Wow funny this thread is here...My sister and I share the holidays now (Thanksgiving and Christmas) We both own china service of 12 but of course different patterns...Anyway we usuallay seat between 24-30 so we use good quality paperplates (YUK!!) so we decided were gonna buy a good set...we like the traditiinal Lenox Christmas with the ribbon and holly and this morning i was online and came across Corelle's holiday dishes...granted its not China but the Lenox will run us at least 4000.00 and the Corelle 500.00 and we wont have to cringe everytime someone makes a move at the dining room banquet table!!! Big fan of corelle and the holiday patterns are beautiful. Think were gonna go this route I emailed them to ask if they had and plans to make ones for Thanksgiving....My dream for sometime now is to purchase JOHNSON BROTHERS AUTUMN MONARCH!!!!!! Will buy at some point off Ebay or Replacement Ltd i think Hubby will choke me LOL!!!

ML- my MIL had actually given me her jewelry and silver shortly before she died. She hadn't been sick or anything, she just wanted them to be passed on and I was the only close female and mother of her only gd. Also, she knew I treasured family things - and old things. When my kids were little a neighbor girl (close friend) died. They passed on her skates to my dd. A yr later when our oldest ds died we also gave special items of his to his close friends. dd (about 10) decided she wanted to give her other friend her watch now while she was alive. Wow. what we can learn from kids. I told her that was a great idea, so off she went with her treasured watch. I encouraged the other kids to do the same. My bgf at the time admired a diamond chip ring I wore - so, I just took it off and gave it to her. It meant so much to her she wore it with her wedding rings. It wasn't an expensive ring by any means. In more recent yrs my sister has often admired a 'jade tree' (oriental) that I inherited from my MIL (it's very small - maybe 8" tall w/little pieces of 'jade' (don't know if real) for leaves). She thought I planned to leave it to her in my will. A yr or 2 ago I gave it to her for Christmas. It has a front position in her china cabinet. Decades ago another sister collected Hummels and I had lots of them from MIL so I gave her a bunch of them. and maybe 10 yrs ago now I sent my #3 son my wedding ring and his ggf's pocket watch for Christmas (I had no idea what to buy him, refused to buy something he might not want or need. I knew that of all the kids he also treasured old family things (he's the future 'keeper' of the family history). Also, my wedding ring would mean something to one of the kids (not me). He later told me that those were the best presents he had ever received! Another yr I reprinted a bunch of pics from his childhood (some with siblings and/or pets) and put in a small album. Again he loved it. He told me 'keep things like that coming'. He'll get all the family pics when I die but why make him wait til then to have some to go thru and show to show to his kids? In the 90's I gave my Apple dishes (tons of them!) and some silver serving pieces to another bgf. She did 'Sunday' dinners and other entertaining. I didn't, my kids were grown and in other states. She'd get great use of them, I wouldn't. I ran across a beautiful crystal bowl the other day in a box and decided that I'd be keeping that out - to USE now, just for me. Time to have it out regularly and enjoy seeing it. I also plan to use the good china just for me. now that I think about those Hummels - I ran across more of them while unpacking. My BIL bought one each Christmas and sent to my MIL. Those will be good things to tuck into a Christmas pkg to the kids. I like it much better knowing these people are enjoying the things now rather then them being in a box in my closet. Monk - that is the one show I've watched on regular tv in recent yrs. well, until it went off. darn. I didn't watch the first few yrs of it, so caught them on reruns.

I bought the jacket at Goodwill for my daughter, for 4.99. It is by Estelle Gracer, who made one of a kind fiber arts pieces in the '70's and '80's. They sold for from 600 to 1000 dollars back then. It has an 1982 tag in it. It is crochet. I am giving it to my daughter. She is small enough to wear it, and I think it would look good with jeans. She lives in Houston, in Montrose area, and likes all the artsy fartsy stuff. She loved the jacket....or maybe you would call it a sweater. I also bought a bunch of Wolfgang Puck knives at another thrift shop. They were $2 for the chef's knives and 79 cents for the steak knives. I bought a cool, old horseshoe picture frame that is metal, marked Humershshatz, which was made in Germany. 2.99 at the same thrift. I couldn't get pics to post, so will try later.

I didn't really like the idea of "used" shoes either, but now I got a pair from my thrift shopping landlady who manages to find the greatest things. We're not talking old ratty shoes that have been worn a gazillion times. These shoes are like new and hardly worn, if at all. Can be sanitized inside. Almost as good as new, and I frankly can't tell the difference now . . . I'll take a good pair of gently used real leather shoes from a good manufacturer any day over a pair of cheaply made albeit stylish looking plastic pair. Just MHO. For example, I have quite a few nice classic style pairs of business "work" shoes that I got when I had money and had to dress fancy for work, weren't worn much, and now I could easily get rid of them since the chance I will wear them again is slim, and they would be a real value to someone who now finds themselves in that same situation I was in back in the day . . . Same with my mom's old fancy shoes, she rarely wore them and they are good quality. Once you retire, it's not like you never go out, but you transition to more comfy shoes, that's for sure, and get sick of staring at the five pairs of dress shoes in your closet you hardly wore and now one or two will suffice.