Saturday with the Bestest

Alhamdullilah I had the loveliest Saturday with my best friend. I wanted to visit her new home (her first place) and she wanted to see my children.

I wanted to take her a gift and whilst I was thinking what to get her (on a budget since the machine ate my debit card and it's taking a month to get a new one), my husband informed me that he had brought home a couple of bags of stuff from a job last night and was any of the stuff any use? I went to take a look in the bags he'd dumped in the front room and got a surprise. I found a big set of five cooking pots, a porcelain tea set, a set of three casserole dishes, trays, designery fruit bowl, a punch set and a load of other smaller kitchen utensils - all packed. This is why I love my husbands job, who knows where the money goes, but at least we get lots of pressies along the way. They went straight into the boot for Bestest, but I still fancied treating her (money, card gone, recession, no sense of finance...). I am quite lucky that where I live, you can get things for a decent price if you know where to look and there are lots of lovely shops nearby. In the end I got her these for under £50:

My fave's are the bangles which costs £5 in total and which the girl in the shop matched for me (other shops had similar for around £20).

We had a lovely time at her home gorging on Moroccan food and pizza. I took a picture of my friends younger sisters book collection. She is training to be a teacher and I love the way she displayed these children's books about the Prophets (AS) from Dar-us-Salam - easily accessible and in a way that they are less likely to be treated with disrespect (I keep the few Islamic children's books I have in the front room so that the the kids are less likely to think of them as play things).

The kids got spoilt rotten with a trip to the garden to pick flowers (something I never allow), then a bus trip (they are bus-crazy) uptown leaving me and my friend to catch up in peace.