I Do Like A Bargain!

My father used to say (maybe he still does) that "a bargain is only a bargain if you needed it in the first place".  Well I did need this!  I'd been looking for a candlestick for my dining table for ages, but my dining table is round and most of the candlesticks I'd seen were either rectangluar or very expensive, so when I spotted this I knew I had to have it.

Before

It was £12.50 in one of the barns at Risby Barns Antiques Centre near Bury St Edmunds.  I spent a morning outside clearning it up with kitchen grease cleaner, a brio pad and a heat gun to melt the years of wax.  I mixed up some paint from old Farrow and Ball matchpots and leftover satinwood paint from the radiators, added some gold wax and crystals and voila, here it is now:

After

Now I just need some nice white candles to go in it, if anyone knows where I can get some (as opposed to cream) I'd be really grateful to know.

Also on the subject of bargains, Sudbury Garden Centre were selling packets of seeds for 50p each yesterday, how could I resist?!  I bought these18 packets, mainly veg for next year and sweetpeas, for just £9 as opposed to over £46 if I'd bought them full price.

Now all I have to do is not lose them before next year!

Meet Aunty Elsie

Actually she was my Great Aunty Elsie, my Grandma's elder sister.

Hopes and Dreams (17cm x 24 cm)

Sadly I never knew my Grandma as she died before I was born so Aunty Elsie was a sort of surrogate Grandma.  She was born in 1899 - I'm not sure when or why this photo was taken, but she looks a lot younger here than in her wedding photos of 1928, so I'm guessing it was taken around 1920, maybe her 21st birthday?

Her and her husband lived in Cottenham (near Cambridge) and were fruit and flower growers.  There are pictures of them from the 1930s with strawberries and tulips they'd grown for market.

She sometimes looked after us as children and although they’d sold most of their smallholding by then, I remember feeding a donkey in the orchard behind her house.  When I was in my early 20s I worked nearby and used to call and see her every week.  She gave me tea and tinned salmon sandwiches, taught me how to harvest asparagus, and told me off for suggesting that at 86 she shouldn’t be up a ladder picking plums!  She talked lots about people and relatives that I didn’t really know but had probably met every year on Feast Sunday without knowing who they were!  

 

She was a lovely lady and I hope she would like what I’ve done with her photo.  After some editing in photoshop I printed it onto calico.  Then I added vintage lace, velvet, recycled sari ribbon and some vintage buttons. 

I used to think of her a lot when I had my allotment – especially when harvesting my asparagus as when she died I was lucky enough to be given this:

 her asparagus knife.