Over in the US, the
Farm Chicks have such an entertaining and useful blog. This week one of Teri's posts got me straight into the kitchen, with silver foil, cutlery and... baking powder?...
It was a new way of
cleaning silver, of course!
Perhaps you knew about this, but I'd certainly never tried it. You put a layer of tinfoil in the base of a baking tray, put your silver cutlery (and other small silver things) on it, shake baking powder (soda) all over, and then pour boiling water on top!
I had the first go on my own, to see if it worked.
The tureen in the top of the photo hasn't gone in yet, while the one below is in the process...
Everything came up better, and some of it came up really well! I got inspired and started re-arranging the mantelpiece, which had developed more of a '
troc' than a '
broc' look over the summer - lots of things dumped on it as the holidays have gone on!
I decided that if it was going to have summer holiday souvenirs on it, they might as well be properly arranged. Now the tureens have sea-urchin shells in them and the tiny
armoire I used at Easter has come back with shells, small stones and sea glass inside.
It all went so well that I wanted to show the family how it worked. We remembered the silver napkin rings, which were looking pretty tarnished when I snapped them earlier in the week...
Thus, between courses at the evening meal, we all trouped off to the kitchen for what turned out to be the best silver-clean of the day!
The photos don't do the new, gleaming look justice! Look where mine came from, in 1924...
'
Firenze' is the proper Italian name for Florence, of course, and Floss is usually short for Florence, so...
There we are, two mega-clean silver napkin rings with only a quick rub, no polishing involved. Thanks, Farm Chicks!
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Yes, indeedy, the silver items I was cleaning in yesterday's post were, in fact two silver(ish) candelabra, which got me singing along with Lumiere here:
The smell of eggs confused a few of you - you don't actually use eggs to clean the silver, but the reaction causes a sulferous smell - that's how you can tell it's working, actually! If you don't know how I cleaned up these candlesticks, here's a post I did when I first discovered the technique.
Last week I cleaned up our silver napkin rings, and this week it was the turn of my mother's candlesticks - I put them all together in this photo so you could see Son 1's new napkin ring, which belonged to my dad. He had it engraved with all the ships he was on (Royal Navy) up until around the time I was born. When Son 1 started taking an interest, my dad got the napkin ring updated and gave it to him - now it's back in daily use, and even kept fairly clean! (Thanks to bicarb of soda...)
Here's an unstaged shot of the table area - scary heaps of school-type plastic pockets sticking out of the bookshelf.
The 'true crown of King Dagobert' has been unrolled (it's actually some vintage shelf edging) and I threaded it with a bit of vintage ribbon to fit in with the red theme around the table. PS That England flag has been taken down now. Nuf said.
And in line with the 'thrill of what I already have' I was delighted to find the hurricane candle that Ben made years back in the UK. He used a mould which allows you to set things into a hollow candle-shape. Here he used shells we'd collected with our teeny-tiny boys on a Brittany beach.
You put a candle inside it and everything glows in a beautifully candle-lit way, without actually destroying your hard work.
The shells I put around it on the wooden stand were from our most recent beach holiday in the Basque Country. I think everyone in the family is pretty chuffed with this combination of warm light for autumn with summery shells for remembrance of holidays old and new. It's been a real talking point with the boys. Clever dad!
