Hidden Treasure

A few weeks back I posted about my little finds at Goodwill.  What I failed to mention is that I also picked up a little silver bowl for .99.  I always see some crazy tarnished pieces at Goodwill that are so interesting, but intimidating with all the polishing I foresee.  So I decided to try my luck on something small.  Voila....or Viola...as Sonny would say...

Pretty gnarly, huh?  Well I decided to cruise my favorite place on the whole wide web, Pinterest, for a homemade, hopefully semi-green solution to polishing silver.  I came up with two totally unlikely solutions.  Baking soda.....and toothpaste.  Toothpaste?  Yup-o!  The white pasty not gel kind.  But I tried the baking soda first.  The instructions were to line the bottom of a large pot with tin foil, then soak your silver piece in a solution of 1/4 cup baking soda, a tsp of salt, and about 2 cups of boiling water.  I did a little variation...I doubled the solution to make sure that it covered the whole boil...then I put the pot on the stove to keep the water boiling.

That actually took alot of the heavy tarnish off...but it wasn't good enough.  Here's the bowl after boiling for about 30 minutes.

It's definitely less tarnished...but still not pretty.  Onto the toothpaste!  Let me just tell you guys that this is where elbow grease is a good thing.  I spent the whole of America's Got Talent rubbin' and buffin'.  Yup...a whole TWO HOURS.  No joke.  Sonny complained that his eyes were "burning with minty-ness" from the toothpaste....but I'm pretty sure it was part of his man-cold. 

Anyway....after all that rubby rubbin....I got this:

Yes...a bunch of ugly, gross, toothpastey, tarnished towels.  And that's all.

Just kidding!!

VIOLA!!!  Look...how...PRETTY!!!  You can see me in it!!!  There I am...right there!!  I love it!  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Maybe put some little candies in it....use it next to my bed to hold my rings and things...I dunno!  I'm just so excited that I don't feel intimidated by the silver I find at the thrift store...and can't wait to collect a few more pieces!  So cute!