Thrifting and Preparing for a 500 Follower Giveaway

I have been so crazy busy preparing for the Holiday Vintage Sale that I almost missed the fact that I am close to having 500 Followers. What an amazing milestone! I appreciate everyone who follows my blog and am gathering goodies for a Giveaway when we hit 500! So if you aren't following please join the celebration. And please see below for information regarding the upcoming Holiday Vintage Sale held by Danni of Oh Hello Friend.

Meanwhile so many more things have been keeping me busy. I finally had a chance to go thrifting today. My favorite find is this kitschy red enamel kitchen thermometer. And yes, it is almost 90 degrees today in Southern California!

I also found a Mission Mason Jar. The glass jar has an embossed symbol of the California Missions. I've seen Ball and Atlas Mason jars but never a Mission Mason jar. I also found another decorative muffin tin.

I love kitchen linen with red accents. The tea towel is vintage. The cherry fabric appears newer.

I selected this crocheted piece from a stack of linen because it had a third place ribbon from a County Fair competition. It wasn't until I laid it out at home that I saw the image of the Statue of Liberty and read the words "Freedom, Happiness, God Bless America". How cool is that? And it won a ribbon!

I found a few old Las Vegas postcards and souvenirs. The yellow object in the first photo is a souvenir keychain viewer. When you hold it up to a light you can view the photo inside. I was able to capture the image inside the viewer of old Downtown Las Vegas at its best.

Now to the big news about the Vintage Holiday Sale hosted by Danni of Oh, Hello Friend. If you are going to be in the Los Angeles / Orange County area on Saturday, November 10, 2012 and would like to do a little vintage holiday shopping then please come by and say hello. All of the details are HERE. It is free and filled with a gathering of Vintage Goodness! It would be such great fun to meet everyone. I will have everything from vintage Christmas goodies to Industrial treasures with kitschy Kitchen gifts and vintage Wedding decoration ideas as well.

And don't forget to Follow my blog if you haven't already. I'm working on putting together some awesome goodies for the 500 Follower Giveaway.

Hope everyone had a great day of thrifting.

This is linked to:
Hey, What's for Dinner Mom?

Preparing to go to {Vintage} Market

I am finally taking a mini-leap into retail sales. I am going to have a one-time opportunity to rent a small space at a vintage sales venue. It will be on November 10 in the Orange County, CA area. It will be big enough to have a lot of sales potential but small enough to not be overwhelming. This opportunity has opened up my "distribution channel" so I can buy and sell larger/bulkier items. I am excited so I took the day off from work to go to some estate sales and search for items to fill my space. Things have been busy here with all kinds of preparations.

My favorite find was this sweet biscuit tin. A little shabby but these are so perfect for storing items.

Keeping with the kitchen theme, I found these enamelware bread and biscuit tins. They are in great condition and are very large, heavy enamel. The Bread tin is 12 inches high. That can hold a lot of bread!

I was thrilled to find these unused French vocabulary cards. The metal rack is a collating device that I plan to use to display various ephemera. Down in front of this photo is a really old timer. Very shabby and I'm not sure if it works but the color {creamy white} and texture {chippy} looked so cool.

These two gooseneck lamps are simply retro. The one on the left is very heavy cast metal. It works perfectly. The one on the right is a scientific lamp. I haven't plugged it in yet. The silver disk on the base seems to be a reflective surface. It came from an estate sale of a scientist so I thought it was unique. {I just did some research and this is an Agglutination Viewer. It isn't a desk lamp but a scientific viewer used to determine blood type.}

Also from the scientist's estate sale were these NIB glass test tubes. I see so much design potential in test tubes {clustered together to make multi-bud vase} so I couldn't resist a box full of them. In front is a box of glass slides. I see a lot of altered art potential in these as well.

In back are more science beakers. Cool? Weird? I enjoy collecting these. In front are old Bromo Seltzer bottles. I liked their cobalt blue color and heavy, old glass feel.

I found several refridgerator dishes. In back are the clear glass ones with and without lids. In front is a Pyrex Butterprint dish with the aqua rooster pattern. It matches the other two pieces I found here. All of these make great drawer organizers because of their rectangular shapes.

Tart pans have a certain fancy decorative flair to them. I found this set of 12 pans connected together. I imagined them as the starting point to an altered art project. In back is a large pan in a pattern that I've never seen before. In front are more silverplate pieces for a project I'm working on.

Many of these items will be going into my Stuff to Treasure store in the next few days. Please be sure and stop by and browse through all of the treasures I have there. I will also be posting more information about the Vintage Holiday Sale as the event date gets closer. I hope everyone has a great weekend of thrifting!

Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop - October

Welcome to the Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop for the month of October. This month's theme is  Hallowed Homes {Decorating the home for Halloween}.

Living in Southern California, there isn't a big seasonal change in the weather so it is hard to think of Autumn festivities when it is 94 degrees outside. But thanks to this blog hop I threw myself into the Autumn decorating spirit so here is my Halloween cupboard reveal.

I began by covering the back of my antique cupboard with old atlas pages, dictionary pages and music sheets. I did this to give everything a lighter background.

On the top shelf I have my favorite vignette with an old antler and pharmacy bottle.

On the second shelf I have two portraits that I bought several years ago. These were some of the first lenticular haunted portraits I had ever seen. More closeup photos to follow. I also have my paper mache pumpkin displayed with some old laboratory bottles.

The bottom shelf has my glove molds, another laboratory bottle, skeleton keys, vintage plastic pumpkins and my black cat teapot.

Here are closer images of the haunted portraits. They "decompose" right before your eyes. They are the scariest part of my Halloween display.

I hope you enjoyed my Halloween inspired cupboard. Please continue forward or backwards through the blog hop using the blue DCC button on the right column. There are so many inspiring ideas from the many creative designers in this group.