Creating Memories

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Celebrate those you love with simple treats. Imagine the light in your young daughter or granddaughter's eyes when she eats lunch (or has tea and delicacies) at a Festive Valentine's Day Table.  It need not be expensive either!  *These Pink Princess House Plates are in my shop.  If anyone is interested in the Bakelite Utensils or any of the other items pictured they can also be made available.

This Pink Bunny Mug & Dish recently sold in my shop and the customer has given me permission to share her story regarding her memories that prompted her purchase.  You will find her comments below: I was ecstatic to find the Pink bunny set.  It has a very long history in my family.  The original was purchased in 1960.  Although it was first used as a baby dish for my younger sister and brother.....it soon became a sight of comfort with a mashed buttered boiled egg and cinnamon toast soldiers on sick days.  My mother kept and treasured it and it has now been retired to the family cottage that we go to each summer 1000 miles away.  It has been used by all six grandchildren who are now adults too. So to find a "new" old set right now is thrilling for me as in 13 weeks I will become a grandmother for the first time.....  Stories like these shared by customers warm me from my heart to my toes!

Ahhhhh...Christmas memories!  Many of us harken back to our favorite Christmas from childhood when the scents of Christmas surround us.  Finding a special something from a shared childhood memory can be the perfect Christmas gift for a brother, sister, cousin, Aunt, Mom, Dad...or most anyone!  http://www.rubylane.com/shop/ruthsredemptions

http://www.rubylane.com/item/168085-CCW/Vintage-Chalkware-Cherry-Plaque Vintage Chalkware Cherry Speaking of Memories.... Mom had a Cherry Canister Set with a matching Enamel tray in our kitchen when I was little...now I have them, along with many other kitchen items; vintage and new, along that Cherry theme.

Some Memories are stimulated visually ... some by touch and many by scents... I found an old perfume bottle this week that was just like one I purchased at my very first auction.  I was  about 8 years old when I went to the estate auction with my mother.  It was in the 1960's.  Mom gave me a little bit of change to spend and I came away very happy with an antique book and the perfume bottle with a faint rosey scent.  I didn't have many "pretty" things sitting around in my room and to me there was something so enchanting about the bottle that my personal genie could have popped out and I probably wouldn't have been surprised. So elated this week to have found this treasure, like the one from my childhood, that I began an online search to see what I could find about it's history.  The milk white glass perfume bottle decorated with a pink floral pattern I now know held Charles of the Ritz Moss Rose Cologne from the 1940's...

I've read that our sense of smell can often bring back good and bad memories and though I am certain there is truth in that, I have found that it is often "thing s " that bring good memories back to me.  I was already a devoted antique shop visitor when I lost my mother but I wasn't really an avid collector until after she was gone. I was browsing an antique shop one day when a simple plate with a cheerful pattern of  yellow poppies and black roses brought such a warm rush of memories, it nearly took my breath.  The cost of the plate was prohibitive so I jotted down the information on the back of the plate and started a long internet search through thousands of  Homer Laughlin pieces.  It wasn't the plate that I wanted anyway...it was an oval bowl in that pattern....a bowl like Mom used to serve scambled eggs. We had no other pieces in that pattern and I have no idea where Mom acquired that one random bowl.  Who would have guessed that just a plate, in ...