My new old Family

The Fired-On Family so far. My only regret is that this pic didn't include my grandmothers light green casserole (in use at the time that the mood struck to take pictures).

The vast majority of this is newly acquired Pyrex. All the refrigerator dishes were bought at an antique mall, all wrapped together with tape (and free surprise bonus diabetes magazine !?). No lids unfortunately, but the bundle was half price, so I was still a happy girl.

Also suspect that I'm one red and a whole lotta lids away from having 2 primary refrigerator sets (!). Completely unintentional, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get, especially when it's a decent price. I'm still unsure though about the blue. It's hard for me to tell. These 3 are all the same shade and seem more like Horizon blue than I ever imaged the primary blue to be, but I've never seen either in person. Hopefully, someone in the know will read this some day and be able to tell me for sure.

Also, I've noticed this: All 3 blue dishes have the Pyrex markings made in different ways. I'm very curious if this would shed more light on when exactly these were made.

The pink round 024 casserole was from Goodwill, same day. Very happy to find anything pink, but especially happy that my first and only piece is this shape. It's my favorite, I'm a bit sad that most all the patterns and promotional items are oval casseroles.

The rest of the family here is Fire King and one lone orange Federal mug. I just love the solid colors and wanted to have at least one picture of them all together as a family :-)

This was truly Pyrex motherlode day. It was my husband who spotted this lovely Empire Scroll (vines) promotional casserole from 1965. 6 bucks. Not too bad, especially since IT actually came with a lid ;-)

I also scored this amazing Hazel Atlas mug at Goodwill. 29 cents *LOVE* I'm also just a little bit smug proud of myself that I could tell it was a Hazel Atlas mug just from the style/looks of it, without having ever seen it before or even flipping it over to confirm. I've yet to buy any resource books (although I desperately need some right now, I'm too interested in spending money actually BUYING the stuff than buying books about the stuff, ha).

Newbies, right? All I need is the internet, a few resource books and an Etsy store ;-) Just kidding! I am in awe of the amazing finds (not to mention creativity and mad photography skills) of most Etsy shops & sellers I've seen. For me, it will be a long time before I've got the skills, knowledge, and not to mention, treasure-trove of goodies that I could actually stand to part with. Right now, I am buying for myself, to learn, to treasure and to replace a lot of the modern crap-ola that I've furnished my home with for the majority of my life.

Before just a couple of months ago, I had no idea the lustrous peach bowl I've eaten out of my entire life is Fire King. Nor did I think much about the green casserole dish or Butterfly Gold Cinderella mixing bowl that continues to this day to be my moms mashed potato serving bowl. (And it's still beautiful. Selfishly, I'm grateful that my mom has never had a dishwasher!)

I also never knew that cute little mug that looked like Tony the Tiger that was hanging around the house when I moved in with my husband wasn't actually Tony. It's the Esso Tiger ("Put a Tiger in your Tank!") that would later become the evil Exxon we know today. But he's the cutest little Fire King mug, you just can't stay mad at him.

So, I'm buying to learn and to fill my home with color, joy and pieces of American history. It's great stuff, plain and simple. And one of these days, when the larder is full, I'm either going to become a seller or a certified hoarder. We'll just see what happens first ;-)