A couple of thrift finds and a canister update

First up, my couple of thrift finds:

This Weibro cake keeper is coppertone and super shiny, which normally wouldn't be my thing. But it was in such good shape and the kitchen utensils theme is right up my alley, so it had to come home with me.

One of the things that I discovered when researching this cake carrier is that Weibro also made the metal dancing dutch couple trash can that was in my grandmother's bedroom for as long as I can remember. I hadn't thought about that trash can in....oh, probably two decades or more. It's neat the things you discover by accident :-)

This Foley sifter was another happy discovery I didn't know existed. I was on the lookout for Foley measuring cups and spoons to add to the incomplete set my mom gave me years ago, before I ever really became a vintage kitchenware collector. So the Foley stuff dovetails nicely. Plus you can't beat that aqua handle. Love it!

So this was my incomplete canister set as found. Barely a few scraps of silver left on the sugar canister and almost none at all on the coffee.

I bought this silver Pilot pen with an extra fine tip (0.5) at Hobby Lobby and did the best I could filling in the missing lettering. The "S" in sugar was super-tricky. I might be able to clean it up a little more with a safety pen, but I was ready to call it quits.

I filled in a lot less on the tea canister, leaving it pretty much original. It blends better to me in person than it does in this picture, I think. I sure wish I knew who made these canisters and how many colors they actually came in!

Hope your junkin' week has been fun and productive!

Happy Thrifting!

Thrift finds this week

Found this incomplete canister set at a consignment store that doesn't really deal vintage, but I've found a few vintage pieces at before. It was sitting on a discount table and I got it for 99 cents!

They are butter yellow with silver lettering, and missing the largest flour canister in the set. I think I'm on a mission now to find out just how many colors they were made in. Once upon a time I bought a partial set in avocado green for a quarter at a yard sale but only one was in decent condition, so I donated them when I was going through one of my periodic 'stuff' purges.

Here they are with my other keepers. I hope I can find a silver pen and possibly fill in the missing lettering. I'm afraid I'll do a bad job at it but I'd like to try especially since I have the other canisters to use as guides to see where I need to fill in.

 

My other thrift finds: a wildflower canister for a buck, snowflake blue teacups and saucers for 39 cents apiece for my set, some corningware cradles, and more Butterfly Gold casseroles I could not pass up for 3 and 4 dollars each. And they even had their lids with them.

And finally, I paid 4 dollars for this sweet, unmarked turquoise bread keeper at a hole-in-the-wall thrift store I'd never visited before. My husband also found a really nice stack of records, so we are definitely aiming to go back sometime soon.

I kinda missed posting about my husbands birthday trip, so hopefully I'll get to that next time.

Hope you are finding cool loot!

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!

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!

Community Sale

This is the craziest, most wonderful single day haul I think I've ever found.

My husband and I go to this community sale every year, and typically find a few things that make it worth checking out every year. But there's a paid admission preview we'd never gone to. (In addition to buying a ticket, there's still usually quite a wait in line and a bit of madness ensuing.)

But we weren't sure what we were missing out on by not buying the early bird tickets. But boy oh boy did I get my answer this time.

New record for lowest price paid for vintage Fiesta relish tray pieces. I had a spare insert, so in a single stroke, I now have two complete trays!

I love how I can look back and piece together the story of how I've completed 2 trays in 3 years time. If you're interested, here's the links to each one.  First, the cobalt center. Then a month later, 4 sides to go with it. Then a green side. Then, about a year later, an anniversary splurge - a base for my inserts. )

Two dollars! I'm keeping this particular set because I know I'll be sentimental about them, but gave my other set to Mom, who loves pink Pyrex but will absolutely not step foot in an antique store. I've bought her pink pieces when I've found them for good prices, but I'd never lucked into the big 475 for song. I'm betting these guys are going to be used for family dinners and even holidays now!

Gigantic unmarked Fiesta platter for two dollars, small turquoise Butterprint for 3.

I didn't even look at the pattern. My brain just said "Pyrex bowl set for 6 dollars" put it in the buggy! Addiction!

There's a surprise set for my mama that's in the first pic, but not exactly visible. I think she'll love it. I also bought an entire set of Taylor, Smith, and Taylor LuRay pastels. Here they are, cleaned up!

So happy we went! Well worth the price of admission. My husband found lots of goodies, too, which is not such a common occurrance. By the end we had a grocery cart filled to the brim and threatening to spill over. It was magical. LOL!

Hope you are finding fabulous sales filled with dreamy goodness!

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!