Birthday loot and a couple of yardsale finds

This is the nicest grouping of Riviera I've ever run into. It was reasonably priced in an antique mall, and it was my birthday, so perfect time to splurge!

The juice pitcher is a first for me. I'd never even seen one in real life before now. I was happy with the price and happier still that all my bigger serving pieces from this line are turning out to be one of each color.

All the pieces are in surprisingly excellent shape, given that Riviera is pretty prone to chipping. Most of the rest of my pieces have some imperfections but I am now getting to the point where I'd like to start removing the ones with the most damage, until I have a mostly undamaged collection.

The rest of my finds are yardsale. I spent around 5 bucks for the lot. The red refrigerator dishes came with extra lids - who doesn't love that!?

The pink ashtrays are either Depression Glass or repro's, I haven't looked them up to determine. And the little syrup was another sweet little find to add to my growing pink kitchenware collection.

I've had a pretty good week yardsaling recently, but I don't have my goodies photographed yet, so hopefully I will do that soon.

Hope you're finding great junk out there!

Happy Thrifting!

Anniversary goodness

Another anniversary spent out of town, looking for more vintage goodness.

I didn't turn up a whole lot. Found a few things I would have loved if the price had been right. Little by little I'm learning not to get too excited when I see something I want before I see the price tag.

Here's the loot I did bring home:

A chippy, but charming, vintage Fiesta teapot in Cobalt blue. 8 small pink MacBeth Evans Dogwood plates I got from a super cheap and cheerful booth.

And two pieces of Pyrex - the Snowflake Blue because I needed it to complete my 480 casserole set, and a duplicate *ahem* triplicate red Friendship casserole set I bought because I wanted it to replace the duplicate piece I have that has a small chip in the handle.

And Hooray! I found the new must-have Pyrex! And on our wedding anniversary, no less!

A very kind Walmart employee with a magical scanner device hunted these down for me. We were at least an hour and a half away from home, so I felt a little bit like a poacher, checking 'someone elses' Walmart. But it was the end of the night and we still had a long drive home, and tired as we already were we thought we might as well check yet another Walmart for these.

Plus I was hoping we'd have some anniversary luck. And we did! Good thing too because 'my Walmart' can't find these dishes, and the ones nearby have already sold all theirs/have them on order/can't find/haven't gotten them.

I wanted to take a picture of them with the original vintage dishes I thought were closest in size. These are 472's  (the middle size).

The Butterprint pattern is really close in size to the original, but as you can see, the Snowflake Blue pattern is quite a bit bigger, as well as a darker color than the original.

I also realized that this is the first time in nearly 50 years that Pyrex has actually produced the Butterprint pattern. Nifty!

And finally, my husband got the Twin Peaks soundtrack lp for me as a surprise anniversary gift.

I was a weird kid. I remember there being buzz about Twin Peaks before it started, enough so that I remember watching the two hour premiere.

It came on as a mid-season replacement on ABC. I remember me and my grandmother sitting there, watching the opening credits.

I was mesmerized by the music. It was the second time in my young life that the music from something just grabbed me up and stuck in my brain. (The other song, in case you were wondering, which I'm sure you aren't, was when Bo and Hope got married on Days of our Lives. Lol.)

When I was in high school I saw the soundtrack on cassette tape, for sale, used and cheap, so my broke teenager self bought it. And played it CONSTANTLY. It was moody and weird and melodic and quirky and just everything that I loved.

I have spent my adult life buying Twin Peaks (the series) in pretty much every format it's ever been in. Had a boyfriend or two that said they'd done the same thing with buying Star Wars in its many incarnations.

It's been long enough that I watched the VHS box set go from the record store price of $149.00 (pre-internet days), to $85.00 or so though Amazon (dial-up internet days), to used media store price of $12.99 (so cheap I bought a second copy, lol).

I've yet to pony up for the blu ray. I'm sure I will at some point. But for now, I just enjoy the warm, creepy feeling I get when I listen to my snazzy new vinyl lp.

Anyways, that's all for now.

Hope you're finding cool treats and nifty treasures!

Happy Thrifting!


 

Recent finds

Finally it seems Spring has sprung, and the world of vintage goodness is opening back up again. I added two expensive pieces to my collection lately, both of which I'd never seen for sale before, so I splurged on them.

The Verde baker was a hard one to pay $ for, but I think I'm secretly wishing to be able to have the complete stack of these bakers. Still missing even after 6 years of hunting in the wild is Butterfly Gold and the Rust colored one. And they'll probably be a billion dollars each when I do find them, lol.

And this Spirograph base is such a pretty color - much prettier than how it looks in this picture. Killed me to pay 38 dollars for it, knowing that the chances I'll ever find the lid are slim, but no way could I have left without it. It turned out to be my only purchase of the day I spent in numerous antique stores and large flea market, so it didn't really hurt that I'd spent most of my fun money on a single piece.

And yay for all thrift store finds! My husband found this Daisy oval casserole for me at GW for $3.99. Happy Happy! The unmarked yellow canister is a duplicate, but I couldn't resist it for 99 cents. Each of the Hazel Atlas pieces were also 99 cents. I'd never seen this yellow and pink colorway before. I have a stray pink and black plate from this same line, so I suppose I'm very slowly collecting the different colors.

Technically, this is my husband's find, but he never blogs. Plus, I was the one who insisted he couldn't leave without it, I'll take the blame. This was a GW find for $14.99, which I thought was an ok price, but my husband thinks is gold and diamonds money, so I had to pull the trigger for him. He's collected Fisher Price stuff for a few years now, along with vinyl records, and coupled with my Pyrex addiction, we've done nothing but watch the things we collect and love go up and up in price. I suspect many of you feel my pain there.

The only new addition here is the Glasbake Have a nice Day mug. It's in rough shape, but was too cute for 99 cents, same day I bought the little Hazel Atlas teacup & saucers. It looks just fine with my other dishwashy tulip mugs.

I bought these for my mom. Both are Jeannette glass but different patterns. The large bowl is Iris & Herringbone, the small bowls Floragold. She collects carnival glass and I thought this would dovetail into her collection quite nicely. It was 5.99 for the 6 pieces, which I thought was a good price.

An antique store find and a little oddity. I was super happy to grab up this pink 503 refrigerator dish for 15 dollars in an antique store. Wasn't so long ago that 15 dollars for this piece without a lid would have seemed kinda expensive to me. Now I'm like OMG THAT'S SO CHEAP.

And these little mugs are Butterfly Gold, but marked Termo Rey made in Brazil. Oh I miss Corelle Corner! I know absolutely nothing about how these knock-offs came about. The glass itself is much more similar to Fire King than Pyrex. Another odd Butterfly Gold that I'm keeping for myself. (Sorry, mom! Lol!)

And finally, my one score from a Friday spent yardsaleing all day. I spotted this from a moving vehicle in the bed of someones trailer. It was filthy black and behind a tub, to boot, so how I saw the thing at all beats me. Best part is the guy sold it to me for a buck! Cheapest Pyrex I've ever yardsaled!
And it cleaned up great.

Well, there's my finds for now. I'm hoping to yardsale again Friday. Fingers crossed for some awesome loot!

Hope you're finding great goodies where you are!

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!

Birthday loot

Got to take a trip for my birthday to some antique stores and flea markets we don't get to go to very often.

Picked up this little clock for my collection, and some Hazel Atlas Ripple saucers for a budget friendly dollar a piece.

The jadeite mixer was an antique store purchase, but the dinner plates were a surprise flea market score. These are the only large jadeite dinner plates I own, and also the only pieces of the Shell pattern.

The (unmarked) Hazel Atlas dots glasses were also, amazingly, a flea market score. I'm pleasantly surprised at how many polka dot glasses I've found in just the last few months! The green dot Anchor Hocking pitcher came later at an antique store, marked down too cheap to pass up. It's a duplicate for me, but I'm glad to have a spare!

I bought every bit of this Pyrex because it was super-dooper cheap. The little blue fridgie was 2 dollars in an antique store! I thought those kinds of prices were long gone. Added a 3rd bowl to my Shenandoah bowl set that I totally forgot to photograph. Those were my only Pyrex purchases. Eveything else that I was interested in was insanely high priced.

I have such a crush on Hocking green depression glass canisters. Wish I could afford them! But these sweet shakers were in my budget, so they came home with me. Fingers crossed that I add some of their canister brothers and sisters to them in the future. And I'm not a thousand percent positive, but I think I saw some fakes of these the other day. Perfect, brand new-looking silver lids with a weird quality to the glass. Almost like it had spider-webbing imperfections in the glass itself.

 

My Spring Blossom purchases were actually just the baker at an antique store and the dinner plates from the thrift. My husband bought me the largest mixing bowl for my birthday to complete my set, so I decided they needed a completed/updated photo.

Our trip brought us close to a Corelle/Corningware outlet, so I picked up an extra turquoise dots bowl and the pink lidded bowl for my mom.

And finally, more Fiesta relish tray inserts! (Blogger turned this pic sideways, so I'm rolling with it). 10 dollars each was not the screamin' deal I got on my almost-complete relish tray I just lucked into, but still a perfectly respectable bargain, I believe. I really love the relish trays! It continues to amaze me when I find pieces for a nice price.

So that's my birthday loot. Had a nice trip, great weather. Especially nice for walking around an outdoor flea market.

Hope you are finding nifty treats and treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

Flea market finds

All of these are flea market finds, except the semi-tragic Kit Kat Klock I hemmed and hawed about coming home with. And mostly, they were all cheap and cheerful, my kind of prices!

I added a Country Calico tray to my CC/Heartland horde, small fridgie lid, and two sweet little pieces of green depression glass for just a couple of bucks.

Spent a little more for this turquoise mixing bowl and unusual - at least to me- Pyrex Corning belt buckle.

Didn't have a chance to clean it up yet when I snapped this picture. I'm not sure what the 42 commemorates. Though I did see that the 'reverse dollar sign' symbol is actually the letter "P" for Pyrex on top, with the letter "C" for Corning below it.

The "C" begins right above the bottom of the "P", so that is actually two little lines instead of one straight across. I feel silly now that I never released that's what the 'reverse dollar sign' actually signified!

My one antique store purchase, this poor (formerly) pink Kit Kat Klock. I thought someone had bedazzled it themselves but once I got home with it I see that it's actually orginal. It doesn't work, is missing a hand and tail, and the jewels just put it over the top, but it's going into my crazy clock collection regardless. At least it was really cheap!

And finally, a couple more cheap and cheerful flea finds. Another Language of Flowers Glasbake mug for my unintentional collection, a sweet somewhat rusty unmarked Ransburg match holder, and two Pyrex lids. One is square and belongs to the old 1920's refrigerator dishes. I've never seen the bottom of one for sale but this lid will go into my stash because you never know what you'll see at the thrift.

Hope you're out finding snazzy treats and treasures!

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!

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!

Depression Glass thrift store finds

Not much new to report on the thrifting front. I've been staying away from antique stores, saving up my nickels and dimes for an anniversary shopping trip if all goes well we'll take about 3 weeks from now.

I did however find these two pieces of Depression glass, two different thrifts on two different days, and they both came home with me.

This sweet little pink creamer is Hazel Atlas Florentine #1 - an entertwining Poppy pattern hard for me to photograph. Apparently this is the smooth top version. But there is a ruffled top version that looks like the same ruffles on the Ripple (Crinoline) dinnerware also made by Hazel Atlas.

Can you see the Ballerina, or Dancing Girl? I was trying to get a picture of this detail - which is practically impossible with the lighting in my house and my out of date camera. I haven't measured the plate but I'm sure it's in the range of either a small dinner plate or luncheon sized. This pattern is Cameo by Hocking Glass (which became Anchor Hocking a few years after production of this pattern ceased.)

I only rarely come across Depression Glass at the thrifts, but what I have found I really do like. My entire collection, save one piece, has all come from thrift stores or auctions for super-thrifty prices. But despite not having much experience with Depression Glass, I really enjoy reading the several different books I have and trying to learn to recognize the patterns on site. I correctly identified these pieces from memory - I was proud of myself :-)

Finally, a Corning Ware handle for 99 cents. I find these every once in a while, but never in the original package, so I thought that was neat.

I also bought a vintage metal stool that I hope to repaint soon. A future project I hope to document here!

Hope your thrifting/junkin/antiquing has been more productive than mine :-)

Happy Thrifting!