I Did Something Crafty!

You all might have figured out by now that I'm not the craftiest of people and I'm sorry if I may have led you to believe otherwise. I can't work a sewing machine, I can't recover or paint furniture, and I can barely scrapbook and make cards.

I have managed a few projects in the past.

Poor sad gray heart. It's been on the fridge so long it's lost all its lovely purple color. But Mom likes it.


Not like this colorful masterpiece. It's still be-you-tee-full.

That's why this craft project is so wonderful -- you don't need any real crafty skills! All you have to be able to do is cut fabric and tie a double knot.

The last project I remember attempting with scissors involved cutting my own hair. It did not end well. This time I fared much better.

My church has women's fellowship events every month or so and I don't always make it out to them but this month was different. This month we made Fleece Tie Blankets. It also happened to be the week that fleece was half price at our local JoAnn's, making it the perfect Friday to make blankets!

Here's my finished blanket.

Cupcakes on one side...

diamonds on the other.

This was NOT a thrifty project. It was fun and pretty easy to do, and I LOVE my blanket, but even at half price and with a 15% off coupon, it still cost about $22 for the fleece.

In order to make a blanket like mine, you will need:

2 yards each of any two kinds of fleece.
1 pair of very sharp scissors
a large flat surface to lay/cut your fabric on.
optional: yardstick or other long, fairly straight edge

For the fleece, you can choose any two kinds you like or even just all one pattern or color. Just keep in mind that they will be opposing sides of the same blanket. I made mine with a total of 4 yards of fabric and I cut my ties very large, decreasing the surface area of my blanket somewhat. If you want a slightly larger blanket, I suggest increasing the fabric size to 3 yards each side.

I apologize that I do not have step by step photos but it really is quite simple to make:

1.Lay one piece of fabric right side down on your surface, and lay the other right side up on top of it.

2. Line up the edges of the fabric and trim off the selvage edge, keeping both pieces of fabric the same size. Try to cut in a pretty much straight line, but it doesn't need to be exact. Set one long piece of selvage aside for later.

3. Cut a square out of each corner of both pieces of fabric. The size of the square will determine the length of your ties before they are knotted, so if you want longer or shorter fringe, adjust the square accordingly. I wanted large fringe, so I made mine 6X6.

4. Take your selvage scrap and lay it out along one edge of your blanket, from the inside corner of one cut-out square to the inside corner of the other. This will make a guideline for cutting the length of your ties. You can also use your yardstick for this, if you prefer.

8. You are ready to begin cutting! Eyeball about how wide you want your fringe to be (mine were 2 inches) and cut through both layers of fleece in as straight a line as possible, making sure not to cut past the line made by the selvage strip.

9. Continue cutting ties all the way around the blanket.

10. Once you are finished cutting, take corresponding aligned ties and double knot them together, taking care not to pull too tight at the corners, as this can cause stretching problems. Tie all the way around the blanket and you're finished!!!

You now have a very warm, very cozy little blanket. I find that the 2 yards length is a generous lap blanket and I am using mine in the car as it is quite cold in the mornings. If you would like to make a baby blanket, use 1 to 1 1/2 yards for each side. These blankets make great simple and fun gifts and are easy enough to make with a child's help -- they can even pick out their own fabrics!

Thrifting By Proxy

Do you ever Thrift By Proxy? That's when a friend is at an estate sale or a thrift store, sees something she thinks you will like and gives you a call. Just because you're not there doesn't mean you can't share the fun.

Like early this summer, when I was at a garage sale and called my Sean Connery obsessed friend Brent:

Me: Do you have twenty dollars?
Brent: No. Why?
Me: Oh, okay, never mind.
Brent: Wait, wait, why?
Me: I just found this framed picture of someone you might know. A man named Sean Connery. Ring any bells?
Brent: (incoherent excited babbling)
Me: He even signed it. I think it's from that movie "Hunt for Red October". Have you seen it? (I happen to know it's his favorite.) But since you don't have twenty dollars, I'll just leave it here.
Brent: No, no. I have twenty dollars. Buy it. Now.

Or the more usual calls to Mom on any Sunday, when I stop at Goodwill on my way home from church:

Me: Do you have five dollars?
Mom: Why?
Me: Pyrex
Mom: What kind?
Me: The five dollar kind.
Mom: (Thinking: $5... must be good) Is it still shiny?
Me: Pretty much. Some light metal marking.
Mom: What pattern?
Me: The kind that will cost you five dollars.
Mom: (giving up) Fine. Buy it. We can return it if I don't like it.

Or:

Me: I found you a present.
Mom: What kind of present?
Me: The goooood kind.
Mom: Is it Pyrex?
Me: Maaaaybe.

This is family code for "I ain't tellin'." When I was a kid, I would try to guess what was in the presents under the Christmas tree, and no matter what I guessed, Mom would never say "no." I could guess "a pile of dog poo" and she would say "maaaaybe".

Mom: (Playing along)Is it socks and underwear? That's what my parents always got me.
Me: I'm at Goodwill... do you really want socks and underwear from here?
Mom: No thank you. Did you use my money?
Me: Well, duh. Have you met me? Broke college student?
Mom: Okay, what did I buy myself?
Me: A surprise.
Mom: Oh, goody. It's such a surprise I didn't even know I was buying it.

Last Friday, Mom invited me to go to an estate sale with her, but I already had plans. My BOYFRIEND wants me to go with him to the premiere of the new Harry Potter movie next Friday, and I hadn't seen the last two movies yet. (I haven't read the books, either, please don't flame me.) So my BOYFRIEND was bringing the movies over for us to watch. (Btw, in case you haven't noticed, I have a boyfriend. And I am officially 12 years old.)

So Mom went alone, and in the middle of the movie, I received this call:

Mom: Are you busy?
Me: I can't talk. Bellatrix is at Snape's house.
Mom: Is $3.50 a good price for three Pyrex mixing bowls?
Me: (to the TV) NOOOO... don't touch her she's---- wait. Pyrex?
Mom: Spring Blossom Pyrex. [My pattern] Three piece set. Cinderella mixing bowls.
Me: How much again?
Mom: $3.50. Do you want it?
Me: Well, duh. Have you met me?

I have a very NICE boyfriend. He lets me interrupt Harry Potter for Pyrex. We support each other's obsessions. (Hey, at least neither of us is into Twilight.)

But that wasn't all Mom found.

She also got a green depression glass mixing bowl, something she's wanted for years. The yellow and green round casserole is the $5 Pyrex from Goodwill. The pattern is called Shenandoah, and my lousy picture doesn't do it justice. She paid $1 for another Tupperware cake keeper because it had this inside it.

This is a pie stacker, so that I can carry two pies in one cake carrier. (Pies are my favorite thing to bake.)
And... several free booklets, including:

The recipe book from the first Pillsbury Bake-Off (before they used that name) in 1949. Someone was offering this for $450 on ebay last week because it is supposedly rare. No takers. One did sell this week for $10, though. I just love the names of the winners... Mrs. Ralph E. Smofield... Mrs. Herbert Leslie Evans... Mrs. Casimir T. Subbie... I am NOT making these up... not the sort of names you hear these days.

This colorful little Coldspot manual is from Sears, Roebuck and Company. No date, but from the pictures, I'd say mid-fifties. That gold and silver chevron on the front is a close-up of the handle to the fridge. How cool is that? And can you see the adjustable watermelon shelf? I want one for my fridge. Plus, it boasts Recipes "that will make you an envied hostess," and they are surprisingly normal for mid-fifties recipes.

And then there was what she didn't buy. There was a wonderful wooden high chair for $40. We would love to have one, but can't afford that price.

Isn't that picture precious?

There were more estate sales on Saturday - the fun kind, that are run by the family, who can tell you about the house and the people who lived there, and who are more interested in clearing out the house than in making a lot of money.

The first one was run by a brother and sister who were clearing out their father's stuff. Dad found a bunch of stuff, like some pointy things, and some greasy things, and some rusty things, and a big bag of aluminum pieces that hold plastic pipes to form the skeleton of a pool cover that he's going to use to make a greenhouse... some day.

And we got:

Twelve Corelle plates for $3.

For as long as I can remember we've had one plate in this pattern. It is fairly beat up and faded and scratched but when I was about five years old it was my favorite plate. I had a little bit of a princess complex (and by little I mean a huge one) and had decided that it was the princess plate because it was the prettiest. It was my job to set the table and so, at dinner every night, I made sure that I got the princess plate. I remember one night my sister made the mistake of sitting at the chair with my plate in front of it. I promptly informed her that it was my seat. She, being unimpressed with my delusions of grandeur refused to move and I bit her arm. My mother then looked at me, sighed, and said "Betty... princesses don't bite." I released her arm and, as punishment, was not allowed to eat from my princess plate.

Mom had decided just two weeks ago that she wanted to start acquiring this pattern for our everyday dishes and Voila! they appear. She was ready to pay the usual Goodwill price of $1 each . I was at Goodwill last night and there was a whole stack of dinner plates, lunch plates, and bowls. They wanted $13 for FOUR plates. I don't know what they've been smoking at GW lately, but it must be some good stuff.

Nesting dolls - $3. This will be a Christmas present. Is it for you? Maaaaaybe.



Two Shiny Brite flocked ornaments for 50c. I've been looking all year and these are the first ones I've found.

And the big ticket items:

Three Puzz-3D puzzles for $5 each. These sell pretty well on ebay, and Mom wanted to give it a try, but there was no guarantee that all the pieces were there. The sellers were certain that they were intact, because their father had been meticulous about his puzzles, and they wouldn't budge on the price, so we took a chance. It turns out that two of them are intact, but there is a piece missing from the biggest one. Oh well, Mom wanted to try putting one together anyway. We'll have to see how the other two go on ebay. We've never sold anything on ebay before, so it should be interesting.

Do you know what these are?

Mom: (Rummaging in a box of toys): Look, they have Yogi Bear bowling pins!
Man running the sale: Because you know what they are, you can have them.
Mom: Thanks, I'll show them to the Grandkids. They're pretty chewed up; missing a few ears.
Man: Yep.
Mom: You must have had a dog.
Man: Nope.

At which point the man's sister busts out laughing and points to her brother, who just grins.

They also gave us these. Hai Karate sells pretty well on ebay, too, but I've never seen it in plastic bottles, and these seem less than half full, so I don't think they're valuable, but they are fun.

We hit two other estate sales and the Goodwill. We got some miscellaneous housewares and books for next to nothing, and these items.

A Pyrex juice carafe for $1, an Airedale dog with two pups for $2, and a pair of copper-dipped baby shoes for $5. Bronzed baby shoes were on our list of things to look for. I had no idea there were copper ones. I like these better, and there is one for each of us.

Well, that was my weekend of thrifting.

I'm joining these parties to share.
Click on the links and see what others have found.

Junkin Finds with Linda @ A La Carte
Thrift Share Monday

A Give-Away at A Coversation at Goodwill

Sherrie at A Conversation at Goodwill is celebrating

her one year anniversary with a giveaway.

As a prize, she will be giving away some of her Goodwill treasures.

Click here to visit her wonderful blog.

Click here to learn about the giveaway and enter.
Hurry, as the give-away ends at midnight on Nov. 10th.

Happy Anniversary Sherrie!!

We Suggest Kellogg's Cereals

Today I am joining Laurie @ A Conversation at Goodwill for "A Few of My Favorite Things Saturday",

and Sue @ It's A Very Cherry World for Rednesday.

This is one of my favorite things. It hangs in our kitchen and is supposed to hold spices, but usually also holds toys, keys, papers, aluminum foil balls - you know, the important stuff. My father gave it to my mother over 30 years ago. Can you tell what it was originally?

It's made out of sheet metal, and has raised lettering at the top. We've never seen another one like it, and can find no information about it, but we think it dates back to the thirties or forties. It was a display shelf for individual boxes of Kellogg's cereals in a restaurant. My father says it was hanging in his garage when he was a boy. His father used it to store cans of oil.

By 1977, when Dad asked Grandpa if he could have it, it was in sad shape. All those years of spilled oil had destroyed the original paint, but the metal was solid. There were little vertical strips of chrome at the top and bottom, but they were too far gone to be saved. So he stripped it down to the metal and duplicated the original paint job.

We thought it would be fun to fill the shelves with boxes of cereal, but they don't fit. Apparently the original boxes were a bit shorter.

Goodwill Finds

The weather around here has pretty much settled into cloudy, with the probability of rain, daily. This will go on for at least six months, only to be occasionally interrupted for ice and snow. For a thrifter, that brings good news and bad news. The bad news is, there are few garage sales and you will get wet. The good news is, the only people brave enough to have a sale in this weather are probably liquidating an estate or selling everything for a move. That means they have my kind of stuff, and they really want to sell it. Fewer garage sales also means more things are showing up in the thrift stores, and it pays to check in more often.

I was able to find some nice bargains this week. We found an estate sale with a some 10c Tupperware. It was pretty grungy, so I'll spare you the photos, but after soaking overnight and a good scrubbing, it looked just fine.

But I will show you this Tupperware I found at Goodwill:

Deviled egg tray inserts for my cold cuts keeper for $1. I've been looking for them since I found the keeper in August.

A small parts cabinet full of goodies-$2. Mom brought this home for Dad, but he emptied all the little parts (hinges, screws, brass bits, etc) into one of his other cabinets and gave this to me for jewelry and craft supplies. I think I'll be painting it a brighter color next Spring. She also brought me a giant box full of scrapbooking supplies. She said they practically paid her to take it away.

Mom also made a trip to the Goodwill Outlet Store. This is where they send all the stuff that hasn't sold at the regular stores. Sometimes Goodwill's pricing system makes no sense to me.

These Currier & Ives pots were originally marked $6.99 each. That would be $28 for the whole set! They are very pretty, made in Japan, and look brand new, but really? I think $6.99 for the whole set would have been more reasonable. But they ended up at the outlet for $39c/lb, and Mom is very happy to have them for $1.11. She's thinking about an indoor herb garden.

This golf push cart will be fitted with a garbage can and used to haul gardening tools around the yard - $5, more than she wanted to pay, but she's been looking for a while, and she was feeling generous after finding this:

Maple child's table and chairs - $15.00

And everywhere we looked we found...

Pyrex!!
Some are from estate sales, some are from Goodwill. I believe the dark brown bss lid is Old Orchard, but I like it with the Woodland. The yellow bowl is a small hostess bowl I was very surprised to find at Goodwill for $3, and I really like the bright orange Daisy round casserole. It's holding the leftover Halloween candy now. We paid $17.00 for everything in the picture.

And my favorite this week:

My Letter Jacket, Laura.
There are a few holes in the ribbing, but they should be easy to repair. Since the sleeves are wool and not leather, it was actually affordable, at $14.60. I've been looking for a letter jacket at Goodwill for a while but haven't seen any. Now I know why. The tag says it came in last March. They've been saving it for Halloween. I guess next year I'll have to check all the GW stores when they first put out the Halloween stuff. I'd still like to have one with leather sleeves. What's your favorite find this week?

I'm linking up with
Thrift Share Monday
Thrifty Thursday



Junkin' Finds

Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays



Click the links for more thrifty finds.

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