What makes our home so special to me is the many keepsake pieces that surround me every day.
As parents, preserving memories of our little ones comes very naturally; save all those baby teeth, recording of all the firsts, preserving foot imprints, safeguarding christening dresses, and now, booking photo shoots of babies literally days after they are born to capture precious photos.
These are all meaningful and lovely, but I have also always loved collecting older family items, especially the ones passed down from generation to generation.
The pieces themselves are special enough but it is often the story or memory attached to them that makes it so unique.
Like my Memere’s dishes that were on her table and now are in my china cabinet and used for all our family meals and gigantic 6-foot-long hand carved rosary beads she used to have hung in her bedroom that sort of scared us with its enormity, my mom’s tea cups and saucers and all the stories of where they came from and who gifted them to her and her cedar chest that she got as a young bride; my Dad’s French missalette with both his and his Moms signature in the front cover, or my mother-in-law’s rocking chair and the funny stories of how we couldn’t sit on the chair in her room at the Manor because “the little girl, or dog, or cat” was in that chair, as well as my other Memere’s buffet and hutch that house all favourite dishes and salt and pepper shaker collection.
When we began the 1st stay at home order in March of 2020, I was newly retired and had some time on my hands to get back into a few hobbies that I had not enjoyed in a while.
So, I dragged out my sewing machine that had been sorely neglected and took a good look at the mounds of material I had collected over the years (you fellow sewers and quilters know exactly what I mean!).
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