Blogging Friends are Tops!

Last week right before I left for vacation, a delightful surprise came in the mail. I was totally not expecting this, but Nanette from Freda's Hive shared one of her new Sarah Smith's colorful cleaning cloths with me.
This is the prettiest thing, and I don't even want to use it and get it dirty! Plus look at the fabric colored button with a mother sheep and her lamb on it that Nanette included.. it matches the cloth exactly. Of course it would. :) And she has a the cutest business card. Such a sweet blogging friend to send me this.. I just love it all. Thank you Nanette!
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Then the other day I was reading one of my favorite blogs - Anne Marie's Quilt. If you hurry over there now, she is having a give-away! But in the previous post, someone had given her a beautiful award for "Kreativ Blogging". Of course she deserves it because she has the cutest way of writing things, and I love seeing how she lives her life in Norway. But surprise! ..she passed the award on to me as well. So I am proudly displaying this honor on my sidebar.. thank you Anne Marie!.. and I would like to also give it to the following people because they always leave such lovely comments here and I love their blogs too. You guys don't have to even pass this on if you don't feel like it.. I know there are lots of "tags" going around lately and it's hard to get people that haven't already been tagged. But just display the award at your site with pride.. you deserve it!

Melanie at jellybeanangel

Cindy at artsythreads

My friend at dollzandthingz

And also in the mail the same day that the surprise cleaning cloth came, was a new Martha Pullen "Sew Beautiful" catalog. I recently ordered a half a yard of Nelona Batiste from her to make some dainty dolly nightgowns, and so she put me on the catalog list.. ..which I don't mind at all. Look at some of this cute stuff and beautiful needlework...
I especially adore the smocking. Someday we will talk more about that here too. :) And now I can hardly write a post without showing at least one of the fabulous things in bloom at the moment. This is our enormous horse chestnut tree, which is usually mistaken for a Buckeye which is our state tree. There are some differences which you can read about here if you are curious. But if not, and you just want to call it a Buckeye.. that is ok with me. It is a beautiful tree.. but very messy. There is always something dropping from it that we have to clean up.

Just to give you an idea how huge it is, we were standing out with some friends waiting for the parade to go by our house yesterday, and my son snapped this picture. Guess I never realized I sometimes nibble my nails. Or maybe I was just thinking about the conversation. Ya.. that's it.
Hope you all have a good week. This feels like Monday to me.