Silver Tray ~ Garage Sale Find!

First, I must say that people always are surprised when visiting my home and find out that the majority of my decor is from garage sales and thrift stores. Goes to show you that you don't have to be rich to have really nice things and beautiful decor. 

Remember this silver tray from my first Diamonds In The Rough post? See it down there in the lower part of this picture?

You can't tell it by this picture, but it was tarnished. No, not badly but it was tarnished all the same. Recently, I saw a blog site that had a post on how to easily clean silver. Cindy over at Dwellings-The Heart of Your Home talked about putting aluminum foil in the bottom of the sink. Pour in hot water and 4 tablespoons of this product...

for every gallon of hot water. Then set your sterling silver in the water on the foil and a chemical reaction happens. Within about 5 minutes or so, you have a clean silver product without the hard work. Just rinse and wipe dry with a rag or paper towel. You don't want to use a good towel because some black tarnish will come off with drying the item and you don't want to ruin your good hand towels.  Anyway, I tried this solution on the tray and it worked really well. I will be cleaning all my silver this way from now on. I found the Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda in the laundry detergent aisle of our local WalMart.

After cleaning the tray and believe it or not for a joke, I served my hubby breakfast on the tray saying, "Don't ever say I haven't served you on a silver platter!" LOL

I decided to use the tray AND the white tureen (in the garage sale items picture too) as decor on my kitchen bar...what do you think? Pretty good for only $3 from a garage sale. (The tureen was $5) Ah, another Diamond In The Rough!

If you want to learn about the decoupage eggs, click HERE to see that post.

NOTE: You should be able to click on most of the pictures to enlarge to see further details.
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