Let’s start off by saying I LOOOOOOOVE jewellery.

Apart from genealogy and chocolate, jewellery is a passion of mine. It all started when I was about 10 or so when an auntie gave me a beautiful silver necklace, which I wore day in and day out. This one necklace has since been replaced by a whole stash of necklaces, rings, and bracelets. And when I travel rather than buy souvenirs from the places I visit, I tend to buy jewellery. At least its small enough to bring home easily enough.

Anyway I found a site that combines my love of genealogy and jewellery. So naturally I helped the economy by doing some online shopping. And now I want to share with  you what I bought ….

The www.mynamenecklace.com.au website  is one of those places that you can order jewellery from and get it customised to have your kids names on it. Well I ordered a bracelet, but rather than get my furkids names put on it, I chose to put my ancestors surnames instead. Well, my four grandparents lines anyway – Hannaford, Randell, Winter, Phillips, and to top it off it has the Tree of Life in the centre.

my MyNameNecklace bracelet has just arrived

ooh it’s so pretty!

new bling added to my wrist!

I’m so thrilled with my new bracelet that I have already ordered another one as well as a necklace. On those I’m getting the words Genealogy. Past. Present. Future. put on them, which should be cool. Anyway when they arrive, I’ll have pics on my Facebook page. They’re my Christmas presents from me to me (we all have those don’t we)?

I don’t normally write about companies, but I chose to do so in case any of you also have a love of jewellery and wanted to do something customised with current (or past) family names on it, I thought I’d share details of this MyNameNecklace site with you. Afterall they do have a whole range of “Family Tree” related jewellery, so how can that not be interesting?

And in the interest of disclosure, I am in no way affiliated with the MyNameNecklace company, other than being a happy customer.

One hundred years ago today, my grandpa, Cecil Gould Hannaford was born.

As he’s no longer with us to celebrate this milestone, I’ve decided to write down some of the memories I have of him. ‘Cec’ was the oldest of three children born to Ralph and Dorothy Hannaford (nee McCullough), and while he was born at Naracoorte, the family spent most of their life at Cudlee Creek in the Adelaide Hills.

I was a regular visitor to my grandparents place at Cudlee Creek, and probably spent at least half of my early childhood racing around their house, playing in the orchard, riding on the tractor, and generally just getting muddy,  which by the way, I did totally master (see the pic at the bottom)!!!

Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were married during World War Two. That was nothing unusual, in fact probably every family has ancestors that were married during that era. They married before the man was sent off overseas or elsewhere for training, or they married when he came home on leave.

This post is about my maternal grandparents Cecil Hannaford and Evelyn Randell. Both grew up in the Adelaide Hills, Cec (as he was known) was an orchardist at Cudlee Creek, and Evelyn grew up at Gumeracha on the family farm, so no doubt knew each other through being in neighbouring towns.

While my grandma, Evelyn was a brilliant diary keeper, sadly 1941, the year she got married, is one year that doesn’t seem to have survived. So without her words to tell me what her wedding

My mum’s dad, my maternal grandpa, Grandpa Cecil Hannaford was someone that I knew. But I feel I never ‘really’ knew him if you know what I mean. I knew that he always had 6 meals a day (breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, tea, and supper). I knew that he usually wore his hat to church, and quite often fell asleep during the service, which resulted in an elbow to the ribs from my grandma to wake him up. He loved nature which is shown by the collection of slides of birds and flowers he took, as well as the many documentary type DVDs he had … these together with a whole heap of other anecdotal memories are my grandpa to me. But he was far more than that!

Grandpa was farmer and orchardist, and was born and bred into the life from his forebears who were in the same business.