Back to the Joy of Thrifting

June has been an extremely busy month for me. Two racing events {and podium finishes} for my son, a new motorhome and truck for Dear Handyman and I designed and completed two very large and exciting projects at work. Which explains why I haven't had a chance to get to any garage/estate sales for almost the entire month. But today was my opportunity to get back to the joy of thrifting.

My favorite find was this set of mid-century modern ice bucket and barware glasses by Russel Wright. I love the colors and it just looks so retro.

We also found another vintage desk lamp. I love the industrial look of these lamps.

A set of His and Hers storage cases...

A vintage 1960s world globe:

Another 100% wool blanket:

Cool old steam punk 1927 Big Ben clock:

Lots of old rulers:

Various Smalls including an 8mm file reel called "Training the RAF", another box of Sparklers, old hat pins still in their packaging and an old squished penny from Pearl Harbor.

The last thing we found is perhaps the funniest thing I've seen in a while. It is a measuring tape that says "Pocket tape for estimating live weight of cow." It has directions to wrap the tape measure around a cow and the measurement will tell you an estimate of the cow's weight. I'm not sure how handy this will be but if I ever come across a cow and need to estimate its weight then I will have this as a resource. If anyone has access to cows, can you tell me if they are docile enough to wrap a tape measure around them?

So this was my extremely fun day getting back to thrifting. I plan to spend some time getting most of these items into my Stuff to Treasure store so please stop by and see what's new in a few days.

Hope everyone had a great day of thrifting.

Designers Craft Connection - Blog Hop June

Welcome to the Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop for the month of June. This month's theme is Happiness is Handmade. I decided to make something special to celebrate Father's Day and of course it was handmade.

My project is a party banner made from neckties and dress shirts. I happened to find some nice neckties in a gray/blue theme so I went to my Goodwill and bought two blue men's dress shirts {half-price day!}.

I cut 7 inches off both ends of the neckties to use as parts of this banner. I cut the pockets off of the dress shirts and 7 inches of the shirt cuffs to include as flags. This would be extra cute if you had a large selection of inexpensive neckties but I only had three so I had to be thrifty.

I used thrifted bias tape as the string, folded about an inch of each item over the string and attached by sewing. It would also be cute to place Father's Day cards or maybe a gift card for dad in the pockets.

There is still plenty of time to gather up lots of inexpensive neckties and shirts at garage sales to make your own banners.

Hope you enjoyed this Handmade Happiness idea for fathers everywhere. Please use the DCC button on the right column to continue through the Blog Hop and enjoy the amazing talents of the many creative designers that are part of this group.

Organizing My Stash

I spent a couple of days sorting and organizing my stash of buttons and spools. This gave me some ideas for future projects. Plus I found some hidden stashes of spools that I forgot I had.

I found some unique spools so I decided to display them on the old cash register drawer/shelf.

Detailed photos.

Saturday Morning Dilemma

I've noticed that I often face a dilemma on which sale to attend first on a Saturday morning {although this is a better dilemma than not having any sales at all}. The choices are between going to the second day of a great sounding estate sale or the first day of a good sounding garage sale. So I have finally come up with a formula on how to pick the best sale. I call it the "Eeny Meeny Miney Go" formula. In other words, there are no two weekend choices that are ever alike so you just pick somewhere to start and have fun.

Today I chose to start with a good sounding garage/estate sale. I got an amazing deal on some small Shiny Brite ornaments and two very large old ornaments.

The large ornament on the left is hand-painted and 6 1/2" long. The one on the right has three indents.

Next I went to a second-day estate sale. There wasn't an early crowd so I spoke to one of the people working the sale and heard that there was still a lot of items to be sold. This is where I need to note that what one person might consider a lot of items might not actually be items you are interested in buying.

I did find a few treasures.

The birds on the tomato are carved wooden pushpin made in Sweden. The two birds in front are spun cotton with wings and tails made of bits of pine cones or wood.

I have a nice collection of science beakers now so I bought one more. And this old photo was very sweet so I added it to my stash.

The last thing I found was a handful of hankies. I already have several that are in shades of red, blue and green so I added these into the collection. The hankie in back was interesting because the image is of spools, ribbons and sewing pins and is "signed" Sally Victor.

So the lesson learned today was that going to the second day of a great sounding estate sale wasn't the best idea. Either go on the first day and get the best selection but pay full price or go on the last day and get the best price but less selection. Going on the middle day just means less selection and full prices.

Hope everyone had a great day of thrifting. And if you have any ideas on how you choose which sale to attend first then please share with a comment below.

Sometimes Even the Nicest People Can Fool You

We had a really fun day of thrifting. The morning started off a little disappointing but we found a lot of treasures at the second sale. We were an hour early for this second sale and had to stand around waiting. There was no crowd and ten minutes before the sale was to open a man arrived who should have been third in line behind us. He was very nice and chatted with us but later I realized that he had slowly worked his way to be standing in front of the gate the moment the sale opened. He didn't even pretend to be polite and let me {first in line} get by him. Luckily he was looking for something that I couldn't have cared less about. And he seemed like such a nice man...

Anyway, we found tons of treasures and I didn't let the not-so-nice man bother me a bit. I especially love these vintage cake toppers. They are so sweet!

I found a cool retro Blendo pitcher and tumblers in lime green. These are both trendy and retro at the same time. The ombre look is trendy and yet these are mid century modern barware. The photo doesn't show the bright lime green color well.

We found a Hall Pottery Ball Pitcher and Goebel ceramic Wren figurine. Goebel is the same company that makes the Hummel figurines.

A nice framed butterfly collection.

Lots of old glassware including a milk glass vase and several refrigerator dishes {Arcoroc and Fire King, Sapphire Blue, Philbe pattern}

I also found a lot of old glass bottles. These are two old English seltzer bottles that are really heavy glass. The other bottles have an interesting shared history as I discovered with more research.

I discovered that all of the old smaller bottles were from a town called Price, Utah. There was even an old 1941 calendar from the same town. Below is a photo of the collection

Detail of a half-pint milk bottle from Price's Dairy with a four digit phone number embossed on the bottle.

 Two bottles were for "Dr. Price's Delicious Flavoring Extracts"

 The taller bottle is from Price Bottling and Ice Cream Company.

 And the 1941 calendar with working thermometer is from Price's Market.

I had a lot of fun looking up the history of Price, Utah. I didn't even realize that they were all from the same town until I began photographing them.

I am constantly putting more items into my store so please Follow my store if you see anything that you would like.

I hope everyone had a great thrifting weekend.