My First Blog Award!

I am so thrilled and honored that Verde chose me and my blog to award with the Brilliante Award!

1. The winner can put the logo on her/his blog.

2. Link the person you received your award from.

3. Nominate at least 5 other blogs.

4. Put links of those blogs on yours.

5. Leave a message on the blogs you’ve nominated

6. Bonus points, list 5 random things about yourself that we might not pick up from your blog.

Now I get to nominate 5 other blogs! I choose:

1. Jessica at the RosieQ Family Blog because, well, first of all she is married to my cousin and we've only recently discovered that we are really kindred spirits in this urban homesteading thing and well at least that's two of us crazy folks in the family! (Thank God! And thank you, Jess, for marrying in...)

2. Devin and Heidi at the Quince Urban Homestead because they, too, are kindred spirits and we loved loved loved meeting them in Minneapolis in June. It's really nice to know another Minnesota urban homesteading blogger, and to be inpired by their mass of chickens and roosters (legal in Minneapolis!). Also, I'm so impressed that I know a GEOPHYSICIST now (Heidi), and I think they're both "Brillante".

3. Danielle at Touch the Earth Farm because I have really enjoyed reading her Simple Living the Easy Way and all her Food For Thought posts. She really delves into a subject and writes so well.

4. Matriarchy at Ramping Up the Garden because she's really jumping in and trying new stuff and then teaching us how she did it. She has great photos too.

5. Shasha at Seeking Simplicity because she's living my OTHER dream life, on a homesteading farm in the gorgeous Kickapoo Valley region of SW Wisconsin (quite close to where we lived in NE Iowa, with similar geography). She also got me into all this online! (Even though she hardly knows it, and I hardly know how I found her blog, the Riot for Austerity, or any of it because it was over a year ago and my mind is going...) Her pictures are lovely, too.

Oh my gosh, that was hard! Can't I pick some more? I really stuck with homesteaders here, but there's also so many other blogs I read daily (nicely linked in my new blog list with updating feeds). I would choose you all if I could. There's a reason you're in my links list.

Okay, 5 random things about me:

1. I think my gardening interest started when I was a very small girl (under age 7) and my friends and I would run around our neighborhood in Willmar stealing carrots out of some gardens and eating them on the spot or feeding them to the pet rabbit of the main person we stole from. There was nothing like the taste of fresh, dirty carrots.

2. I went to Seminary for 3 years to be a Lutheran pastor but now I'm more of a pagan because I believe the spirit of God/Goddess is in all things--plants, animals, heck even the rocks. That is not what Christianity teaches, though of course Paganism and Christianity have always gone together like birds of a feather. People know the truth. And Paganism is not a lack of religion, satanism or anything of the sort.

3. I first got excited about my husband because he is a flute-player, but now I can hardly stand to hear him practicing in the house. It's loud and repetitive! However, I'm as proud as his mother when he's up on stage playing with a band, or directing a band of students.

4. My favorite museum out of all that I've been to is the Art Institute of Chicago, in the old masters painting wings. I went there for the first time two years ago, and I was in awe. As much as I love education, art, etc., I'm not much of a museum person actually.

5. I'm addicted to black tea, preferably English or Irish Breakfast, one cup in the morning and maybe one in the afternoon especially in winter. I'm also extremely particular about it. One tea bag or teaspoon of loose tea to one mug of boiling water. I boil the water in my $60 Braun stainless steel electric kettle that I researched heavily before buying on Amazon because I was sick of buying a $10 kettle at Target every year when the last one broke down. I add 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to the mug, no more no less because I can taste the difference. I set the timer to steep the tea exactly 2 minutes because I can taste the difference. My favorite Irish Breakfast is from Caribou Coffee, but I mainly buy Lipton tea bags or, lately, bulk Frontier Organic English Breakfast from the co-op. So now you really know something about me!