Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. 

 Here are some thoughts on love from 

I made a set of envelopes out of this book for a friend from church.

 

Then I made some cards, too.

 

 

Here are Calvin and his friend... er mortal enemy Susie Derkins.

 

Their relationship is um...

 

 complicated.

Fun fact: Susie Derkins was based on Bill Watterson's wife.

See how nicely the book pages

make into envelopes.

For my own valentines, I made envelopes out of some old sheet music.

A friend from ravelry sent me a nice pen, so I am sending her

some envelopes, note cards and seals.

Some of the envelopes were made using this

envelope punch board that Mom purchased from JoAnn on sale for about $13.00.  (They are having a big sale this weekend.  Check the website for coupons.)

Some were made with this homemade template.  Instructions for making your own are here.

I hope you all have a lovely Valentine's Day.

I'm linking to the following parties:

Frugal Friday
Show and Share
Tips & Tricks
Roses of Inspiration
Think Tank Thursday

What IS a chenille?

I took a little trip to the Goodwill Outlet with my Mother and our entourage recently.  (My boyfriend carries my stuff and my friend Rachel's baby is really cute.  That's an entourage, right?)  Going to the Outlet is bound to be an adventure, as you never know what will be there.  You have to sort through a lot of junk, but there's always something to be found.  And whatever it is, it probably won't cost you much.

 

 I got everything in this picture for less than $2.40.

I picked through several boxes of ornaments and salvaged these unbroken ones.  I am especially happy to have found some indents.



 I gave the stamp set to a friend who LOVES The Little Prince.

The little gold-toned item in the center of the picture is a wax seal stamp.  I've wanted one since I was a little girl, but they cost at least $12.00 new.  This one cost 3c.  It stamps the initial "T", so maybe I'll change my name to Tabitha.  My six-year-old self has loved that name ever since she first saw a re-run of  Bewitched.  Or maybe Tilapia.  She thought that was very exotic too.

Most of the rest of the things are craft supplies for making ornaments next Christmas.  I want to try and make some putz houses, so I'm hoping the wooden trees, wreaths and drums can be used for that.  I plan to glitter the angels. 



I salvaged some metal tops off of broken shiny brites because we had these at home.
Mom found them at an estate sale for $1.00.  She almost fainted.  Aren't they gorgeous?


The box is pretty cool looking too.

I found this set of playing cards in a haunted house-themed board game.  There are four of each card.  The object of the game is to collect all the cards in the deck.  You deal out all the cards, make stacks, and then the players turn over their top cards at the same time.  If two cards match, the first player to yell "SCREECH!" wins those two cards.  Play continues until one player has all the cards or the nearest adult's head explodes.  It sounds hideous.  But they should be good for playing Old Maid or Go Fish.

This little basket has a sticker on it that reads "Match Mates by International Laminations." It appears to have been made by fusing fabric between layers of plastic.  We think it's from the 70's.  It's now corralling my craft supplies.

 

I also found this chenille bedspread.  My second one! Within two weeks, even.  When it rains, it pours.

Me: (pointing into the bin next to me) Look, Mom! A chenille bedspread!

Mom: (apparently blind from 10 feet away) No, that's a towel.

Me: (holding out the bedspread with my boyfriend's assistance) Look, Mom.  A chenille bedspread.

Mom: Ooh look! A chenille bedspread! 

After that fuss, my friend Rachel asked me "What's a chenille?" and I couldn't believe that she didn't already know.  I then explained to her that it is a wondrous and lovely bedspread of a style that is not commonly produced today.  

When I got home my Mother and I started to wonder to each other "What IS a chenille?" and I figured it out! A Chenille is an exotic animal, some kind of wild cat I suppose, prized for it's beautiful and soft pelts.  Chenilles come in many colors and with lovely patterns on their pelts.  Most of these creatures have dotted or striped, simple geometrically patterned fur in only one or two colors but sometimes hunters could be lucky enough to find a Chenille with a flower basket or other intricate design emblazoned on it's backside.  Chenilles were hunted to near extinction in the 1940s and 1950s due to fashion forward housewives prizing their pelts as bedspreads and blankets for their homes.  Sadly, due to this over-hunting it is very difficult to find a Chenille in the wilds today and so few people are willing to part with their beautiful heirloom pelts that I am reduced to looking for them at thrift stores and estate sales wherever I can.  

I think they come from the same place as pink and blue poodles, because my six-year-old self knows they're real; they just live in some far away place... like Australia.  Australia has exotic animals, right?

I hope you find lovely things in your travels, too.

I linking up with these parties:

Show and Share
Vintage Bliss Tuesdays
Thrifter Share
Vintage Inspiration Party
Roses of Inspiration 

Look What I Made - Notebooks!

I recently finished making some notebooks using thrifted items.

The first one I made as a gift for my friend Wendy.  I found a Little Golden Book version of "Peter Pan and Wendy" at a local thrift store, and cut it apart.  I started with the front cover,

 kept all the pages of the book

and mixed in plain paper pages

 

that I cut from copier paper.

Then I added the back cover

and bound the whole thing with wire.

Wendy was thrilled with it.  

This is the machine I used.

It is a Bind-It-All binding machine.  

Mom ordered it online from Wal-Mart around Christmas.  She saw a youtube video of someone using it to make a journal out of a vinyl record and was pretty impressed.  She couldn't find it for sale locally so she chose to order it from Wal-Mart because of their easy return policy.  We're still not sure if we are going to keep it.  I'll admit we've had some trouble mastering it; there's a bit of a learning curve, and $50 is too much to spend on a tool we're not super comfortable with.  But we're getting better at it, so we'll see.

I made another little notebook using a postcard I found at the Goodwill Outlet for a few pennies.

This postcard shows the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry, which was an exhibit in Disneyland from 1955 until 1966.  

"Where Creative Chemistry Works Wonders For You."

That's a pretty crazy slogan, concerning Monsanto is now known for bringing lawsuits against farmers for "stealing" Monsanto's patented GMO seed because pollen from the Monsanto plants drifted into the farmers' fields and pollinated their crops.

I just cut the card down the middle, making a front, 

and a back.  Then I added about 50 sheets of plain paper, and bound it at the top.  Sorry, I don't have a picture of the finished notebook.

Mom took my teen-aged niece to Goodwill to find something to make into a journal, and Niece picked out a set of  "Your Baby Can Read" sliding word cards.

They look something like this.

Here's the one she chose for the front cover.

 

She used graph paper from a composition book for the inside pages,
and the back cover is the "tongue" word card.

Next up will probably be a recipe notebook using something like

nuclear peaches


recipe comics
or

mmmm... pie.

We also have some VHS boxes to experiment with and we haven't tried the vinyl record yet.  So many possibilities...


I'm linking to the following parties:

Show and Share at Coastal Charm

Roses of Inspiration

Think Tank Thursday
Tips & Tricks
 Frugal Friday
Bouquet of Talent

An Estate Sale Adventure and The Naked Boob Hour

Mom and I went to our first estate sale of the year a few weeks ago.  We are fortunate to have a very cool local website where we can see what estate sales are coming up and what things will be for sale.  They usually have lots of pictures.  Even if the sale is too far away or we're too busy to go, it's fun to look through the pictures. I guess it's like thrifter p*rn.

We hadn't been to a sale since summer and we could tell from the pictures this was a great one. Going through the pictures is sort of like our version of playing I Spy.

  

I spy something Pyrex! Ooh... three partial sets of mixing bowls.  Maybe they will have the elusive red bowl.

I spy rooms and rooms of craft supplies... yarn... crochet thread... ribbon... I bet there are zippers,,,

And look,  that sign says everything is 25c!

Yarn...

 More craft supplies...

I spy toys and board games... I wonder what's in that box for $10...

 I spy enamelware in the basement... Ok, you find the craft room, I'll take the basement.

I spy... what the heck IS that cherub feather thing?  A lamp?

 We also spied shiny brites and a Disney Snow White toy ironing board, and horrendously loud 70's clothing, and so much more.  We weren't planning on buying everything, but hoped to see lots of it before everybody else bought it.   We figured this would be a popular sale, so we'd have to get there early.  We might even have a sighting of the elusive Magpie Ethel.  This was just her kind of sale.

 Early Saturday morning  we gathered our coats and umbrellas and set off across the river.  We arrived more than an hour ahead of time, but there were already dozens of people in line and they kept coming.

And you can see from the picture that this was an old house; the kind with narrow hallways and steep stairs leading to tiny rooms, so they couldn't let everybody in at once. 

The first customer was in and out before we even got in the door.  As he came out all of us waiting were anxious to know what he had bought.  He stated proudly that he had gotten the aluminum Christmas tree for $100.  Wait... what? There was an aluminum Christmas tree?!  That wasn't in the pictures. And I didn't even get to see it.  Drat!  But I did see that he was carrying the cherub feather lamp thingy.  What the heck?  I figured he was a dealer, so did that mean that weird thing was valuable?? 

After we got in, I headed for the basement, but the enamelware was all snatched up already and there was no toy ironing board in sight.  Then I went to the dining room to see about the Pyrex and there was a crazy lady sitting on the floor surrounded by mixing bowls growling nastily at anyone who came near and mumbling something about "My Precious."  Ok, not really, but almost.  She was actually on the floor, totally blocking traffic and trying to lay claim to everything Pyrex within her sight.  I dared to pick up a bowl that was out of her reach and she yelled at me that it was hers until she said otherwise.  One of the red mixing bowls was actually sort of an orange color so she held it out to me and said, "Here, this is good enough for you."  I thought to myself, "They're ALL good enough for me," but didn't really want to fight a crazy woman, so I just said, "No thank you," and went in search of the craft room.  

When I got to the craft room, there was only one other person in there: Magpie Ethel.  You can read her post about the sale here.  All was quiet as we each shopped.  I got some beads and a large knitting needle and a Tunisian crochet hook.  Everything really was 25c :)  

Then I moved into the corner where the piles of yarn were.  I didn't want to block traffic, so I set my large bag down a few feet away.  I grabbed a few skeins of yarn and turned to put them in my bag, when two women with toddlers in tow barged into the room and pushed past me.  They proceeded to pull out large garbage bags and loudly announce how wonderful it was that they were going to get ALL this yarn.  A few other women had come into the room at the same time and tried to get to the boxes of yarn , but they were not about to share.  I moved on to the crochet thread, but couldn't help hearing them yelling at their poor kids not to touch anything and crowing about how much yarn they were getting as they scooped it all up.  "I can't believe I got 95 skeins of yarn."  "Well, I got over 100." They were so obnoxiously greedy that I wanted to grab one of their bags and hit them with it, then give them a piece of my mind, but I didn't want their children to have to witness that.  They looked miserable enough as it was.

Meanwhile, Mom was looking through books and games and other craft stuff.  There were a lot of craft supplies all over the house.

Here's some of what we got - pinking shears, vintage hair shears, craft punches, a 1930 edition of Nancy Drew (these were my favorite books growing up and I'm quite pleased to have found a clothbound edition), a nice vintage ledger, some cowboys and army men...

 

bags of beads and a couple of cute jars with plaid lids...

 

 crochet thread, yarn, the needle and crochet hook...

 

 a spaghetti kitty and a little dog...

  

 a colorful 70's domino set...

 

and a 1966 version of Milton Bradley's memory card matching game.  

Mom liked the graphics on these two games, but was surprised to find that the Memory game is quite popular on ebay, selling recently for $35, even with some of the cards missing (we're missing a card, too)

We had a good time going through the house in spite of the behavior of some people.  Most people were very patient and polite.   We also found some recipe pamphlets and books. 

By far, our favorite book is this one, because there is a family story to go along with it.  

About twenty years ago, we lived in an apartment.  Free cable was provided to all the tenants, but it was only 13 channels.  During Christmas vacation, they gave us free premium channels to try to entice us to sign up for the pay service.  So one evening, after the eleven o'clock news, Mom and my then teenaged sister decided to see if they could find anything good on HBO, Cinemax, etc.  Hoping for a movie, they tried HBO... half-naked people making out... Cinemax... more half-naked people making out... Showtime... even more half-naked people.  And by half-naked, I mean mostly naked boobs.  "This is ridiculous," said Mom.  "Apparently, eleven o'clock is the beginning of The Naked Boob Hour.  I give up.  We'll go to Disney Channel.  At least they won't have naked boobs."  So she turned it to the Disney Channel, and there was baby Perri, the squirrel, being nursed by her mother.  Even on the Disney Channel, there were naked boobs!  Granted, they were squirrel boobs, and you couldn't really see much, but come on!  Needless to say, we did not get premium channels that year.

We did not buy this pink poodle with real bright pink rabbit fur, but she was awfully cute.
I'm not sure where bright pink rabbits can be found.  Maybe the same place that pink and blue poodles can?

We spent almost two hours going through the house, and just as we were leaving I remembered that I wanted to take a picture of something else we didn't buy...

this hilarious robe made out of bath towels.  Apparently such robes were a fashion statement in the '70s.  I believe the exact statement was, "What the frickety-frack?"

You can tell this one was extra special because they used fringe on the collar and sleeves.  I'm really glad I went back because that was when I saw the chenille bedspread.

I love chenille and have always wanted to find a bedspread.  This one is peach in color and is worn in places, but I plan to cut it and make pillows or something.

We stopped at one other estate sale, but only bought a sweater and some boxes of Little Debbie brownies.

 We did, however, see this terrifying ashtray...

and this adorable felt on cork giraffe.  

Mom remembers assembling several of these art kits back in 1968. 

On our way back home we stopped at Wendy's for chicken sandwiches and discovered a very nice deal.  This year Wendy's is selling plastic key tags for $1 ($0.90 of which goes directly to the Dave Thomas Foundation) that entitle the cardholder to a free junior frosty with every purchase for the duration of the 2015 calendar year.  We each bought one and I'm very satisfied with the deal and highly recommend it to anyone who likes frosties.

Our first estate sale of the season was a success. How has your thrifting been lately?

I'm linking to the following parties:

Show and Share at Coastal Charm
Vintage Bliss Tuesdays
Thrifter Share
Tweak It Tuesday
Roses of Inspiration