The Heritage Buddy

​Not long after my nan passed away last year, she had left a lot of family history behind, including the amount of keepsakes she kept. This gave my mother a good excuse to make good use of her Ancestry subscription that me and my sisters bought her for her birthday. We already knew that my paternal great grandfather was a construction worker and his family owned and ran a construction business in the heart of my borough; my father once drove us around the neighbourhood he helped to build pre-WW1, or at some point in the very early Edwardian era. After beginning a long process of clearing out my nan’s house, he brought home his equestrian trophies and rosettes, we did already know he was a keen horse rider, as well as a construction worker, as my father looked into his family history a quite a while ago. There was also a business directory of all the local public services and businesses, which did include my great grandfather’s construction company which was located next to one of the ...

Did you know that lavender has been used for many different purposes throughout history? The inspiration for this blog post came from when my mother, who works as a gardener on a private estate, brought home a whole bunch of lavender sprigs for me to harvest and keep the buds for my embroidered lavender bags I like to craft.  Above: My harvesting process and my filling lavender jar on my Instagram story. As we know, lavender is a purple flower that blooms in season from late May through to mid-July, and is harvested from late July through to early September. It is known for its sweet and relaxing scent that is beneficial for stress, anxiety, depression and sleep-related difficulties, which is most commonly used for in this modern day, but can also be infused as a herbal tea. (Yes, lavender is also considered a medicinal herb, there will be more on that later in the post).  Traditional uses of lavender include aromatic (for scent inhalation), carminative (helps relieve flatulen...

Now that I have this blog up and running, what shall I start off my blog series with? I’ll start by explaining how the ‘Heritage Buddy’ namesake came about; it was at the height of the toy action figure trend via Chat GPT. I’m not a huge follower of AI generated artwork but I felt curious enough to jump onto the bandwagon. It took a frustrating good few attempts to get right, but what I did get out of those attempts was a very inspiring name. Because my name is HB, I typed into Chat GPT something along the lines of “create a toy figure of a heritage and museum worker called HB”, then despite the results not being what I was expecting, it came up with the following: Name: HB (Heritage Buddy) Appearance: HB is a cute, small figure with a friendly face and bright eyes. Dressed in a navy blue outfit reminiscent of a classic museum guide, complete with a white collar and a little badge that reads "Museum Explorer." Accessories include a tiny backpack filled with miniatu...