Vintage baby, vintage bottles, fresh flowers...

This little cutie-pie came out of hiding last night. I've had her since I was a child, and my mother is going to have to remind me who actually gave her to me. She's been nestling in a box with some vintage lace (as you do) since the boys were born - I thought they were far too dangerous for her! She's now on our new (second hand) CD shelves, sitting on a French embroidered mat. The CD shelves were having a 'relooking' done on them (as the French would put it), because I'd bought several charming hand painted planters yesterday:

I felt that the top shelf looked light and bright, both with the white planters and the lamp, but that the bottom shelf, despite the pleasing selection of vintage bottles, just stayed too dark. What do you think?

Lo and behold, Carol, on Raised in Cotton, has a fantastic flower display using vintage bottles on her post today. She says, 'Fresh flower toppers are one of my favorite ways to display my vintage bottles. ' I rushed out to the garden to see what I could do:

Well, in my opinion, they bring a bit of light, colour and freshness to the othewise dark shelf. It's not as glamorous as Carol's, but I think it will do:

Thanks very much to Carol, for such a simple but effective solution to my problem.

I am always reluctant to put this bottle out. We 'excavated' it from our garden when we lived in North Shields, and it's an interesting piece of history: a feeding bottle for an invalid or a baby. However, I lament the way that mothers were (and in some countries still are) encouraged to avoid breast feeding in place of the often unnecessary and probably once quite risky practice of bottle feeding, so that makes me less than keen on the bottle. Just this once, however, I'm prepared to put it out, because the vintage baby/vintage bottle link is quite special, really. I think putting the narcissi in it is quite cheeky, too - better than feeding a baby from it!

So here is my little flower baby, tucked on a shelf between an ink bottle and an 'Eiffel Tower Fruit Juices' bottle, all of them English, but now sitting on a French mat, in a French house, surrounded by French flowers.