You make my day!

Finally! I am taking the time to sit down and give a little recognition to some of my favorite bloggers. It feels good to be sitting here. We closed the garden shop 3 hours early today because of the extreme cold. With the wind chill it is something like -23 degrees F (-31 degrees C). Yes, that's cold, even for my winter soul. Did I mention that I work in a UNinsulated converted garage? That's right. No insulation. Not even a little bit. Needless to say, I was having a hard time staying warm today and since I had a total of 1 customer, by 3 pm I decided to call it quits. I was so excited! I mean, I felt like a little kid on days that they announce that school will be let out early. Only difference is that, when I got home, rather than enjoy the blissful peace and warmth of simply being home, I spent the extra time cleaning and then made (a wonderfully warm) dinner of enchiladas and black beans. Actually, it felt good to have the extra time to do these things in such a happy and relaxed state of mind because, seriously, this place needed a little TLC.

Needless to say, at the moment, I am sitting at a clean desk, incense and candles burning, a fresh cup of coffee at my side. Louis is asleep at my feet and Anu is strangely happy under the crystal clear night sky. The warmth of my room against the cold outside makes for an especially nice contrast.

But about those awards. ;) Thank you Vedrana, Jamie, Jenn, Melba, Leah, and Bella for passing this on to me! You are all such powerfully wonderful women and I am so grateful to be inspired by you on a regular basis. Consider yourself added to my list as well! And since now I get to pass on the award... :)

This is seriously tough to decided and so I need to make it absolutely clear that, if I had time, I would give this award to every single blogger that I read and love. And there are quite a lot of them!

Here's the rules:

Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

And here's just the short version of my list:

Maddie
Kristine
Meg
Tara Dawn
Amber
Fiona
Mardougrrl
Ruby (her blog is password protected. Want to read? If you do, just send me an email and I'll forward it to her.)
Loralee
Olivia

Oh, that's just not fair!!! My list wants to be so much longer than that!!! But, really, I'm working hard on the fine art of time management which means that I can't hang out with my blog all night (UNfortunate!).

But there's one more blogger that I would like to pay a tribute to and that is Bernie Berlin. She is doing incredible work and is inspiring to me in ways that I cannot even begin to explain. That girl is living my dream. Kudos to her! You can watch a video about her rescue efforts here.