It’s a Chemical Reaction Baby … Cleaning Silver with Baking Soda and Aluminum Foil

Disclaimer : I'm not a professional in the care of valuable silver pieces and used this method to clean only inexpensive items.  It worked nicely and I'm happy with the results, however please use at your own discretion.

ass="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11075" title="silver-sauce-ladle-and-bottle opener" src="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/silver-sauce-ladle-and-bott.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426">Wow, I did something fun today. Well, that is if you consider this type of thing to be fun!In preparation for a fall project I have in mind I wanted to clean some small silver pieces. So I went online looking for a green alternative to cleaning silver and without question, this was the most popular solution. It is a method that involves removing tarnish from silver by immersing the pieces in a boiling hot water bath of baking soda, with the item to be cleaned touching aluminum foil. Apparently it is chemistry and the tarnish will move from the silver object and adhere itself to the foil. And you know what? It works!Combined with nice clean silver, this method hits a 10 on the fun-factor scale. Note that there is a definite pootie odor that is emitted in the process. Ok, so your house will smell like rotten eggs for a short time, but your silver will gleam! And you can see it happening right before your eyes.Nick was upstairs as I was doing this and as he came down for a break he was all like, 'sniff sniff, um baby did you ..?' Yes, it smells quite strongly so you might want to do this outside, or at least well before any company arrives.Here are the before pictures:

Then Versus Now : Queen Street West

It is safe to say that my favourite neighbourhood in Toronto is the one in which I live now, known as Queen Street West. In fact, this is the 4th time I've lived here. Well actually, the 5th if you count the short-term (1 month) boarding house type of rental Nick and I lived in before our first apartment together was ready for us to move in.

My first time here was the three month summer-break between 3rd and 4th years of university, when my friend Kathy and I rented the basement apartment in the house my brother and his fiance were living in then. I returned to the neighbourhood for a couple of years after graduation, renting an apartment in the only highrise building in the area at the time. I remember how out of place it looked in comparison to the rest of the buildings around it, but at the time it was perfect for me, as the area was considered to be rather sketchy back then and this building was secured with front lobby guards and was an easy walk to where I had found a job.

Then I moved away to another part of the city. I see the years away from the neighbourhood as my "less happy" years and was quite pleased when Nick and I found our first apartment together, right down the street from my old place. (In fact, when I met him he was living less than a two minute walk from that highrise apartment I had once lived in, so he knows the area well too.)

During our year and a half of living in our apartment together we got married and then found our own home, again, just down the street. This is where we remain, very happy, to this day! We both love it here, with its artistic bohemian live-and-let-live vibe, and we have no plans to move out soon. This is home.

And now to the photos! Longer term readers will know that I love an opportunity for a 'Then Versus Now' look at buildings. And I have two for you in this post!

First there is this block of buildings (located at Queen West and Portland) that by chance includes one of our favourite restaurant in the area, The Epicure. These buildings would have been built around 1900. I love that by 1958, when the historic shot was taken, the landlords thought the old girls needed some sprucing up, with a fake front on part of the block, and a neat art deco awning on another.

These two added features are no longer there, so clearly sometime in the last 50 years someone realized the old buildings were very pretty as they were and the fake fronts were removed.