Compliments of the hostess

It happened again. For the second time within two weeks, I complimented on a pretty dish that a friend brought to my home. And now I've decided not to hand out compliments so enthusiastically.....ever again! It's making me feel so guilty!

On Memorial Day, our friends who are moving soon came over for barbeque and visiting. She brought a GREAT potato salad, but she put it in two cute, cute, cute heart shaped pottery dishes. They were navy blue with stars or stripes on them (for Memorial Day....she is so theme ready!) and I just raved about how cute the pottery was, honestly just admiring them. A few days later Laurie and I had lunch together in downtown Glendale. When she got into my car, she had a gift bag in her hand and there it was, the cute, cute, cute heart shaped dish with stars! I really loved it, but I felt so guilty that I had raved about it so much that she felt compelled to give it to me! But I didn't argue, I accepted it and used it last night to put out some cantaloupe chunks. People admired it, but I did not feel compelled in any way to give it away. (being brutally honest here)

Last night we had a group of men over from our church who are going to Africa nest Sunday. They will be gone for almost three weeks, including my husband. So I"m sure you will hear much more about this very soon. We made brisket and the wives brought things to go with it.....lots of great salads! Brenda brought two salads and also a big beautiful bowl of veggies for dipping. I mean, it was a beautiful bowl. I looked at it on my dining table and admired it aloud as we women folk stood around the kitchen talking. I teased Brenda on how it really matched my table, lamp and kitchen SO well! We all laughed. And she told us how it was her mother's. She said whenever she came home from school, there would be this bowl on the table filled with fresh fruit from their farm. Charming! I could just picture it and loved the story. When it was time to leave, she started taking the leftover veggies out of the bowl and putting them into a baggie. Then she informed me that the bowl was for me and she was leaving it here.

My eyes flew open and I argued with her for a good 5-10 minutes. I kept saying no way was I taking her bowl full of memories and she kept trying to convince me that it was just a dollar store type of bowl and the story was mostly made up. (Insert very puzzled look from me trying to IMAGINE my friend Brenda making such an elaborate deception!) We went back and forth, up and down, round after round and I lost. She is stubborn!!!!

This morning I looked at that bowl sitting on my counter and laughed. Then I filled it with fruit, set it on my table and took pictures of it. I will probably shake my head every time I see it for a while....maybe forever. Truth is, she is one of the most generous people I've ever known. She and her husband get great joy out of blessing others. They have blessed us in so many ways these past two years we've been at this church, both in physical as well as spiritual encouragement, love and friendship.

She overheard me telling someone at church that one of my favorite singers had passed away. The next Sunday, she put a gift bag into my hands and it was a Best of Dan Fogelberg CD! So I will accept the gift, but I'm also going to find out the truth somehow, Brenda! She's gonna crack up that I wrote about her on here. teehee