Vintage Jingle

Jingle bells,
Jingle bells,
Jingle all the way,
Should I get my cousin Pam
some perfume or a tray
hey!



Jingle bells,
Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg
A coffee pot for Bobby,
And maybe one for Meg
Hey!


A day or two ago,
I thought I'd take a ride,
To the local thrift shop,
to find something for Clide.

I thought a new bread box,
or maybe a pair of socks,
But would he rather have a towel,
or maybe a ceramic owl?
Hey


jingle bells
jingle bells...

Out and About with Evan

Saturday my oldest son was stuck with his mom all day as my husband and younger son went on a field trip to Washington, D.C.

At first Evan was really not into checking out some newly discovered thrift stores in Lancaster...how unusual for a 15-year-old boy. So surprising. But with the bribery of lunch out at a diner - food is a big motivator anymore -- he begrudgingly hopped into the old Suburban with me and we headed northward.

The first place we stopped was a small thrift store run by a Mennonite church, and there were some good finds. Here is the set of Ransburg Canisters I found there...

After that I took him to the promised diner where he wolfed down a cheeseburger, fries and a rootbeer before I finished half my sandwich. It was a nice restaurant filled with people coming and going from Christmas shopping and Saturday chores. I actually got filled in on some of the goings on at school - more than the usual "its fine." He even admitted he was having fun poking around the stores with me.

Next we headed northward again to a place that promised 20,000 square feet of thrift store, great bargains...not so much. It was bigger than your usual Salvation Army or Goodwill, but the prices were as well. Not much for me to buy that would leave enough room in the price for any profit. I did find this Mid-century tea service in stainless steel on sale and decided to get it.

In the end I probably didn't find any great treasures...except one, a few hours one-on-one with a fifteen-year-old who seems to grow up right before my eyes. Priceless.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

With all the holiday running around, I was only able to get to a few thrift stores this week, but I did find a few interesting things.

I thought I'd give a quick, down and dirty view of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly from this weeks picking...

The Good
A set of eleven atomic ranch dessert plates, love them.

The Bad
A ceramic figure of two rabbits...one has fake eyelashes (what is it with weird bunnies at the Salvation Army?)

And the Ugly
This is a lamp made with a piece of plastic and a dented old root beer can...really, you can just throw stuff out, you don't need to bring every treasure to the thrift store.

Neat Mixer...Neater Lady

When I went to the church sale on Saturday with my Aunt Joan, I found the most unusual mixer I'd ever seen. You can't tell from this picture but the base is actually triangular.
When I went to put it in the trunk of Joan's car, I noticed on the cover of the instruction manual (yes, it still has the instruction manual!) that there was a blender that went with the unit as well.

When I'd paid for my items, the woman who was tallying my order had mentioned that this had been her mother's appliance, so I went back inside to ask her if the blender part was still on a table somewhere in the sale and I'd missed it.

Immediately, she remembered she did have it in her basement but had forgotten to bring it to the sale. Without missing a beat, she asked for my name and phone number so she could call me when she'd found it so I could pick it up.

There was no hesitation that she was going to invite a stranger to her home, no hemming and hawing that it was just a pain-in-the-butt. She genuinely wanted me to have this missing piece and she was old enough to be of a generation that welcomed people - even (gasp) strangers -- into their homes without a can of mace at the ready and poised to scream "stranger danger" at the top of their lungs.

And true to her word, she called me the next day and I arranged to stop by her home on Monday. I found her home easily and was welcomed by three adorable little dogs and this lovely woman in a Christmas sweater holding her door wide open for me, someone she'd met for only a few moments two-days before.
She handed me the blender and then offered me a seat. We chatted for awhile as I looked around the room, where every square inch had been decorated for Christmas. She even took me to her bathroom where all was Kris Kringly too.

In the twenty-minutes I was in her home, this wonderful lady shared with me pictures of her grandchildren, some of the heartaches she had to endure in her long-life, and expressed interest in my own. An authentic, human connection made between two people who had simply been strangers before a 1950 Nutone Power-Maid blender introduced them.

Church Sale, Aunt Joan and Wandering

A church sale, my aunt Joan and wandering around to yard sales and thrift stores...three of my favorite things all in one Saturday morning, doesn't get much better than that.

Joan found a listing for a church sale near Gettysburg so we headed there early on Saturday morning to find a few good items. Here was one of my favorites, a wood display box, probably used once for spools of thread.















Once we finished poking around the church sale we decided to stop at an indoor yardsale and some thrift stores as we wound our way home. Here are some pictures of the stairwell and basement of the indoor yardsale.

Joan and I both agreed we were happy there were two of us so one could run for help if something creepy jumped out of the shadows.

You Just Never Know

I am often surprised by what people will buy on etsy.com, or more precisely, what will sell first.

Today was a perfect example. I hit some of my favorite Thrift Stores and found a couple nice things to add to my shop. At my last stop, almost as an afterthought, I picked up a small silver-toned ring holder shaped like a donkey...what? I thought it was cute.


It sold in twenty-minutes after it was listed.

Yet, I found this very cute vintage metal daisy pin - very popular right now -- weeks ago, same price as the donkey, and its still sitting unsold.

Or this beautiful set of very old, very collectible Pyrex bowls...they've been for sale for months now...nada.

Maybe that's part of the fun of selling things online, it is always a surprise.

A Pause...for Clause

Since opening my shop on etsy.com in July, it is rare for me to go more than a day or two without poking my head in a thrift store or tracking down a garage sale, but I have found myself thoroughly distracted lately by the holidays.

Plus, there are no more yard sales listed in the paper (too cold) and the Thrift stores are filled mostly with Christmas decorations (see the pictures of the strange 50% off Santa doing a split and the weird, scrunchy-faced one - they are hitting the bottom of the barrel at this point), so I have had my first moment to pause since starting my search for vintage things to sell online. Up until now, I've been so focused on hunting down stuff for the shop - it's rare that my kids don't come home from school to find me surrounded by vintage bedspreads, Pyrex bowls, old blenders -- so it feels weird not to be adding to my inventory.

But what I have discovered lately, to my surprise, is that all this hunting and picking over the last four months has allowed me to stock up the etsy shop enough that I can take a moment and still have a decent amount of sales, even if its been awhile since I added anything new.

Of course, that said, my plan is to get the house decorated, finish the shopping and bake the cookies so I can get back out there in the world to find the things people don't want anymore to sell it to the people that do...and you know there's going to be a lot of attics and closets cleaned out after the holidays to get rid of the old and make room for the new. Yay!