A small, boring haul post!

Lol.

That's what I'm feeling most often these days when I think about this poor, neglected blog. I'm partly to blame for my lack of finds. I just got frustrated with the lack of 'good stuff' at the thrift, and the major price increases.

So I lost quite a bit of interest, which, honestly makes me sad. I still love this stuff now as much as I ever did, I just don't find much these days to actually post about.

So forgive me for my small, if boring, thrift haul.

First off, these Corelle bowls are some of my favorites. These two are the more beigey stoneware color that seemed to be their creative direction in the maybe late 70's - 1980's era, when Corning starting manufacturing different shapes and styles to compete with the stoneware that had gained popularity at the time. I'd fact check here, but my favorite site for all things Corning - the now defunct (?) Corellecorner.com site - seems to no longer be searchable. One of many valuable collector resources that no longer seem to exist online anymore. Sigh.

And these two little Fire King bowls! I was just so happy to see them. When I saw them on the shelves I had this feeling I can barely describe. Just a very sudden awareness of how many years I've been thrifting things like this, and just how long its been since the last time I had.

All these bowls were 35-40 cents each.  Now that's a price I can get behind! lol.

And finally, this isn't boring to me at all - Vintage Ornaments! But no crazy good scores, just very sweet ones. Most of these boxes cost a dollar each.

These Woolworth's ornaments are my third box now, each from a slightly different era. I'm going to do a collection post soon, and I'm looking forward to getting to play with my collection!

From what I can tell from checking online, some Woolworth's ornaments had the thin, narrow top like this. I'm always interested in knowing details like these so I can reunite sets.

These can't be vintage. They just seem too perfectly try-hard. They did not come in this box. This was one of those frustrating times when I wanted these 6 ornaments, but they were in two different boxes with a bunch of ornaments I didn't want. Plus this box was there, sold seperately, but it would hold 6 perfectly. So I bought 3 boxes to cobble together this one. Still, I don't think 3 dollars is too steep an investment. :-)

Look at these details! I'd love to know where (and when) these actually came from!

These guys just pulled me in by their simplicity. Not the oldest ornaments ever, not by a longshot, but still vintage. Or kindly put, Retro. I still think they're great.

And speaking of new vintage style, I couldn't pass up this vintage style gift wrap. $2.99 at TJ Maxx.

Shiny Brite logo!

I bought one roll to use and one for projects. Love it!


So that's my thrift haul for now! Hope you're finding fantastic treasures where you are!


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!

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!

A few finds

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th!

I haven't been out much since my last post. I've gone to the thrift store exactly once, and of course what do I find but more Corelle?

This time it's the coordinating Colonial Mist pattern, which I'd never seen before. These 5 plates were taped together for 2 dollars and I just couldn't pass them up. And a couple of Butterfly Gold teacups were there as well.

Yesterday we got to go to a few of my favorite antique stores. My husband said he could hear the quick intake of air when I saw these from several feet away:

And actually, it wasn't even the whole casserole together. It was just the lid, but I had the casserole at home with no decorated lid. So I was very happy to be able to reunite them.

The Friendship baker is the first time I've ever seen this piece in the wild. It was more than I cared to pay for it, but less than ebay, so I was coming home with it, without a doubt. The dealer who rang me up was the one who brought it in, and she kinda hugged it to her before wrapping it up. My husband said that he didn't think she'd wanted to give it up just yet. She told me she'd just put it out an hour before. Lucky timing!

That's all my finds for now.

Hope you're finding fantastic treats and treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

Thrift Roundup

Well, thrifting for Pyrex has been a total bust lately. All that I find these days are lids, usually expensive lids at that. But these were 49 cents a piece, so I scooped them up.

Also really happy to find my first bubble lights. No date on the package, but they look 1980's-ish to me? These will be on my tree this year if they are all working. I haven't tried them all 3 strings out yet, just the one (which worked fine but was missing one) due to the pain-in-the-toosh factor of removing them from their individual little cubbie holes, plugging them in, holding them upright to get them bubbling, then carefully placing them back in their packaging. Just lighting the one strand took me and the husband both, they just would not bubble hanging upside down.

So this next item, a clock, may just be the kind of thing only a mother could love. Or me. Cause I'm nuts?

This is a molded plastic, faux wood, faux window, country barn scene clock. It works, too. There is even a faux tree painted on the faux window. My first thought when I saw it was, it would look so cute painted white. Is that even true? Or have I fallen into some thrift-induced object dysmorphia that sees beauty that isn't actually there? 

Oh, and here's something else totally 1980's and totally wood grain:

Two more Heartland items I didn't have - a towel bar/paper towel holder thingy, and the 3rd set of salt & pepper shakers I've picked up, all different. Both of the shakers are setting off OCD I wasn't even aware that I had, because the pattern isn't lined up beneath the S or P, and is only on one side so there's nothing you can do about it other than just accept that if you collect Heartland, your pieces are going to be a little wonky. And maybe, just maybe, you're just a bit wonky yourself ;-)

These are my husband's finds. He's not going to blog about them, so I will. He has an Andre the Giant that is just like the Hulk Hogan. He scored the Hogan for a buck. Wish we'd find duplicates of both of them so he'd finally use them. Ever since breaking his prized McCoy Star Trek glass, I think he's afraid to use any more of his favorites. Poor guy! I was in the kitchen when the McCoy glass broke. He just went to set it down on the table, normally, and it just shattered like he had Hulk strength.The dangers of collecting vintage glassware. Sometimes glass just breaks, no matter how careful you are with it :-(

And finally, I picked up this set of Woodland Corelle with Pyrex teacups at an unusual Sunday yard sale, day after Mother's Day. I have a problem I think. This stuff used to be so plentiful around here just a few years ago. At Goodwill, I'd find the teacups for 29 cents, plates for 99 cents or less, and everything else some price in between. I bought a lot of it, got overwhelmed with it all, and donated it back to another thrift store.

Now this stuff is getting hard to find and expensive when I do. I guess I have a now-or-never mentality about it when I do find it for cheap. Purchase in haste, repent in leisure? I don't know. I like the pattern on Corelle. On a white background - as opposed to white on brown or caramel - the pattern seems understated. Now I'm finding myself wanting a cabinet just for my Corelle, and I'm positively marveling at myself that I am.



Hope you're finding great Junk this weekend!

Happy Thrifting!

Birthday shopping

We didn't get to go out last weekend for my birthday, so we rescheduled to yesterday. Low and behold, I found some more pieces to my Snowflake Blue Corelle set I've been building lately. This is the 1 quart bowl, 2 quart bowl and the oval platter (it doesn't look very oval in the picture, but it is). I also picked up the oval platter in Butterfly Gold for my mom's set.

These were pretty cheap - and one of the more unusual Corning Ware patterns I don't see often. This is the green version of Medallion. There is also a blue version. Corellecorner.com calls these Shell Oil promotional pieces. These and Country Festival are the patterns I'm actually collecting, though I've also managed to amass a stock of Wildflower I don't know if I'm keeping or not. I already collect enough Pyrex to run Corning Ware out of the kitchen, trouble is, I like them both. I just need a bigger kitchen!

These were my Pyrex finds for the day:

I love the vivid orange Daisy 403 bowl. And the best thing about it is it finishes my set!

The larger-sized pressed flowers casserole also finishes something of a set as well. Again, according to Corellecorner.com, these casseroles were the first pieces of promotional Pyrex that featured a pattern.

And these were my two biggest SQUEEEEEEE's for the day:

I have this set plus spares already, but it took me YEARS to complete that very first set. Plus I paid a good bit for that last piece because it was the last one I needed. So now I find the whole set at once, with lids, for what I think is a fantastic price - $29.75 (35 minus a 15% discount). No way I was going to leave without them.

And speaking of Pink Gooseberry, I've been actively searching for this pattern in particular and buying anything I find even remotely reasonably priced because it's the other pattern besides Butterfly Gold that my mom really loves. I've bought nearly everything I can get my hands on, in triplicate - one for me, one for mom, and when I find it again, a spare for either of us.

That said, yesterday, I could have come out of my shoes at the prices I saw. I saw more Pink Gooseberry in a single store than I've seen the whole time I've collected, and other than my surprisingly cheap complete fridgie set I just bought, the prices were NUTSY BUGGO. A greatest hits of Pyrex prices I saw was a set of Pink Gooseberry Cinderella bowls for $175, two different sets for $199 each, and get this one - a Daisy divided dish for 99 dollars.

I also saw some fair prices on pieces I kind of hated to leave behind, but that's not unusual either. All in all, I really didn't see anything uncommon. And though I got some great deals, I still feel like if I'm ever going to have a Starburst or a Rooster space saver or Pink Butterprint someone is going to have to deliver it to my doorstep. Pyrex prices are definitely in a state of flux right now. Some dealers seem to be pricing it the same as years past and some seem to think they're going to get rich off of it.

And one final SQEEE:

My second piece of Cathrineholm! And I found it at Goodwill for 2.99!!

It has a touch of damage on the handle, but is in good condition. I love it, I love Cathrineholm, I just can't do the online prices. But I'll very happily treasure the rare and few pieces I find afforably.

That's all for my belated Birthday treasures.

Wishing all you Moms out there a wonderful Mother's Day. Moms make the world go round!

Happy Thrifting!

Last nights thrift finds

We almost didn't go out last night (I've been saying that a lot lately). We're still broke from our Valentine's Day splurges. But the only thrifts that were open were Goodwill, and I had some loyalty points burning a hole in my pocket, so we went anyway.

I couldn't resist these seahorses. So sweet and so utterly tacky. My husband kept accidentally calling them sawhorses. I told him that these sawhorses might just be hanging up on the bathroom wall when he gets home from work ;-)

Funny thing about the chicken mug stand - it's actually a matching Sears Chicken Little item to the very canisters behind it! Believe it or not, I didn't even put that together in my head until this morning. A little poking around the net led me to this page from the 1976 Sears Big Book. This page has tons of cute stuff, including a whole range of Merry Mushrooms items.

It was Corelle night. I bought the stack of hook handled mugs all taped together with the matching creamer. No sugar bowl. I always wonder when I find odds & ends like this if there was more donated and someone else just beat me to it, or if these were it. Worse still is when the cashier says something like "Oh, someone else just bought a whole bunch of this earlier."

Isn't that just the pits? I just try to smile it off, knowing that there are times I'm sure I was the other side of that equation.

Like when I bought these bowls, the cashier said "Oh, I know someone who comes in here looking for this very thing." I'm not sure if she meant the Spring Blossom pattern specifically, or if she meant Corelle in general. I didn't ask. I felt somewhat guilty, like I was buying the phantom other persons Corelle bowls.

I have never even seen the larger of the two bowls before. It's the same diameter as a dinner plate. HUGE bowl.  Even if Crazy Daisy Spring Blossom Green isn't my favorite pattern, it sure is useful. In fact, I'm certain my husband prefers to mix/heat things up in Corelle serving bowls when possible, just so there's no chance he breaks one of my Pyrex mixing bowls.

And finally, Oh my very Goodness. I could.not.love.these.more.

These so-sweet little Glasbake custard cups were all taped together for 99 cents. If bowls were as cute as baby kittens, they'd be these bowls.

Huh?

One is in better shape than the rest and one is more worn. These will probably never be used again. They are just too precious. And it's unfortunate, because I'd use them in a heartbeat, but some of these vintage treasures just do not have the ability to withstand everyday use and wear.

This pattern dates back to the late 1930's as seen in this amazing advertisement. And this site itself is a fantastic resource for vacuum coffee maker fans like myself :-)

Anyways, I'm really glad we got out. Now I'm cash-poor and with no more loyalty credit until payday!

Hope you are finding the snazziest stuff!

Happy Thrifting!

Second thrifting trip of the new year

I was happy to pick up these 3 Cronin Tulip pieces, 7 dollars for the three. I collect this pattern, but haven't added a new piece in some time.

Next up, just a small hodge-podge of housewares. Nothing too rare or exciting, but all things I collect. The Corning Ware coffee perk is my first electric. Haven't tried it yet, but it was in lovely condition, so I bit the bullet and bought it.

I also found two Spring Blossom Corelle plates, two Fiesta mugs in discontinued P86 Rose & Persimmon. And also somewhat coffee related, two metal heat diffusers. These guys would be used with Pyrex Flameware or other glass cookware, allowing it to sit on the coils of an electric stove. 

And finally, a blast from the past. Lisa Frank! I hate to say it, but if this hadn't been kittens, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. (or unicorns. Or..or....okay, I probably would have picked it up no matter what was on it, lol!)

I can't tell a whits difference between current Lisa Frank stuff and 'vintage', so I really don't know how old this is. And I can't find one like it to compare. But I bought it to use. ( I like to load up a couple of coolers of drinks and snacks to keep me and the hubs powered up through our epic all-day antique shopping trips we take every few months or so. :-)

Lisa Frank inevitably reminds me Trapper Keepers. And have you seen how much 1980's Trapper Keepers are going for these days? Gah! In all my thrifting, I've never come across a single one. I'd collect the crap out of vintage Trapper Keepers if given the opportunity. Haha.

Anyways, that's my second thrift haul of this new year :-)

Hope you're finding great stuff!

Happy Thrifting!

Auction loot

Went to an auction this weekend. There were a fair amount of things that my husband & I were interested in, but of course that was the stuff that went sky high. Everything I came home with was part of box lots at the end of the night.

These little Swanky Swigs were part of a box of probably 30 various drinking glasses I paid a whole dollar for. Since I didn't have any intention of buying a bazillion drinking glasses, I had nothing to cushion them with on the ride home. It was a musical ride, let me tell you. From the box I rescued these guys, a set of 8 juice glasses, and some pretty blue drinking glasses I'm giving to my mom. The rest of the lot is getting donated.

This was the only Pyrex of the night. It was also a box lot with half the kitchen sink thrown in just for good measure. The Corelle is better shape than it necessarily looks in the pictures. It's got the characteristic rust marks of Corelle & Corningware that hasn't been used in a decade or two. I can probably get them out pretty easily with Corning Ware cleaner or Bar Keeper's Friend. This lot was my priciest item of the night, 15 dollars. I need that Corelle like I need a hole in the head, but such is life.

I did find a couple of things at the thrift last week that I hadn't blogged about yet, but my camera batteries decided to die after the last photo. Perhaps they don't like Corelle. Or maybe they looooove Corelle and they didn't want anything to upstage it. Or perhaps personifying camera batteries is just silly.

Hope you are finding super snazzy stuff!

Happy Thrifting!