I volunteered again this year to work on the basket from our church to be auctioned off at a fundraiser for a local retirement village. This year I had more than two days notice to get it ready, I had almost a whole month. The baskets are also wanted much earlier so they can promote them better prior to the auction. I did the basket from
last year all by myself, and I thought that was going to be the case again this year, but I ended up with help. I asked one of the other ladies from church if she’d like to help and she agreed.
I didn’t have a definite theme in mind and neither did Susan so we began our shopping at an antique/flea market to get ideas. I had a lot of luck here last year and thought it would be a great place to start. We wondered up and down the aisles, looking for inspiration. Several items caught our eye but we kept looking for more things that would bring a theme together. The theme we finally settled on was Apples.
We found a cute small-ish bushel style basket and a set of four cups and saucers with apples on them. At different stores we found dried apple slices, apple juice in cute bottles, caramel apple coffee, apple dip mix, apple pie spice, a cinnamon apple scented candle, and a hot pad with apples on it. We couldn’t find any towels with apples so we bought two red hand towels to line the basket with.
Can you believe I forgot to take pictures of our prizes until after I had it wrapped??? So this is the best picture I have. I also found some decorative green apples at the Dollar Store. I spray painted them red, which turned out great as they looked more real this way. I added them to the basket, too.
The bushel basket and apple theme came about by what we found at the flea market but it worked out well for another item as well. It happens that Susan has published several books, the latest being “Bushels of Nostalgia” with a bushel basket of apples on the front cover. She was kind enough to donate a signed copy of her book to put in the auction basket.
I didn’t get a picture of the book by itself, I was trying to get an interesting picture of the bookmark.
From the beginning I planned to put something tatted in the basket but was waiting to determine the theme and color. Now I started looking for patterns with apples. I found a couple but not quite what I had in mind so came up with my own.
Apple Bookmark © Wanda Salmans 2015
I’ve never tried layering rings like this before. I’ve seen it several places on the Internet but I’m not finding the sites now – of course. I didn’t quite get the shape I was going for but with the leaves I think it still looks like an apple.
I was very happy with the basket we came up with. The auction was last week but I have no idea who won our basket or how much it went for. It doesn’t really matter – whatever it went for and whoever got it – it was all for a good cause. I’m hoping that the winner is enjoying all their apples.
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
George Bernard Shaw
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