A trip to Grandma's...

This past weekend, Brian and I spent 3 long days helping my parents empty my Grandparent's sold house.  We took a lot of trips down memory lane, especially my mom.  I was truly amazed at how much "stuff" my grandparents actually owned.  Not a cupboard was left empty, and not a container left unfilled.  Although it was tiring, we came across some pretty neat things along the way. 

My grandmother was a collector.  For one, she collected bells.  My mom reasoned that when people found out she collected them, they started giving her bells for every holiday so her collection grew that way.  She also collected Swarovski crystal figurines, vases, Thomas Kincaide houses, Christmas village houses and lastly, it would appear that she and my grandfather collected matchbooks. 

Brian and I were debating on getting personalized matchbooks to put at the bar for our wedding but when we came across these, we realized they were vintage matchbooks.  We thought it would be really neat to put these at the bar instead.  They kept matchbooks from every wedding they went to, some dating back as far at 1980.  Some matchbooks are even older than that.  Who would have ever thought that Burger King gave out matchbooks? 

Here is a picture of the collection:

I want to make some kind of small sign to display next to them at the wedding noting their significance.

I also mentioned that she collected vases.  During my hunt for hobnail, I never thought that my grandmother would own so many pieces.  I probably found 10-15 pieces of milk glass, 4 of which were hobnail.  We gave the rest away although I hated to do that seeing as how difficult it was for me to find milk glass at first.  Here is a picture of some of the pieces I recovered:



They are all unique and for the most part they are unlike anything that I have for the wedding so far.