Sharing Family Treasures

My Aunt Evelyn, my mother's youngest sister, and her husband, my Uncle bill, were collectors. Wherever they lived - Ballard in Seattle, Falls Church, VA while working at the Pentagon and government agencies in DC, or retired to Port Angeles, WA on Puget Sound, they collected. 

When age and dementia eventually took their lives, they left a treasure of antiques to be dealt with by their two kids, my cousins Kris and Dan. When my sisters and I helped Kris deal with some of the treasures in the Ballard house, we received some lovely things. Not knowing what to do with all of it, Kris put much of it in storage. 

Now, a few years into the process, she is distributing the items that were in storage. She asked me if I would be interested in some stained glass windows. Remembering how my aunt had them displayed over windows in her house, I said yes, not knowing what I would actually do with them.  Kris brought them to us when she came for our big celebration in July.

This week we finally got back to dealing with the windows. I cleaned them up, and put new paint on two of them Now they are hung.

 These two, with white frames, needed only a cleaning. We hung them in our living room. 

 That's my mother's clock in the corner. 

 The other two windows needed some new paint and we just happened to have some green paint that would work. These two windows are a matching pair. 

Today Tom hung them on the garden deck, where we will leave them until bad weather sets in. 

It's a privilege to have these treasures. Thank you, Kris and Dan, for sharing them, and thank you, Aunt Evelyn and Uncle bill, for being such interesting people and eclectic collectors. You live on in our memories and in the treasures that have been shared.