Have you joined the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2011 writing project? Did you know that by joining or voting for your chosen blogs, you can be one of the 10 winners of $100?!

All you have to do is nominate AT LEAST 5 blogs. But, I recommend you vote for 10 blogs. There are a lot of emerging and influential blogs out there that you might haven’t seen yet.

And with that, my bro and I are hoping you’d consider our food blog, Certified Foodies, as one of your Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2011. Let me explain why we believe we deserve your vote:

Our food blog, Certified Foodies, was started back in May 2010. I share the blog with my brother Kenneth. We’re very close and I believe that our love for food and cooking also bonded us as siblings and best friends. And we both believe that food can really draw people together, something that years of going on foodie adventures and cooking for our friends has proven to us. And our beloved nanay passed on this passion and she’s been a true inspiration to us.

Our main goal back then for starting our food blog was to share our own recipes at home of dishes that may seem or sound too complicated to prepare. We love our kitchen and we enjoy adding our own twists or experimenting with different flavor combinations. And this, we want to share with other foodies out there.

We want to show people that cooking can really be fun. And we’re glad that all our recipes have managed to encourage people to try making them at their own homes. To name a few of our recipes, there’s our Kenny Rogers Cheesy Garlic Potato and Ken’s Creamy Pesto Pasta recipe among the most popular and most searched for.

Aside from our recipes, we also share our food trips and discoveries on our food blog. My bro and I didn’t start as adventurous foodies like how we are now.  We used to only order the usual for fear of not being satisfied and not getting our money’s worth.

But, our passion for discovering new flavor combinations other than the usual sweet and salty had grown over the past months and we now enjoy surprising our palates with flavor twists new and up-and-coming restaurants have to offer.

And lastly, whenever my bro and I go on our food trips, we always opt for the food places where affordability and satisfying food meet. But, we do sometimes treat ourselves by dining in posh restaurants that offer really good food that’s worth the bucks.

There’s something for everyone on our food blog and we hope to continue this in the next years to come, especially now that my bro has started his culinary dreams. He’ just started culinary school and in the next weeks, you can expect him sharing new recipes and techniques he learned from school.

If you do consider our food blog for your list of Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2011, we would really appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts… and tummies!

Now, before you start your own list, here are a few reminders:

Voters Eligibility

For you to be able to vote, you must meet these requirements and take note of the reminders:

• Your blog or website owner profile must be visible and accessible online.
  This means that they should be able to verify your identity and ensure you’re not just another spam blogger. We suggest to put up an About Me page or a link to your Facebook profile. That should help verify your true identity.
• Your blog should be at least 3 months old when you join this project.
  That means if your blog was started BEFORE June 7, 2011, you cannot join. Why? Because the deadline for submitting your post and votes is September 7, 2011.
• Make sure you include the list of sponsors on your post.
  They’re listed on the information page about this project on Janette Toral’s Influential Blogger blog.
• Vote for at least 5 blogs.
  You can update your post until September 7th. Make sure you inform them once you’ve updated your list.
• Make sure you add a short description or explanation as to why you’re voting for your nominated blogs. Otherwise, it won’t be counted.
• Include a link back to the writing project info page.
• Once you’re done with your post (with at least 5 blogs), leave a comment on the info page with your post’s DIRECT URL / link.

Who Can You Nominate / Vote For?

• The blog should have been in existence from April 2010 up to the present.
• You cannot vote for old blogs that were moved to a new domain.
• Make sure you double check the age and first posting date of your nominee to ensure that they’re truly qualified to be nominated this year.

That’s it. Easy, right?

There’ll be an event for those who participated in September so stay tuned for that. This will be the day when they’ll award the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2011.

Good luck to you and your nominees!