Year End Wrap up

Another holiday season has come and gone and I've managed to go the month of December without a new post. I've gotten out a few times, but either the pickin's have been too slim or the prices were too steep, so I've counted it lucky when I've walked out with a single thing.

This pretty pink Pyrex was also pricey, but Christmas is a time for presents, after all. The pink Butterprint is my first piece of elusive pink version. It was cheaper than ebay prices by a goodly chunk but still not what I'd call cheap either.

I got comments from the dealers working the register like I was frivolous, weird or crazy for paying that amount for a small pink Pyrex dish. I wanted to defend my purchase and say something like, "Check how much these are selling for on ebay before you scoff at what I'm paying right now", but I just kept my mouth shut. I'm not saying a word that is going to help them. I can't understand dealers who would treat customers like their purchases were foolish. It makes me not even want to shop in that store any more, even though I know the dealers there are just booth renters working off their monthly rent and not the owners themselves. I could mention it to the owners, but cynically I'm afraid anything I say will just continue to give the message that Pyrex is worth big bucks now so every dealer needs to double check ebay prices before they put it out on the shelves. I just wish that when I was finding cool things I just had a positive association with it and not a negative one, you know?

I also have the hardest time making myself letting myself use pieces I think would be hard to replace. I did actually eat cereal out of it a few times before it made its way into my display, but I definely wouldn't use it in the oven or microwave. Only casual use or refrigerator storage for the pieces I feel like babying! Lol.

The same trip I basically paid 5 dollars for a Shiny Brites box. It had some ornaments in it, but no actual Shiny Brites. I was going to use the ornaments for a wreath, and put some actual Shiny Brites in this box.

This 'Uncle Sam' box is my favorite style. (Uncle Sam shaking hands with Santa Claus on the cover). I have one other just like this, but the tree is is a cellophane covered cut-out. I suspect (but don't know for sure) that since this box specific says Gold ornaments on the bottom side panel that this style was for single color ornaments, and that the cutout version was for more decorated stripes, patterns a/o indents.

Either way, I sure do love Shiny Brites. They are becoming my Christmas obsession. My husband and I visited an out of the way haunt we go to only once in a while and they had positively tons of Shiny Brite ornaments. But each one was priced seperately, usually between 4 to 6 dollars a piece. They had lots of original boxes I ooohed and ahhhhed over, but none were being sold as a boxed set. I mentioned this to my husband who I believe astutely deduced that the boxes were basically just being used as props to sell the ornaments out of. He thought that if you asked about the boxes, they'd either say they weren't for sale or that you'd have to buy the entire contents of the box to go with it  - which would have made a box of ornaments somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 dollars!

And finally, this beautiful tree topper came out of a half-off booth, making it what I think was the best 10 dollars I've spent all year.

So delicate, I hardly handle it. The triple indents are dotted with bright aqua inside. The top and bottom of the ball is pink, and there are handpainted white flowers in between the indents.

I love it so! Can you even get over the price tag - .24 cents from Sears and Roebuck! I'm not sure if the 49 is the year it's from, but that's definitely the right time period.















Well, those are my last goodies of 2015. Here's hoping for great junk in 2016!

Happy Thrifting!

Long time no post

Long time, no update. I've bought things here and there but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, most Pyrex I'm finding is too expensive for my humble budget and I'm finding myself staying home more and more when I could have been out hunting.

These two terribly DWD bowls are my first Pyrex thrift store finds in a while. I've suspected for a while that this particular Goodwill only put out on the shelf pieces that were too damaged to send on to their online site or whatever GW heaven they send all the good stuff off to. I was okay with paying 3.99 for the dots bowl because the damage made it look pink like the poor pink mixer I didn't want to buy so much. But my husband encouraged me, thinking I'd have not-buyers regret. All in all, he was probably right. So it came home with me as well.

The solid pink is so damaged, the white looks like water damage - or whatever it is - on top of the pink, but that's not the case. It's been dishwashed down to the white underneath the paint. Not much hope for saving it. Chances are good it's going home to my mom to use as a cat bowl.

But the "pink" dot bowl, I like it the way it is. I haven't oiled it to see if it would make it look any better. I tried using a touch of Bar Keeper's Friend to a bad place with a silver utensil mark but it just made the orange start showing through. So I think I'll use it just the way it is.

And then yesterday we went to a few antique stores. I cracked a joke about us not finding anything after visiting at least 3 stores. Something like "It'd be nice if I could find a treasure to make all this walking around worth it". And very shortly after that I found this nice, shiny orange dots bowl for 9 dollars! Yay!

What a difference in the color! And this nice shiny orange dots technically completes my dots bowl set, since the one I was using was also dishwasher damaged. Good deal.

And since I'm not finding much in the way of glassware these days, I thought I might add in a few non-related things. Hope my dish friends don't mind. :-)

My husband is a record and toy guy. His finds sometimes completely trump anything I'm finding out in the world, but he's pretty much stopped blogging ever. I'd like some of that stuff (including non-vintage) to see the light of day. I enjoy looking back through my blog and seeing when I've bought things. After 5 years, I've started to completely forget where I've bought things and when, so having a record of them is pretty cool.

For now, here's my vinyl purchases over the last 6 weeks or so.

I love Lana Del Rey. I don't care what you say, lol. This album was fun to go hunt for because it came out on mine and my husband's 10 year wedding anniversary. How often do you get to buy an album called Honeymoon release on your 10 year anniversary?!

I'm not a big rap fan, generally. But Run the Jewels stomps the face off what passes for rap these days. I really, really, really hope that the limited vinyl Meow the Jewels is pre-ordered for me very, very soon. (Hint hint to all my blog readers who are my husband).

And finally, I have those things I habitually hunt for in the used section of a record store that I don't really think I'll find. The Cure is high on that list. This is the original 1987 version, not the Record Store Day version from 2013, though I must note with some dismay that the RSD version (that I don't have) is selling for 3x +  the original.

Ah, vinyl records, another collection I totally can't afford to keep up with.


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Anyways, hope you're finding cool junk out in the world.

Happy Thrifting!

Re-Ment miniature Hazel Atlas Ripple

I've seen pictures of these miniatures online for probably 5 years now, but I only very rarely buy anything online ever. So these sweet miniatures went on the back burner.

But mine and my husband's anniversary was coming up and I wanted him to order me something I wouldn't normally buy for myself, but was still thrifty enough that we'd still have all our pennies and dimes to spend on his week-long vacation, which would hopefully include trips to antique stores we'd never been to before.

So these Re-Ment figures suited me just perfectly. Here's the box:

and the contents:

(had to include the little foldout booklet!)

And here they are, stacked up sweetly. So cute! And really well done for such tiny things.

And here they are, worked in with my Fire King and the actual-sized Hazel Atlas Ripple.

The best scale shots I managed to get out of my wildly out of date camera (that also hates my dark house).

I am attempting to refrain from trying to buy a whole stack of these dishes to match my hoard stack of their real life counterparts. They are just so cute and precious.

There are other odds and ends in these sets that I want too. Mostly the pieces that resemble Pyrex bowls and Fire King mugs. I don't know if that will happen anytime soon, but there's always Christmas :-)


As for our actual anniversary, we had a good time going outside our normal areas to shop. Found some incredibly expensive stores, expensive furniture and of course, expensive Pyrex. I bought a few pieces that complete (or nearly-so) patterns for me, so I'll get around to posting them in another post.


Hope you're finding thrifty treats and treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

127 yard sale - Everything else

Major 'grail' status achieved! These green Hocking canisters were one of the items I was most wanting and looking for on the yard sale. Neither had lids when I bought them, the ones in the picture are from my lid stash. I actually think the one on the right is the right lid. I'm not sure about the other, I'm thinking Jeannette for some reason?

When I picked them up to ask about a price, the guy said "I'll give them both to you for 10". I couldn't buy them fast enough!

Now I probably shouldn't have bought this mixer, but it's in beautiful shape, I got it for a good price, and I have its pink sibling. Am I collecting stand mixers? Yipes. It even came with booklet, which I've totally misplaced at the moment. I haven't even plugged it in yet. Hope it works as good as it looks :-)

And everything else here was what I'd consider a true yard sale price. Mostly 50 cents or less, and a few dollar items.

Yellow Riviera platter, two Carnival saucers to go with my matching teacups, a couple of vintage Fiesta bread & butter plates.

Sweet milk glass pieces.

Paid 5 dollars for this Chein moon globe, which I knocked over before I could even buy it. The guy said it had been happening all day. Poor globe! Bought it anyway. I'll just pretend they're craters. Lol.

Stanley Home Products Cookies canister ( needs re-lettered ) and Country Calico tins

And a little bit of canister love. Less than a dollar bought me my first  (unmarked) Stanley Home Products Cookies canister  (and a big wave and thank you to Farm Girl Pink for solving the mystery of where these canisters came from. Read all about it here.)

This in my first cookie canister. And the first time I've seen anything in a solid white colorway. There is but the tiny-tiniest little hint of silver pant on the lettering, so I'm going to use the same silver pen I bought at Hobby Lobby to do some restorative work.

This was a final stop at some antique stores on our way back home. Can you guess which of these set is NOT Lustro ware? If you said turquoise, you are correct! They are marked Sterilite but boy they sure do look identical!

And a final thing. A real Would You? or Wouldn't You?

Would you pay 5 dollars for a set of desireable dishes if after going through them you realize that every single one of them is chipped in a major way or cracked? Would you be sad, say your goodbyes and walk away? Or would you be trying to figure out ways to re-use or re-purpose? Or would you be content just to use a/o display them as-is?

Well, I bought them anyway.

Franciscan Starburst. Every one of them chipped. Moderate to bad chips/cracks. And not a lot of minor damage pieces.  As of right now, I really don't know what I'm doing with them. I'm thinking I may just try to display the ones with chips on the underneath, which are still perfectly useable, and think about repurposing the plates with damage on the face/surface. Thoughts, anyone?

That's most all the loot from our yardsale adventures. As usually, I feel like I'm missing out on posting half of what we find due to the absence of my husbands part of the goodies. (He's a toy, vinyl record, games, books guy). And he actually found a fair amount of stuff this year, for once. So we were both pretty lucky.

Hope you're finding great Summertime treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

127 yardsale - Pyrex

This was our second year checking out the deals on the 127 yard sale, but it was the first time we had the time off to do more than one day.

We headed out on Thursday, the first official day, and got absolutely poured on! Many of the vendors closed up on account of rain. But I'm glad we slogged though (my tennis shoes are still wet!), because I'm sure I wouldn't have found this beauty by Friday:

First time I've ever seen the white rimmed blue Americana. When I picked it up and saw the 10 dollar price tag I was elated.

And the ladies we bought the blue bowl from also sold me this 3-bowl Woodland set and two other bowls. That green Spring Blossom II bowl completes my set. My husband also bought a 1987 Michael Jordan cardboard standup. Thankfully the rain let up long enough for us to get it in the truck. It's rare enough these days my husband and I both find things we want, but to find them in the same sale is pretty rare.
 

More cheap Pyrex! The delphite blue completes my chip and dip set, minus the ever-lovin' bracket that is almost never with them.
 

I had a few 'grails' in mind to add to my collection, one of which is Hazel Atlas pink ripple, in practically any piece. I did find a single bowl and also a solid white one. Trying to hunt down the pink piece by piece reminds me of just how lucky I was to pretty much an entire set of turquoise all at once.

The turquoise Pyrex pieces are pretty much all the turquoise I saw along the way. They were not super cheap, but not terribly priced, either. The pink and green Vitrock pieces are duplicates for me but they were also cheap and cheerful roadside finds.

All of these items except the Corning Ware were all super cheap bundle price deals, probably a quarter apiece, I'd say.  I was happy to find a Spring Blossom soup plate - wish there had been two! And the Heather Corningware is one of the only times I've ever seen that pattern or shape. It was a thrift store find along the way, and my husband found records for 10 cents apiece there as well, so we were glad we made the detour.

I have lots more finds for another post. And I'm exhausted!

Hope you're finding thrifty treats and treasures.

Happy Thrifting!

Lucky Day

Seriously, yesterday was my lucky day.

At my first stop, I picked up this poor lidless LuRay pitcher from one of my favorite flea market vendors. It's the first piece I've added to my inadvertent collection I bought all at once as a boxed lot. I joke that me finding good deals is like the 50 cents that will make me spend 50 dollars, because I'm downright compulsive about putting sets together once I find a bit of something I like. I don't just want a piece or two, I want ever color they came in!

But that was just the beginning of the day. Next find was this dreamy turquoise canister set

I'll be honest, they have numerous cosmetic issues. The coffee canister is cracked, they are all stained and discolored even after a nice soak, and the lids are a marriage of two different sets (and I'm not entirely sure which ones are the right ones).

But I still love them. Completely and utterly smitten!

They are marked Cols. Plastic Products, which if I'm not mistaken, stand for Columbus Plastic Products of Columbus, Ohio, parent company of Lustro Ware.

Here I've taken a picture of the largest and smallest canisters from my new turquoise set with my marked red Lustro Ware canisters. Interestingly, each of the red canisters are one size larger than their turquoise counterparts.

Then at the next stop I found only my second new in box Pyrex!

I picked this up for the nice price of $15.00.

It looks like it's never been used. And even has the care booklet.

Quote from the CARE section:

"PYREX (c) ovenware is dishwasher safe; however colors or decorations on the outside surface of the ovenware may fade with repeated washings."

This is the first acknowledgement I've seen from Corning that dishwashers can indeed fade a/o ruin the finish. (Which, unfortunately, all us collectors have witnessed firsthand in thrift and antique stores all over)

And a detail I never realized before. This 474 casserole since it was sold as a single is the darker shade of gold from this version (Butterfly Gold II). When the 474 was a part of the 3 piece set, it was the lighter yellow shade. Meaning there are 3 different Butterfly Gold 474 casseroles.

As my husband and I were heading home (with one last stop at Goodwill in mind), I was just saying how awesome today was. I found really neat things, but I stayed on budget and felt like I still had a little change in my pocket for next time. We stopped at GW, walked though all our areas of interest and were fixing to walk out empty-handed when a worker who was stocking the shelves rolled out with a new cartful of goodies. I couldn't believe my eyes.

A vintage forest green Fiesta coffee pot for 2.99.

And it cleaned up perfectly. Absolutely mint. And probably the most flawless piece of Fiesta I have.

I am truly amazed. The coffee server and mixing bowls are my absolute favorite pieces of vintage Fiesta. This is my third coffee pot, and amazingly enough, the second one that's come from a Goodwill. My other is a yellow with a broken finial I picked up for 5.99.

Such an awesome day, with fabulous treasures!

Hope you are finding splendid treats and fabulous goodies!

Happy Thrifting!

Cabinet Update

 I finally got my cabinet painted! But I'm not a good blogger, so it didn't even occur to me to take a "before" shot. This is the closest I have to one:

Once upon a time I think this hutch was a blonde or light brown. But ages ago someone painted it white and it seemed to eventually end up in storage where the color didn't exactly age well.

I painted it semi-gloss white on the outside and about as close as I could get to turquoise Pyrex or Tiffany Blue as I could find. I'll update this post (hopefully) when I remember to get the paint details off the can. *UPDATE* My color choice was Behr Island Oasis from Home Depot *

I did actually take a turquoise refrigerator dish to Home Depot with me to have color matched - something I've wanted to do forever. But alas, the scanner just wasn't helping me out. Light passes through the glass, so the color it kept matching was quite a bit darker and greener. The paint people behind the counter didn't have much better luck either.

Funny thing was, I think the universe was pretty bent on me having a decent match after all. Right beside me (literally, to my right as I stood at the counter feeling disappointed I couldn't get my fridgie matched) was one lone paint sample of a color that looked remarkably exactly like my refrigerator dish. I requested a small can mixed up in semi-gloss, used a Christmas gift card to pay for it, so I literally got it for free. How cool is that?

Here she is all filled up!

Hard to get a picture of it all at once. It's in a small room with an awkward furniture arrangement, so my pictures are all angled and cut off.

I filled it up with some of my very favorite things - and this time I decided on whim to highlight my Fire King collection.

Once I finished painting and hubs & I got it where I wanted it I started filling it up. First thing I put in was my brand newly-acquired pink Sunbeam stand mixer. I knew I wanted my collectors books in beside that, and as luck would have it, they fit perfectly.

Next, I knew I wanted my collection of Hazel Atlas Ripple. And the one thing I knew for sure was going on the top was my Fisher Price light up globe. I have to stop myself from collecting globes, I have nowhere to put them! And now my pink and turquoise canisters have a home! I love it so much!

In the same room, I've been playing around with even more shelves and displays. I didn't think I owned enough Jadeite to make a decent looking display, but I mixed in green depression glass, Delphite and 3 shades of blue Fire King. I really like the way it turned out!

The jadeite shelf is directly above this one, which is housing (most of) my original 6 colors of vintage Fiesta. I haven't actually arranged these yet, they are just stacked by color, but I still like the way it looks all together.

One of these days I'll take a pic of my Pyrex shelves. But right now they are a total jumble.

I used to have my Pyrex mostly on display on the shelves and kept duplicates in the kitchen as daily users. Sounds completely practical, in theory. But in practice, if I wanted to use something I didn't have in the cabinet, I needed to go get it from another room and wash it first. Meaning I tended to use the same pieces over and over again and some of my very favorites just sat on the shelf in another room collecting dust.

So what I did was basically switch out about a hundred pieces. It was a job and a half. Now my kitchen cabinets are full of my favorite Pyrex, washed and ready to go - whether I have a duplicate or not, and my shelves are full of duplicates (both good and bad) and not-as-loved. This may be the incentive I need to divest myself of some overflow.

I've been doing so much Spring cleaning and organizing lately! I feel like these displays are my reward for a hard work and a job well done, and I am enjoying them tremendously.

Hope you are enjoying some nice weather and finding awesome junk!

Happy Thrifting!