Musings of a Vintage Junkie: April 2014

Monday, April 14, 2014

It's Pickin' Season!

Finally! Warmer weather and my first garage sale find. Once you find that first thing, there's no stopping the pickin! Of course I am not talking about strawberry or vegetable pickin'. I'm talking about pickin' for rusty, dusty, beautiful vintage stuff!

This is a lime green vinyl sewing box from the 1950's. It is in great condition.

From the garage sale I went to a church rummage sale. They are usually great for vintage items. The older congregations donate some of the best treasures. Not so much on this day. The reasoning is that the still cold weather is not putting people into the spring cleaning mode. I did find this French style wine basket though....

The next day I went thrifting with my Mom Jane to another church rummage sale and it was the same story. This church is known for their great sale twice a year. What is usually a fabulous pickin' time was not so much. Not many donations this time around. I did pick up some vintage wood hangers.....couldn't leave empty handed!

Our next stop was the Salvation Army, a flea market and a new vintage store, Rustique, located all in a row on a side street in the next town over from me. I am thrilled to find new places to pick so close to home. I survived my need to pick all winter by going to local VOA's, Goodwills and Saver's. I can still visit them all summer when it's raining!

I found this great turquoise watering can. It has such a unique handle and it is all scraped up and rusty. So perfect!

I also found this pretty wood carved vanity mirror. I have my grandmother's mirror on my dresser surrounded by her antique vanity items. I couldn't help dressing this one up with some of the things I inherited from her. I wore that necklace and matching earrings on my wedding day.

This pretty Victorian vanity box was such a great find at the Salvation Army Thrift store. It has an Edwardian style picture of what looks like a garden party.

It opens up to a mirror and places to put trinkets and jewelry.

So many great things so far but the best is yet to come!

My decorator, thrifty, garage saler friend Susan goes to way more sales than I ever could manage. She has one of those fancy phones with a Yard Sale app on it, something I need to look into for my summer pickin'.

She offered to pick some things up for me if she saw something I might like. I gave her my "rules", like she needs to let me pay her for what she finds, and a run down of what I want for my shop. Wow, did she see stuff! Great stuff!

She found this Hall's Royal Rose cadet blue ball pitcher. It is such a pretty blue and in pristine condition.

Gorgeous white handle with pink roses.

She also found this great moustache cup. I recently read a blog about how moustache cups are not for shaving! It was invented by a British potter for men with waxed, groomed moustaches so that they could drink their tea or coffee without wetting or staining their 'stache.

I guess the hot tea would melt the wax which would then go into their tea. Yuck! They drank out of the side with the holes to avoid this. The lip held the moustache out of the liquid and they could still get some hot coffee or tea through the holes!

It was all the rage for men to have a fabulous looking moustache in the Victorian era.

This guy has been growing his since the Victorian era!

And finally, Susan found these like new Damask linen napkins in blue and white with a leaf design. I love these! But I'm the type that could never use them and dirty them so they would have to be for display only!