Not Without Your Ticket

One of the first things I blogged about finding (and arguably my favorite) was my Remington Quiet-Riter typewriter. I found it at a church rummage sale for $5.00. When I was about four years old my sister had a typewriter. I couldn't tell you what brand it was, but I used it to type up "movie tickets" that I would slip under my mother's and sister's bedroom doors on Saturday mornings, inviting them to watch various Disney movies with me, usually The Little Mermaid. I was a very insistent child and, at least once, refused my sister access to the living room because she had left her "movie ticket" in her bedroom. I also would consistently deny tickets to my brother and father because we were watching The Little Mermaid which was a "lady movie" and, seeing as how they were not ladies, it was not for them to watch. At least once my mother told me that I had to show a "boy movie" so that they could watch too.

Recently, multiple friends of mine have expressed interests in owning typewriters and, me being the thrifter, I offered to find them.

This is an Olivetti-Underwood Studio 44 that I found at the Goodwill bins for my friend, Michael. He is very pleased with it and for a small price he became the proud owner of a mid-60's typing machine.

Not shown in the picture is the very nice vinyl case that came with it.

In news of other things I've found at the Goodwill bins, this lemonade glass was sold by Dollar Tree stores everywhere (except of course where I live).
I saw a picture of them on someone's blog a while ago and have been wanting some to go with my Pyrex lemonade carafes. Now I own two. If I'd been able to find them at our local Dollar Tree they would have cost me $1.00 each. At the bins they cost a mere $0.25 each.

This Mary Engelbreit tin is the first M.E. item I've found at the bins so far. It's slightly dented up, and had an original Goodwill sticker price of $0.99 on it. We got it for $0.76. A pretty good price if I do say so myself.


And because it's Mary Engelbreit Monday and still February, here are some fun love-themed prints from the little book I showed last Monday.

I'm linking up to these parties:

Mary Engelbreit Monday
Thrift Share Monday

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The Year in Thrifting

Here are my favorite thrift and estate sale finds of 2010 in no particular order:

Rhinestone Necklace for myself.

I finally found a good one at an estate sale rather than an antique store.

Our mid century coffee table for $1.00

\So much Pretty Pyrex!!!

This was the first year I really started to collect it and I have gotten so much I can hardly believe it.

Assorted mid-century specialty cookbooks.

Various assorted books from the '50s and '60s on "better living" through home improvement
and craft instructions.

Tons of adorable baby planters and the vintage quilt in the picture.

Vintage Shiny Brite ornaments, specifically two with flocked lettering and images on them.

Remington Quiet-Riter and a Eureka typewriter ribbon (in the cutest little tin ever).

Vintage Hotpoint refrigerator.

Old slides, a projector, slide viewers, and even a screen to view them all on.

My vintage pink Sunbeam Mixmaster ca. 1957.

It's been a wonderful year of thrifting and brought me many useful and fun things. How's your year in thrifting been? What are some of your favorite finds?

I'm linking this post to:

Thrifty Thursdays@Bloggeritaville
Junkin' Finds Friday@A La Carte

Join the parties and see what others have found.

Just Like the Egyptians

Last Friday, my mother was awake at 3AM as she so often is (don't ask me why) and she decided to check Craigslist for estate sales. Lo and behold, there was the sale to end all sales: there was a picture with PYREX in it!!! The sale was scheduled to open an hour before my first class that day so Mom woke me up and told me about it, asking if I wanted to go with her. We took separate cars, and I went in first to sniff out the Pyrex. Mom was looking for some vintage cookbooks she had seen advertised.

That sale was packed; we could barely move around. The Pyrex turned out to be over-priced, and Mom couldn't find the cookbooks, but I managed to snag a few things before I had to leave for class. It was an effort just to get near enough to the check-out table to make a pile of things for Mom to pay for later. The line went through two rooms of the house, and several people did not take kindly to what they assumed was me cutting into the line. After a number of dirty looks, and one lecture, I managed to stash my finds and escape unharmed. Ah, the things we do for vintage. This is what I found:

A glasbake mixing bowl for sunbeam


An enameled refrigerator drawer, which someone just handed to me :)

A Westclox Travalarm - I just love the style. The cream colored part closes over the face like a roll-top desk. The alarm works, but unfortunately, it doesn't keep time. Dad's thinking about opening it up and seeing if he can fix it.


And a copper-colored jointed owl necklace. His name is Octavius Augustus.


The other necklace is my Benjamin Bunny scrabble tile I bought at my favorite Antique Mall this summer. When I was four, My mother cross stitched a little picture of Benjamin Bunny onto a blue corduroy jumper for me. (For those of you who understand counted cross stitch, it was 18 count and corduroy is too thick for such tiny stitches. She swore, "never again!") This was my favorite jumper and I didn't want my mother to wash it because I was afraid the picture would fade. In the interest of keeping it stain-free, the jumper wasn't allowed out of the house or near anything sticky. I still have it today.

This is what Mom found:

Tupper(ware) Silent Partner poker chips set, dominoes, some free Fisher Price wooden people, and this neat little tin.

The unused ribbon is inside, and it's for a Remington, which is the brand of typewriter I found back in July! I'm not sure it fits my model, but I like the tin so much, I'd have bought it empty.

Passports from 1947!


Aren't their pictures wonderful

This couple apparently spent a year in Paris, and made at least one trip to Geneva. There were also some other papers with the passports, including a driver's license and some French bread ration stamps.


This was tucked in one of the boxes. We hoped to find the camera, but no such luck.

It was fun to read, as it was intended for a child. Love the Brylcreem hairdo on that kid. I also found it interesting that a roll of film only had 8 pictures on it.

A "mystery for girls" from 1934. I wonder how it compares to Nancy Drew. And although you can't tell from my crappy picture, that's a copy of Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cook Book. We bought that by mistake, because Mom was holding it when I had to leave and it got in my pile of stuff. But it was only a buck, and it turns out to have been illustrated by a young Andrew Warhol. So if you're interested in teeny little pictures of measuring cups, mixing bowls, and a fish or two drawn by a famous artist, I have the book for you, lol.

There was one other item that Mom had seen in the pictures for the auction that was on our list:

Our neighbor had asked us to look for one for him, but I will also be using it for a project I'm working on that I will tell you about in a future post. We got all of that for $23.00.

Then Mom headed off to a few other sales.

She found this hardly used set of Tupperware canisters for $2. The largest one is missing it's lid, and the lid to the next biggest one shattered after she got it home. I read online somewhere that Tupperware can get dehydrated, and that if you have some in a cupboard not being used, it should be taken out every 3-4 months and soaked in water to keep it soft. I guess these had been in storage for a long time. Time for me to soak some Tupperware.

She also found a whole bunch of Pyrex compatables pieces in my favorite pattern, Spring Blossom. She was quite excited, until she realized they really were pieces. There was the underplate for the gravy boat, sugar bowls, but no lids, etc.

She bought them anyway, as they were part of a huge box of miscellaneous dishes, mostly Pyrex and Fire King that was only a few dollars. For the most part, they were not remarkable, but there were a few nice pieces, such as two very faded Amish Butterprint small refrigerator dishes, and four opal white 12-oz square bowls.

And then there is this interesting little tea cup. That's a marijuana leaf on there. And if you look closely, all the "flowers" are also marijuana leaves turned on their sides. Do you suppose that whoever originally bought this knew what it was? Or was someone having a little private joke with this design? This looks like the kind of tea cup that came with my grandmother's snack sets, but those belong to an era I don't usually associate with stoner decor. It has no markings and I couldn't find anything about it online.

Then Mom went to Value Village on Monday, and they had a stack of matching snack plates in the same pattern. They wanted $2.99 for each one, or she would have bought one just for fun. (She paid about 12c for the cup)

The last thing Mom found on Friday was something she's been thinking about getting ever since we moved into our house in 2007. We have a 26-inch TV that sits in a corner of the living room. It has never looked quite right there. It either needs to be in a big entertainment center or should be replaced with a bigger TV. Mom has had this idea that we should be able to get a 34" TV for very little money since there are so many people who are upgrading to flat-screen HDTV and will want to get rid of an old set. And we'll be fine with old technology for a long time. (Heck, it's not even vintage yet.)

So we've been watching Craigslist for free or cheap TVs, but most of them have been too big, too far away, or need work. But Friday, Mom found a guy who advertised a moving sale and had several 36" TVs for sale for $10-$15. Plus, he also mentioned a huge free pile (Mom loves a free pile.) The sale wasn't due to start until 2 pm, so Mom politely waited until 2:05 before she showed up. By that time, whatever free stuff there had been was gone. The poor seller, who was still setting up when Mom arrived, had been ambushed by early birds all morning long and hadn't been able to get much done. He spoke very kindly of them; said they were mostly elderly folks who were just driving by early to verify the address for when they planned on coming back at 2 pm. Yeah, right. Some people!

Fortunately, he still had 2 TVs left. So Mom got a 36" TV and a stand for $20. Score! She also got a large oak bookshelf that screamed 1986 for $15. Since they were too heavy for her to haul home, she arranged for Dad to get them with the pick-up on his way home from work.

Somehow, she assumed Dad would call a couple of strong friends to help get the TV out of the pick-up and into the house. But when he arrived she realized she was being elevated to "strong friend" status. Ha! Had he forgotten who she was? When they were first married 35 years ago she could fake "strong friend" status, but now? I suppose she should have been flattered that he thought she was as young and strong as when they first met, but somehow it wasn't making her feel all warm and fuzzy. (Thankfully, I wasn't home when he arrived.)

My father is a pretty resourceful guy, and he's got a lot of stuff around the house, so with the help of some plywood, some straps, a pair of car ramps, and a furniture dolly, they managed to wrestle the TV into the house... only to be stopped by their inability to grab that TV and lift it 18 inches up onto the TV stand.

Mom said, "We just have to think like the Egyptians did when they moved giant stones for the pyramids and lever it into place somehow." So Dad went out to the woodshed and came back with some pieces of cedar fence wood. He lifted one side of the TV up and Mom slid a board underneath. Then he lifted the other side up and she slid another board in on that side. Slowly and carefully, with much sweating and only a little swearing, Dad lifted the TV 18 inches. Then they used big furniture glides to slide it onto the TV stand.

Here it is on its tower of boards.

The TV works great. It's just in time for us to watch Shaun of the Dead on Halloween.

Mom and Dad say their favorite find this week was the TV. I'm torn between the enamel pan, which we've been looking for all summer, and the ribbon for my typewriter, which I didn't expect to find at all. What was your favorite find this week?

I'm linking up with
Thrift Share Monday
Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays
Thrifty Thursday
Junkin' Finds
Come join the parties

Typewriters, Barstools, and Pyrex oh my!

Last Friday afternoon, after deciding we didn't have money to spend garage sailing anymore, my mother sent me out with a list of sales and eight dollars. A good friend of mine whom we'll call Kitty went with me.

As it would happen, the church rummage sale that we went to first had one thing I have been waiting most of my life to own: a working manual typewriter. The machine is a Remington Quick-Riter and light grey with dark green keys. It has its case and none of the keys stick. I paid $5.00 for it and am quite satisfied.

Also at that sale I got a large cranberry colored Samsonite suitcase with a pink lining and a couple of old metal picture frames.

The next stop on our list was another church rummage sale where I found a few small things such as a postal scale, a wall-mounted hat rack, and a velvet painting souvenir of San Francisco.



After that sale I had only a couple of dollars left and was trying to find another sale when I drove past the most beautiful garage sale find of my life! It was a Yellow Crackle Ice Dinette Set. A fairly small table and four chairs, no lea,f and the vinyl on the chairs needs work but otherwise it's beautiful (sorry but I won't be able to get pictures of it until it's been cleaned up). I had to give them some money to hold it and go back home to get the ($15.00) cash but it was worth it. By the time I had loaded the set into our Kia Optima (which left almost no space for anything else) my mother called and asked me to swing by the American Cancer Society's thrift store for her.
I had just parked in front of a house in our city's downtown and was walking to the store when I saw three red and two black barstools sitting outside of a bar with a FREE sign taped to them.
(the dinette chairs are there in the background)


I had Kitty go check them out for condition and got on the phone with my mother because there was no way they would fit into the car with the dinette set already inside. After a few more phone calls to my father and mother both, I called a friend and he agreed to come pick them up for me.
About twenty minutes later I got home and unloaded it all and with only $20.00 I had gotten three things we've been looking for: a dinette set, a velvet painting (sort of), and a typewriter.

And since then we've just been finding better and better things and of course, it happens as soon as we don't have money to really be buying.

Today, in fact, we found these:


Those are Pyrex divided dishes with their lids; one is Snowflake pattern in Aqua blue and the other is an atomic-looking promotional pattern in black on white. Of all the pyrex we own, these are actually our first divided dishes! If you know anything about the promotional dish pattern, please let me know.

That's all I have for you today, have a great weekend and happy "sailing".


EDIT: I found out which pattern the black and white pyrex is. It's called barbed wire and it was a promotional pattern for fall, 1958.

I'm linking this to:

http://creatingahouseofgrace.blogspot.com/
http://linda-coastalcharm.blogspot.com/
http://diane1876.blogspot.com/

How I Came to Love Vintage

Even as a child I always liked things that could be described as vintage. I grew up with household names like Pyrex and Samsonite, and the soundtrack to my life has always been Broadway and Golden Oldies. When I was a child my mother and sister would take me to antique malls to look around but we rarely bought anything. My mother collected green depression glassware and records and took me to musicals and showed me old films. I became enamored of Judy Garland and the glamour of old Hollywood before I was out of elementary school and I longed for ermine and pearls. Before I was old enough to enter high school I had already started collecting Original Broadway Soundtracks on Vinyl and received a long-awaited record player for my thirteenth birthday. As a gift to celebrate my graduation from high school I finally got the mink stole I had always wanted and, around that time, my mother and I started frequenting Goodwill and estate sales and made a few more finds like a vintage sweater clip and a beautiful two-sided hand mirror. Someone might argue that my mother raised me to like vintage things but I'd have to disagree. I didn't have to be raised to appreciate vintage, I'd always loved it. I was raised around it and wanted vintage things for myself but I wasn't stopped from having new things while growing up; I simply appreciated the older things in life. I have always liked personal items most of all when looking at vintage things, the sort of things that people handled and used on an everyday basis. They tell a story of the owner and what he or she liked or did with their lives as well as what was fashionable or luxurious in earlier times.

In all, I have always liked vintage things. They tend to be better quality, more stylish, and more fun and they just don't make things like that today.

I will soon be blogging here about vintage, thrift stores, broadway, floral design, and anything else that comes to mind but in the meantime, here are some photos of items I should be blogging about.