Good Vibes and Liebster Awards

The sweet Marisa from The Green Sunshine was kind enough to tag me for a Liebster Award, and I had so much fun doing this!

Marisa blogs about travel, health and living life to the fullest – exactly my kind of blog, in other words 😀  She’s currently in training to become a certified health coach, and shares some amazing recipes… Not to mention, she wrote a whole post about why sweet potatoes are awesome from a nutritionist’s standpoint. Seeing as I eat sweet potatoes by the bulk practically every week, I’m sold.

The Liebster Award works like a chain letter, and it’s a way for bloggers to spread some love, support and encouragement, and to discover new blogs. The rules are as follows:

• Thank the awesome blogger who nominated you.
• Post the award badge on your blog.
• Answer the questions your nominator has left for you.
• Nominate some other awesome bloggers.
• Make up 10 questions for them to answer.

First up – here are my answers to Marisa’s questions for me!

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1) If your life was a movie, which title would it be?

This was hard….! My head’s spinning after trying to come up with something good for this one.

I’m gonna have to go with the tagline instead:

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2) What smell do you love?

The smell of Christmas!

I’m obsessed with Christmas, and it happens to be my birthday month as well, so I live and breathe for December. The smell of snow, pine trees, clementines, cinnemon, a lit fire…

… in Norway, tradition says to bake 7 kinds of Christmas cookies to have on hand for the whole holiday season. The smell of “julebakst” throughout the house is one of my favorite smells in the whole world. (I promised myself I wouldn’t go there to torture myself now that I’m a vegan-ish, but the smell of “pinnekjøtt”…. oh God. If you’re Norwegian, you get it.)

Bonus: the smell of coffee and aquevit doesn’t hurt either.

3) Which season do you adore?

(I hate to be this person, but) I love all of them!

I really can’t choose. I come from a country with what I would say is an extreme diversity in its seasons, and there’s just no way I could choose one that I love more than the others.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To appreciate and adore the changing seasons and what makes them each so special to you 🙂

4) What is your wildest dream?

a) Be a rockstar.
b) Marry Sweden’s Prince Carl Philip and become the Kate Middleton of Scandinavia.

I’m kidding. (No, I’m not. Kind of.)

If I can’t have that, my wildest dream is to travel the world and go on adventures for a living. To write, play music, meet like-minded people, go to far and distant corners of this planet, and just be… me. To work for myself and be my own boss, and write a fantastic memoir one day about all the mind-blowing adventures I’ve been on. To inspire people to follow the feeling of joy and happiness wherever it may take them.

I want all that – and then a private helicopter so that I can fly home at moment’s notice to be there for all my friends’ birthdays and wedding, all the big moments in my family members’ lives, and whenever I need a hug from the people who knows me best.

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5) What is your best childhood memory?

I have to say all the memories I have of playing outside with my sister.

People always commented on how “good” my sister and I were at playing together. Whether it was at our family cabin, in the woods behind Dad’s apartment building, or in the backyard of Mom’s house, we had a very vivid imagination and always made the most of our surroundings.

I cherish those memories so, so much, and I want that so badly for my future children.

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6) What is your favorite book?

I have several favorite books, but I’m going to go with what is probably the most meaningful book to me; the first book I ever fell in love with and read over and over again.

Nobody’s Boy by Hector Malot.

I was very young when I first read this book, and I kept going back to it over the course of a couple of years. It was the first time I can remember experiencing the power of books and stories – how they grab a hold of you and make hours disappear.

I was so emotionally involved in the story of Remi losing his parents and being all alone in the world, and eventually getting to the happy ending was  reassurance that all is well in the world (and that Mom and Dad would never leave me. A child’s brain will nearly always circle back to that).

This is the book that made me fall in love with reading, and therefore it’s my favorite! 🙂

7) Share one of your healthy tips.

Adding.

I really can’t stress this enough: if you want to make a bit of a healthy change, don’t immediatly take away something that you like. Don’t think, “I’m gonna quit sugar” or “I’m gonna quit coffee” or “I’m gonna quit eating meat”.

I believe you have a 100% better succes rate if you just focus on adding more of the “good” stuff.

Want to quit drinking soda? Just start slowly adding more glasses of water into your daily routine. Soon, you’ll find you can’t physically drink as much soda as you used to because the water is taking its place, so to speak. And the less soda you drink, the less you crave it.

Want to eat more veggies (cause we all know we should…)? Don’t think about cutting out meat or pasta or starchy carbs. Just add more veggies to your plate every single time, and in no time at all you’ll find that you’re eating twice as much veggies without even making a real effort.

These subtle changes really do add up! 😉

8) What is your favorite quote?

I’m a huge collector of inspirational quotes, so this is a tough one!

But at the moment, I think my friend Roal Dahl is the winner of this one… It’s a simple quote that always makes me smile and reminds me that as long as I’m kind and grateful and think good thoughts, all is well.

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I’ve had this quote stuck on my bathroom mirror for months to make sure it’s one of the first things I see in the morning 🙂

9) List one thing on your bucket list!

Just one?!

Better pick a good one… Let’s see…

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the items on my bucket list deal with travel – I would say most of them are travel related. So to share something other than that:

Be present at a major sporting event, like the Super Bowl, winter olympics, or World Cup finals in football.

10) What makes you shine?

Lots of things make me shine because lots of things make me happy!

But looking through pictures, I definitely think I shine the most and the brightest when I’m having a laugh with my girlfriends. And I have the best friends.

I feel exactly the same away as Raves & Revelations when she writes, ‘I have the best friends. No, really. My group of friends is better than yours.’ 😛

But, seriously. My friends are better than yours.

And they bring out the very best in me ♥

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For the next round, I nominate these wonderful ladies…

Zauni from The Kind Side.

Lisa from Love To-Go.

Laura from inspiration.sparks

… and my questions for them are as follows: 

1. What is one skill or talent that you desperately wish you had?
2. If you could time-travel and go back in history to experience one thing only… which moment would you travel back to?
3. Do you have any completely irrational fears or phobias?
4. Do you have a daily or weekly ritual that you cannot forego no matter what?
5. Name one of the people who have inspired you the most in your life!
6. If you could speak one other language fluently, which would you choose, and why?
7. Do you own an item that you cherish more than anything? That you would practically run into a burning house to save?
8. What makes your family unique from others?
9. What is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
10. Tell us about your best childhood friend, and one of your fondest memories with them.

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