Curio Curiosities

Lloyd and I are in the process of moving from Edmonton to our home in Lethbridge, 5 hours south of Edmonton.  We bought our house down there about 5 years ago and over the past few years we've done some renovations, furnished it, and have gone down there every chance we get.  It's the home we've been planning on retiring to.  We'll be officially moving there in July, and giving up the rental we've been in up here in Edmonton.

One of the first things we moved to Lethbridge several years ago was my curio cabinet.  The front glass panel got broken in the move as well as one of the glass shelves.  So it was stored in the shed until we got it fixed.  Well, we got it fixed this weekend and moved it into the house.  I was finally able to unpack my little pretty things and get it set up in our living room.

Unpacking the little treasures was like opening Christmas presents.  Each one had a story to tell - I remembered who gave me some as gifts, where I bought others, what they all meant to me - I had a lovely afternoon setting it up. 

Here's a few of my treasures I'd like to share with you.

This is a small part of my egg collection.  The one on the far left is a real egg decorated by a Ukranian woman in the traditional pyzanky fashion.  I love the shape and feel of eggs, especially the heavy marble ones like the one on the right.  I have a basket full of those someplace.

I guess this is one step up from my love of eggs - I love the birds that produce them.  Son Rob gave me the cardinals and bluejay figuerines on successive Christmasses about 20 years ago.  My sister Wendy and I bought each other identical crystal ducks for our birthdays a couple years ago.  We were out shopping together around our birthdays (which are 8 days apart) and since we each wanted one, we each bought one for the other.

I just liked the look of these cheerful witches so added them to my random collection of things I like.  Every girl needs something to bring out her inner witch ;)

The top shelf of the curio cabinet - Mum gave me the two collectors plates but I never pursued that collection.  The small Hummel figuerine in the center is from my grandmother's house.  It's probably 50 or 60 years old now.  The little girl hugging the egg reminded me of one of my granddaughters so I had to have it.  Then Emily gave me the matching one of the little girl in a teacup with apples.

This is about half of my thimble collection.  I started collecting them in 1967 when Mum and Dad, my sister, brother and I went on a road trip.  I bought a souvenir thimble at our first stop, Fredericton, New Brunswick, and thereafter I bought one at every stop on every trip for years.  I have thimbles from all the Canadian provinces and a lot of the States and cities, as well as fun ones with products such as Pepsi, Coke, Bon Ami, etc. , a woven one from the Philippines, porcelain, metal, peuter, plastic, clay and wood.  I have my grandmother's and my mother's quilting thimbles, and a couple of wooden ones I painted and decoupaged small pictures onto.  And at Christmas I use one of the thimbles to poke the hole in my thimble cookies so put the jelly in.

My egg shelf shares it's space with the small souvenir glasses that Mum used to collect when we lived in Germany in 1960-61.  They're all tucked in behind the hanging eggs.  As you can see, the back panel of the cabinet is a mirror so there's no escaping the photographer's image.

The witches share their space with a little stein that Emily brought back from Germany when she was an exchange student there.  The blue music box in the center used to belong to my Dad's mother.  It was popular in the 1950s and was actually a powder box for loose face powder. The music still plays when the lid is lifted off.

And the birds sit on the lower shelf with a crystal apple that used to belong to my brother.  After he was killed in a mining accident in 1991 I kept this apple from his house as a keepsake.

So, those are my treasures - not worth much financially, but their sentimental value is priceless.