Happy Birthday to me and Friendship set complete(ish)

My birthday is tomorrow, but my husband and I got out and shopped a little today. In the last little shop we stopped in (but don't usually find stuff in) this pretty pink set was just waiting for me.

What an awesome little set! This really beefs up my pink ripple collection. And the lady I bought them from had seen what they sell for on ebay, and scoffed at the ridiculous prices, and priced this set much more reasonably. I told her my birthday was tomorrow and that I was thrilled to have this as my present! Really nice antique dealers really do exist!

I rearranged my cabinet and moved my shakers and grease jars to another shelf. So this is what my cabinet looks like now.

Even though this guy is no longer shiny, I was glad to pick him up from another antique store today. My Friendship Pyrex has been really slow to piece together. I still have issues with finding the decorated opal lids on some pieces and replacing others that aren't in the best shape, but I'm happy I'm just one piece away from the whole collection.

In fact, when I started gathering pieces for this group photo, I thought this orange bowl had finished my set until I remembered there's also a decorated promotional piece with underplate that I do not have. So for now my set is complete(ish) and I'll add more when I'm lucky enough to find a new piece. The 503 refrigerator dish is also new, an early present from my husband who bought online. Thanks, honey!

And I've still got tomorrow to shop. I really don't have any money left after today, but I can enjoy the eye candy, right?

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!

Pyrex Day

Had a day last weekend where it was Pyrex motherlode day. Hadn't had one of those in a long time! Each piece either completes a set for me or was one I didn't have already - except the pink daisy
divided dish.

The blue barcode piece was expensive, but when was I likely to stumble into another for less? Especially since it was the in-between size of the two I had at home.
 

Thrifting has mostly been a bust lately. I picked up a few Butterfly Gold dishes for my mom's ever expanding set. Other than that, not much at all. Unfortunately, schedule conflicts keep me from yard sale-ing or estate sales, so no luck on that front either. The antique stores around me have more Pyrex right now than they've had in months, but it's all expensive. These days I spend my fun money budget in one trip and feel like I need to stay home until the next payday.

Leave it to me to complain on the same post where I'm showing a bunch of pretty happy stuff I collect!

Hope you're finding neat stuff!

Happy Thrifting!

New Dots!

Haven't been out much lately. Buggered up my foot last week - presumably the aftermath of my wild and wacky Saturday night spent gardening. Cause when I garden, I garden hard. Lol. :-)

Picked up two items yesterday. First, a thrift score:

Corelle Strawberry Sunday platter

Eating dinner over at my parents house has convinced me that not only that A) it's perfectly ok to eat dinner on a Corelle serving platter -and-  B) why would you ever want to go back to using a dinner plate after that? These platters are literally the perfect meal receptacles.

So in a day and age where every diet/health/fitness site says eat on smaller plates, I am embracing using serving pieces as my plate. The Pioneer Woman makes much the same observation in this post here. (Fair warning, so much Jadeite ahead, drool and jealousy are imminent.)

Green dots bowl! Yay sauce!

Wish I could say I got a bargain on this piece, but in truth I paid retail for it. (Pretty sure the dealer who sold it to me priced it off ebay). He did however knock 15 dollars off just because we are regular customers, so that took a good bit of the sting off of it. So yay for in-the-wild Pyrex finds I actually really wanted and didn't have already. And yay for beating ebay prices, even if it's just by a little bit.


And it completes my bowl set! My orange bowl is dishwasher faded, so I hope to replace it someday with a nice shiny one, but this works for now.

The blue dot bowl was probably one of the first mixing bowls I ever bought! I remember that it was a whole 8 dollars in an antique store and that was just sooo much money for a bowl to me at that time. Gah!

And it's taken me a full 5 years to complete this set in the wild. But it couldn't be more timely, since the 100 year anniversary pieces are Dots themed. Since I broke down and bought these at Target, I had to get at least one group shot. Almost 50 years difference between them in age!

Hope you're finding thrifty treats and treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

Sunshine finds

Happy March! Wonder if it's been crazy weather around your locale like it has mine? Yesterday was, in my opinion, the first pretty day of the year we've had so far, and definitely the warmest, but that's all pretty much due to a storm blowing in behind it. My garden (and garden blog) have languished for months. Yesterday's sun and warmth had me wanting to go to a garden center and pick out starters - which none of them seem to have yet. My impatience is tremendous, lol!

So I visited some antique stores instead.  :-)

I picked up a set of 6 of these glasses. I had 3 red and one blue at home already, so I have a set of 10 now. I love polka dots!

These glasses are unmarked, but I believe these are the glasses in my Hazel Atlas book. It's difficult to make out, but I think the green, blue and yellow/orange are on the top right. I sure would love that matching pitcher to go with them!

And it figures I'd pick up sunny yellow and orange Daisy Pyrex on the warmest day of the year! I love that these had their decorated lids. In what is now almost 5 years of Pyrex collecting, I've never come across these 2 pieces in the wild. I'd love to find the versions with the opal lids, to display, and keep these clear lidded ones in my everyday users cabinet.

Hope you are finding thrifty treats and treasures where you are!

Happy Thrifting!

Favorite finds from 2014

Recently I've seen several folks do a recap of their favorite finds of 2014 which I thought was a great idea! So I spent a little while looking over my photos and deciding what my standout favorites were.

First off, I found my first Cathrineholm. The skillet was an unmarked Goodwill find and the bowl is an unmarked square pattern that isn't as frequently seen as the popular Lotus design. I would be thrilled to find more pieces in the wild for good prices!

I thrifted these sweet little McKee Glasbake custard cups for 99 cents total. I love polka dots!

I also found a vintage holy grail - a custard McKee dots dish! In the same antique store I found the Snowflake Blue dish to finish my round casseroles (470's) and got a fantastic deal on some pink fridgies!

On the Fire King front, I bought the blue band and pink band bowls to complete my Stripes set.

I also thrifted my favorite Fire King mug ever - a 99 cent reStore purchase.

These original ads were antique store purchases, but were inexpensive - I spent 3 times what I paid for them to frame them, lol!

I didn't realize when I thrifted this vintage Lisa Frank lunch bag just how much I'd use it and love it. It's held drinks and snacks for my husband and I on many a yard sale day/antique trek. It also seems like Lisa Frank is on a major resurgance lately. I saw so many different knickknacky Lisa Frank items at the Dollar General around Christmas this year, I requested them for my stocking stuffers.







And speaking of yard sales, this is one of my very favorite finds of the year. And it definitely wins for best yard sale score.







I wish I had the slightest idea who made these canisters. They are unmarked. Chances are good they were sold nested with only a sticker on them or a cardboard holder/box.



The turquoise set was a junk store find earlier in the year. Each set was 5 bucks! I really want to know who made these and what color combinations exist!




And on the Pyrex front, I thrifted a new cabinet (that I still haven't painted!) to store some of my favorite pieces. I've toyed around with the idea for years of taking a turquoise Pyrex mixing bowl with me to have color matched at the store, and this year I think I'm really going to do it. It might make me rethink what pieces I have on display, but that's okay with me. What I'd really like to do is turquoise on the outsides and as the drawer color, but white shelves and insides with white framing the whole piece. I'd also like to measure the backs of the shelves and have some kind of thin wood that could be painted or framed with fabric. I'd start off with black & white chevrons, but I'd also like to try just a solid lime green as well.








 I found my second turquoise bowl set in the wild, and I shamelessly snapped them up.








I also very recently added my first piece of turquoise bakeware.

I also scored my very first Pyrex in the original box!










And added a couple of great Horizon Blue pieces to my collection. I love those decorated opal lids so much!

Added two Friendship pieces I'd never seen in the wild before.
















Also recently added these unusual labware pieces to my collection. Butterfly Gold looks really neat in blue!







Finally, to round out the year, I added a couple of Christmas items that were high on my wishlist. First I found several working strands of bubble lights at a yard sale for 10 bucks, then I added 7 more boxes via thrift stores!

I also bought my favorite favorite favorite box of Shiny Brites I've ever seen for sale. I paid the price for them, but I'm totally okay with that. Love 'em!

So I think this is the longest post ever! I'm sure I've forgotten things, and failed to post some good stuff. Maybe sometime I will catch up with the rest of the world, get a smartphone and do that ole instagram thing all the kool kats and hep chicks are talking about.

I've not really gotten out so far this year. Went thrifting once. Found a lady head vase for my mom and few Pyrex mugs, but that's it so far. Hopefully we'll hit the town by Valentine's Day and find some new treasures.

Looking forward to finding all sorts of neat treasures in 2015!

Happy Thrifting!

Thrift scores and a day on the town

This Caboodle is one of those 1980's childhood nostalgia items that came home with me despite having no idea what I was going to do with it. It might replace the train case I'm currently using to hold makeup. I actually still have my childhood one (it's light pink and purple) but I couldn't resist this black & white one with hot pink interior.

Continuing the trend of finding my entire American Sweetheart depression glass collection via thrift stores, I got these sherbets with metal holders for $1.99 a piece. To my knowledge, these are the only clear pieces in the American Sweetheart pattern, though MacBeth Evans did produce other patterns and colors with these same metal holders. I wanted to show one out of the holder and flipped so you can see how the glass was actually made. 

Since my husband and I were a bit disappointed with our big trip out this last Wednesday, we took the opportunity yesterday to go in a different direction and go to some other out-of-the-way antique stores. I bought this empty Shiny Brite box for two dollars to hold some of my smaller, loose ornaments. I didn't photograph it well, but I love the detail of Uncle Sam shaking Santa's hand.

Truthfully, I paid a small fortune for both of these pieces, but as my husband said to me in the antique store, I'm getting to the point in my collection where pieces I want, but don't have already, are becoming harder and harder to find, and they are probably going to be fairly expensive when I do.

I got the turquoise 2 quart baker (my first piece of turquoise bakeware!) for 30 dollars and felt rather bad for being willing to pay so much. Curiosity got the better of me, so when I got home I checked ebay for what they were going for, and pretty much immediately changed my outlook. Now I feel like it was practically a steal. (Well, maybe not a steal, but a good deal, nonetheless :-)

The 2 1/2 quart Snowflake Blue casserole was the first time I'd seen this piece in the wild, so I went for it. Merry Christmas to me! I'm getting pretty close to a complete collection of this pattern - even the matching Corelle. I love it!

I also have a couple of items still soaking in a nice, warm bath that I'm saving for another post!

***

I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to get out and hunt for this stuff. Every trip my husband and I take together is a memory I won't soon forget. I frequently complain on this blog about prices, prices, prices, but in truth, I still love collecting Pyrex. It's been a really fun hobby. Thrift shopping and antiquing are something my husband and I really love to do together. And though we are looking for different types of items, so many times he's spotted something for me that he knows I like, and I just enjoy that so much - seeing him with something in his hands he knows I'm looking for. And he's actually pretty darn good at it, too!

I'm grateful that we have had the health to get out and go places together. And that we've had the disposable income to set aside purely for enjoyment. That is a real blessing and a true gift.

I sincerely wish everyone a very *Wonderful Christmas* Happy Hanukkah* Happy Holidays*, and a much blessed and prosperous *New Year*!

Happy Thrifting!

Thrift Scores

Seems to be a running theme here that I've been absent for a couple of weeks. This time it's been because of an awful flu my husband caught first, then of course I caught it. Still not over it after a week & a half, we both just wanted to get out of the house for a little while yesterday.

So we went thrifting & popped into a couple of our favorite nearby antique stores. Here's my loot:

I cannot even say how much I love these ornaments. They were an antique store splurge, but I had to have them. This was the first time I've found a box of Shiny Brites for less than 25 dollars a box, and half of them are my favorite - indents! So I went for it.

I also picked up a copy of a Southern-based antiques magazine called the Busy Bee Trader, which also happened to have this fantastic article on the history of Shiny Brites. Found out something I never knew - that Corning produced these ornaments. Yet another Corning product I collect and never knew it!

These Friendship casseroles were together like they were a pair, and no sign of the other pieces that actually did come with originally. I had one already, with the opal version of the lid, so now I've got one of each and a spare. I just can't pass up Friendship if it's at all reasonably priced. Last time I saw a piece of Friendship in the wild, it was a 403 mixing bowl for 30 dollars. Ouch!

And here's my two thrift finds:

Couldn't get a good picture of this baby pink Rubbermaid silverware tray. I have the exact same one in turquoise already, but it was probably made a bit more recently than this one. The pink has an older, cursive script on the Rubbermaid logo, but my turquoise one has the current logo, a block script inside an oval shape.

And finally, this piece of Markley descoware has been put through the ringer, but I had to buy it anyway. I love the pattern! My husband spotted it for me. I think his hunting instincts come out when we go thrifting and antiquing. It's both sweet and maddening at the same time, because he's always racing ahead to try to find the good stuff, but he's calling me over while I'm still looking somewhere he's already moved on from. I lag behind because I'm looking for possibly buried treasure!

Hope this has been a good week for you!

Happy Treasure Hunting!

Fire King Stripes set complete!

Picked up the largest pink bowl today at a local antique store for $14.99 and it completed my set!

It's a shade lighter than the grease jar and shakers, so if I get the chance to, I really wouldn't mind picking up another darker one and relegating this lighter pink to an everyday user bowl. Typically in my area Fire King bowls are more expensive than Pyrex, and seem to be more fragile, so they're mostly display-only pieces in my collection - though I do use some jadeite and turquoise blue pieces from time to time.

There is also a batter bowl that I'd like to have. The band is red, so it doesn't exactly fit this pink/blue/yellow color scheme, I still think it would be a nice compliment to them.


And I also found a really cool vintage item that even though I was with my husband when we bought it I asked him to wrap it up and give it to me for Christmas. I'm excited to share it after Christmas!

How's everyone coming on the Christmas decorating? We put up our tree last night. I'm still mussing and fussing with ornaments and decorations. I'll get it together at some point, lol!

Hope you found nice surprises this weekend!

Happy Thrifting!