...

congrats to everyone and I'm definitely going to check out the carbon-neutrality of my blog. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on all your awards! There's a repeat one over at my blog for you. I guess I just didn't post it in time. Hope you like it anyway! :o)

Jessica Bell said...

Thanks so much for the award! That's so very sweet :)

Lola Sharp said...

Phew! You must be tired, Nicole. You managed to get it all in that post. :)

Shelley Sly said...

Congrats on these fun awards! And man, what a day you had yesterday. Good for you!

Thank you for passing an award on to me. YOU are one of my blogging BFFs, Nicole! :D

Kelsey (Dominique) Ridge said...

I'm in awe of your massively productive day.

Also, thanks for the info about going carbon neutral. I didn't realize the blogosphere could generate so much carbon output.

You rock. :)

Jai Joshi said...

Thank you so much for letting me know about the tree planting initiative. I'm on my way to that website right now.

Congratulations on your awards and to the people who received their awards from you!

On that note you have another award waiting for you at my blog!

Jai

Kirsten Lesko said...

I wondered what those carbon neutral badges meant. That's a really cool program!

DL Hammons said...

You do realize that pretty soon they'll have to start making up awards to give you...right? :)

I missed you teaser yesterday, but I'm heading there directly. Promise!!

And thank you for the BFF Award. It is appreciated and reciprocated. BTW...I can totally see myself in the hat & sunglasses, but forget about the dress!! :)

Kimberly Franklin said...

Congrats on all of your awards!!

Terry Stonecrop said...

Carbon neutral. Great idea. Thanks, I'll do that!

Congrats to your winners!

Angie Paxton said...

Nicole, congrats on all the awards. The green blogging thing is really cool. I might check into that later on tonight when I have more time. And thank you so much for the award! That was so nice.

Tiana Smith said...

Carbon neutral, how interesting. I'll definitely look into it! Thanks for the award :) I've been hoarding, so I guess I should probably do an awards post soon. Thanks again!

Crystal Cook said...

Congrats to everyone for all those awards!! And I've got to do that carbon neutral thing!

You were super productive yesterday :)

Tory said...

So sweet you are, Nicole! Thanks for recognizing me and Head in the Clouds. Okay, newbie questions (Try not to laugh too hard, I'm so out of the loop on this one!): 1.) How do we transfer the awards to our blog? 2.)If we want to give others an award, how do we pass them along?

Follower in need; HEELLLPPPP!!!

Tory said...

Hee-hee! I think I've figured it out, Nicole. Duh, just cut and paste, right? Now you need to create a blog award for the biggest-goof-follower (That would be me hands down!). LOL! Thanks again for the butterfly --I can't wait to put it on my blog!

Leigh Hutchens Burch said...

I just popped in to link you in an awards post I'm composing... and saw you left me an award today. Thanks, lady. You are pretty much awesomesauce personified yourself.

Mary Aalgaard said...

Nicole, thank you very much. I think you're sweet, too. I'll mention the "Make it Green" plan.

Susan Fields said...

I love the Go Green idea - thanks for passing it on!

Congrats on your awards! Just when you thought you were done...you have another waiting for you at my blog. :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for the award! On my way over to the Green site!

Anonymous said...

Awards! Awards! *happy dances* *takes celebratory sip of vodka*

(Okay, I would've taken the sip of vodka anyway, but that last one was totally celebratory, fyi.)

My thanks, good lady. I'm a BFF! I feel like I should give you a hug. Next time you're in the Philly area, or I'm in the... uh... wherever you are area, let's make that happen. :)

Jemi Fraser said...

Congrats on the awards! Well deserved :)

Love the tree planting initiative!

MTeacress said...

Nicole, you sweet lady! Thanks for the award. :)

J.R. Johansson said...

Carbon Neutral. Very cool :) I'm excited to check it out. Thanks for the blog award! It's so cute! :) *hugs*

Private said...

Hi:) I'm your newest follower! Congrats on all the awards, getting them is such a great feeling!

And I made my blog carbon neutral a couple of weeks ago:)

Alexandra Shostak said...

THANK YOU!! :)

And I'm totally going to go make my blog carbon neutral right now!