Sunshine Award

Fellow A230-er, Heather, over at Reading, Writing and Everything In Between gave me the Sunshine Award back at the beginning of May. I'd been all set to respond to it when I was hit with the lurgy and decided to put it off rather than trying to make a hash of responding on my iPhone.

The Sunshine Award seems aimed to spread a little bit of sunshine and happiness around blogs (in the form of the slightly creepy baby sun who I think comes from the Teletubbies) and like the Liebster Award encourages you to link to other blogs and check them out as well. I'm in favour for anything like that, and considering summer seems to have come and gone (it was last Tuesday for anyone who missed it) we could probably use a little bit more sunshine.

The sunshine comes with a few questions, so I'll get down to those.
What inspired you to start blogging?
I previously started a blog because I wanted somewhere to record happy things, because I wasnt particularly happy with my job and various other things. I abandoned that when things hit rock bottom and I found myself struggling to find happy things to write about.

This blog came about because I got into a better place, I had a new job, a nice home, cute pets. Mr Click and I decided we wanted to start a family and having always enjoyed reading those 'mommy blogs' where people share what they get up to with their families, I decided I'd quite like to do something like that. I intended it to be a bit of a multipurpose blog with reviews of books, films and TV series, my crafty projects, my OU progress and one hundred and one other little random things. Now it's also branched out to include our infertility journey, which I hope other people in the same boat as us will read and know they're not alone, because I know firsthand, there's not a lot of information about that out there.

How did you come up with the name of your blog?
When I decided I needed a new online identity I ended up settling on Click because it's a smush between my first and last names (I adopted it after I kept typing Click instead of my actual logon name at work). I spent ages trying to come up with a word that would work with Click. I think I narrowed it down to 'Click Snap' (based on the fact I was planning on posting lots of photos) and 'Click's Clan' (or some combination thereof). The latter happened to be the one that was available on Blogger so that's what I ended up going with.

What is your favourite blog to read?
I don't think that I have just one favourite blog that I prefer to read over all others. During the A to Z Challenge I found a bunch of new blogs and I'm still working out exactly where they come in my blogging hierarchy. I enjoy reading the blogs of the girls from HTV who post about their nail art (among other things), also from HTV is Mark at Random Ramblings who has a similar taste in books to myself (and a similar taste in everything else to my husband, which gives me lots of ideas for film choices for him). There are a whole host of photography blogs and funny lifestyle blogs that I follow which generally sort of blur into one for me but which I always enjoy when I see they've updated.

Recently Allie at Hyperbole and a Half posted again after a break due to depression, that's a really good blog to read. She has a brilliant sense of humour and you can't help but find yourself agreeing with some of the things that she writes.

So in short, my favourite blog, all of them!

Tell us about your dream job.
When I was younger I always wanted to be a Blue Peter presenter, I loved watching it and even when I was about fourteen or fifteen I thought it'd still be something I could do. I figured I could train to be a primary school teacher and then maybe, somehow, be on Blue Peter. Now I've hit twenty-seven I'm probably over the hill for that, but it's still something I'd love to do.

I'd be one of the outdoorsy people (as opposed to the sporty ones). I could handle crafts and farm stuff like lambing (since I've got experience doing that). Hopefully they'd teach me to cook too and I'd been alright at that as well.

Is your glass half-full or half-empty?
I try to keep things half-full but occasionally I slip. Normally if something bad happens I'll immediately see it as half-empty but fairly quickly pull myself around to see things in a more positive way. I'm generally a fairly optimistic person.

If you could go anywhere for a week's vacation, where would you go?
I would love to go to New Zealand. I've wanted to visit since I was about nine years old, a desire which was heavily refuelled when Lord of the Rings came out when I was about fifteen. The people all seem lovely, the scenery is fantastic and it'd be great to visit it in person rather than just reading about it and looking at pictures or videos. I already have a list of all the places I'd plan to go!

What food can you positively not eat?
Tomatoes! I'm allergic to them. Not seriously, and I've gotten better as I've grown older, but they still don't taste right to me. Even when I was a baby I used to refuse to eat any baby food which had tomatoes in it. Now I'm able to articulate exactly what it is I don't like about them; they give me a metallic taste in my mouth, like when you spray an aerosol can and get it in your mouth. It took me a long time to realise that they weren't supposed to taste like that.

Because of the tomato thing I was terribly deprived as a child. I didn't experience my first pizza until I was nineteen!

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
Definitely milk chocolate, I'll eat little bits of dark chocolate but I'm not really a fan of it. When I was younger my brother learnt to love coffee-flavoured and dark chocolate purely because they were my least favourites and so when we were given a box of chocolates to share, those would be the only ones he could be guaranteed to get without a fight. I'm not proud of my chocoholic past.

Have to agree with Heather at Reading, Writing and Everything In Between, Galaxy chocolate beats all others.

How much time do you spend blogging?
A large chunk of my Sunday afternoon so probably several hours a week. I do a bit on Saturday afternoons or days when I'm not at work as well as odd paragraphs here and there on my phone when I have an opportunity. I should probably sit down and actually work it out one day.

Do you watch TV and if so, what are your favourite shows?
Yes we watch TV, but the things we watch tend to be on DVD or blu-ray. My favourites are usually old programmes like ER and Friends, Scrubs, Waking the Dead as well as Bones, Doctor Who and Game of Thrones (some of those we watch as we are able to get them on DVD/blu-ray, others my in-laws let us watch at their house, for which we are eternally grateful).

And now I'm passing the sunshine (and the creepy sun baby) on to a handful of other bloggers; these are all people who have commented on my blog recently and whose blogs I enjoy reading too. I'd like to send a little sunshine their way because it always brightens my day when I get a message saying I have a comment on my blog. ;-)

1. Mark @ Random Ramblings
2. Jai @ And Then...
3. Tina @ Life is Good
4. Laura @ My Baffling Brain
5. Mary @ Dark Thoughts

So go ahead, if you want and answer the questions:
What inspired you to start blogging?
How did you come up with the name of your blog?
What is your favorite blog to read?

Tell us about your dream job.

Is your glass half full or half empty?

If you could go anywhere for a week’s vacation, where would you go?

What food can you positively not eat?

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?

How much time do you spend blogging?

Do you watch t.v. and if so, what are your favorite shows?