It has been a full month (wee bit over actually) of thrifting & estate sales & rummage sales for me. Life just keeps on rolling & I'm learning to better cope with the things that kept me from fully enjoying it. It is wonderful to talk to friends & have them sigh with relief when they notice that I am my old self again.
How refreshing to be silly without worry, flighty & strange but not nearly as anxious or awkward, especially in crowds or around strangers. The Jewish Grammaw in me doesn't like to talk about it much for fear the panic attacks will return, but even my therapist is like, "Who ARE you!?" She had never met me before the anxiety returned, & had nothing to compare my personality to. She hadn't realized how completely terrorized I had become.
One thing that I love is that I can go places by myself again. I can drive up the canyon, & go grocery shopping, & I've taken up my every-other-day thrift route again. I particularly missed estate sales, which I like to dilly-dally at. So I have been. I have been hitting them hard (like my ex co-worker Terrie who would give up chocolate every year for
Lent, only to make herself completely sick with M&Ms 41 days later) because I can now take my time & dig through boxes & bins & cupboards without hurrying through before the fear struck.
Below are some of my favorite finds over the past month, most of these are in
the shop (unless they have sold already) but I am sharing one of my favorite things ever found at the end of this post & that is staying with me.
Smalls! Lots & lots of smalls! Some folks don't like to fuss with them, but I can't resist their sweet kitschy charm & I have tons of customers who appreciate the time I take in selling
the little dears. Those
Siamese cats at the very left are so perfect & hard to get rid of, but I have them listed. They are just perfect in every way! Everything above (aside from
the Lucite dachshund) sits easily atop a quarter.
A fancy & very feminine
set of mugs with colorful birds & foliage on them. They are the loveliest creamy color & are kind of scalloped all the way around with ornate little handles, such a pretty vintage set!
My first Cathrineholm pieces, a pair of
Lotus bowls that I picked up for $10 at a local thrift & sold, within two days of posting them, to a gal in Norway who paid me well for them & also didn't mind the hefty shipping fee (these bowls are not light). I entertained the thought of keeping them, but it would be too easy to start up yet another collection. I'm trying not to do that, tempting though ... very tempting.
Two gorgeously colored floral Noritake Craftone Blue Sky
dessert plates. Perfect colors, perfectly floral. I would love to own an entire set of this dinnerware, but it seems pretty elusive.
The best little kiss
clutch ever. From the 1950s with the clasp at the top & a zipper across the bottom. Just the right size & in amazing condition given its age.
A set of super cool Hazel Atlas
pheasant hunting glasses. Found these for a song at a local thrift, just in time for autumn & fowl season. I'm not much of a hunter, but there's something so retro fabulous & masculine about them. I know they'll find a great home & be very loved.
The sweetest little panda bear
mug you've ever seen! It's already gone, to a darlin' named Amanda. She was so excited about this mug, I almost felt bad selling it to her as if it should have been gifted.
The coolest calendar I have found. It is from 1964 & stands up
& folds like a little Asian room divider. It is covered in
beautiful graphics made up of shiny foiled paint or paper & there
are little pumpkins on the extra spots in October, turkeys on the extra
spots in November, etc. Kitschy & cute.
I found this fabulous
unique owl jar at a local thrift. It has wonderful little details, like the rain drop shaped feathers down the front & the its head comes off & will sit on its own too. I have many owl loving customers & I'm sure he won't stick around long, especially with fall almost here.
I have a very large colletion of vintage buttons. About seven years ago I decided that if every cardigan I bought was going to lose its buttons so quickly then I was going to replace the buttons (with vintage buttons I loved) as soon as I bought them to save the future frustration. Thus I started buying jars of buttons every chance I got & then squirreling away my favorites.
Well, you can imagine I ended up with way too many buttons. I mean, I have a lot of cardigans, but the button stash was taking over my Etsy room. I took a week & rifled through them all, tucking away my very favorites & then I carded up a bunch of them onto these vintage animal SNAP playing cards. They look so
cute, I put some
for sale in
the shop.
Here it is, one (actually two) of my favorite finds of all time. It is a Mid Century melamine storage chest. The perfect dreamy turquoise, little black feet & an awesome shape. Just right for stashing away those buttons I decided to keep! It was extremely dirty when I found it, but I took a chance & it scrubbed up nicely.
Sitting on top is a little wooden finger push puppet. I collect them. They don't have to be vintage, but I have to like them a lot in order to buy them (that keeps the clutter at bay ... HA!). As kids our mom would get these for us on Easter in our baskets & at Christmas in our stockings. Finding vintage ones makes my day. This little black cat is so sweet & goofy.
I have so much more to share, but I've been putting off a post for too long now. I got super behind on everything in life & now that things are slowly becoming "normal" I am noticing how many things I avoided over the past year ... like cleaning off the top of my refrigerator! Egads, that was a task not for the faint of heart!
I always find time for Instagram though & I think that may be why my blog has been so sorely neglected. I will try harder not to substitute proper blog posts with ten Instagram posts per day.
Linking up with:
Thrift Share Monday
&
Thriftosaurus
&
The Penny Worthy Project
&
Vintage Thingie Thursday
&
Treasure Hunt Thursday
at the moment, one of the most perfect Halloween listening albums ever released ... even if it isn't really a Halloween album.
