Blogger Recognition Award.

Hi 🙂

I was nominated by my totally awesome friend Shelbie over at Lu-Lu’s Rants & Reads for the Blogger Recognition Award. It was originally created by was originally created by Eve over at Edge of Night. Thank you, Shelbie! You guys should go over and check out her blog! She’s super cool, loves Doctor Who, and has great taste in books!

Rules:

• Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to. Do some digging if you must! Find those blogs. You cannot nominate yourself or the person who has nominated you.

• Write a post to show off your award! Give a brief story of how your blog got started, and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog. List who you’ve nominated in the post. Make sure to also attach the award itself! (You can do this by right-clicking, saving, and uploading the image above).
• Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them. Provide a link to the award post you created.

• Provide a link to the original post on Edge of Night. That way, anyone can find the original guidelines and post if needed, and we can keep it from mutating and becoming confusing!

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My Story:

I originally started this blog back in 2011 with my bestie over at The Art of Failing. We both made a blog to do 30 day writing challenges. That went good for awhile and then I neglected my blog and we tried again a year or two ago. I bought both of us a book called “642 Things to Write About” and we were going to start blogging about the topics from the book. Failed again, sigh.

Eventually, I just didn’t even look at it much anymore until January of this year. I decided to start over; so I erased all my old entries, renamed my blog, updated the look of it, and here I am! I enjoy reading and I’ve been doing a lot of it this year. I think having this blog really got me back into reading. Last year I read a total of 26 books, but this year I am already at 75 (that’s including audiobooks too). HUGE DIFFERENCE!

That’s basically how all this got started. It’s been nice getting to know so many awesome people and I’m sure this has made my boyfriend a little happier not having to listen to my constant book talk! I still try to make him read, 😛 – always fail, lol. He’s been cool about my craziness with books, especially this year. He puts up with bookstore and thrift store trips.

My advice to new bloggers is to have fun! Write things that you love to write about and do it for yourself! I know some things can start to feel like a chore and it isn’t fun anymore, so do the posts for you before anything else. Go crazy with it! Blogging is fun and the more you do it, the better you get. I know at first I was kind of lost with it all, but slowly I’ve been getting better and I’m always striving to do better with my blog even now.

Don’t be afraid to meet new people and follow other blogs! Engage with others too. Likes are cool, but comments are where you actually get to know the person and talk with them. I’ve also talked to so many of you guys outside of this blog and that’s awesome! It’s nice to share other little aspects of my life outside of books too. I have tons of my blogger friends on Instagram, Twitter, and Goodreads too. It’s nice to connect other places as well. It makes you really feel closer to them outside of just books. You form really good friendships.

Shelbie mentioned how we originally met on Pinterest and then became friends on here over on her blog post. It’s been totally awesome talking to her outside of just the blogoverse. We pretty much talk almost every single day now through all social media outlets and even texting. You form amazing friendships like what happened with her and I this way and it’s great! It’s always exciting to talk to others outside of here! So go meet new friends and it’ll make the blogging experience so much more exciting and rewarding!

I nominate:

Stefani @ Caught Read Handed
Yvo @ It’s All About Books
Emily @ The Diary of a Bibliophile 
Alina @ Radiant Reads
Josie @ Josie’s Book Corner
Nicole @ Awayinneverland
Analee @ Book Snacks
Aimal @ Bookshelves & Paperbacks
Claire @ Art and Soul
Stephanie & Taylor @ Bibliophile Gathering

I also nominate everyone else too! I would love to hear your story and meet new friends on here! Link me to your posts! 🙂 If you’ve already done this award, ignore and feel free to link me to your posts if I haven’t already checked them out!

And if you want to become friends outside of here, feel free to add me to the following and let me know in the comments and I’ll make sure to add you back!

Instagram: heyyitsashley
Goodreads: heyyitsashley_
Pinterest: lalalaitsashley
Twitter: whoa_itsashley

In case you missed them, here are a few posts I’ve done recently linked below! 🙂
Friday Finds #21. – Books I added to my TBR this week. Just did this post a few hours ago.
June Recap & July TBR. – Books I read in June and books I hope to read this month.
Top Ten Tuesday. – Top books I read so far in 2015.

I hope everyone has an awesome day! BYE! ❤