Pick Your Precious

P and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary last month.
 My mother-in-law has recently completed a sugarcraft course and brought the most beautiful cupcakes for our Good Friday lunch.

These 2 facts may appear unrelated, but combined they gave me the topic for this month's Pick Your Precious (Sian's lovely monthly blog hop). I scheduled this post before I left for France, so I hope it goes live at the right time.

These dusty flowers, worthy of Miss Haversham are the fondant icing flowers from our wedding cake, which my Mother-in -Law made for us. They have spent the past 14 years on a shelf in my kitchen, but I think it is time for them to be tucked carefully away in my memory box now. So I thought I'd share them with you first.

The whole cake looked liked this, decorated with trailing ivy and a combination of edibble and real yellow roses.

We ate one tier and took one with us on our honeymoon to the Czech Republic, where we had a party with my friends from my time teaching there.

The top tier was cut and shared at a party to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 2000. My granddad was very ill by this point, but he held out in order to see my grandmother receive her precious message from the Queen. He died a couple of months later.

For more 'Precious' memories, go over and see Sian at High in the Sky.

PIck your precious 3- from my memory box

                     

I opened my Memory Box last month, to search for a story for Sian's Pick Your Precious Storytelling blog hop which takes place on the first Sunday of the month. The stories are often moving, sometimes funny and always inspiring so I recommend that you pour yourself a cup of tea and head over there. But read mine first while you're here!

10 years ago,I culled my Memory Box quite ruthlessly when  I was moving house and pregnant with R.  Items which had been important through my teenage years had lost relevance and I knew that I was about the embark on a whole new set of memories. Although I was not a scrapbooker then, I must have already had a scrapbooker's mentality because I based my choices of what to keep on what I would want to show my children when they grew up. So the things in there are consciously precious, not just randomly saved.

Here is a selection some of the things I found:

 A collection of Royal Mail First Day Covers. The earliest was for the Queen's 25th Jubilee in 1977 and the oldest is 1981 - Prince Charles' wedding to Diana. They are not all royal. There is one about Guiding and Scouting, a ballet dancer and various animal ones and famous people. They are probably fairly worthless now, but might be collectable by the time M inherits them. I kept them more for historical interest. The cover price of the earliest stamp was 8 1/2p, compared with 50p today!

These champagne corks were from the children's christening parties and my wedding. I had never come across this tradition of putting a coin in the corks until I met P.

These 2 swimming badges from primary school were kept because they were my only ever sporting awards (until I got my orange belt in karate in 2011) I threw away the badges between 25 m and 500m, but kept the highest two. I am an OK swimmer, it is once of the sports I can do, but I am not fast. In my final year of primary school we went to the public swimming pool once a week by coach.  We got exactly 45 minutes in the water and then had to get changed at lightening speed to get back to school by the end of the school day. We did distance badges at regular intervals, the highest award being 1500m. I was proud of my 800m but on the day I was due to try for my 1500m I was nervous. This was twice as far as I had ever swum.

However,  I was determined and there was a lot of peer pressure to succeed. I don't remember how many laps we had to swim, but I do remember a teacher telling me to hurry up  because I only had 10 minutes before I needed to get changed. There was no way I was going to cvomplete the laps in time but I battled on regardless until the teacher literally had to pull me out of the water. I was gutted. Everyone else had achieved the required number of laps. I hadn't. And the badges were to be given out in school assembly on Friday. I cried with frustration all the way back to school on the coach.

In Friday's assembly I sat with my head down as my friends went up to collect their badges. Then my name was called. What? But I hadn't swum 1500m. Puzzled, I stood and went up to the front of the school hall. The teachers had located a 1000m badge! We didn't know that distance existed, but they said I had achieved it. I maintained, and still maintain today that I could have swum 1500m if I'd had enough time!

Pick Your Precious 2 -

This little lady is currently called Eileen and she is 40 years old.

I can't remember what I called her when she was mine, but she is now Eileen because my paternal grandmother, Eileen Ruth Shaw nee Mitchell, knitted her fetching blue outfit for me all those years ago.

                                           Nanny Eileen (for a while known as Black Nanny because she died her hair a very deep black) was a dab hand with the knitting needles and made most of my jumpers when I was young. She always seemed to have just enough wool left over to make a matching one for my dolly. So, although sadly I don't have a photo to prove it, I'm certain I wore a handknitted jumper in these colours.
The tiny plastic dummy is the original as well.

And it makes me happy to see M playing with her, even though she never knew my Nanny who died a couple of years before she was born.

To read about other people's precious possession or share a story of your own , head over to see Sian at http://fromhighinthesky.blogspot.co.uk/

Storytelling Sunday- Pick Your Precious

This year, for Storytelling 2013, Sian has challenged us to tell a story each month based on something which is precious to us. I love this idea, I'm still hunting for the right monthly challenge for this year, and I love the idea of a 12-page mini book (or more) telling the stories of my most precious things.

There are not many pictures hanging in my living room, but those that are there are all special for a similar reason.

This is the church in Humpolec, a small town in the Czech Republic, where I taught for 2 years. The picture was painted by one of my students and given to me as a gift. I love it, not only for the memories it evokes of adventure and friendship, but also for the blocks of colours and the ever-so-slightly-wrong perspective which make it unique.

 This is our house in Cherence-le-Roussel,  a village in rural Normandy. It was painted by my mother-in-law who, since retiring, has discovered a talent for watercolour painting.

Finally, a painting by P, done in Cherence, of a still life. The subject is a copy of a painting by Manet, and I particularly admire the way in which P has painted the water in the glass vase.