Paying the price

I paid the antique store price for these guys. Had them already but one had some dishwasher damage and the other has some knicks in the pattern. So these replaced them.

I've seen the red 402 a couple of times that I wasn't willing to buy - once, it was dishwashed and still 10 bucks. The other time, totally scratchy and 22 dollars. No thanks. And I've never seen the big orange 404 bowl that would complete the set.

So for now, my 'set' is a made-up one. The 402 is from the reverse primary.

I like this version. It's something cool to do with the primary red 404 that has no other pieces to go with.

And finally, why if it isn't The Weight Saint himself, Richard Simmons. This magazine was waiting for me in an antique store at the curious price of one dollar and twenty five cents.

This issue is from 1981. It mentions the fact that his show was up against Donahue and sometimes beat him in the ratings!

And I've fallen off the wagon of doing my daily Richard workout. Broke down and did one yesterday - probably guilt-induced exercising triggered by the purchase of this magazine :-)

Tomorrow, assuming I can drag both myself and the hubs out of bed, we'll try to do some yard sale-ing. I hate to say I'm not optimistic, but I'm definitely not holding my breath.

Hope you are finding snazzy stuff!

Happy Thrifting!

Stress-terday's Thrifting

So yesterday was more like stress-terday. I went to a new Dr, and much anxiety ensued. So the hubs and I hit up a few thrifts to blow off the tension.

This incomplete Primary set was waiting for me in the fancy-shmancy case, complete with a fancy-schmancy price. But it's one of the older sets - a style that is my very favorite. I wish these thicker bowls had been made in pink and turquoise, but they seem to have already changed the style of them by then.

This Early American bowl was behind the counter with the Primaries. Had it been by itself, I might have talked myself out of it, but I was in a splurge-y mood, so it came home with me. I collect the brown and white pieces of this pattern anyway, but I had picked up the smallest gold & brown bowl from the Chip and Dip set some time ago. So I either have a chip and dip set without a bracket or the beginning of a Cinderella set.

So much for me cutting back, huh?

And the other day, I came home from thrifting pretty much empty handed - except for 14 random pieces of this starburst silverware.

I've mostly avoided buying silverware at thrift stores. It's always in some tub with about 14 metric tons of random pattern butter knives. And riffling through it makes an epically loud clattering ruckus that can be heard from everywhere in the store.

I just never want to be *that person* who stands there for 4 hours, digging through silverware like I'm going to find some solid silver surviver from the Titanic or something.

But anyhow, I do poke around from time to time. I decided a while back that I liked atomic star patterns - any of them- and it might be cool to piece a set together, even if it's mismatched.

This is the one I found, Americana Star by International. Miracle of miracle, there were even a few forks! (Hardly ever find forks. Just billions upon billions of butter knives, lol)

I really like the way it looks with my Snowflake Blue.



Hope everyone finds fabulous treasures this weekend!

Happy Thrifting!

Saturday yard sale-ing

Hubs and I hit the yard sales pretty hard yesterday and came home with not a whole lot. Stopped at a thrift along the way and found a bunch of Heartland that I didn't have. I'm going to need a bigger house soon!

Heartland breadbox

Heartland lazy susan, utensil holder, vegetable bowls

Heartland Breakfast set

These are pieces I didn't know existed. I think of them as soup cups/mugs, but Replacements.com calls this a Breakfast cup & salad plate set.

I took a photo of it beside the regular teacup just to show how huge this thing is.

And come to find out the salad plate is made differently than the regular salad plate. It's more heavily decorated and the piece itself is heavier and sturdier than the regular salad plate.

regular Heartland salad plate top left, Heartland Village salad plate top right, and below them the salad plate from the Breakfast set. Same diameter, but thicker.

 And finally, these guys were from the first stop of the morning. 20 cents I couldn't pass up.

I'm not sure if the good stuff was snapped up Friday, or earlier on Saturday morning, but I sure wasn't finding it. We did more driving yesterday than it seems like we do when we go out of state antique shopping. It's always possible folks are saving it up for the big Spring yardsale we usually have in May. Dunno. At least I tried, right?

Hope you're finding great junk!

Happy Thrifting!

My new hutch

Gardening has been keeping me busy lately. I've been thrifting a couple of times since my last post, but came up empty handed as far as Pyrex or glassware went. But strangely, we've picked up a piece of furniture almost every time we've been out - which is really unusual for us.

We bought a funky, retro, Love-it-or-HATE-IT couch and loveseat pair, a mirror that I promptly repainted, a small coffee/side table and a vintage hutch.

I've been looking for a reasonably large, open hutch to display some of my favorite Pyrex. I've been feeling like I was heading towards a Pyrex collection downsizing, and I thought buying a new-to-me hutch, painting it a good color, and filling it with my favorite patterns would go a long way towards easing me into a smaller collection overall.

Here it is! It needs to be painted. Before I saw this hutch, I was sure I wanted it painted turquoise. Now I'm not so sure?

And speaking of turquoise:

I was very surprised to find this set locally. I've never seen all 4 bowls for sale together before. And it actually didn't cost the arm & leg that turquoise Pyrex usually commands, so I was super-duper-thrilled to find them. This is a duplicate set for me, but my other bowls -my birthday set- I have in the kitchen, behind closed doors, so I don't see them until I use them. Now that I have my new hutch, I've got the best of both worlds. I can admire a set and still have one in the kitchen cabinet, all nice and clean and dust-free just waiting to be used.

It's just now starting to be reliably pretty and nice outside now, so hopefully yard sales & estates sales will be worth looking for. I wish us all great luck finding good junk that we just can't live without :-)

Happy Thrifting!

Surprise Saturday shopping

Being the total rebels that we are (lol), we spontaneously decided to tear off to some antique stores we generally only go to once or twice a year. Hubs had a giftcard from Christmas he'd never used for another store nearby, so away we went. I'm a planner type, but even I've got to admit sometimes it's so much more relaxing and less stressful to just grab a few things, run out the door and have fun.

I've been obsessed with Snowflake Blue Corelle lately? I don't even understand it myself. I get fixated on a certain pattern or color, and either my patience runs out to find them in the wild, or it seems to manifest them right before my eyes.

This doubled my collection. I was especially happy to get some dinner plates and the sugar and creamer -complete with the elusive glass lid!

I added 18 pieces to my collection of 19 more, and I'm now pretty darn close to a 4 placesetting set! Yay!

These Country Calico items were from a nearby thrift store. I got these, a clock, and my husband got a board game for 5 bucks total. Not bad!

Fire King! These were my biggest purchases for the day. I have a long term goal to collect all the patterned Splash Proof Fire King mixing bowl and range sets (Tulip, Modern Tulip, Stripes, Red Dot, Black Dot, Apples & Cherries, Kitchen Aids).  The two grease jars I'm missing I believe will be the hardest to find - Black Dots and Kitchen Aids. And I still need a ton of the matching shakers and mixing bowls.

I had a chance once to buy the Black Dot grease jar for the price of one arm, one leg & a first born child - but instead I paid a slightly smaller fortune for Red Dot mixing bowls. An anniversary splurge I don't regret one little bit :-)

And hey, there's some Pyrex! The universe enjoyed having a laugh at my impatience. I just bought a set of Horizon Blue refrigerator dishes online not more than a few weeks ago. Now I find the largest 503 for 6 bucks! The good thing is, I wanted one set to display and one set to use (that also serves as klutz insurance!)  and now I have a spare of my favorite one!

The pink I hoard, period. If its pink or turquoise, I don't care how many I have at home, if I can afford it it's coming home with me. Is that horrible? I sure hope not.

Both of these pieces I'm 99.999% sure are Glasbake, but neither are marked as such. The casserole was just too sweet. It's actually marked on the bottom as Sears ovenware, but it has all the telltale characteristics of Glasbake.

The honey whip jar came in a ton of different colors. Goodness, I have such a soft spot for giveaways.

And finally, on the way home, we stopped at Goodwill. I haven't seen opal Pyrex at this GW in so long now I've suspected they were sending it off to go to the website. I paid too much for it. My trouble is, I just can't pass things up - especially coming off a winter were there really has been nothing for months. If I find some good Pyrex for cheap at yardsales or such, maybe it will set my mind back where I'm able to let it go at the thrift it I think it's priced too high.

Anyways, I had a blast yesterday, and renewed hope & enthusiasm that there's still good stuff out there to find!

Hope you are having good luck as well!

Happy Thrifting!

Hazel Atlas

I love Hazel Atlas glass! I don't have the huge collection of it like I do my Pyrex, but I really love what I have. I just don't see it very often. In fact, I was surprised to see I only have 8 HA mixing bowls, half of which I only recently purchased. 

Both of the patterns on the left (the turquoise Kitchen Aids/Utensils and red Candy Stripe) are also full dinnerware patterns.

I have a lone mixing bowl and some of the glasses. The glasses I bought as a set of 8, for basically a dollar apiece, but 5 of them are dishwasher damaged. I still thought it was a good price just for the 3 undamaged ones.

This Ivy pattern was a decoration used on a wide range of items. I suspect it was used a lot for promotional items. The little glass once contained sour cream.

These adorable little milk pitchers were a Kix cereal promotion. Kitchenware author C. Dianne Zweig talks about them here.

 The apple and strawberry jars are also reported to be a Kix cereal promotion from the early 1930's.

Hazel Atlas Ripple and a very small amount of Macbeth Evans American Sweetheart in Monax (the forerunner to opal Pyrex)

Finally, my favorite Hazel Atlas - Pink and Turquoise Ripple.

This set is more popularly known as Crinoline, but it's listed in my Hazel Atlas book as Ripple, owing to the discovery of original factory boxes.

I lucked into a 30 piece set of the turquoise all at once, and am really glad I ended up buying them. My pink collection is much smaller, pieced together one at at time, except one lucky time I bought 6 dinner plates together for $15.

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As for the company itself, here's a good history of its appearance before the United States Supreme Court, and ultimately its assimilation into Continental Can Company and Brockway Glass.

New green Ball jars

I was wondering if you guys had seen these yet?

Apparently, this is the second color of a three color series they are going to do - last year being the blue re-do's that were only available in pint jars.

This time, they made both pint and quart, and I just now noticed the boxes carry the Made in the USA label, so that's always nice.

I'm not sold on the color. Put in a flattering light, I'd call them "Spring Green". But I really think of it as Easter Grass or Dill Pickle green - which is fine - but I woulda shoved Gramma outta my way to buy case after case of these jars if they were true Depression Glass green.

Here it is with last years blue perfect mason- style jar. I use these pints as drinking jars. I put a couple of the quarts in the cabinet for me and my husband to also use as drinking jars, but once I realize how kinda ridiculously big a serving that would be, I put a 'water-only' stipulation on them.

I got my hopes up dreaming next years color would be pink. That would be sorta the holy trinity of vintage colors right there, but my husband burst my bubble reminding me that it's more likely to be a yellow or amber jar, if they are indeed really modeling these after their original jars.

Way to go, hubs. Way to go bursting a girls dream like that.

Lol.

Anyways, I like these just for the sheer fact that I really do think I'm going to try my hand at water bath canning this year. Today's new stuff may pale in comparision to my love of the vintage, but I'd never can with vintage jars, so I'm thankful to have something kinda cool of my own for my first year's canning attempts.

On the thrift front I've found nothing...nada...zilch. I've got a birthday coming up in May, so I'm trying to convince myself that all this nothing-to-buy is just saving up for my birthday trip.

Anyways, hope you are finding nifty treats and treasures!

Happy Thrifting!