Old Easter Pictures and Keepsakes

Digging around in my stash of pictures I came across this one of me. I would guess I was about 10 years old which would put the picture at Easter time 1955. I was dressed in my Easter finery. My mother was a seamstress and she made this coat and more than likely the dress I was wearing also.The hat and purse was probably store-bought to match. 

I think back now about how many outfits my mother made for me for so many occasions including my wedding dress for my first marriage. I wish I had pictures of everyone. Back then I really didn't know how lucky I was to have a mom who could do all that.

Well, what is in the background of the picture lends itself to another story for later. There are so many memories that lie in those two structures in back of me.

Brother John and I felt one Easter we weren't kids anymore and the game of parents hiding the eggs and we find them had come to an end. So that year 1957 (on front of picture below), John and I hid the eggs and our parents went to find them. Mom found one in a cabinet and John snapped a picture of her discovery. That was a fun day and appropriate for our last family egg hunt.  

There were two dozen eggs hidden, 23 were found on Easter Sunday...the 24th was found several months later. It was behind the mirror above the kitchen sink! 



GRANDMA'S VICTORIAN BLOWN GLASS EASTER EGG

I don't have many Easter items, but I do have a few keepsakes which I'd like to share with you. As you can see in the bowl on top there are some wonderfully decorated eggs I have picked up here and there and a couple I did pick up in Germany one year. I just love them. 

The large white egg is blown milk glass and was my grandma Porteous'. I don't know how old it is, but it is Victorian. My paternal grandparents were married in 1895. The egg could be from that time or before. I had always admired and loved that big egg. I would make sure it was brought out and displayed on the Easter table when I was a little girl. The paint on the flowers and lettering is fading or missing in spots, but that doesn't matter to me, it's still the most beautiful egg I've ever seen. 

I checked online for any similar ones and none compared to mine. For the ones I saw, the prices range from $12 to $150. To me -- mine is priceless.

The bottom picture is of a vintage glass setting hen. This covered glass bowl was always on our Easter table holding jelly beans. It might have had something else in it at one time or another, but that is what I remember. What I have in it now are the little cotton chicks (made in Japan), a toy pheasant, and a chenille Easter bunny holding a carrot. I don't think they are very old, maybe from the 1940s or 50s. They are saved from my childhood.

It's interesting what we cherish and the varied reasons we have for keeping them. It's the little things like these items that bring back warm memories of my grandma and my childhood.

Happy Easter!