Thrift and antique store roundup

It's hard to keep up a thrifting blog when you just aren't finding anything. Thrift stores have been devoid of treasure. And this time of year it seems like more dealers are moving out of antique stores than moving in, so the finds have been few and far between. But yesterday, hubs and I finally found a few treasures.

I added this vintage glass to my collection for 40 cents from a thrift store that used to be a sweet spot for thrift goodness. But it was the only thing I went home with other than some Shirley Temple videos for my mom. This thrift now puts everything I collect in its collectibles section, and asks a few dollars more than I'd expect to see at an antique store.

Then I have a moment in an antique store where I buy something I don't really need, because it's cheap (or at least cheap for around here, that is). This Spring Blossom bowl was in good shape and for $5.75, it came home with me.

The only new addition from this picture here is the burgundy/maroon pie plate (the lime happened to be in the dish drainer, so I thought I'd include it for something of a color reference). I think this burgundy color is uncommon. It's not the in the greatest shape, and it wasn't exactly cheap, but I thought I'd regret it if I passed it up. It was 12 dollars.

More Gemco go-alongs for my Snowflake Blue collection. From a half-off booth, 6 dollars for the set.

And finally, a few flea market treasure from a few weeks ago.

I'm always excited to add Riviera pieces to my very slow-growing collection. Even more excited when they were in great shape and just a few dollars for the set.

I paid a bit more for the green handled utensils and whatnots, the beginning of a new collection of green that I probably shouldn't have started. I think I was under the influence of having fallen in love with a green handled utensil/enamelware/jadeite display I'd seen in an antique store before, but all the pieces were priced higher than I could ever see myself paying. So when I saw these guys at the flea market for quite a bit less I went a bit overboard, lol!

Other than some lids, that's all I've bought so far this year. I'm sad that it isn't as fun or fruitful to go thrift/junk/antique shopping these days, but on the other hand, I've been clearing things out and parting with piled-up stuff I probably shouldn't have bought in the first place, and it's nice to be making some space.

That, or I'm just making room for this years junk - which is probably closer to the truth, lol!

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!

Thrift roundup

Haven't been out thrifting much lately, though I have picked up a few things most times I've stopped in.

This yellow Pyrex Desert Dawn baker is a duplicate for me but I was not going to pass it up. Bakeware seems to be in high demand these days (and pricey!), so I'll scoop up every thrift find I can.

Felt like I'd hit the motherlode the other day at GW. This is also one of the Goodwills I suspected only sold damaged stuff in store and shipped off everything else. Well, for whatever reason, I found 3 pieces at once, all between 3-5 dollars, in nice and shiny, undamaged condition.

A ReStore find and another piece of Pyrex from GW. Couldn't believe it.

Also picked these up, a White Lace bowl for my mom and a Corningware Floral Bouquet baking sheet for myself.

And finally, my one antique store purchase, the pink lidded Kromex grease jar and salt & peppers. I need a product to shine these guys up with but all the things I've tried either don't work or carry a warning about using them on aluminum. Anyone know any tricks?


That's all my treasures for now. Hopefully I'll be dragging out my Christmas stuff any day now and feeling a little more in the Holiday spirit.

Hope you're finding thrifty treats and treasures!

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!

Thrifty Treasures

Headed up the other day to a large area flea market that is an hour plus drive from home. Hubby didn't find many goodies that day, but I got what I felt like was a pretty good deal on a grouping of Fire King Jadeite. 25 dollars for two Swirl mixing bowls and a batter bowl, all in nice condition.

Picked up another Hazel Atlas pink Ripple saucer from another vendor for a dollar. Some day I will have a pink set pieced together to go with my turquoise.

This next grouping of dishes was bought at two different GW's on two different days, and has a few things in common. Each dish was 99 cents, and they aren't marked, which is, I believe, the entire reason they ended up being cheap. The Fire King Azurite Charm plates are the dinner plate size. It's been several years since I've added a single piece to my Charm collection, so to add dinner plates for a song was a very nice surprise.

The FK Jadeite saucer is the ubiquitous Jane Ray, but I'm never going to pass on thrift store jadeite.
And the white sugar bowl is MacBeth Evans Depression Glass in the American Sweetheart pattern.

Almost all my American Sweetheart (pink, clear, and Monax) has come from thrift stores for a dollar a piece or less. With this particular sugar bowl, it's not particularly valuable in itself, but the lid for it is rare and can sell for hundreds of dollars.

And finally, these canisters came from my very favorite antique store, nicely priced at $9.95. But what made my day most of all is that I didn't have this matching Cookies canister. So cool that even the lettering is also white like my flour, sugar, coffee & tea set.

The tea canister with silver lettering is a single for me, so I'm definitely going to be on the lookout for its silver-lettered siblings.


Hope you're having a fabulous Labor Day weekend!

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!