My first blogging award - Stylish Blogger

After a weekend away from the computer, visiting friends in London, I was surprised and pleased to get home and find I had been awarded the Stylish Blogger Award by Mandy at Mandy's Escape, so thank you very much, Mandy!

So here's what I have to do next:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.

2. Tell us 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers.
4. Contact these bloggers and let them know they have won!

7 things about me:

1. As well as writing and blogging I take part in some amateur dramatics and am currently in rehearsals for a double bill of Gilbert and Sullivan: Pirates of Penzance and Trial by Jury. I'm in the chorus for the first and playing a gender-swapped Counsel for the Plaintiff in the latter.
2. I am an ice-cream fiend, and feel that a day out is incomplete without it. I love to try new flavours, but that means I don't actually eat chocolate ice cream that often.
3. I've been designated as adopted auntie to a high school friend's 9-month-old twins, Alice and Evelyn, a duty which involves a lot of knitting.
4. I am possibly the clumsiest person in existence, constantly walking into things, dropping things or falling over things. Yesterday, for example, I sat down on the end of the spare bed in my room - except it wasn't where I expected. It had been moved a little way down the room to make space for a bookcase - about a year or more ago! So I fell in the gap and ended up sitting in a magazine rack. Oops!
5. As a Doctor Who fangirl, I couldn't resist getting on the phone to book tickets to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate act together on stage. They will be playing sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and what's more I actually like Shakespeare. After four years watching him in the role of the Doctor, it was seeing his performance as Hamlet (on TV) that I realised how good an actor Mr Tennant is.
6. My bedroom wall is decorated with paintings from my Grandma's college days, around 1943. What was then an art project, pictures of everyday life, I now find a fascinating historical snapshot of Wartime Britain.
7. I can be rather old-fashioned, and my sister thinks I would be more at home in the 1940s or 50s. Of course, had I lived back then, I would be unable to keep this blog.

15 Stylish Blogs (in no particular order)

1. Anna Reads
2. Becky's Book Reviews
3. Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing
4. GReads
5. I was a Teenage Book Geek
6. Inkcrush
7. The Bursting Bookshelf
8. What's Your Story?
9. Snowdrop Dreams of Books
10. She is too fond of books
11. The Mad Scientist
12. Steph Su Reads
13. Smash Attack Reads
14. Pink Tea and Paper
15. Southern Scrawl