I have a friend and her name is Amanda.  She is funny, out-going, talented, thoughtful, forgetful and completely adorable.  She is my opposite.  I am neither funny nor outgoing, I am thoughtful (I think), I am not forgetful (although I did forget to go to work one time but that is another post) and I’m not adorable.  But that is okay!  My friend Amanda and I share a serious love of poultry, gardening and crafting.  Only she is much craftier than I.  Once, we got together with a few other friends, to knit preemie caps to give to the hospital.  While all the other ladies were knocking them out in record speed, click-click-click-clickty-click!, I spent the better part of an hour doing, undoing and redoing until I decided my cap would be donated to the preemie mouse ward and I was just going to stay for moral support.  And the snacks.

Each year we exchange a gift of some kind.  I always give her a box of homemade cookies, bourbon balls, truffles and cake bites.  Food is my talent, sadly enough for my ever errant waistline.

This is what Amanda made me last year……because we also share a love of mushrooms and snails.

How darn cute is it?  I love it.

I have tried to sew.

It didn’t turn out like this.

I did mend a hole on my husbands pants one time.  It is currently unraveling.

This year she created this………

This is Cherry the Pig, a figure from one of my new, favorite children’s books.

She just sat down with some colored pencils, brown paper and TaDa!  Filled the can with goodies and gifted to my non-drawing self.

Piggy Perfection.

Thank you Amanda, for your thoughtfulness, your shared talent and your friendship.

I hope you all have a friend, at least one friend, like this.

Friendship and love are the two greatest gifts of all.

🙂