Friends are the Zest of Life

Been quite a busy time for me the last two weeks. Working a lot of days in a row, playing some tennis, working out, and finally doing a little bit of creating thanks to a visit by a blog friend. Years ago growing up I had a pen pal. I was in high school and right now I can't tell you where my pal was from or what her name was. But I remember how fun it was to have a pen pal. And then along came -- blogs. A form of pen pals but I do believe you get so much closer since at times blog becomes a journal online. I certainly know over the years I have told you all more things than I could have ever imagined sharing when I began.

This weekend I was blessed with a visit from a dear friend who I met for the first time. We spent 12 hours together on Saturday beginning at the hotel in the Reston Town Center. Terri and I met about 3 years ago over at PaperWhimsy. She has a beautiful blog called Artful Affirmations. This one blog has taken off and I encourage you to follow her. We started our day out with shopping, eating lunch, and then heading to my place where we had a fun time creating together. We also discovered we like the same authors and the same shows. Hmmmmmmm, we had never discussed this before in any communications we had prior to her visit.

I had a handmade book made a couple of years ago that I needed to begin painting. I began with gessoing a number of pages and then spreading paint on a number of pages randomly. In our travels shopping  we stopped at Anthropology where I found some fascinating gift wrap......

In my heart of heart I was hoping it would "run" when I played with it. It is sturdy, peeps, sturdy,

Started to do some stamping on it. This is a Leonardo DaVinci book and so I had all of my stamps set aside for working in this journal, glad I didn't have to go looking for them, (yes the craft room is still a random accident in the universe waiting to happen)......

So I can always remember that the first two pages in this journal were done while Terri and I had tea and coffee and a great visit in my dining room.

Larcy and Oliver Pup came over to visit.

After our creation time, we headed off to dinner and a play.  Had tickets to see the Elden Street Players presenting A Midsummer Night's Dream. Excellent dinner and  play  made more fun when we caught up with other friends. We celebrated Mary's birthday,

And do tell, she and Terri are from the same home town in Michigan. Holy Cow! LOL So those two had a great visit about the old home grounds. The play was a hoot, you can tell from the set....

I took a photo of the floor with my phone and although dark you get the idea of the beautiful flowing colors,

The night ended when I dropped Terri back at her hotel. Yes, 12 hours went by so quick. What a great weekend! And now back to creating! Am I'm back, probably...... just need to get back into my routine........ Hugs, peeps.....