I'm Honored

I'm very honored that Meadowlark at the Just Wandering Through blog gave me this award...thank you!

It's called the Arte y Pico award, for creativity, design, interesting material, and contributing to the blogging community (in any language). It's to be passed along to 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award based on those criteria.

I think everyone I know in the online homesteading community has their unique ability in creating, designing...and are definately interesting to me. All have contributed to me as a community. It's always so impossible to narrow things down here. It's also difficult for me to know who may have already received this...

I'm going to have to shoot from this hip on this one. Here are the 5, among all the deserving others, that came to mind for those reasons...

1. Edifice Rex -- Annie is an artist in the truest sense. She is a sculptor, potter, gardener/landscape designer, and knows how to create from the ground up...construction, design, problem-solving, do-it-yourself, aesthetics. She's finishing the building of her own home that she built herself. If you haven't stopped in to see her blog lately, it's definately worth the trip :)

2. Maria at Dirt Under My Nails -- definate creativity, as a lifestyle. I can't get enough of seeing how they built their cordwood home, complete with the planted roof! As always, this blog is a delight, with a can-do attitude, and a very wonderful spirit of family teamwork.

3. La Ferme de Sourrou -- I love when two people carve out a life that is authentically theirs; in this case, hardworkinghippy and her hubby have integrated into their local community as well as have wrought, through a lot of effort and vision, a hand-built home for themselves, their animals, and their prolific garden. Combining the potager with chickens, goats, wildlife, and traditional skills, they embody inspiration and grit off the grid in France. Do check out the lush photography, as well.

4. Tina at Irish Dexter Cattle, Cheap Sheep and More Creatures, otherwise known as Wilamar Farm, is the industrious and artistic micro-farmer who does an awful lot on what most folks would consider a small property, considering all the animals who call it home. Her careful planning and diligence really pay off, and these are some very happy creatures. Tina is usually tackling a creative project, and she has trained one of her dogs to be a therapeutic companion for trips to visit residents of nursing homes. She is also a proud mother and grandmother, and finds time to keep experimenting in the kitchen as well. All that, and a garden, too. She has the stuff that turns a homestead into the hearth of a community, and is well-deserving of this award...

5. Katherine Dunn's Apifera Farm always blends accomplished art with a child's-eye wonder. I love how she interprets life on her lavender farm...named for the bees that adore the nectar there...and how farm life and its inhabitants populate not only her homestead, but her imagination and her expression through varied media and writings. Lovely!

There are so many others that should be named as well...

I hope you enjoy revisiting these, and please check out the wonderful blogs listed on the blogroll on my sidebar if you haven't yet...you'll find so much to appreciate and by which to be inspired!