Thrift Store Bakeware Finds

I just love wandering around the local thrift stores and see what treasures I can find, my smelly man likes to tell me that I am filling our house with junk, obviously there is no appreciation for vintage things. But that's okay, we are all different! Anyhow I digress, back to my finds. There are two thrift stores in the town I live near and one is very much geared toward vintage and so is a bit more expensive than the other. I think vintage has grown in popularity here. The other thrift store in town only very seldom has any treasures to be found. But when I visit my mom, she lives about a half hour away and I go to the thrift stores in that town I can always find something there.

So here are a couple of photos of the bakeware treasures I have found. The small blue dish is my most recent find. But my favourite is the yellow dish with the big yellow flower on the lid. I use that to serve nacho dip so I can do a hot and mild one because it is separated into two sections. In one of the mixing bowls you can see the vintage cookie cutters I found, I got those at a yardsale for $0.25! I find it very useful to have these things around, because when you have company you always need extra bowls and such.

My Yardsale Dresser is Finished!

In the spring I wrote about a yardsale I had gone to where I found many wonderful buys. One of these buys was this dresser, except is was painted pink! Also, someone had replaced the brass handles with ugly ones. Well, I have finally completed refinishing it. I love it, I think it is beautiful. I didn't stain it, I just used polymerize tung oil. I also went out and bought some nice brass handles for it. I knew that was what it was supposed to have because once I got the paint off the keyholes were brass. I know it didn't turn out perfect but I just love it! You can see that the carving on the mirror is darker, that's because I couldn't sand it to get the old stain off properly but I think it looks good like that, it makes the carving stand out. My fiancee, the smelly man, was not please when I brought this home, he thought it was junk! He now agrees it was definitely worth the $30 I spent on it. Though I did spend a lot more on materials to refinish it, it is still cheaper than buying a new maple dresser.

Working on The Next Bedroom

So I repotted some plants this weekend as some of my house plants were getting way to big for their little pots. I had one tree in this basket which is now in a much larger pot and apparently the Smokey cat thought the newly emptied basket looked like a nice place to have a nap. My little sister, the Stinker Weasel has been visiting and she brought him upstairs to where I was working on the bedroom to show me, and he didn't move at all! He obviously doesn't realize he does not fit very well!

I have been working away at the third and final bedroom! I have finally managed to get all the horrid painted wall paper off and am now starting to patch the plaster! It is most definitely a lot of work. But we only bought the farm a couple years ago and are not ready to spend a lot of money on it right now so I am trying to improve the look without getting into having to drywall.

You can't really tell in the pictures but the plaster walls are all full of hairline cracks, as well as some larger cracks so I am using fiberglass tape and joint compound and patching even the tiniest cracks I find. You can see the one wall I started with is covered in joint compound. You can also see another of my little helpers, this is my black and white kitten Tess. She curled up to have a nap beside me while I was busy working.

I Love Old Books

I just love old books! I always pick one or two up at yardsales or thrift stores. They work very good for decorating and they provide insight into how people thought at that point in time, even a turn of phrase and can tell you a lot about the time with the book was written. I really love old history books, I think it is fascinating to see how things change. I have one book about the British Commonwealth and Empire, and another one called "Standard Canadian Speaker and Reader" which I think was meant to teach but it's not like the other old schoolbooks I have come across.

This picture is a shelf where I used a few of my old books to decorate in my home office. Don't mind the mess! This is the shelf Rob bought me for my birthday last year because I wanted something to hold all of our old textbooks from college. The shelves get narrower at it goes up so the top shelf was only really good to hold a variety of knick-nacs and some of my vintage finds. You can see a couple pieces of my milk glass, and there is an old singer sewing machine tin my grandma gave me and the little rocker used to be my Oma's (great grandma). The vintage books used here are mainly Shakepeare and some philosophy which I thought appropriate for an office.

The two red books in this picture are the ones I mentioned earlier. I got them at a yardsale, they were more than I usually pay for old books at about $5 each but I thought they were worth it because I found them so interesting, and really to buy a new softcover book you are looking at at least $10. The white one called "The Cornflower and Other Poems" Was the first ever vintage book I bought, I did have a few others my grandma gave me but this was my first step into vintage. I got it at a small antique shop in the town where I grew up, It's from 1906. The shop is no longer there and neither am I but I still have the book, I would have been around 16. The bottom book is called "In the Time of Roses", the cover is very damaged, I got it for $2 at the local thrift store, but I still think it is a very pretty book which I would like to use in decorating my living room when I get to redecorating that room. After flipping through it I would also like to read.

These are my two most recent thrift store finds. One is to add to my vintage history collection, it's from the 1960's. The other gold coloured one is from the 1940's but I didn't realize that when I first picked it up. I was reading the forward thinking it sounded like an interesting and amusing book then I noticed that it was from the 1940's. The other picture I was trying to get a picture of the bookmark I got for $2, someone made it using vintage jewelry and it looks so pretty with the gold book. But ever since I brought it home the cats think it's a new toy for them, as you can see in the picture Sally Cat is playing with it.

Here is a better picture of the book mark, it has really pretty sparkly red stones. The disappointed cat was removed to the floor. I just love this idea though, it's a great used for bits of old jewelry that might just get tossed out otherwise. I love reusing things, much better for the environment than just throwing things out.

New Shoes!

So on Friday I was out shopping with my mom and sisters for wedding stuff, we needed to get shoes for my sisters for their bridesmaids dresses. We went to Sears which was having a sale, and my youngest sister (age 13) whom I have dubbed Stinker Weasel, came up to me with a box of shoes to show me. The reason she was showing them to me was because she wanted to show me how ugly she thought they were. Well once I laid eyes upon them I thought they were super cute and must come home with me! She was horrified! To me they have a vintage feel, don't you think so?

These flats with their lovely contrasting pink border on white and the cute pink circles, oh I just love them. And I wore them to work yesterday and all the ladies kept telling how cute these shoes are so the poor Stinker Weasel will have to be informed that perhaps the styles which appeal to a 13 year old will not appeal to some one as "old" as myself! And even better they were marked down to $14.99, and were 40% off the sale price!