Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Moments from 5 years of Fairy Tale Fortnight!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke & the Bookish, and today's topic is Top Ten Inspiring Quotes from Books. Bonnie and I have decided to mix things up a bit and do a 5th FTF anniversary retrospective of sorts, which means today won't be inspiring quotes so much as quotes and moments from the last 5 years of Fairy Tale Fortnight. It's hard to pin these down, really, so I'm sure I'm going to miss some. (Also, now that Ashley, my original co-host, is no longer blogging and her blog is gone, some of those moments are lost to history!)
But here are 10 of the moments that always come to mind, that I've loved in some way and find myself thinking about, years later. (And if you want more, I've been sharing them all FTF-long as "In Case You Missed It" posts!) I would LOVE to know some of yours in the comments!

10. I'm going to kick off with my favorite thing of this year, which was my giveaway of a watercolored glass slipper. It's not that this is the best thing I've ever done, or even my favorite post of this year, but this will be the one I remember. I had a goal this year of bringing more me into the blog, and sharing my silly little side projects, like these watercolors, is one way of doing that. So that makes me happy, and knowing that one of you will have something personal from me makes me even happier. ^_^

9. Because it's something I personally like to talk about, IRL, I was happy when Elizabeth Blackwell joined us to talk about strong female characters, and had this to say:

But I’ve discovered, in my own life, that there are many ways to be strong. Elise [main character of While Beauty Slept] quietly subverts other’s expectations. She knows that keeping a secret can be the key to holding power. And when she is tested, she finds strength within herself that she didn’t know she had.[...]Being strong doesn’t always mean being tough and loud—and that goes for real life as well as literature. 

8. Two vlogs on the same note as each other often come to mind, and they are my "Genre Push" of fairy tales, where I tried to narrow down the perfect retelling for different types of readers (and the list is lengthy), and my Top 10 favorite retellings vlog from 2012 -- though I think some of these may have been bumped from their spots in favor of books I've read since... May need to do an update to this!

7. I shared an Ariel lookbook with you as an ICYMI post earlier this month, but my favorite might be last year's lookbook for Belle (probably because I wanted to be her, and certainly wanted to dress like her, when I was a kid). Though I'm not sure anyone else cares the least little bit about these, I love doing them, and they always make me smile when I look back on them -- and probably will even more as the years go on and fashions become laughable... ;)

6. In one of my more unique posts -- and I mean unique in that, it'd probably be hard to pull off again, because there aren't often books so similar, and yet so different -- I compared three retellings of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, side by side, and gave my verdict on which ones failed it and which ones nailed it. 
I also made the most juvenile joke I think I've ever made, so... there's that.

5. I took a look at some weird tales. Some REALLY weird tales, and they still kinda haunt me to this day... I just... I don't even know what's going on.
What even, Grimms?

4. We've played a couple of Mock Cover games, where you make your own cover for a fairy tale or retelling, but my favorite that I've personally done was 2013's Wolf - a cover I still love so much that I kinda want to write a Little Red Riding Hood retelling to go with it... lol

3. I listed my top 3 tales that I desperately wanted to see unique, solid retellings of, and surprise, surprise, Jack & the Beanstalk and Rapunzel are on it. I had actually forgotten about this post, but I find it particularly funny, given my recent Tea Chat...clearly these are long-standing issues with me. ;)

2. In my review of Jodi Lamm's Titan Magic: Body & Soul, I had some lovely, glowing things to say:

The thing I love about Jodi Lamm's writing is that there are a lot of things I love about Jodi Lamm's writing. 

I was going to list an actual item there, like that her writing is deep and layered.
Or that it's lyrical and lovely.
That it uses the inhuman as a canvas for a study in humanity.
That it's heartbreaking. Triumphant. Poignant.
But as you can see, as soon as I try to pick out the thing I love, a whole host of others clamors to be chosen, too.

But the reason that this quote means something to me is that, beyond reminding me of how much I love this series, I don't think I ever would have found or read these books without Fairy Tale Fortnight. It's possible, but without the strong fairy tale theme of this blog, Jodi wouldn't have found me, and without a fairy tale event to prep for, I may well have dismissed this indie gem out of hand, as I normally did/do with indies & self-pubs (just because of the sheer volume of requests I get, and books I have). And I would have really been missing out. So I have Fairy Tale Fortnight to thank for some of my favorite books, and the chance to share one of my favorite passions with you -- and have it reflected back at me.

1. This "collaborative bedtime story" from the first year. Even though it's rough, this is still one of my favorite things to have ever done on this blog. Pulling together all of these different people, bloggers, authors and readers alike, and getting them to read Little Red Riding Hood -- getting their interpretations and their 'bedtime story voice' -- and the satisfaction of seeing this crazy idea I had not only come together but have people enthusiastically joining in, is still kind of amazing to me. As frustrating as it was to pull off and try to edit together, I wish I'd made it a yearly tradition.

Want more fairy tales? Return to the main schedules
by clicking here for The Book Rat or here for A Backwards Story