Back with a vengance!

Don't let the long hiatus fool you - I am thrilled to be blogging again!  There was unfortunately a lot of upheaval in the last year, what with starting a new job that was a 45 minute commute (that's one-way), the joys of home ownership, AND getting married...  Amongst other things.  I felt like I never had time to do anything, or I was too tired, and my thrifting outings became non-existent.  But no more!  Thanks to a lot of thrifty living and boring bill-paying, along with Jason's hard work earning him some nice raises at his job, I have taken the leap - I left my job to stay home and make junking my new full-time career!  I'm on week two and it is going great - I now share two booths with my mother-in-law Kathy, one at The Rose Too in Rogers and our newest booth at Home Town Flea Market, just a few blocks away.

I don't know if the hot weather is the cause, but summertime has also brought a LOT of great stuff out into the thrift stores lately.  When I had been getting out on occasion there wasn't much that I saw to pick up, but perhaps the thrift gods are welcoming me to my new career - since I've been going out more there has been piles of good, cheap stuff to buy!  So keep checking back for more updates - with all these goodies to photograph, I won't be neglecting the blog again. :-)

Jason and I went out thrifting last Friday and we scored some great stuff.  We had to work hard for these pretties.  I think we rummaged for at least a good 30 minutes in the kitchen utensil file cabinet drawers at the Rogers Salvation Army.  I feel pretty confident that I found all that there was of this great set.  I've wanted a set of starburst flatware for a while now.  These are marked 'Stainless Steel Japan' and are marked with the brand 'Sapphire'.  I wasn't able to find any info on this particular brand of starburst silverware when I did some research on the internet.  At 25 cents apiece I'm happy to keep these and hope I find some more!

I picked this Kmart Spice of Life coordinate 'Sim R Pot' up at the Rogers Salvation Army also.  Appliances were half off, so I actually only ended up paying $2.50 for this, and it was tested and in working condition!  Sweet.  It has a nice milk glass bowl for the inside.  It was pretty stained from chili or beans or some such, but bleach water took it all right off.  The Corning lid that came with it is a little chippy around the rim, but I don't know that it is original anyway, it seems a hair too large.  This is going with the rest of the Spice of Life items that I have at The Rose Too.

This old Sears and Roebuck vaporizer was marked $3 at the Salvation Army, but thanks to that half-off appliances sale I paid just $1.50.  Very cool to actually find this with the white plastic cradle.  Unfortunately we got it home and I started having a weird allergic reaction to something - I was sneezing, eyes watering, throat itching, the works.  Jason cleaned out the vaporizer - there was a some kind of white powder and some yucky grease inside, he told me - and that seemed to solve my problem.  The perils of thrifting!

Two Saturdays ago Jason and I stopped for a church sale - great decision!  There was a large round table FULL of blue cornflower dishes.  The lady was super nice and marked everything down for me. I also got two roasters, a 4 qt. dutch oven with lid, and lipped saucepan with spout that aren't pictured here.  Oh, and some vintage cookbooks for a dollar apiece.  The 8" square pans were $5 each (I got 3 total) and the pie plates were $4 each (also 3 total).  When we were chatting I mentioned having a collection of vintage Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks, which of course she then tells me they had piles of earlier that morning.  Ah!  It always kills me to hear on what I just missed out on!  She very nicely offered to keep my name and number because she had many more items from her mother that she had yet to dig out.  I hope I hear from her again!

Our trip to Springdale's Council of the Blind was pretty fruitful as well.  These cute Disney melmac dishes were $2 for the set, and Pyrex Drink-Up is a nice addition to my mug collection at 50 cents.

I love finding these Couroc of Monterey pieces at thrift stores so far away from California.  These were the third and fourth pieces that I've seen, and at $2 for the cypress plate and $2.50 for the large round roadrunner plate, I wasn't going to leave them at the Council of the Blind!

I was excited to find the Couroc, then I rounded the corner and saw this Corning Ware electromatic skillet base!  It was marked '$4.50 works'.  It went in my cart immediately.  There was some stuck-on food debris, but with the super-smooth surface and a little Bar Keeper's Friend it wasn't too hard to get off.

I hit the motherlode of books at Helping Hands.  While Jason loaded up on several nice cheap speaker sets that he is going to resell on Craigslist, I loaded up on Better Home and Gardens cookbooks for $1 each.  Most of these I already have, so they are going to be at my booth at Home Town.  The Playboy Bar book ($1.50) is also out at Home Town and has a ton of delicious-sounding drink recipes.  I bought the Singer sewing book for myself for $2... which I suppose I'll never forget as they decided to just go ahead and write on the cover of that one with black marker.  :-/  I really hate it when the thrift store ruins items.

I've always wanted an old cell phone like this, so I picked this one up at the Bentonville Goodwill for $3.  The Tupperware (50 cents) was found by Jason who loves these containers for sleeves of crackers.

Finally, of course I had to go around and shop the other booths after I moved into Home Town last week.  Two booths over, I found the Corning 'Season's Greetings 1963' 2.5 qt. casserole for $6.  I had never heard of Corning making anything like this, but the design doesn't appear to me to have been added afterwards.  The pattern is actually in a pretty shiny silver.

Jason found the four Couroc bird bowls, and I was a little iffy about buying them because they have been treated pretty roughly and lost all of their original lustre.  Some of them even have a couple of chips.  Jason talked me into it, as he hopes he can possibly restore them.  I decided to go for it at $1.50 a bowl.

I haven't found a nice piece of Pyrex that I wanted to add to my collection for a while.  This is a cute promotional 'Spices' that I don't have, and still has nice shiny paint and no damage.  It was only $5, so I scooped it up.

Great Pyrex Move of '08

Oh dear, we've nearly been a full month without a post from either Leilani or myself! I've finally found some time to edit and upload photographs of some of my finds from the past month. A bit of an exciting update (exciting for me, anyway) - I just got done moving into a new, much bigger and much nicer apartment! Now I'll have plenty o room for my vintage goodies. And as soon as I get some shelves for my Pyrex, I'll finally be able to photograph my collection of Pyrex all together! Actually, I already took a few group photos before we moved in...







My Pyrex collection was the first thing I took to the new apartment. I put a lot of the dishes in the kitchen cabinets for safekeeping, so there was no possibility of them being broken as furniture and the like was moved in. I took the opportunity while they were briefly displayed to take those pictures. Sadly, that's not even all of them.





This table also goes along with my new apartment - I now have a patio, and I needed a patio table! I fell in love with this one at Famous Hardware Antique Store in Springdale. I was considering buying a similar tile mosaic metal table at Bed Bath & Beyond that was smaller, with all-white tiles, for $45. Then I saw this one - larger, handmade, and with a pretty design, for $65. Worth the extra $20, I think. A few of the black edge tiles were missing, but it was easy enough to find the same ceramic tiles at Lowes, where they even cut them down to the right size for free. Now I just need to finish grouting, and it'll be good as new. The best thing about the table is that the two creators signed it on the bottom. They even named it - "Born to be Tiled." Cute!



I think the table is going to be my new dedicated photography spot. :P I took another picture of my set of Pyrex Desert Dawn yellow dishes. I finally managed to get the proper lid to the 2 qt. round casserole (the knobbed lid rather than the one with the flat top). Now I feel like that set is truly complete. And the cake dish can have the old lid as a bonus! I got two of the knobbed lids off eBay for .99 cents, plus shipping.





Another mini-set has been completed! I just recently thrifted the middle percolator (6 cups) at the Council of the Blind in Springdale. I got it for $5, which is a good price considering it looked like it had never been used, literally. The 6-cup percolator goes great with the 9-cup and 4-cup that I already had. That same day I also found 6 Tupperware coasters. I had considered buying a set that I found in an antique store, but I just couldn't pay the high price tag. I found these for just .50 cents at Second Chance Thrift.





This Foley flour sifter is one of my favorite finds. I found it in the antiques and collectibles corner at the Peace at Home thrift store in Springdale. It was $5, I could hardly believe it was so cheap. Usually anything that they even suspect is collectible is marked way up. With the great turquoise color, I could see this going for $20 at antiques stores around here.





These melmac plates are thrift store finds from before I moved. I've found quite a few plates in this size with varying patterns. Random patterns in sets of 3 to 5 show up at the thrift stores around here pretty often. They're hard to resist because they're usually pretty cheap at .10 to .25 cents per plate.



In my last post I posted a picture of the Pyrex Cracker Barrel that I found in an antique store in the Bentonville/Rogers area. Not too long after that I found its mate at another antique store in the same area, and it was pretty reasonably priced. The gold leaf on the cookie jar is in a little better condition than on the cracker barrel.



This promotional Pyrex casserole called "Lace Medallion" is one I had been wanting for quite a while. I actually didn't even end up finding it- kudos goes to my good friend Amanda who found this dish on eBay. She went a little too crazy buying Pyrex on eBay and had buyer's remorse after getting this dish, because the color didn't go with any of her pieces. I paid her the full price plus shipping costs, and I threw in an extra $3 Pyrex Bake-A-Round that I found at the Salvation Army. So thank you thank you thank you Amanda for buying this and selling it to me! I love it! :)



This last dish was part of my mother's day present to my mom. She's had her set of Wildflower Corning Ware casserole dishes for 20+ years. When I saw this microwave dish, I had to get it for her set. I found this in a small antique shop in the Bentonville/Rogers area. It was $15, and came new-in-box with the dish, glass lid, plastic storage lid, and care instructions. As for the gift aspect, I think my mom liked it. :)