{Thrift Shop Temptations} Someone Else's Creative Vision

Over the past couple of years, my daughter and I have seen one or two Mod Podged tabled at the Goodwill outlet. They're not even tempting. That's someone else's creative vision that doesn't match mine....and the person who had the vision must have changed their mind for it to wind up in the thrift store. 

This one was different. Not all of the images appeal to me, but if I was going to pick things to glue onto a bookshelf, a lot of these would work for me. 

Especially the Arizona Road Maps Tour Book. There are some book spines at the back of the lowest shelf that I didn't get in the picture, but they look just perfect, especially the way they're peeking out from other images.

There's a lot here that I don't recognize and a lot that I do.

My own reaction was that I could find an old piece of wooden furniture and make something like that someday. Maybe. Can't you just picture a shelf or cabinet with pictures cut out of old crafting books and magazines? Now that I think about it, I've got a couple of pieces of furniture that would make wonderful backgrounds for a project like that, along with stacks of old books and magazines. It's one of those projects that I could do, but probably won't.

The bookshelf from the thrift shop? That's at my house now  because my son shares the vision of whoever made it in the first place. And it really is a nice old piece of furniture under everything else.

Want to see the rest of our thrifting adventure? Just click below.

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Translucent Crashing Waves

This one was hard to resist. I love those little villages of resin houses and this is all one piece, with lots of little detailed houses and an inlet with the remains of a sunken boat....and just look at that translucent crashing wave the wraps around the side!

I talked myself out of it because it was expensive and heavy and I don't need a seaside village, no matter how many amazing little details it has.

Most of the clocks we see at the thrift store are new. I guess the one shaped like a clock radio must have been new-ish, because it was battery operated. But how much neater would it have been if it had been an actual radio instead of just telling the time? The gold and jeweled clock makes me wonder where it belonged originally. It's just so pretty and distinctive....

This little pillow we found in the bins was obviously once part of a very old quilt. I wonder what happened to the rest of it and what will happen to this bit and whether someone was dividing an heirloom into keepsakes. (In case you can't tell, I've got really mixed feelings about "cutter quilts.)

{Thrift Shop Temptations} I Resisted the Hundred Year Old Fabric Ads...

Someone donated actual antiques to St. Vinnie's last week. There was an old Edison wax cylinder player (which I'm sure has a proper name that I don't know) and a gramophone and some pretty furniture. 

And lots of those huge hardback binders of fragile hundred year old newspapers...

I want beautiful fabrics at "great concession from regular prices!" I also want a huge binder of newspapers with ads like this one, but they were sooooo crumbly and I don't know where I'd store them or how I'd manage to physically read them.

One of my sons was trying on jeans which gave me plenty of time to carefully flip through a few pages and convince myself to be reasonable.

We also didn't buy this old soft sculpture piece. He looks creepy enough before you realize that his eyes follow you when you move.

I don't know who made him or how they pulled off that effect, but I'm impressed!

{Thrift Shop Temptations} A Break from Christmas Shopping

I must not have been the only one who had the idea to take a break from Christmas shopping and duck into the thrift shops on Monday afternoon. They were more crowded than the mall. 

This piece of needlepoint was hanging in with a lot of old bedding and tablecloths. I'm not in love with the texture, which reminds me of the wrong side of a stockinette sweater, but I love the colors. Just look at the froth on the waves and the detail of the rocks!

I had to remind myself that I already have an old radio. Mine doesn't have that amazing Zenith logo....but it does have sentimental value. I didn't even check to see if green tags might be half off, because as much as I love this thing I couldn't justify bringing it home with me.

To see everything else I found, click on the video below --

{Thrift Store Temptations} All the Cornucopias and Another Conquistador

Do you remember my story from a couple of years back about the stranger who lectured us about cornucopias after I responded to my son's question with "it's a Thanksgiving thing?" I'm still annoyed with her, whoever she was, but at least she sparked a fun game. 

It's not uncommon that one of the boys will ask me what something at the thrift store is and most of the questions are legitimate....but Quinn is really good about catching my attention with something held just out of my line of vision when I least expect it.

I didn't like cornucopias before the incident with that lady and I've been liking them less and less. Although I do admire how skilled his is at ambushing me with them. I decided  to see just how many we could find in one afternoon.

The local Goodwill had seven, plus a ceramic one that's not in the picture. St. Vinnie's had the one in the picture above. The other St. Vinnie's had two (or three, if that decorative hanging basket counted as one.)

We also found this school scene. The little boy has a pair of scissors on his desk and a slingshot in his pocket. He may have something held in the hand behind his back. The little girl in the yellow dress has another pair of scissors behind her back and someone is obviously in trouble. WHAT is going on here? And why is it commemorated in a sculpture?

We also  found this fella. I apologize that he's kind of hard to see between the fan and the pool ladder, but at least they show how big he is.  The ax is removable. And thank God he was a hundred bucks because we could totally make him a lamp to make up for missing out on that other one and that would be ridiculous.

What unreasonable thing have you been tempted by lately? Did you resist?

Grandma's Favorite Thrift Store is Closing

I don't know for a fact that this was her favorite, but the one  we used to meet her at almost every week before having lunch and running errands so it's the one I always think of as "her" thrift store. It closed last week and I'm kind of sad about that. 

I'm surprised that it stayed for so long. The other half of the building was a K Mart that went out of business years ago and that space has been sitting empty ever since.

I never found much at this particular store and wound up scrolling back through all of my thrift store posts to see if there even was anything exciting. I remember one haul of quilting fabric and a 1980s Intellivision game console that we didn't buy but I still want.

I found clothes there for the boys to wear for the wedding. One afternoon we bought my youngest an entire shopping cart full of Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzles.  Grandma was using her senior discount and we spent less than we would have for two brand new puzzles.

Quinn found a huge collection of Rose Tea figurines to add to the one we'd found at an estate sale a few months earlier. This was only the first bag. In total, I think there were over a hundred.

 We found a tabletop voting machine (and somehow I feel like I should clarify that we didn't buy it!) and the purple cow head.

On most trips we didn't  find treasures but one the rare occasions that they did have something great, it was a memorable something. The cow got taken off of the living room wall to make room for my cuckoo clock...now I'm curious where it wound up.

We went in last week, a few days before the store was scheduled to close, and half of it was empty and marked off with caution tape. It wasn't worth getting out of the car for but at the same time we're glad we went.

New stores have opened and I still have plenty of places to go, but I'll miss the chance to stop at this one now and then. I was always halfway looking for Grandma's black Subaru in the parking lot, even years after she was gone.

Practical Thrift Store Shopping

When I go thrifting, I'm almost always looking for things I couldn't buy new. Sometimes I'm digging through the bins at the Goodwill outlet just looking for a warm sweater in a yarn that won't fall apart after two washings, but usually I'm after interesting vintage craft supplies or original text Nancy Drew books or stuff that's interesting enough to photograph and put into a thrift store post. 

My summer thrifting got taken over by the quest for shoes.... 

I needed three teenage boys to have presentable feet for the wedding. They didn't have to be brand new shoes, or like new shoes. They just had to be kind of nondescript and not garish sneakers. My oldest might wear his again someday, but the younger two aren't done growing and I don't expect another occasion that will call for fancy shoes.

We went to every store I know of, most of them more than once. There was a pair that were a size too big for my oldest but they were in perfect shape and dirt cheap so they came home with us (and later went to the best man who actually wears that size and also needed shoes.) There were a couple of pairs that were perfect except for the price.

I also called around to see what rental shoes cost. Yikes!  We bought all three pairs for less than my husband spent for his new pair....which was less than the rental place wanted.

As much as I love thrift store shopping, I'm glad that the endless shoe hunt is over. It's much more fun to just wander in and see what's there.

Thrifted Floss -- A Slightly Cautionary Tale

Do you buy floss at the thrift store? 

I pick it up when I find a good deal, but most of the time the prices seem kind of high and I really do have a lot of floss already. This box was marked two ninety-nine and had at least fifty skeins so it seemed like a good deal until I got it home and actually touched it.

The problem wasn't the musty or cigarette smell that I usually worry about. It was the texture. This isn't DMC, it's one of the Chinese knock offs.

If you look at the labels (new DMC from my stash is on the left) you can see how I misjudged. As much as their labeling has changed over the years and as many variations as I've had in my stash, this stuff looked right, especially through that tinted plastic box.

It's not a huge problem. I've bought the Chinese floss on purpose and I'll use this floss with the other colors I bought or for vintage embroidery or ornaments or something where I'm not mixing it with the cotton floss. If I'd paid more for the box -- and lately I've seen them up two twenty dollars -- I'd have been seriously disappointed.

Just a reminder to double check what you're buying, especially if you can't get a clear look at it.

{Thrift Shop Temptations} I Love the Graphics

I left this vintage cooky and donut press on the shelf and did not buy it for its wonderful vintage packaging. Mostly because I know I've bought other cookie presses over the years and never used one.

If I want to swoon over the illustrations, I've got a whole stack of vintage cookbooks to go through.

I also didn't buy myself a scary looking 1970s pressure cooker, despite the fact that it was harvest gold and had extremely entertaining pictures on the top. 

The boys and I could have had a lot of fun trying to figure out what those illustrations are supposed to actually be.  It wouldn't have been the first time I'd bought a vintage pressure cooker just because it looked cute, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise that this one was so badly scratched up.

I can appreciate that this box of hair pins survived the years with its contents intact without wanting to own it myself. If this sort of thing makes your heart flutter a bit, go follow Magpie Ethel over on Instagram. Her feed is full of amazing vintage goodies, lots of them in their original packaging. And her Someday Beachhouse is amazing.



Are you more tempted by old packaging designs than new ones, or is that just me?

{Thrift Shop Temptations} There Was a Couch...

I can't find the originals posts to link to the pictures but there was a desk from an old schoolhouse at the  Salvation Army thrift shop for a hundred bucks, which was just ridiculous. A few weeks later there were the pieces of an even more battered old desk at an estate sale for ten bucks. I seriously thought about that one. 

And last week at the Goodwill Outlets, there was this...

For three dollars, in gorgeous condition with the groove for the pencil and hole for the inkwell. The ironwork wasn't fancy, but sitting right next to it and for ten dollars was this...

I had to work hard to convince myself that they wouldn't fit into the back of my daughter's car and  that if they did I had no place in my life to properly display them. But there was a fainting couch for twenty-five dollars that also wouldn't fit into the back of the Volkswagen and I drove back up with the truck the following morning to get it. If the three dollar desk had still been there, I would've given in to temptation.

There was also this, but it was thirty dollars and apparently someone had chopped the legs a few inches shorter....

When we went back up, the desks and the tea cart were gone, but they had this...

The cabinet was in absolutely fantastic condition and had all of its drawers and  the paint on the machine was good and it had its bobbin intact....for thirty-five dollars. I already have two treadle machines at home and the idea of wrestling that into the back of the truck with the couch was enough to keep me from doing something dumb.

The world is full of treadle machines and (apparently) old school desks. I'll have other opportunities and I don't feel bad for passing this one up. But it's still fun to take pictures to share with you.

Bicentennial Temptations -- The Weirdest One Yet

Happy Fourth of July! I don't usually do holiday posts, but on Wednesday we found the absolute weirdest piece of Bicentennial decor yet. That's at the end of the post. First, I'll share the mid-70s patriotic finds that you might have forgotten.

It started with the lamp with the Declaration of Independence on the shade. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by this stuff, but I am. I would've been four years old in 1976, so I don't remember the event but I remember the decor...probably from much later.

I still can't quite wrap my head around this lamp, but it's nothing compared to what the boys found.

The unframed Bicentennial crewel piece came home with me by accident because it was in a plastic bag and all I could tell was that it was embroidery and dirt cheap. I will, at some point, probably do something with it.

And then there was the tablecloth, still in its original package with the suggestion to buy one to use and one to keep as a cherished heirloom. We didn't buy that.

Yesterday we were in a local antique store that's going out of business (that'll be my next vintage post) and one of my sons pointed out this thing...because of course they want a rotary candlestick phone with the stars and stripes on it. 

The owner of the shop told them to take it, so now the two oldest boys are sharing custody. I know that I said last week I've always wanted a candlestick phone...and I have...but this is so totally not what I had in mind!

It was made in 1973 and it's red white and blue, which is why I'm assuming it was for the Bicentennial even if the first candlestick phones would've been a century too late for it to make sense. 

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Anyone Know What "Gibraltarized" Means?

We are still on the quest for two more trunks because, despite what those articles say about old stuff your kids don't want, all four of my children absolutely need big old trunks. For anyone keeping score, I currently have two which are both family pieces and my children can have over my dead body. Our daughter has one that we bought at an estate sale and she's an adult now so she can buy her own trunks. Our oldest son has a fantastic trunk we found last spring, complete with leather straps and wheels. That leaves me with two more children whose lives will not be complete until they have awesome old trunks of their own. 

The thrift and antique stores are full of trunks, but whatever they get has to be extremely affordable and in decent shape. That narrows down the choices considerably. 

Last week, they found this one....

Looking back at the pictures, I'm kind of suprised that this thing isn't in the back of my van. It was only forty bucks and had most of the original pieces. But it reeked. Now I'm wondering if it really smelled that bad or if it was the migraine I've been fighting all week.

I did tell my son (who didn't smell a thing wrong with it) that if it's still there on our next trip to town and goes to half price I'm willing to gamble that we can air it out. Which leaves a whole new problem because the son who found this trunk already has one. There's going to be swapping or rock-paper-scissors-ing or something if this trunk hasn't already found a new home.

We also found (and didn't buy) The Un-Candle by Corning. It doesn't look nearly as much fun as the Bake-a-Round clear glass bread tube.

How is this less expensive or bothersome than candles? Were candles a whole lot more complicated in the 1970s?

There's a video with the rest of our finds. We left the stores empty-handed, but definitely had fun!

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Nothing Changes

The biggest surprise on this trip was how little had changed since our last visit. The ship in a bottle kit and conquistador lamp were gone, but I think almost everything else I took pictures of on our last visit was still there after three months.

These cross stitch parakeets were new. They're on ten count which gives them a kind of pixelated look.

I would've brought home these two ladies if the price had been right.

One of the volunteers saw me crouching to pull this out from under a table and encouraged me to open it up. I haven't seen a case quite like it, and I'm wondering if someone peeled the original covering off to reveal the wood.

Inside was the most run-of-the-mill electric Singer ever. Some days it's really easy to remind myself that I have enough sewing machines. 

{Thrift Shop Temptations} All the Needlework at the Habitat for Humanity Restore

The Habitat for Humanity Restores close to our house are mostly building supplies and appliances, but we've found some interesting things in other cities. These two stores were full of needlework. 

Needlepoint soldiers from the Revolutionary War...

Have you ever seen a barefoot Santa on the beach, cross-stitched or not?

That piece on the left is a fairly convincing photo copy of a cross stitched piece. It's effective and if you hung it on your wall no one but another stitcher would notice..but that's definitely cheating, right?

I love the bright colors on that floral piece.

I didn't get pictures of the sewing machines, because this is a picture heavy post and we all know what treadle Singers look like, but I did take several of the dollhouse with the haunted vibe.

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Jelly Rolls and Precuts?

I really want to know the story behind the fabric stash I found at the thrift shop last week. I don't think I've ever seen precuts, let alone three small laundry baskets full of them... 

There were jelly rolls and charm packs and some others I don't know the name off, all dirt cheap if you were comparing them to the original prices and all in the condition they'd left the quilt shop in. 

See that bundle in the top center? Someone could use that to make a 30s Barn Raising quilt just like the one I made. 

Like I said, I want to know how and why all of this was there. Did someone give up quilting? Die? Read that book about decluttering and make some drastic decisions? This particular thrift shop supports a local no-kill shelter so they get some great donations, but I've never had a thrift shop find like this one.

Luckily, the fabric wasn't in colors that made me swoon. I picked up three jelly rolls to give to my mom for Mother's Day (with a full explanation of where they came from because the backstory makes them even more fun) and left the rest for another quilter to be excited about.

So what's your opinion on thrifted gifts? I'm all for them if they're going to someone else who enjoys thrifting, but I wouldn't try to pass anything off as new.

And have you ever found fabric like this at your thrift shops? 

{Thrift Shop Temptations} The Chairs at the Goodwill Outlet

Last week, my daughter and I spent a day digging through the bins up in Portland and falling in love with chairs. 

I'll start with the one that isn't going to haunt me -- 

I love wooden swivel desk chairs. They capture my imagination and make me think of old movies and this one was in great condition and only seven bucks. But I have one already and I like the one that I have.  It's also much easier to resist temptation when the person you are with is buying the thing and you know you'll be able to see it again.

This pretty little rocker wasn't too tempting because even though it was only five dollars I knew I didn't have a place for it.

I walked away without even taking a decent picture because I wasn't tempted. Then I saw it in one of the bins being wheeled away to the back and realized that it hadn't found a home and I felt a little sorry for it.

Then I got back to my own house and a day or two passed and I realized that I had the perfect corner for it. It could have replaced the child sized rocker in my bedroom corner. Damn.

I am totally going to buy a print of The Fairy Tale, but it isn't going to be this one. The whole thing was much greener in real life.

This landscape wanted to come home with me and it would have been soooo cheap. But it also would have taken up a huge amount of my extremely limited wall space. There will be other paintings like it and some will be just as pretty even if they aren't as inexpensive and I really do want to fill the wall space with my own quilts and stitching...

Just because I  can smell the trees and river and imagine crawling over that fallen log doesn't mean I have to succumb to temptation...

If you want to see what else we found, click on the video --