More Blogging Fun & A bit of Christmas

Yesterday was full of nice surprises. Bright and early there was a knock at the door, and the dogs, very excitedly, let me know a package had been delivered. I wasn't sure what it was, but packages are always exciting. When I opened the package I was surprised to find an assortment of Golden Star Trading Products.

Quite some time ago I wrote a blog post about my favorite rice, that I always keep in stock in my Pantry, and a couple of my favorite rice recipes- Here is a link to the blog post Porcupine Meatballs & Spinach Rice Bake .

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from Golden Star thanking me for posting about their product as well as my recipes, and that they would like to send me some of their products to try. And that is what my surprise package was! Along with a kind letter, my package was filled with these Golden Star Goodies!

I look forward to trying Golden Star's brown jasmine rice, as well as the Basmati rice, and I happen to love mandarin oranges and baby corn- I think I may have to come up with a fun new recipe! What a very fun surprise this was!

Later on in the day, as I was going through my mail, and the slew of holiday catalogs that had arrived, I was in for another treat. The Tomten Christmas Catalog arrived! I learned about this company last year when I was looking for more Scandinavian ornaments, they have great books, and cute little Tomtens (little gnome type people), a super fun catalog to look through for treasures. Here is a link to their website so you can have fun browsing too :) The Tomten Catalog

Reading through all of the wonderful books The Tomten catalog has, I was reminded of one of my favorite children's authors from Sweden- Astrid Lindgren writer of one of my favorite childhood stories- Pippi Longstocking- Oh how I loved stories of Villa Villekulla and all of Pippi's adventures!

In addition to the Pippi Longstocking Stories, when my children where little I discovered she also wrote The Tomten- a cute little winter story about a little Tomten that lives on a farm, and at night he visits with all of the farm animals and talks to them in his special Tomten language and reminds them that spring will come again. Such a cute story!

Astrid Lindgren also writes The Children of Noisy Village & Christmas in Noisy Village- stories about children in a Swedish village and the customs of 6 children living on a group of three farms in the countryside. Christmas in Noisy Village has wonderful Pictures and is a great story for Christmas, and would be great if you are studying Christmas traditions of Sweden, The Children of Noisy Village is a Chapter book like Pippi, and would be wonderful for young readers enjoying their first chapter books!

Here are my Amazon Affiliate Links to some of Astrid's great Children's Books!

Astrid Lindgren's books are wonderful classics for any children's library!

My last surprise last night was a Liebster Blog Award- I had fun with this Award, and picking out some of my favorite blogs to pass along an award to. One of the bloggers I chose was Barefoot In Blue Jeans. This blog is written by the daughter of a very dear friend of mine that I have known since elementary school, I have known her daughter since she was born, both of our daughters are very close in age. I love encouraging young writers, and I really enjoy reading about her adventures, and all of her recipes. She has passed the Liebster award back to me (Thank You Courtney!!), so now I have the opportunity to pass this along to five more bloggers that I enjoy reading!

The word 'liebster' actually comes from the German word for love, friend or dearest - very sweet!

The goal of the award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are:

1. copy and paste the award on your blog
2. thank the giver and link back to them
3. reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
4. hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers

Now, choosing just 5 blogs was a challenge I must say, but here goes (in no particular order):

Verde Mama

My Simple Life

Living In The Land of Chocolate

We Bloom Here

This Cosy Life

These are all wonderful blogs that I enjoy reading, I hope you will enjoy them too :)

So that was my day of surprises, days like that are very nice. :)