Spread The Love

I am not really into the lovey-dovey valentine thing and in Japan the girls give the boys fancy chocolates on Feb. 14th then the boys give the girls marshmallows on white day which is Mar. 14th and i am pretty sure that it is similar in Korea too but they also have black day on April 14th, where those who didn't receive anything go out and eat black noodles to celebrate being single.

So, instead of another hearty tutorial or idea I thought I would send out some bloggy love instead, these are a collection of blogs that I have recently discovered, currently loving or can't be parted with....

I am quite new to listening to podcasts and I think the Crafty Podcast by Sister Diane is my favourite, other podcasts have great content but the crafty podcast is edited so all those awful bits are taken out making it a much better listening experience. She also did a great video on craftypod the other day on how to make the most out of your google reader. (click here to watch it). If you read a number of blogs then you should get yourself onto google reader, it is amazing and so easy to keep a track of blog posts you like, I have about 200 blogs in my reader at the moment :o)

Another new-to-me blog is SwirlyThoughts, I have been a fan of cutable for some time but I only just discovered that Lynsey has a personal blog too! Then there is Made which I only discovered today but she is having a celebrate the boy month so I already love her.

Obviously I have a tonne of Montessori and child related blogs in my reader and it is really hard to pick out just a couple, Chasing Cheerios is in there and the link queen Shannon at Shannons sharings as is my montessori journey and I have been enjoying the slightly crazy ideas over at filth wizardry.

These are some of my 'always read no matter what' blogs and you will probably recognise some of them, paper-and-string home of the felt goddess Sarah, The Crafty Crow and One Pretty Thing, I have to read these because I am scared of missing out on something LOL. Print and pattern and sweet tidings are a great source of visual inspiration and sew mama sew is, strangely enough a great sewing inspiration blog.

Along with the always read blogs, I have the, 'been reading them since the beginning of time' blogs, these are ones that I started reading way back when and still love, of course there is Meg over at Sew Liberated who used to have Montessori by Hand, inside a black apple it was through this blog I got introduced to Etsy and How About Orange, more inspiration and time wasting links :o) I recently did a de-clutter of my google reader and many of the old blogs I used to read were given the boot or the owners, for whatever reason have stopped blogging.

And finally these are blogs I love because they make me smile, laugh or cry - yes, you Jodie at Ric-Rac, go and see the story of Ernst to see what I am talking about. Nikki at WhiMSy love always has some loonie idea up her sleeve, her last one was genius and Heather shinshu life makes you want to move to the outback of Japan one minute then not even venture there for a holiday the next. Finally, Katy at Sycamore Stirrings always has something new and interesting to share, I have been learning a lot about that little place called Luxembourg.

I hope I haven't upset anyone by not including them! It was a toughie picking a handful out of the 200 in my reader, as I said, I did a bit of spring cleaning, so I am now looking for some new-to-me blogs to read, so apart from mine ;o) which is your favourite blog and do you have one of your own?