When we were nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award back in early 2017, our first question was – What is the Sunshine Blogger Award? We dug deeper and found this “The Sunshine Blogger Award is given to those who are creative, positive, and inspiring, while spreading sunshine to the blogging community.” This description resonated with us because we love those aspects of blogging, especially the community. The Sunshine Blogger Award has given us a chance to share, recognize, and learn more about so many fabulous bloggers. Please keep reading if you want to learn more about, our interview questions and answers, our nominations, some fantastic Sunshine Blogger Questions, and why we love the Sunshine Blogger award.
Sunshine Blogger Roll Call
More than anything else, the Sunshine Blogger is about recognizing the community of fellow bloggers for their creativity, positivity, and inspiration. We figure that there is no better way for us to do this than by creating the Sunshine Blogger Role Call. If you are looking for other Sunshine Bloggers, or want to be added to the list, please check this link out.
Answers to Our Sunshine Blogger Award Questions
Ladies and gentlemen! We are excited to announce that we were nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award by the fabulous Katie Williams AKA The Travelling Spud. This will look great on our digital shelf next to our Liebster Award. Below we’ll be answering a few questions about ourselves and about the blog.
What is your favorite part about blogging?
The new places and people we have discovered. We love exploring the fantastic world around us and finding amazing adventure.
How did you get started with blogging?
We knew that we wanted to transition to another career path. We thought about it and decided to choose blogging because of how well it matched our wanderlust nature. From there, we researched how to blog and started with TBS and WITS. From there we have been working diligently to put those lessons into action.
What three bloggers inspire you?
Dave and Deb from Planet D, Raphael Alexander from Journey Wonders for his honesty and humor. Bret Love (green global travel) for eco tourism.
Where is your favorite place you’ve ever been?
Nassau Bahamas. For one, it’s absolutely beautiful and for two we got married there.
Continuation of Our Sunshine Blogger Questions
What was the last flight you were on and where were you flying to and from?
Indianapolis for Bloghouse for Jenn and Orlando for work for Ed.
What’s your travel style?
Activity first travel. We pick an activity we want to do and that drives when and where we go.
Where did you go on your first trip and how old were you?
When Ed was five, he took a road trip from Alabama to Ontario Canada with a side trip to Washington DC for the Bicentennial. Jenn visited San Diego and stayed at the Hotel Del Coronado as a wee little girl.
Do you collect anything during your travels?
We like authentic wood crafts and little freebies from tour operators or hotels. It’s either a work of art or just a little nicknacks with memories.
What would you do if you didn’t blog?
Our second runner up was for Divemaster for Ed and Professional Photographer for Jenn. Of course, these aren’t necessarily exclusive of blogging.
And lastly, give us three random facts about yourself?
Ed: I was a manager of an ostrich farm in college. I am a physicist by training and trade. I play Mozart on my head like a bongo drum.
Jenn: I was a volunteer firefighter for five years. In my adult life, there is only one four year stretch that I did not hold two or more jobs, 5 is my max. I have little short arms. T-Rex is my spirit animal.
Thank you, Katie, for the nomination and we look forward to following your travels. Now it’s time for us to pass the love along.
Our Sunshine Blogger Award Nominations
We are nominating Adam Sterling from The Sterling Traveler and Cat from For Two Please. We love these guys and you will too. Make sure you click over to their site to see what makes them so special. Once nominated, if you choose to accept, write a post where you:
- Thank the person who nominated you for the Sunshine Award and link back to their blog
- Answer the questions set by the person who nominated you
- Nominate other blogs and give them questions to answer
- Notify your nominees through social media or commenting on their blog
- List the “rules” and display a Sunshine Award logo in your post
Our Sunshine Blogger questions:
- How did you get into blogging?
- What is your favorite post you’ve written?
- What is your favorite food you have eating in a foreign country?
- Where is your favorite place you’ve ever been?
- Where did you go on your first trip and how old were you?
- What would you do if you didn’t blog?
- What is the most adventurous thing you have ever done?
- What are your favorite and least favorite things about blogging?
- What makes you different from any other blogger?
- What is your favorite book or travel movie?
- Bonus question: Include the best travel picture you have ever taken!
Fantastic Sunshine Blogger Questions
If you are reading this, chances are you have been recognized as a Sunshine Blogger. You want to pass the love around, but you don’t want to ask your peeps the same questions you got. You are way more creative than that. You’re looking for the best, most insightful questions that will help the world know more about some super cool bloggers. We have compiled this list to help you out. If you think of any questions that should be on here, feel free to drop up a line or leave them in the comments. We would love to hear from you.
- What do you love most about your blog?
- Describe yourself in three words.
- Which bloggers inspire you the most?
- What is your favorite social media platform and why?
- What is your favorite book?
- Which song inspires you to travel?
- What is your one place you have to see before you die?
- What is one thing you would change about yourself?
- What is your spirit animal?
- What are your goals / resolutions for the next year?
- more to come….
Our Bonus Sunshine Blogger Answer: What do we mean by activity driven travel?
One of our favorite parts about the Sunshine Blogger Award is that it give bloggers a chance to get to know one another and share their work. For us, we specialize in activity driven travel. That means we pick places we go based upon the activities we would do there. Here are some of our favorite adventures we have goon on so far. By clicking through these adventures you get to know more about us, our writing style, and our core values of travel.
Congratulations on your award! That’s amazing
You worked on an ostrich farm, how cool – well it sounds cool, maybe it wasn’t. I love Nassau too. What a great place to get married.
It was cool in its way. Kind of the diametric opposite of travel writing. I was all set to settle down in small town Ohio with my plot of land but fate intervened.
I am very excited for you, congrats! You have a great blog and amazing adventures. You deserve it!
Thank you. It’s always great to hear that.
That is our no kidding wedding shot at Nassau. It was a great day.
Our big travels through the end of the year are:
next weekend – short trip to Long Beach for Dark Harbor
Halloween – Hopefully returning to Tucson for Day of the Dead and a culinary tour(and dentistry)
Thanksgiving – Sri Lanka for a yoga retreat (you have actually been there and we love your post on it)
Christmas – finishing dive master on Christmas shutdown and major site upgrade
February – Costa Rica for pure adventure fun
later ????
In the mean time, just living the So-cal dream. I went diving this morning and have two dive trips scheduled for next weekend. (along with Dark Harbor) and the waves are beautiful so I will probably surf tomorrow.
Thank you. Sometimes a photo montage is the best way to tell a story.
Congratulations on your award, I love the photos and nice wedding shot.
Thanks. Glad you liked them.
Congratulations on winning this Sunshine blogger award! I remember how excited I was a few years ago when I wanted. Being nominated by your peers is a truly exceptional thing.
Congrats on your award!! Your wedding pictures are so pretty.
Congrats on your nomination. I will check our your nomination also. Good luck!!
Congratulations! You truly deserve it, these are fabulous photos!
Sondra xx
prettyfitfoodie.com
Thank you, a photo montage goes a long way to tell a story.
You guys have definitely lived an amazing life. Congratulations on the Sunshine blogger award! Loving your photos as well 🙂
That you. We have a particular style of travel that suits us. Glad you think it’s amazing. We like to think all our readers are into that sort of thing.
Oh wow what a cool award and recognition. My son and DIL got married in the Bahama Islands as well and have gorgeous photos as yours are.
It’s a great place to get hitched. Plus, Sandals had a “free wedding” with a week stay so that couldn’t be beat. My daughter still thinks the pumpkin soup at our wedding was one of her best meals ever.
I learned some new things! Ostrich farmer – I love that. You two definitely bring a level of sunshine and positivity to the world, so in my opinion, this award is well deserved!
Thank you Andi. That is actually our favorite thing about you – Positivity. Spell checker doesn’t like the word but we can insist on using it. Keep hanging out with us and you’ll realize the full depths of our…. new fun things.
Congratulations on the award! I love hearing about other bloggers, how they got into it, what they enjoy about it, etc. And I think if I had two lives to live, I’d be a travel blogger in my second life. Thanks for sharing!! 🙂
How many lives do you think you have to live? I heard somewhere that the average person changes professions seven times and jobs 12 times. While that number might be high, it only takes a couple of changes to reach your dreams. When you kids grow, or you have your retirement set is a very natural second career. Before kids, houses, and jobs is the more traditional digital nomad travel window. Either way, there are opportunities to live many different lives.
Manager of an ostrich farm?! What was that like? I can only imagine the humongous omelettes you got to eat for breakfast 😛 And wow, Jen is a trooper working 5 jobs at a time. What were they?
Jenn’s five jobs were as follows: ski instructor, massage therapist at two places, personal trainer and retail clerk.
The ostrich farm was primarily a custom hatchery where we brought in modern equipment for small farmers with flocks under 10 birds. We had about 40 birds of our own from payment plans and such. What really brought in a lot of eggs is where we would do fertility analysis for culled eggs. Mom (a PhD scientist) would analyze the eggs to say why they weren’t progressing. It made for a lot of one egg cheesecakes (one really big egg).
Congratulations on receiving this award! I love that you play mozart in your head on repeat. I have about 4 songs that are always on repeat in my head. (One of them being the alarm song that came on my phone)
Technically, I play Mozart ON my head. You can use your mouth to form a resonance chamber, almost like whistling but instead of making the initial sound blowing wind over your lips you knock on your noggin. I also do a good fake bagpipe with humming through my nose and tapping my nostrils. I just need to expand my repertoire beyond Amazing Grace.
LOVE all your adventure photos 😀 And your photo in Nassau Bahamas looks so cute!! I understand how the honeymoon destination holds a place in your heart. Kev and I went to the Philippines together and it is also my favourite place to date!! Thank you for nominating me! I can’t wait to share my story!
You absolutely deserve it and we can’t wait to here your story.
Congratulations on the nomination for the award. I can imagine that you have many great things ahead of you. I will be looking forward to reading your work into the future.
Congratulations, this is a really good description of you guys, makes me think I know you a little. Keep up the traveling, exploring and thanks for letting us tag along.
You’re very welcome. Glad you could join us for the journey.
Congratulations! That’s very well deserved. Love your blog! I started blogging many many years ago, first I only wrote about poetry and literature!
Poetry and literature blogging sounds like a labor of love.
I didn’t know you were a volunteer firefighter Jenn, or that Ed is such an expert diver! Gorgeous wedding picture too! Congrats on your award 🙂
It’s amazing what you can learn about people when you when you least expect it. Jenn’s fire fighting was so she could get her advanced first aid training for ski patrol. It was all about skiing for a while.
Congrats on the award!! Loved reading your answers, and so glad I stumbled across your blog x
Abby –
Awesome, glad to have you reading.
Congrats for being nominated and good luck. Hopefully, you can add another trophy to your digital shelf.
GOod luck with your nomination! Thanks for sharing so much about yourself, great getting to know you 🙂
It is amazing to be recognized for your hard work so congratulations.
Keep up the good works! It’s such a great way to learn more about fellow bloggers too!
I would like to think of it more as a newbie blogger award. We currently have a DA of 29 and have been publishing steadily for over a year. Not old guard by any stretch of the imagination but past the raw newbie stage. Even though these awards are kind of cheesy, a lot of our regular readers learned something about us from this article and we formed good connections with our refer (Katie: Travelling Spud) and new connections with our selections (Adam: Sterlingtraveler and Cat:fortwoplease). No mater what stage you are at in your career, you should never let ego stand in the way of a good opportunity. The Waybackmachine shows Rain Dazed Entertainment has been an active url since 2013 and around since 2006 but the site site appears to be undergoing a major renovation. When then “coming soon” banner is removed, let us know. We would love to check it out.
Our tech guy says a domain migration is super easy. He is actually doing it as part of the monthly site maintenance. In fact, he is begging to do is so he can get root privileges for our stuff and not have automated backups hosing things up. (and massive amounts of missing space that we supposedly have purchased but is “unavailable” when we try to use it.
I checked out arainofthought. It looks like a nice site that provides a lot of information. Great to see your work.
Nice Blog Post!!
I would like to thank you for sharing such a great post.