Tree of Happiness Award

Continuing to play catch up on the blog, I find I have been tagged by the lovely aromatic at Winds of Change, who has awarded me the Tree of Happiness. Thank you!

The rules of the award are:

• Link to the person who gave the award to you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• List six things that make you happy.
• Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
• Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
• Let the person who awarded you know when your entry is up.

It's always a good exercise to focus on the positives in life, so with no further ado, my six happy-making things are:

1. Spending time with my loved ones - blood family, chosen family and friends. I am especially looking forward to spending Christmas with my loved ones this year.
2. Going to Witchcamp! Next year's will be Avalon Spring in late May, a beautiful time of year. We will be working with the Charge of the Goddess back at our old familiar venue, the lovely Earthspirit, near Glastonbury. Can't wait!
3. Watching my chickens. They are so interesting and so entertaining as they eat and drink and scratch and socialise and explore. And it has been wonderful watching the ex-battery hens blossom and thrive.
4. Tai Chi. I have mentioned before the positive effect it has on my mood. I've noticed that even if I'm feeling really depressed and sad, my weekly lesson never fails to pick me up. It's strange as I'm really not an exercise lover - I loathed PE at school and spent a great deal of time evading it whenever possible. Later, I went dutifully to aerobics classes but never enjoyed them and always left feeling exhausted - I thought I was immune to the 'exercise high' that others seem to get. But after a Tai Chi class I feel stretched (literally and metaphorically), energetic and positive.
5. Craft activities. I love getting totally immersed in the creative process, and I especially love recycling something old/broken/tatty/useless into something new and beautiful.
6. Harvesting food I have grown and making it into a tasty meal for my loved ones. I often say I don't like cooking - by which I really mean cooking and eating alone is not something I find pleasurable, it feels like a chore. And frankly, I get sick of my own cooking. Yet harvesting food I've grown feels like a real achievement, and preparing food for others is a different matter, a pleasure indeed. And when the garden suddenly throws up something unexpected - say a glut of broad beans or courgettes - then by necessity my cooking becomes inventive and suddenly it's fun again!

My six nominations are:

1. Brett at This Guy's Journey
2. Boho Mom at Words from a Bohemian Mom
3. The Awakened Heart - if she has time to do it, having just moved home
4. Sleepy Kitty at From the Windowsill also sounds very busy, but I hope she'll find time to do it too
5. Breezy at Breezy Break Blog because she liked the last meme I passed on to her, and she's been quiet of late...
6. The Kitten's Mother