Woman in Real Life

Pretty much every time I visit my parents, Mom and I deliver a few things to the thrift shop. Or she gives me things - mostly dishes and other household items. She is trying to de-clutter (as are most of us I think). But last time I visited, she wanted me to toss a bunch of old magazines in recycling. And I couldn't do it. I put them in our van instead. Which isn't ideal, because I really need to de-clutter too. The magazines are mostly old editions of The Antiques Journal from the seventies and eighties.

I have a weakness for magazines. (I recycled over 300 in the past year and it was hard because usually I read them before tossing them - I had to let that go quite a bit.) And these old antiques magazines are so cool. The subjects are fascinating. Since it was Halloween last night, I thought I'd share a bit of the October 1974 edition of The Antiques Journal, with a section devoted to witchcraft antiques or "antiques of the occult."

We celebrated our Canadian Thanksgiving just over a week ago. October has been a whirlwind so far and I didn't even get a Vintage Bliss Tuesday post up last week. We had a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner at my sister-in-law's house. She has so many sweet vintage touches in her rural home that I thought I would share a few pictures today. Her home has such a warm and comfy feel. The emphasis is on family (four kids, two dogs, one cat, two turtles, many chickens and a few ducks) as well as food (she's Italian after all!).

Today is Vintage Bliss Tuesday linky party #100! One hundred weeks of sharing our treasures. For me, it's been (lots of) plates, pillows, cutlery, mugs, drinkware, blankets and even a couple of wardrobe additions. And I've enjoyed browsing through the vintage, thrifted and inherited goodies that have been linked up by other treasure hunters.

Some of you have good fortune finding unusual jewelry pieces, like this snake jewelry that Stories of Objects linked up last week. Some of you have incredible booths where you resell your awesome finds. (I think I need to do that to free up some space in this house!) Check out Melissa's southside booth. Others share my fondness for vintage books, like this lovely pink 1965 Nancy Drew book that Dianne linked up last week. Be sure to head over and find out why the cover is pink.

I haven't done any thrift store shopping the last couple of weeks. But my mom did give me these beautiful Mikasa Cheers highball glasses last time I visited. These glasses are tall and thin, and etched with dots, lines, and swirls. I think they'll look lovely with a nice girly pink cocktail inside. Mom got the Mikasa glasses as a gift from the Niagara Fallsview Casino.

Actually she has passed a few gifts she got at the casino on to me - a soft robe, a king-size duvet and a wireless indoor/outdoor thermometer set. Mom hasn't been able to get to the casino as often lately, so she didn't get invited to her usual VIP September birthdays celebration this year. Which means no gift for her...and therefore no gift for me, haha. We do have one night at the casino resort hotel booked for October, so we'll be enjoying a little overnight in Niagara Falls. And maybe Mom will get a gift at Christmas? May I suggest some Mikasa Cheers white wine glasses?

Have you been to Niagara Falls? How about your local casino? I'm not a gambler myself (can't stand to lose money). How about you?

I am always on the lookout for pretty small bowls. They are great for eating decadent yet healthy peanut butter "nice" cream or this peachy dessert parfait. And, as I've said before, a petite bowl makes photographing food easier. (Fits in the camera frame better and requires less food).

Recently I found two of these pretty pink and yellow floral bowls at the thrift store. They'll be great not only for pictures, but for snacking on my fave raisin cereal in the evening too. They say yingzhouzhengdong on the bottom. I attempted to do some research, but even when Google translates the page from Chinese I can't really get a meaningful idea of what it says.

I have a weakness for plates. Plates of all colours, shapes and sizes. My cupboard tells the story. Instead of tidy, cohesive piles of plates, there are wobbly stacks of oddly sized plates leaning at precarious angles. When my daughter empties the dishwasher, she fits the plates together in order of size on the counter top before putting them in the cupboard. When my son empties the dishwasher, it's another story. Let's just say you have to take care when opening the cupboard doors.

I recently spotted these peach-coloured plates with pleasant little fish around the edges at the thrift store. I don't have any plates in this colour, I rationalized. And the fish are so cute!

I took an unplanned, two-week hiatus from Vintage Bliss! There are a couple of reasons for that - one, there are just too many other things distracting me in summer with the whole family home - and, two, the last Vintage Bliss Tuesday party was a bit of a dud. I think people may have been on vacation and didn't have posts to link up. And there wasn't the engagement on the post that I normally see. So I thought I would allow August to (mostly) pass before looking for other vintage enthusiasts to link up once again.

Truth be told, once the family is back at school and I go back to more thorough planning of posts, as well as a bit of a blog re-design, I'll be thinking about whether I should continue the Vintage Bliss Tuesdays party. Let me know what you think, pretty please. Would you miss it? For those of you who link up your thrifted finds, have you seen any engagement from it? Any suggestions for bettering the posts? If it isn't desirable or useful to many, I may move on to other things.

In the meantime, I'm sharing a look at a couple of the small thrift store finds I have picked up on my summer travels. I certainly don't need more mugs, however, I'd like to replace our ordinary, kind of boring mugs with mugs that put a wee smile on our faces. I think these blue floral (with birds on the other side) mugs do the trick. They say Mexico, lead-free on the bottom. It hadn't occurred to me that they might contain lead actually, until I read that. Does anybody do lead testing on their thrifted and inherited vintage dishes?

What have you been up to this summer? Have you visited garage sales, auctions and outdoor flea markets? Or maybe you've been hanging at the beach instead?


Linking to Vintage Charm.

Vintage Bliss Tuesdays - Join The Party!

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Happy Tuesday! I haven't done any thrifty shopping this week. In fact, I have been focused on de-cluttering. Mainly I have been purging clothing - mine and my son's. He is starting high school in the fall and he'll be wearing a uniform. In the meantime, I have been taking all of the too-small jeans, t-shirts and pajamas out of his closet and drawers and giving them to my twin nephews. Next up, we need to tackle his desk area so he has a tidy spot at which to do homework.

Today I'm looking at some older thrifted finds - the kind of little, inexpensive pieces of pottery that I really like, but try not to buy anymore. There simply isn't more room for them in this house! But they are sweet aren't they? I have actually made use of this cute cream and sugar set, above. A couple of times anyway.

I enjoyed a vacation of sorts this past week. I still did some freelancing writing, but I didn't create any new blog posts after last week's Vintage Bliss Tuesday party. I have a few posts that I want to get up in the very near future. But, with the entire family home for the summer, it's just too easy to get pulled away to an amusement park, shopping expedition or a meal with friends.

Sometimes those aforementioned shopping expeditions are to the thrift store. Of course. Pictured above is one of my fave thrifty finds of the past few weeks. You know how much I love plates. Because we clearly have enough plates already, I usually just buy one of any given pattern of plate to use for food photos. But when I saw these Pier 1 tomato and pepper plates, hand-painted in Italy, I clearly had to have all four (one for each member of the family).

I mean, the kids are half Italian. And, coincidentally, we only have a few veggies and herbs growing on our back deck this year and they happen to include tomatoes, green peppers and basil. These plates were meant to be with us, don't you think? They seem to invite refreshing summer eats like roasted vegetable sandwiches, pasta primavera and fresh bread with olive oil.

Best of all, they didn't have a price on them, so the cashier suggested $2 for the set. "Sounds good to me," I said.

How are you balancing work and fun this summer? And do you have any more space for thrifted plates?


Linking to Vintage Charm.

Vintage Bliss Tuesdays - Join The Party!

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I visited my mom and dad at the cottage last week. Mom and I now have a routine involving lunch in town and a quick pop into the thrift store. Since I bought so many vintage glass baking dishes last time we went to the thrift shop, I avoided buying more of those. But I found this little orange flower cream and sugar set irresistible. I don't know what it is with me and orange flowers. I can't pass up a vintage dish with orange flowers on it. This sweet little set was made in Japan.

I am a bit late with my Vintage Bliss Tuesday post today, as I'm enjoying a couple of days at "the cottage," aka my parents' house. We have plans for shopping (at the thrift store?) and lunch in town, swimming with the kids later and, hopefully, reading on the deck while holding a lovely cold drink. So I'll make this quick.

Here are a couple of items I found recently at the thrift shop. Another trivet, this time with a rooster on it. I don't have the kind of decor that invites lots of roosters, however, I love these black iron trivets. I would like to put a bunch of them along my wall in the kitchen in lieu of a backsplash (because we have been too lazy to install one). And this rooster has a nice jaunty look. I really like the colours too.

On my most recent visit to the thrift store, I discovered an abundance of vintage white baking dishes. I found the patterns so cheery and the prices so reasonable that I couldn't resist picking up a few. Plus my mom was with me and she got her senior's discount, for another 10% off. These dishes were all $2 or $3 each to begin with. Practically a steal, no?

Thank you to all of the new visitors who came by and linked up at last week's Vintage Bliss Tuesday party! If you didn't check out the lovely treasures linked up, be sure to visit last week's post now! This week, I'm sharing a couple of the finds I got when my mom and I visited the Salvation Army thrift store in her town this past weekend. They tend to have a different variety of dishes on hand than my local store does.

If you have been reading this blog for any time at all, you know that I head straight to the vintage dishes whenever I enter a thrift store. I don't often take the time to go through clothing, pick through purses or browse the jewelry counter. Last time I was at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, though, I had a coupon that required spending $25 to get $5 off. (It was an old coupon. You can now get a $10-off coupon when you donate clothing or housewares.)

I didn't find quite enough glasses, plates, etc. to reach $25. But I did spot this floral-design straw tote bag. I got the idea from Design Mom to keep a "summer bag" packed and ready to go for summer excursions - you know, with sunscreen, towel, hand wipes, sunglasses - that sort of thing. So when I saw this thrifty bag, I knew just what I would use it for. Of course, being the hasty and kind of unobservant thrifter I am, I didn't notice the name stitched on the bag.

When I got home my daughter was like, "Why does your bag have a name on it?" Oh well, I'll just pull those stitches out! (Dianne says it's a country name and I can leave it on. I'm not even sure what it's meant to say. If it's Suyana (or Sullana), that is a name and a Quechua word meaning faith and hope. Sullana is also the name of the capital of the Sullana Province, in the north-western coastal plains of Peru.)

Happy summer friends! I'm looking forward to sunny beach days, picnics, tall glasses of iced tea and homemade ice cream. And perhaps a few garage sales and flea markets. My latest thrifty purchase is this set of colourful glasses. I want to call them shot glasses, but perhaps they are a bit on the large side for that? Let's just call them colourful drinking glasses.

When I'm taking food photos, like these ones of my Peachy Dessert Parfait, I tend to think about what plate, bowl or central dish I'm going to use. Then I'll think about a backdrop and maybe add a napkin or dishtowel and sprinkle some ingredients around. Less often do I focus on the cutlery.

So, last time I was at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, I had a wee peek through the bins of random cutlery. I think they were about 50 cents a piece, but I have seen them for as low as 10 cents elsewhere. I picked out two trios including spoon, fork and knife. The great thing is, I won't actually be using them for meals, so I don't need to find a complete set. Most of the pieces are stainless steel, but it's kind of fun to dive into the pile looking for more colourful options.

I had an appointment in a nearby town yesterday. When I'm in another town, I think, "different thrift store..." So, after my appointment, I headed to this other town's Salvation Army Thrift Store. And it did not disappoint. I felt like it had a lot more interesting, unique items than our local Salvation Army Thrift Store. My theory is that the folks who make up the mix of people in a town look for different treasures at the thrift store than folks in other towns do. And they donate different treasures too. Does that make sense?

Seeing as we just enjoyed the most beautiful, sunny long weekend, I am loath to bring up Christmas. But here I go anyway. We visited my mom and dad on the weekend. (Dad recently celebrated his 89th birthday!) I always come home with a box of some vintage something or other. This time it was Christmas albums.

I can't resist a Christmas album. As long as it's December. Not November. Not October. I'm not going to buy Christmas gifts super early just because the stores start rotating Christmas tunes in the fall. Although I really should shop earlier...

I'm taking a walk down memory lane today. I have this Hardy Boys mirrored framed photo on the wall in my basement. Because where else would I put it? I figure the basement is a good place for whimsy. By rights it should probably be discarded in my 4-month household declutter. But I can't do that - I'm a mother now, with all the (many!) responsibilities that entails, and I figure I can use a reminder now and then of my inner child. Like, "Oh yeah, there was a time when I actually explored my own interests..." Like Shaun Cassidy. He was an early interest.