Antique Memories

Welcome back to the blog. Like I said yesterday, today is National Cherish An Antique Day. As a kid, I would sometimes go along with my parents to different antique stores, to look for items like cookie jars and cookware. My grandfather also ran an antique store for a while, so I'd like to highlight some older items that my grandmother has given me in relatively recent years.

The item on the left isn't at the best angle, so here's a photo of a similar item that I found online:

So you plug in the light and the color wheel spins making the light change colors. By the way, I know that this item was popular in the 50's and so some may say it's 'vintage' rather than 'antique', but that's probably a discussion for a different time. Anyway, want to guess what the light that changes colors is used for?

Take a second to whip up a guess.








Ready?





It's to light up aluminum Christmas trees! Since the trees themselves were silver, the changing lights added some color to the room, including the festive red and green. I don't personally have an aluminum Christmas tree, but I will plug it in when people are over to hang out and be low-key. The only struggle is that the light is quite bright, but I also don't want to cover it or hide it much because the metal around the bulb gets pretty warm. (Then the antsy me kicks in.) Anyway, my grandmother gave me this a few years back when she was having a garage sale and I visited.

The other two items are wall hangings - one is a violin and one is a mandolin. Both of them are metal, so they have a little weight to them. I did have them up in my apartment in Missouri because nails happened to already be in good spots in the walls, but I didn't want to go too nuts here. I did pick up some heavier-duty 3M hooks so hopefully I can get these up soon. My grandmother gave me these items a little farther back as general apartment decorations.

I like having little items that remind me of certain family members because it can be my way of having them close by. The violin and mandolin do remind me of the family room where my grandparents lived for many years because there were a few wall decorations that fit with that burnt orange color. That place was torn down a while ago, so again, it's nice to have some physical manifestation of those memories.

I like the idea of announcing tomorrow's holiday ahead of time so it doesn't feel like a scramble. I probably won't have every blog entry be about that day's holiday, but it's nice to get the thoughts rolling ahead of time. With that said, tomorrow is National Sibling Day! Do something special for your sibling(s) if you have them!

DFTBA