Treasures from an estate sale preview

On Friday morning, I had the great pleasure of getting to check out my friend Patti's pretty tea wares as she prepares to downsize and, in preparation, hold an estate sale. She said she wanted me to have first dibs, which was quite thoughtful of her, and I left with a shopping bag full of goodies that I am happy to have since they will remind me of Patti, whom I first met in Bible study years ago.

Her prices were quite reasonable too, like just $8 each for teapots (this one from Wood and Sons) and trios.

I have had several pieces with this design and definitely wanted this pretty trio from Royal Staffordshire.

 And I'll have more to say about this set later, but this is actually the first thing my eye went to, for a wonderful reason. (I'll explain on Wednesday.)

And while I have quite a few tea tiles, or tea trivets, I'd never seen one with these pretty old roses, and I love the fact that the background color is a bright emerald green. I'm redesigning my author website and want it to be green and vintage-looking, and I have just not found very many lovely old things that are emerald green, but this is perfect and may end up in the opening page photo. And if you look at the top photo, at bottom left, you'll see a tiny sliver of another trio I got. It has an intriguing back stamp and backstory, so I'm researching that before I share more about it. So as you can see, I was quite thrilled with my lovely array of goodies from Patti's cleaning-out prior to her move, and now I have some fun research to add to this week's tasks. I think I like a good backstory as much as I like pretty tea wares!