And the award goes to...

...ME!

I had another post all worked out for today, and then out of the blue I got an award!

Ta da!


The lovely lady what lunches, Cucinista, has honoured me by passing on the "One lovely blog" award, my first ever blogging award. Thank you so much!

So what happens now? Well, first of all you head right on over to Working Lunch and check out the fabness. This is a lady that takes lunches very seriously indeed, and frankly so would I if I took the time to prepare the gorgeous meals she does. Salad with avocado and grapefruit, oh yeah.

Next? The rules of the game are that I have to pass the award on to ten other blogs I've discovered recently and think are damn fine. Here, I hit a wall, not because I can't think of ten lovely blogs, believe me I can probably list almost a hundred, the problem is that so many of them have either had the award, or are so well known that everyone already knows they are lovely.

My solution is to name six very special blogs that I follow obsessively, and that more people should know about. I hope that is alright with everyone. Here's my pick in no particular order:

The Transplanted Baker - Siri upped sticks from the confort of Minneapolis to the Fiords of Norway, and has done with with an ease and style I envy. Plus she digs pie and bread with a passion. What's not to love about her?

Arctic Garden Studio - Nicole is my blogger-ganger (like a doppleganger in the blogging world), she preserves, she knits, she loves buttons, is obsessed with lemon and somehow always manages to post things I am thinking about.

Green Ink - a literary Londoner (well, living in London at least!), need I say more?! Get thee hence to her page.

Shutterbean - I'm not sure how I stumbled across Tracy's blog, but I do remember arriving and then losing hours going through her previous posts. This lady has style, her obsession with black and white reminds me of a very close friend, and her home and cooking are just beautiful. I'd harbour some seriously jealousy if it wasn't for how downright nice this lady is, and just how effortlessly she seems to cope with balancing being a new Mum with absolutely everything else!

The Domestic Novice - There is nothing of the novice about this lady, I can tell you. Gorgeous summer cakes and the pictures of flowers will have you wishing for days in the garden tending to flower beds and drinking white wine and eating sponge cake. Or is that just me?

Batter Splattered - I was originally only going to post five blogs, but it would be a huge injustice not to have Molly in my list as I owe her so much. In fact, I would love to give her a special award of her very own, the "Molly Rocks" award. She is the lady who got me blogging, she said far too many nice things about my writing when I was still a humble invitiation-only, "I bet only my Mum would read this" blogger. She pulled me in with her love of thrift store scores, her jammin' jelly and her appreciation of a cold beer on a hot afternoon. She's also an Alaskan. Boy, those Alaskan ladies are something special aren't they? I wish that Molly and I lived closer as I can just see us sitting on a deck in the soft summer evening light sharing a beer and talking about recipes with unusual names.

So there you go, that's my list. There could have been so many more, but the above ladies are ones that make me grin every day, and make me thankful for the blogging community.

Now, I'm off to put things in jars...more about this later in "The reveal (part two)" hehe.