christmas, part 5: fun new toys and good old friends (or, hooray! i have my laptop back!)

so… my laptop is fixed and i now have access to my christmas photos again and the saga can continue.

one of the fun things we did on our christmas vacation was visit some very dear friends who live in england but who were visiting parents who don’t live very far away from mr. happy stuff’s parents’ home, so we traveled a few hours one day in order to visit with them and meet their little punkin for the first time.

the guys (our husbands) might have gotten slightly bored because we sort of went nuts with the crafting.  i mean, we were only there for a few hours, and we managed to sift through her piles of beautiful buttons and i couldn’t resist buying one of her luscious button bracelets:

and a few other pieces from her poor robin shop (that’s the same bracelet–not a second one):

i had a really, really hard time choosing, but i love all three (or is it five?) items i chose.

we also had time to play with one of my very favorite new toys that i got for christmas:

a fantastic needlefelting kit from my mom.  look at all of those colors!!!

here i am, enjoying my new bracelet and needlefelting at the same time!

and here is the first monster i’ve created!  doesn’t he look like he’s pontificating?  i love the bowtie.  this little guy was heavily inspired by made by moxie even though she took down her wonderful flickr photo tutorial a few days before i actually got my kit (sniff!) but i’d read through it before and got this result from memory.  i definitely need to play more with this medium.  and maybe get some more thimbles.

anyway, it was tons of fun crafting with my friend and visiting with her family.  maybe someday we can live a little closer together.