Is it 2015, yet? Yes, that’s me attempting to blow past the next three years for no other reason than if it does indeed get better, I’m sure it takes a while. Holidays are stressful, eh?

Let’s get to it.

Editor’s choice

…this week belongs to Deborah at Mannahatta Mamma who will probably smell a rat because somewhere in someone’s comments she was loving on lovelinks, then being all bummed how she’s never won lovelinks. I can’t believe she’s never won. She’s such a good writer, and I know she’s come very close to winning a few times. I chose her this week because she packed so much into a relatively short post: current history, local politics, literature, parenting, good writing. It’s curious timing that she won, but it’s a win well deserved. Congrats, Deborah.

Lurker’s favorite by @FloodG

…this week is lovelinks virgin Annie at Letters to Mo for her post explaining to her baby Cash how awesome her childhood was filled with Saturday morning cartoons, sugar cereal and Sassy magazine. Congrats, Annie, on your first time linking up and your first time win.

Popular vote winner

…is Mommy2Cents with a very naughty post about a very naughty elf on the shelf named Frank. Here’s a pic of Frank trying on his neighbor Barbie’s shoes. You’ll have to click through to see the rest for yourself. Very funny and creative, Mommy2Cents. Congrats on the win.

silver wedges!

Comment karma

…goes to Shannon at new favorite day. I know I’ve said that comment karma will never be based on quantity, but Shannon hit nearly every lovelinked blog with comments that showed she read the posts and empathized with the blogger in some way. Thanks, Shannon, for taking the time out of what I’m sure has been a very busy week to leave your thoughts in so many places.

A giggling shoutout to Ado for talking directly to me in the comments section of Mommy2Cents’ pervy elf on the shelf post. For the record, I’m never looking for Anna Karenina being left behind in comments, especially on a humor post. Wanna make me stabby, though? Leave something like: “stopping by from lovelinks, come leave a comment on my post!” I swear to gods, I will slap you using my bourbon-pouring hand. It’s the stronger hand, and it’ll leave a mark.

Thanks, everybody!

Congrats to all the winners, and thanks to everyone who linked up. It’s amazing that you took time out of your holiday preparations to hang out with me, and I appreciate it. The thumbnails are ordered in the grid from most votes to fewest. In case of a tie, like if three blogs got seven votes each, the blogs are ordered by number of page views. Don’t be discouraged if your blog is near the bottom; it’s always a tight race.

Lovelinks mailbag

If you have cookies to bake or food to burn, you can skip this section; it’s been a long post. If you’re hiding on the potty avoiding your family, please continue reading. You can truthfully tell them later you were doing something important.

In email, I get different forms of the same questions each week, so lemme answer them here publicly:

Erica, is it okay if I link upan old post to lovelinks?

Well, the FAQs do say to link up a recent post. As people have discovered accidentally through the plugin that tweets my archived posts from my personal blog, it’s hard to tell what’s going on when you land without warning on a post written in 2009. Even though I love new readers getting to know the old me by reading my archived posts, and it’s cool for them to see how far I’ve come since I started blogging in 2006, that’s not the reason for lovelinks. Lovelinks highlights the best post you’ve written in the past couple of weeks. If there’s been a significant update to that archived post, and you bring the post into present-day with an explanation and a new time stamp and it is still the best post you’ve written in the past couple of weeks, link it up.

Erica, do you care when people link up their posts to lovelinks and to Monday Listicles and to Mama Kat’s and to Write on Edge and to any other linkup they can find?

If the post is the best post you’ve written in the past couple of weeks and you feel confident that it’s up to lovelinks standard (it’s a bit of a competition, remember) use your best judgment. Stasha’s Monday Listicles, for example, does such a good job of getting traffic to your blog through Stasha’s tweets and her regular readers. Ask yourself if the time she dedicates to your post deserves your complete attention. I’ll answer that: it does. But say you also link that same post at lovelinks. Now you gotta make the lovelinks rounds. How can you manage Stasha’s 40 and lovelinks’ 30? And Write on Edge’s 60? Not to mention managing the requests of the other weekly linkups which I confess to being quite unfamiliar, but that sounds impossible.

If it is indeed your best post of the week, should it end with the screenshot I snagged from Random Blog That Loves It Some LinkUps? This was at the bottom of one post. One post that the blogger linked up nearly 40 times in one week.

click to embiggen if you dare

I will not use my bourbon-pouring hand against you when you submit the same post to more than one linkup. Again, that’s up to you, and I won’t stop you. However, I do think your personal narrative and the reputation you’re trying to build with your blog get lost in the linkup shuffle, and if those two things are important to you—your story and your brand—you’ll write with each individual prompt or theme in mind, not all jumbled together as one big traffic magnet. Some weeks, you may have to pick and choose which ones to join.

Lovelinks #37 opens Tuesday.