My Christmas/Chanukah With Patty

Wishing you all a very Happy Holiday

and a Happy New Year

I have a best friend from childhood. We moved into her neighborhood when I was six months old, and Patty was one year old. We have great memories of shared childhood fun, playing Dale Evans (Patty) and Roy Rogers (me); Drama lessons at the dancing school down the street: "Some day somebody is going to sprinkle ant poison on you!" (my favorite line); playing at each others houses, calling each other on the phone five minutes after going home from the others house; riding bikes all over town together, and she reminded me today in front of the funeral parlor and screaming to wake up the dead!; roller skating; hanging out at the Foster Freeze at the corner and getting free ice cream from the owners; playing dress up and doll houses; going on double dates to drive in movies; the time Patty got me down on the floor to make me smoke a cigarette (I never smoked later, she did!); I could go on and on and on. We truly have shared a life time together, promise to grow old together, okay we already have done that, and to be there for each other until the end of time...which we hope is lots and lots of years from now.
Patty collects Cupie dolls... So today when we were celebrating Christmas and Chanukah together I gave her a quilted wall hanging I made for her of cupie dolls!

Patty also collects beautiful crosses. I gave her a lovely tiled mosaic one today and a tiny one for her little "faith" bag.

In case you are looking for me, those are my argyle socks in this picture! ;-)

Patty has lots of collections as you can see here.

And a big beautiful Christmas tree that is full of ornaments with great sentimentality, some that go back to her father's time.

Some for her children who are grown now with children of their own, and some for her grandchildren and great grand child.

We had a fun day today, one more in a life time of them. We had lunch at a tea shoppe and talked and talked...later we drove by our old neighborhood (Patty still lives in the town we were both born in) and were a tad depressed by what we found...very old run down houses...schools...nothing as we knew it in our yester years. But still, it was our beginnings, the place where we had all that fun. We feel truly blessed to still have each other in our lives today!

I realized after writing all this that I had neglected to say what a generous friend Patty is and how thoughtful too. Her gifts to me were all filled with thought for what I like and care about.

For instance, to name just a few, she gave me a very beautiful piece of Lucite that has an etched menorah in it's center and it comes in a very special blue box. She also gave me a Sketching Kit, with a book on sketching by an English artist, two layers of pencils/charcoal, an artists pliable eraser, pencil sharpener, and sketch pad. And the clever box it comes in folds to make an easel! Wow!

AND two gift cards: one to Michael's (for more art supplies) and one to our local quilt shop! (for more fabric!!!!) How sweet is all that? Thank you again, Patty!

PS Mark tagged me today to write about Christmas. May this plus what I wrote on Sylvan's site or was it Kelly's suffice? There must be a total of twelve things between these three places. Okay, Mark?