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!

Thrift loot

I've been hitting the thrift stores a little bit lately. It's still mostly misses but just enough good stuff slips through to keep me coming back for more.

The other days find were these yellow vintage Dansk Kobenstyle pieces. They were 6 dollars each and another couple of dollars for the lids - no matching dishes to go with them, unfortunately. I have only a handful other pieces of Kobenstyle, all thrifted.

These all have chips around the edges, but the cooking surfaces are in good shape and I actually look forward to using them! The baker is very large. The scant bit of research I did on them when I got home gave me the impression this was the largest baker available. And from the lid sizes, the covered pot is the medium sized of the set.

I believe these are enamel over steel, which would seem like a good budget alternative (and lighter weight) than the enameled cast iron pieces popular during this same time period. I have a few of those as well, and it's impressive how heavy cast iron can be, especially in the larger pieces!

I bought this chip and dip set halfway hoping I had a bracket at home that would fit it. But I did not. So the search continues! lol

A few more thrift finds. The red JSNY tray is a part of a seemingly neverending pattern called "Country Calico" metalware and ceramics that I started picking up to dovetail in with my International China "Heartland" dishes - neither of these sets I have any need of whatsoever! I have a house full of dishes and my Heartland set is one of those things that's always on the chopping block but never manages to get cut.

The Pyrex was another moment where I really, really did not need doubles of things I have already. But they just hopped into my hands. I really do think I have emotional weakness to decorated opal lids. Even in a not-favorite pattern, they are just so cute. At least the lid and refrigerator dish were cheap!

And finally, and antique store purchase. I hemmed and hawwed about getting this damaged, incomplete set for the 25 dollar asking price, but then noticed the booth was on 30% off. So I got them. The lettering on the tea canister is the best, but the canister itself is cracked. I don't use these plastic canisters anyway, they are for cuteness factor only, but it's always nice to find your pretties in pristine condition. I rarely do, but I imagine it's nice - lol!

I've found quite a bit of pink kitchen goodies in the last few months. Probably more than I've accumulated over all the years I've been collecting vintage goodies. No idea why, but I'm certainly not complaining.

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

Happy Thrifting!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!