FMM - Adventures With My Amiga

My best friend Barbara flew out here for a visit, and as always, we had such a great time together!  There's something about 40 - yes, FORTY - years of friendship that makes for being able to fall into a natural flow immediately, despite more than a year going by since our last visit.  We'd be talking about one thing in the car, arrive at our destination and the conversation would switch to something entirely different, and then however many hours later we'd be back in the car and pick up the original conversation right where we left off.  It's a kind of friendship that I don't take for granted, and one that is both rare and very precious to me. 

This was the first visit in 15 years where we didn't have our trusty sidekick, Theresa, along for the fun.  Barbara's daughter is taking some very challenging high school classes and couldn't miss a week, so we were on our own, although there were texts and phone calls to her throughout the visit.  But it was weird to have it just be the two of us - I mean, we met the first week of my freshman year of high school, so we obviously have a lot of history as a duo; still, we missed our girl!

Of course we had to start several of our days at Blue Baker, where Barbara took a picture to send to Theresa, and naturally we had to sit where the Duchess could be included in the shot:

Egg bagel sandwiches, hot coffee...you can't go wrong with that!

We both had lists of things we wanted to shop for and take care of while she was here, and we ended up completing just about everything, which is pretty amazing considering how long those lists were!  One thing on my list was searching for a narrow plant stand for my little front porch - this one was a contender, and in lieu of having a tape measure to write down the size, we just used Barbara for comparison:

So it's size 7 wide and hip height, gotcha.

We had a bit of pampering in the form of pedicures:

Barbara was extending summer with hot pink, while I deviated from my usual blue color with a cherry red.  So fun!

We also bought a living Christmas tree - I had my eye on one at Home Depot, and with Barbara's encouragement, ended up buying it.  I've never had a living tree, but for $19.98, I figured it wasn't too much of an investment if I end up killing it.  Also, we couldn't resist the challenge of fitting a four and a half foot tree into my Mini:

Luckily we only had a two-mile drive home.

How pretty, right?  I'll put some lights and ornaments on it after Thanksgiving.

Barbara brought me some succulent cuttings from her garden, along with a redwood planter, so I got that all put together one afternoon:

I love the variety, and also, the wood smells so good!  Reminds me of a new deck.

Another cutting - it was big enough to need a deeper pot.

The little guy second from the left came from Barbara's garden; we found the wire basket while we were shopping and had to bring it home - I love how the mini clay pots look in it!

There's a lot more adventures that I want to share with you guys, but that's for another post.  In the meantime, one more picture for today:

It was super fun to tool around in my Mini Cooper with Barbara years after we visited a showroom in California.  Dreams do come true - eventually!

From 2011 - just another adventure with my amiga!

Have a great weekend!