The Carnival of Beauty is today, hosted by Michele of Chasing Contentment. You can visit her site and read a collection of nine posts written on the theme of The Beauty of Friendship. Michele says:

This morning, I found an e-card in my in-box from a friend, thanking me for my friendship. The card mentioned that February is International Friendship Month, a fitting time for a Carnival about friendship.

She also took the time to look up several scriptures relating to friendship — so this whole Carnival is inspiring, and I’m glad I’ll have this link in my archives. I’m sure I’ll be peeking at it again in the months to come. I’ve enjoyed that Technorati search tool in my sidebar a lot lately — I’ve found a blog to be a great place to store my thoughts that would have gotten lost if I hadn’t recorded them.

A quick note of congratulations to those of you who are finalists in the Share the Love Blog Awards. You can vote for your favorites until February 27. I only recognized a few of the finalists, and one is Katy’s Fallible blog, which is my pick for best design. I recognized her to be a kindred spirit because she also interviewed Mary DeMuth on her blog tour. If you love the French language and antique beauty, you’ll love Katy’s site!

Hmmm…how can I say this? More than ever, I appreciate Sallie of Two Talent Living’s diligence in making sure the blogs nominated for her awards last fall were clean for viewing. I visited a few of the finalist’s blogs to consider voting, and I felt like a frog who hit boiling water and jumped right on out. Why do women blog about such crass things? I don’t know. I guess I don’t get out much beyond the blogs in my blogroll and participants in the Carnival of Beauty (and those of you kind enough to leave me comments!) Just a warning, in case you were heading that way.