Will you be my Valentine? Awards and appreciation days/weeks/months/years are, I hope we all know, about marketing. From the Oscars to Appreciation du jour, groups get together to give themselves awards, hoping to raise awareness and bring people (dollars) to their product. It is nice, though to let someone know that you appreciate their work - encouragement can work wonders, especially coming from ones peers. The blogging community is no different. Enter the blogging awards! There is the well designed, if predictable, "Bloggies" and the disappointing "Anti-bloggies" to begin with. More to follow, I'm sure!

Less palatable are the blog-raters - so far, the only thing I've seen from these sites (none to be listed here) is cynacism and sarcasm. I suppose if it makes the person feel better about themselves, it's serving it's purpose, but my guess is that in the long term, the "fix" of slicing someone else's work up will fail to revive a faulty self-esteem.

To keep things positive here and to show my appreciation for the work done on my favorite sites, I've decided to give out my own award! Here are the winners of the first annual...

Luminous Quality Awards

Quality Content - to Booknotes - the best kept secret on the web. This site always has quality content, thoughtful commentary, interesting links, and a wonderful theme. Great work here!

Luminous Beauty - to Nostalgic Thoughts by Yen of the journal Shinkansen. The writing is sublime, the photography is first rate, and the design is impeccable. The more I explore this site, the more in awe of this young woman's talent I am. Brava!

Luminous Insight - to karmabytes for glimpses into the life of a person who is looking at himself and the world with heart.

Luminous Heart - to fiona elise - diary of a toddler. I heart fiona elise! Loving babies as I do, I can't help but be drawn to this sweet heart! Thanks goes to her father for his sensitive look into her world.

Luv ya! Awards

Cup of Coffee - goes to Patti for the site most like stopping by a friends house for a cup of coffee and a chat.

Guilty Pleasure - goes to Faith and making the elephant fart! LOL (oh yes, and I forgot - keeping up with the gossip ;-)

Commrade in arms - goes to fellow nurse Al - a site filled with surprizes!

Beautiful Spirit - goes to Kaycee for her smiles and sunny outlook on life.

I Love Lucy - goes to Here, Kitty Kitty! for making me laugh, and being the site I first discovered the world o' blog!

Cool daddio! - goes to Red Cricket for being the funniest (and I do mean laugh-out-loud-for-real funny), if warped, community blog around!

Winners can copy their awards and display proudly! (or not! ;-) LOL!