Five Fabulous Bloggers

Thanks to Trop 50 for sponsoring my writing about fabulous bloggers. This year Trop50 is granting 50 fabulous wishes. Click here to enter for a chance to win $1,000 to help grant a friend's wish!

There are so many fabulous bloggers and blogs out there, way too many to contain in any list, quite frankly.  I finally managed to narrow it down to these five bloggers because I think each of them are shrouded in complete and utter fabulosity (Yes, that's a real word, but only on blogs.) and because I'm afraid that you might not have discovered their blogs yet. Seriously, if you aren't already hooked on their sites, you have to go check them out. You will be a better person for it. You might even win a Nobel prize. Probably not for reading their work, but for something else. Just sayin'.

1. Ann's Rants
Not many people know this, but it is fair to say that I would've given up on blogging if it wasn't for Ann. We found each other's blogs and then, because we both lived in Madison, we eventually found each other's houses and have been Bloggy-BFF's ever since. To say that blogging can be a grind is an under-statement, so I credit our competitive spirits for not allowing either of us to give up our separate blogging endeavors before the other. Now here we are almost two and half years later, still blogging away. Thanks for always making me work harder to catch up to you, Ann! 

In addition to her blog, Ann is the national director of the show Listen To Your Mother (check the site to see if there is a show near you), which she conceived and mounted the inaugural production of last year in Madison, she also writes a monthly column at Aiming Low (a collection of more fabulous bloggers). She is funny, brilliant, ambitious, filled with insight, a loyal friend, and has awesome hair (despite her recent foray into Nigel Tuffnell territory when her cut grew out a little too much prompting a comparison to certain members of Spinal Tap). You could pick anything from her archive and instantly fall in love, but I'll give you her early morning schedule one to start.

2. Studio EightOneSix
TJ is one of those blogging whirling dervishes that manages to be involved in so many sites of awesome that you wonder how the hell he does it all. He blogs, he's a photographer, writes for Mamapop, Draft Day Suit, How To Eat and just got hired to be an editor at IndieInk.org. In addition to being hugely talented, intelligent, and funny, he writes achingly beautiful prose about his personal life that somehow manages to give the reader a perfect little window to peek through, but never strays into TMI territory.  Love, love, love how he does that and wish I could learn how to exhibit some of that artful restraint in my own writing. Enjoy this or this.

3. The Bean
There isn't another person in the world who can make a post about nothing the most riveting (and giggle inducing) part of your day. I don't know how Bejewell does it, but, truly, her posts where she claims to have "nothing to write about" are always my favorite. Honestly, though, any of her posts where she uses tons of bad language and large doses of irreverence are my faves. And that would be pretty much all of them.  Read this to see why she's been awesome since the 10th grade (at least!) or this one, which was one of the first posts I read of hers and I laughed myself into a froth over (also: she gets bonus points for non-obnoxious use of emoticons).

4. Classy Chaos
Pauline is one of those women that, in theory, I love to hate. My first impression (formed instantly from browsing through a few pictures on her site) was that she has a beautiful home, beautiful children, she's a naturally gifted photographer, she's gorgeous, has great clothes and looks like one of those annoying types that always have it together.  But if you read her blog regularly, you come to find out that she is actually a thoughtful, kind, and, yes, inspiring daughter of Polish immigrants working to raise fabulous kids despite living in a consumer-oriented, instant-gratification world. She does this by making her family heritage relevant to her kids' and her life and by being as real as you or me. She and her husband did a ton of the work themselves on their house to make it as beautiful as it is. Her minivan is just as likely to be a roving dumpster as any other mother's. She works to try and maintain a hint of classy amid the chaos of life, just like her blog says and usually succeeds. But then she'll go and do something like actually post a picture of herself missing a tooth. You heard me,  missing a tooth! I am too vain for such shenanigans, so I bow at her feet for that one. Also, one of my all-time favorite winter dishes is her family recipe Polish hunting stew called Bigos. Sauer kraut was never so classy!


5. Motherhood in NYC
Marinka is one of my personal blog heroes.  I don't know how she posts such consistently brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny posts, but her dead-pan delivery never fails to make me chuckle. One of the many highlights of her blog is when she writes about anything having to do with her mama and papa, Russian immigrants who, apparently, have never heard of self-censoring. God help her if they ever decided to actually give her a piece of their mind! Read this post about going skiing and try to disagree. I love that she never takes herself too seriously, but still manages to give you little peeks into the more serious moments in her life and everyone's lives. See there? Another mystery.  She's like a shy-er Joan Rivers wrapped in a Don Rickles-esque engima all swaddled up in a wedding veil. But way nicer. Trust me.

These five fabulous bloggers also happen to be fabulous twitter-ers! You can find them here, along with a few of my other favorites.

Don't forget to enter the 50 Fabulous Wishes contest for a chance to win $1,000 to support a friend's wish. I was selected for this Tropicana Trop50 sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do. I received compensation to use and facilitate my post.