Liebster Award & Allergy Awareness Week

Today I proudly accept my LIEBSTER Award from Nickely Challenged. I love to blog and I can get side tracked with everything else going on – including reading others stories. Great bloggers and my awesome followers motivate me to continue to make time to blog regularly.

In an effort to participate in Allergy Awareness Week & Month I wanted to make sure to make my own nominations – many of who write about allergies – this week!

Nominations for the LIESTER Award are given from other bloggers to blogs that are still small but growing in followers. To receive my award, I was asked to answer the 11 questions below and nominate 11 other great bloggers.

1. How did you decide on the title of your blog?

My blog was my name christycushing.com. It is about my personal life experiences dealing with my nickel food allergy and atopic dermatitis. I recently changed my website address to https://nickelfoodallergy.com/ so more people could find it when searching about nickel food allergies and nickel allergies.

I was diagnosed with this unique allergy in the summer of 2009. Whenever I go out to eat or talk with others about my nickel food allergy, they almost always respond:

“I have never heard anything about nickel food allergies,” or

“I would have never guessed that ____(food)_____ has nickel in it.”

My partner suggested I write about my nickel allergy and I finally gained the courage to do just that in 2013.

2. What is one word that sums up the heart of your blog and why?

Allergy.

I am allergic to foods with nickel. When I eat those foods my body has an allergic reaction that results in severe eczema or atopic dermatitis.

3. What’s your favorite pastime other than blogging?

I have multiple favorite pastimes. I love to garden, read, hike and play board games.

4. What’s your favorite aspect of blogging?

Determining what I am going to write about, or being inspired on a topic by reading a fascinating article or blog.

5. Which recipe, project or idea on my blog would you most like to try yourself?

Tackling my sweet tooth can be a challenge. Avoiding chocolate is difficult during any holiday – but especially during Easter chocolate is everywhere. One of my favorite candies is the CadBury mini-eggs only available around Easter. When I first went on my low nickel diet and avoided chocolate, nuts and many other foods I lost 10-15 pounds immediately.

I also absolutely love to eat brownies. Before I received this award, I had wanted to try to make Nickely Challenged’s nickel free Lemon Brownies! Now I have made them and they were absolutely delicious!

6. Where does your blog inspiration come from?

My blog inspiration comes from recounting situations from my daily life. Restricting my diet to minimize my chronic eczema can be very challenging. It’s been very rewarding to write about my experiences and connect with others who have similar challenging food allergies and/or my same nickel food allergy.

7. What is one country in the world you would like to visit and why?

I want to visit Iceland. I love a great view, mountainous hikes, active volcanos, hot springs, and I would love to see the Northern Lights.

8. If you have children, what are their names? If not, what are your favorite boy and girl names?

My favorite names are Abby and Alex.

9. A long lost relative leaves you a large sum of money. What do you do with it?

I’d pay off my student loans, invest in my business, travel, and hire a personal chef for dinner meals.

My low nickel diet isn’t great for my partner Stevie, who needs to eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, and whole wheat grains. Often we eat the same or similar main dish, but we have to make difference side dishes. Having a personal chef who could make healthy meals for both of us at dinner would be fantastic!

10. In your opinion, what is the best blog post you’ve written so far?

“Natural” Skin Products Loaded with Nickel – I am not aware of another food allergy that results in severe eczema. Concentrating on my food allergy sometimes results in my neglecting that my primary chronic condition is eczema, which is triggered when I eat foods loaded with nickel. In addition, I have used skin products, derived from those same foods and experienced adverse reactions.

11. What’s your favorite food?

My favorite food is zucchini, which I am really glad doesn’t have nickel. My favorite food with nickel is leafy greens, I love eating salads!

11 Blogs I’m awarding the Liebster Award:

Flourish with Food Allergies

Amazing and Atopic

No More Reactions

Miss Allergic Reactor

Sharing Community of Food Allergies

Living with Nickel Allergies

DermBytes

HypeFoddie

Food Allergies Recipes Box

A Series of Adventures

To accept your Liebster Award:

1. Answer the 11 questions below.

2. Comment on this blog post with your blog post link with your answers

3. Nominate 11 other blogs that have under 1,000 following (If using FB, I was asked to keep it to about 200 likes). I choose Twitter as my social media platform and realized a couple of my nominations have strong Facebook presences. However, I loved what you have to say I included you.

4. Give me a shout-out on your blog!

Here are your 11 questions:

1. How did you decide on the title of your blog?

2. What is one word that sums up the heart of your blog and why?

3. What’s your favorite pastime other than blogging?

4. What is your favorite aspect of blogging?

5. Where does your blog inspiration come from?

6. Which of my blog posts would you most like to try yourself or which blog did you most enjoyed reading?

7. What is one country in the world you would like to visit and why?

8. How has blogging positively influenced who you are now?

9. A long lost relative leaves you a large sum of money. What do you do with it?

10. In your opinion, what is the best blog post you’ve written so far? (Include the link)

11. What is your favorite food?

Congratulations bloggers and thanks for sharing your story!