Little Miss Sunshine… ;)

A most wonderful lady, one I feel proud and honoured to call a friend, has nominated me and my blog for a Sunshine Award. Apparently this means my blog is considered inspiring! How very lovely – I feel quite humbled. Thank you Taylor Fulks, who is herself an amazing inspiration, not to mention a very talented author (among other things) of an absolutely incredible novel called My Prison Without Bars: The Journey of a Damaged Woman to Some Place Normal. She also writes a fabulous blog – why don’t you visit her sometime?

The Rules: When you receive the award, you are asked to do a few things…

1. Post the Sunshine Award Logo you see at the top.
2. Accept the nomination and link back to the nominator.
3. Answer the questions below.
4. Nominate ten other blogs and inform them of the nomination.

That’s it!

The Questions:

1. My favourite colour ~ I’ve always loved yellow because it reminds me of bright sunshine (very fitting for a Sunshine Award!) which always lifts my spirits and puts a bounce in my step. I don’t surround myself at home with yellow things but I do have quite a few spring and summer clothes in this colour. My previous car was bright yellow too! 😉
2. My favourite animal ~ I absolutely adore small monkeys. I don’t care which breed they are! I don’t know why I love them, I just do. 
3. My favourite number ~ I don’t have a favourite number. Ask me again if I ever win the lottery big time! I won the lottery ‘tiny time’ this week – just £10! I’m not sure I should call any of those chosen numbers ‘lucky’ because they weren’t lucky enough. 😉 hehe. Greedy me!
4. My favourite non-alcoholic beverage ~ Peppermint tea! I would have said black coffee with two sweeteners but I’m trying to keep away from it, except at weekends, because I want to keep my teeth stain free. I drink lots of peppermint tea and if I visit coffee shops or restaurants it’s always my preferred hot drink. Here’s one I drank last week complete with a massive cream scone! What a piggywink I am. 😉
5. My favourite alcoholic beverage ~ I don’t drink much but at weekends I tend to have a small glass of white or rose wine each evening. If I’m socialising I have a small rose wine spritzer (with soda). I get tiddly on very little alcohol these days and suffer with humungous hangovers – I don’t consider a few drinks worth the pain and sickness that follow so I remain very controlled.
6. Facebook or Twitter ~ Facebook for socialising, all the way! I spend far too much time there. I spend a lot of time at Twitter too but I use that mainly as a promotional vehicle. Having said that, I do chat with tweeters there and I’ve ‘met’ some wonderful people who I can now call friends. In fact, it’s how Taylor and I met, so it must be a good thing! 🙂
7. My passions ~ My partner, my family and my beautiful friends. I love days out and holidays away with my man – we have some wonderful times together. Here we are in the Maldives last year, a place I am most passionate about – it is Heaven on earth. Other passions are promoting my novel THE MAN IN A HAYSTACK of which I am so very proud, and my blog which I’m now committed to writing regularly.
8. Giving or Receiving Gifts ~ Giving, always. It’s the whole process I love. Going in search of a gift, or coming across one by accident – being filled with warm thoughts of the receiver and imagining how they will feel when they unwrap it. I love gift wrapping too – sometimes I get quite creative and make them look very fancy!
9. Favourite City ~ I’ve been blessed to go to quite a lot of cities in my time. I think I’d have to say the most beautiful was Florence, Italy. It’s such a romantic place. I was very young (sixteen) at the time; the memory has faded and therefore I’d like to visit again with my grown up, mature head, and appreciate it much more second time around.
10. Favourite TV Shows ~ That’s easy! I’m a soap addict. I love Coronation Street and Eastenders, and also the reality soap The Only Way is Essex. I’m also a big fan of reality game shows such as Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here. I love Britain’s Got Talent and XFactor, although I watch the latter mainly for the banter between the judges. If I didn’t like the judges I’d probably ditch the show as it’s lost a lot of its originality and appeal over the years.

My Ten Nominees:

1. Geoffrey West @GeoffreyDWest
2. Jess Sturman-Coombs @JessSturman
3. Toni Morrow Wyatt @Toni1777
4. Debra Dunbar @debra_dunbar
5. Patricia Mann @patriciamann11
6. Terry Tyler @terrytyler4
7. Lizzie Lamb @lizzie_lamb
8. Elke Feuer @elkefeuer
9. Brea Brown @breabrown3
10. Pauline Wiles @paulinewiles

Thank you Taylor for nominating me for the Sunshine Award! It’s been fun taking part and I hope you’ve learned a little more about the person behind this blog, as I have certainly learned more about you in reading your answers to the same questions.