I’ve been tickled by the idea of this competition, a ‘shelfie’ of your home, the shelf you like the most, with the things you like the most on it. I had high hopes of even actually putting up the shelf I’ve been trying to get round to for 6 months to do it. Unfortunately chicken pox and finances intervened as usual and I didn’t quite make that happen – and nor have I finished the bunting I’m trying to make for the living room. (To be honest, I haven’t started it, but let us not mention that!)
My favourite spot in the house is my window ledge, which has some little bits and bobs that remind me of Freddie on it but it isn’t an especially pretty spot and it needs a clean! It is out of the way of Bene though and when there is a toddler in the house, all pretty things have to go up and out of harms way. So here is a reconstruction of what my living room shelf surface will look like in a year or two!
These really are a few of my very favourite things; a pair of stones that fit together like interlocking hearts that Maddy found me, a gorgeous buttoned heart from a lovely friend, my Devon glass paperweight I bought to remember Freddie, a little pot given to me by my Dad on one of his first trips home from Cairo, a glass bottle posted to me in a moment of social media loveliness from Homebarn after Cybher, a peace pebble sent to me by one of our favourite customers. Essentially, centrally, a picture of all of us (the only one there is) as we were for 11 brief days in 2010. The only picture I can ever have taken of me and the whole family that I had then.
Then there is the little hook, a bookmark, made specially for me by a lovely crafter after I won a competition on another blog. “When the world whispers give up, hope whispers ‘try one more time’.” I can’t tell you how many times I have needed that sentiment in the last few years. And the light was a Christmas decoration I liberated last December when I decided it was just too pretty to come out for only 2 weeks a year. The smaller glass paperweight was on a table by the door on the day I first met Max’s gran. I remember picking it up and holding it and after she died I kept it to remember her by.
The vase though, that is my new and most recent acquisition and is going to grace the top of the crochet mandala (my own make, I’m so proud!) for a good while. I bought it in London the other week on my way to meet Chris for a charity blogging event, when I decided to walk across town and found myself expensively in Covent Garden. I saw the daffodils and the perfect blue and bought them as one of my occasional little presents to Freddie. I loved it but the thing that amused me was this; a lovely chap in late middle age, who turns wood for a living and makes flowers, stood and helped me make up the perfect pretend bouquet by his stall. When he had done, I offered my card, but he didn’t take cards. I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to find a cash machine, so there and then, I sent him Paypal money from my phone – and he looked at his phone until it arrived 🙂 A perfect virtual meets real life moment.
So this is my shelfie; as befits a blogging competition entry, it is full of memories and momentos that have come from my ordinary life and the life that blogging has brought me – and that seems pretty much perfect.
