Buttons, buttons... Who's got the buttons?

On Friday, when I almost ended my gardening career by doing too much outside, I finally came in for lunch.

Don't you just love it when you have really good left-overs? My husband has been fishin' on the Mokelumne a few times a week. It's kind of a competition to see who gets the biggest fish from the middle of the Middle Bar Bridge. It seems that you can't fish from the edges of the river because it's.... well, I'm not sure why.... but you can't. The water flows into the Pardee Reservoir. It's water shed at Middle Bar. You can't swim there either... naked or otherwise. He always seems to get some of the biggest fish from the bridge though and he always, well almost always, bring dinner home after a day down at the river.

This is fresh trout and cut up asparagus with some Balsamic dressing on it.
Dinner the night before was served hot, without the dressing. Now I was enjoying it a second time, cold, for lunch. That's what I call yummy leftovers. The dressing is just olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper.
The Prospector had gone downtown and picked up the mail on the way back. There was a pink slip in it for me. You know.... the little slip of paper that tells you they couldn't get the package into the mailbox so you have to retrieve it at the local Post Office?
I was too pooped from gardening so I waited until Saturday to drive down and retrieve my package.
Well, on Saturday, I picked it up and look at this....
I knew right away who it was from....

My friend, Jan from Little Pink Houses, that I went to Benicia with recently, had sent a rather large package to me. She and I have a long standing debate about MONKEYS.
I don't care for them. She does.
I think they are kind of scary. She thinks they're "CUTE".
So what does she do.... one time  she sent me monkey slippers. This is the kind of friend that stretches the boundaries of friendship just a bit too far. IT'S always got to be about MONKEYS.
Anyway.... I saw this remark on the package and I knew it was from her..... well, by the return address too. She said " no monkeys" but you have to be careful with some obsessed monkey lovers, so I opened it very carefully.
AND WHAT IS THE FIRST THING I SEE?

Yes, she just had to give me pause for thought.
I lifted the paper up carefully. NO Monkeys in the box. Just two lovely paper bags, tied with pretty wrapping string..

that were filled with BUTTONS.

Look at all the wonderful buttons, medium to large, to very large. All very vintage and lovely.

Like this one that is 2 1/2 inches in diameter. and when you hold it up to the light it turns brown and translucent.

Or this one that's so "art nouveau" pretty.

Or one that looks like wood.

I love all of them and can't wait to used them on purses or scarves that are in the making.
Then at the bottom of the box was a great big red plastic ornament. Can you guess what this is for? What I will do with it?

I put it out in the garden to take a picture of it. Pretty isn't it?
When the Prospector found some ruins of an old house near the river a few months back he brought me some broken pieces of old china and a little glass bottle. Do you remember the sweet little bottle? I did a post on it.
  Jan said that I should learn how to do mosaics with all the broken pieces. She has done some and they are beautiful. Then she told me  that she found a plastic ornament at, I think, the Dollar Store that she was going to cover with old broken pieces of china. I thought that was such a cool idea. Well, she sent me this big plastic ornament to cover with old china or mirror.... or glass. Last night I looked up how to do mosaics on eHow.com and now I have directions to transform this red orb into a thing of beauty.
They were no Monkeys in the box ... not even a small one hiding in a corner. But, what a box of goodies.
Now all I have to do is finish this....

 I'm making a purse out of an old sweater. It will look like this (below) when I get all the felted pieces together...

I've had such fun with it but I have this bad habit of getting the pieces together and then not finishing what I'm working on.  Like wanting someone to finish cleaning up my mess in the garden, I would like someone to finish this purse for me. I know... FINISH WHAT YOU START, GIRL!.
I love the flowers on the front.

I think I might just put one of Jan's buttons inside the flowers. What do you think?
I haven't attached any of this to the purse yet so I'm open to suggestions.
I have also mastered the "Andalusian" stitch in my knitting and will be felting this scarf soon. This scarf will need a nice big button or two on it for decoration. 

I'm using Lion Brand Fishermen's wool in Maple Tweed. I can't wait to finish it and felt it. This will be a long skinny scarf  that you can wrap around your neck a few times.

But I may put it on hold until I finish the purse.....
or do both, on and off, or cover the big red globe with mosaics,
or go outside and plant some ''red" yarrow next to my yellow one (another friends idea).

Finally there is time for everything.
Too much of EVERYTHING.
But it's what I was waiting for... and it's all WONDERFUL.