Shell Box and Sampler

Photo by Gavin Ashworth

The shell box is especially loved by me and all who see it.  My  sister in law, Alice McLane, now deceased, found this box in Florida many years ago on her yearly vacations to Naples on the west coast.  She placed  the box on her stair landing at her home in Columbus, Ohio.  On a visit to her treasure packed home one summer,  I admired it and she immediately made me a present of it. Wasn’t I the lucky one!!!   It is one of my choicest possessions.  

The shell box  has lived its life on various pieces of our country furniture at our beach house, and now it is resting  on a open bookcase shelf in our front parlor in Historic Church Hill.  It finally has a niche of its own!  What is so interesting about this box is the row of peach shells around the bottom .   Some of the peach pits were missing and we found replacements in a peach orchard in the south end of Virginia Beach..  They were on the ground, under the trees, and just the right patina for the shell box..

Which leads us to wonder……..did the creator of the box…..run out of shells so he or she could not finish the compostion?   And used what was on hand?  

The small sampler “SO FAR” was found in great grandmother Louisa Frace’s big  bible, circa 1880. The bible contains Frace-Cramer  family history of  many generations.  Luckily, I  had just the perfect frame for it, and now it becomes my daily motto…..SO FAR…living one day at a time!   This, too, is hung on our kitchen brick wall….

Every day I remind myself that “So Far” I am tending to my duties as a wife, mother, grandmother, and friend and pray that I can count you as a friend who loves collecting and whimsy as much as I do!!!....All the while appreciating MY FAVORITE THINGS.