Yesterday I was honored to guest host on the Instagram "party" #magpiemonday.
My duty as a guest host was to read and comment on every tag and then select a favorite - this stack of colorful tea towels shared by @patch_russell was my choice.
What I loved most about reading all the entries was the stories shared about the collections.
Ann of @collectingmama shared her grandmother's china.
Sandra of @vintageticking shared her thermometer collection which was started by her mother 3 years ago.
Cheri of @queenastuff started a teapot collection for her mother 25 years ago and she shared a portion of it.
As I scrolled through the Magpie Monday collections, the lyrics to the song, You Mean So Much To Me, came to mind and I looked around the house for pieces that have meaning to me.
There are lots of things on display in this cabinet, but there is only one collection that means a lot to me.
One of my childhood chores was dusting and these little pieces of Torquay Pottery were among the things I hated dusting.
Today, they remind me of my mother and as you can see one of the little pieces is broken yet I keep it on display out of love.
There are lots of things I love in this photo, but that yellow platter (another chipped piece) is what "means so much to me" - it sat in our family kitchen when I was growing up.
I vividly remember the day 42 years ago when I bought these little enamel bowls in an open market in Kingston, Jamaica - we didn't get to bring much home from our time as Peace Corps volunteers, but the bowls fit easily into our bags.
The red bowl sits on Steve's kitchen scale and is used daily.
This canvas bag goes with us on long walks with Lulu and the pink bowl is always inside the bag and ready when Lulu needs water.
I love the line, "dancing with history".
Our house is filled with pieces of history like the painting Steve did of a family vacation in Kauai,
furniture passed down from generation to generation and
and new treasures like the tablecloth and napkins from my dear blogging friend Rita, of Panoply.
"It seems to be like heaven to me, with you at the end of the day" might be referring to a person in the song, but for me it alludes to all the treasures that create our little piece of heaven.
