Brocante - the finds

I've loved reading your comments on my brocante post yesterday!If you'd been there with me, my brocanteuse could have sold a rocking cot, a water pump, garden tables and chairs, bed ends a couple of times over and that red shutter. In fact, Sarah's suggestion, that: "The shutter would be hung on a wall by the bed like a picture. A pretty quilt on the bed. Roses on the bedside table..." nearly had me rushing back and snapping it up!
But I resisted the big stuff (good thing too, now we've had the garage bill...) and instead picked up more vintage china:

It's the pink polka-dots that are new, but I couldn't resist a photo of them on last month's blue stencilled roses. And the red plates, above (seven of them, 1€ each) have already been put into good use for Son 1's courgette and feta fritters. He is a Hairy Bikers-obsessed cook this summer! I'm building up a really nice mixed collection of French stencilled china this year. Last year it was just stuff I saw in magazines, but now I'm finding it myself. It's mainly from the '50s and therefore still in good condition, and dishwasher safe...

The rest has gone into my blog shop. (With a few sighs, I have to tell you, especially for the little lotus tin, above.)Pop over if you want to see what I found in that pastilles tin!Sweet...And oh, so French.

Violet is...

... part of the print on my French flag... ... MY napkin ring - they were a wedding present from a friend's holiday to (I think) Venice... do they look Venetian to you?..
... a beaded neckline on an old T-shirt...

... another of son 2's nature drawings...

... and some nature in our garden right now...

Bon weekend from France!

Treasures

Last week Son 1 and I were searching for some 'jewels' to add to a 'Celtic Goblet' he had thought of making. I opened an old Quality Street tin, which held some of the beads I'd collected in my teens:

Don't you think the combination of 'treasures' is amazing? He was immediately drawn to a red plastic dog bead and the diamantee, but I'm afraid I kept the diamantee strips for myself! What do you imagine they came from?

Also in the tin were African glass beads, sequins, plastic 'Hamma' beads, carved wooden ones, pieces of abalone shell and the tiny red tin which held vitamins long before I was born. We love opening up boxes of treasures like that!

Some more treasured memories from today: Son 2 'walking on the moon' in some sort of clever contraption which gives you the feeling of reduced gravity.

Son number 1 doing the same thing - he was only half a kilo too light to try the really big 'moon jump' experience, but he took the disappointment quite well...

And here are both boys setting off a water rocket.
This is all at Toulouse's 'Space City', which is the French Space Museum/Activity Centre. It's a wonderful place and we've renewed our annual family pass once again. It also happens to be about 10 minutes drive from our new church, and open on Sundays...