2 cross-country moves in the past five years have forced me to jettison a lot of weird stuff, but here are three mainstays I’ll never give up carting around (though they may not be displayed forever).

1. A bust of Beethoven. Not classy, ugly, with sort of a fake metallic finish. It’s really cheap looking and chipped. But he was a gift, so I keep him.

2. Also a gift, a stuffed Triceratops. One of the first (maybe THE first?) stuffed animal I ever received as a child. She has bald spots where I trimmed her fuzz with safety scissors.

3. Yet another gift: two vintage political promotional ashtrays (I no longer smoke). One has a donkey and the slogan “I’m no dumo I Vote Demo”; the other has what I grudgingly admit is a very cool blue and red elephant emblazoned with “GOP ‘72”.

of the stuff that I don’t love, so no junk. That said, I do have two pieces of art that some people find a bit odd. They’re both from Africa, bought when my husband lived there. One is a handcarved wooden bust of a stylized, fierce face, resting on three little supports carved to look like smaller heads. It has a great, protective energy.

The other is a bride mask with rope hair. It used to freak me out because it would turn on its stand to face my husband. At first, I thought it just turned one way, but when he started sitting somewhere else, it tracked him there, too. This happened in more than one house. After my husband died, I actually told it that he had and asked it to be kind to me. Now we get along fine, but she does have a certain haunting and haunted feel.

At last count about 5 years ago, I had 300 pieces of Fenton Art glass. Aside from that we have quite an assortment. I, too, have a vintage stuffed animal, a teddy bear I keep around which was handmade for my mother when she was a little girl. We currently have a wall RR clock hanging in our hallway (no room left in the livingroom with all the Ducks Unlimited prints and the giant Stephen Lyman print of a moose in the woods. We actually have another house which we are fiving up and will move into eventually. There we are keeping some of our latest acquisitions: a bison statue, an ‘old Crow whiskey’ crow figurine, several hanging lamps, and more glassware.
And before I forget, I still have a child’s outfit circa 1950 which my father brought back from Japan for my aunt which was passed on to me. I wore it and my daughter wore it and now my granddaughter will have a chance to wear it once she grows a bit. I also have several boxes of old photos, postcards, and Christmas cards dating back to the 1910s.
Now moving on to my basement…...

at the moment to display everything I’d like to, but like Funniculee I do still have my first ever teddy-bear. He’s a kind of a cross between a bear and a squirrel, and very beat up at this stage, but I love him. :o)

I’ve also got a circular wooden plaque on my wall that my brother gave me for my 18th birthday. He made it in woodworking class in high school. It’s painted dark orange around the edge shading to light yellow/orange in the centre (because at the time those were the colours of my bedroom) with a black silhouette dragon in the centre (I have a big thing for dragons). He put so much thought and work into it that I’ll always treasure it.

The other eccentric things I’d like to display – among them the miniature knife collection and the awesome skeleton-hand chalice – are packed away at the moment but will definitely reappear someday when I have more space.

I love history, the more history an object has the more special it is in my heart.

I could give you a list of precious things to me. Most every thing I have is that way. I’ll post a picture of one of my great loves. It hangs in my living room surrounded by others kinda like it.

My sister just looks at my wall, “you know Seren, I don’t think most people would do that”... not likely, they are more into art. But to me this is art in perfection.

The only thing I dislike about this picture is the lack of detail, you can’t see the carving on the top, but you can get a feel for why I love it so much.

It’s the back of an oak chair.