From America with love... via Germany... via London and Brighton!

A few days before Christmas, I got the bestest Christmas present any blogger could get......... meeting up with a bloggy friend, yay!!!

My wonderful friend Lanette (Betsy's Heartstrings) and her husband from the States were spending Christmas with one of their daughters and her family in Germany, and they all decided to spend a few days in London. That was too good an opportunity to miss! They wanted to take a day trip to somewhere as well and Bath, which they had thought about, was too far away, so they decided on Brighton and we were determined to meet up there. Can you imagine how excited I was? It was amazing when we spotted them on the platform at Brighton Station, coming through the barriers. And that was it, Lanette and I didn't stop talking until it was time for them to get on a train back to London again, lol. Here we are at Brighton station, having just met up -

 left to right - my DH Andy, moi, Lanette and her DH Kim

We went to visit the Royal Pavilion, which was just awesome. We weren't allowed to take photographs inside, but google images for Brighton Pavilion and you'll see it in all its glory

We didn't stop talking when we were walking, and we didn't stop talking in the restaurant where we had dinner either, lol -

 Whilst the others were enjoying their drinks and their food, we were pouring over something which Lanette had made for me, something she called a Project Board Collage -

OMG, she had collected many many pieces of beautiful old silk ribbons, lace, embellishments, tiny keys and shell beads, trims and millinery and beautiful threads and collaged them all together so beautifully. I can't bear the thought of taking things off and using them. We spent ages in the restaurant going through every last thing on there :-). What a wonderful thing to have and it is hanging in my craft room now and being admired by me every time I look at it. Of course I just got to show you lots of detailed pics of all the wonderful treasures in this collage -

It is very precious to me, but even more precious are the memories of our meeting :-).

They also gifted us with some of their awesome cider ( omg that stuff tastes soooo good and it is alcohol free ), and my DH now proudly wears an Empey Brothers jacket and cap when he takes the dog walking in the Firehills.

It was over all too soon. A couple more photos on the way back to the station -

and then the final wave goodbye -

Most of the photos of the visit were taken by Lanette or one of her family. I guess I was too busy chatting away, lol, to remember my little camera. Doh.

That was last year, tehehehe, doesn't that sound incredibly long ago. I am hoping to meet up with Lanette and Kim again this summer in France, fingers crossed.

Toodlepip, xxx