Tuesday, December 15, 2009

My Best Thrift Store Find of the Year

I frequently shop at Thrift Stores, because I like to reduce, reuse and recycle.  You never know what you  are going to find.  Each shopping trip is an little adventure. 

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we were in Cape May NJ to have a Thanksgiving dinner with my daughter and her family.  She is very pregnant and wasn't able to travel here for the holiday so we packed up the fixings and headed down there first thing Friday morning.  Until recently, there were very few thrift stores in her area.  There was a new one called The Arc on Rt 47 in Rio Grande, so we headed over with the kids on Saturday morning.  Since we had the kids with us, we couldn't spend the amount of time in the shop that we would have liked, but in addition to a Christmas-y tablecloth and a couple of other small things, I found these gems:



I love old things, they have so much character.  So this sugar and creamer set caught my eye, just sitting on the tray on top of a bureau. 


The pieces were very heavy when I picked them up, so I figured I had a good buy on my hands.  I got the three pieces for $9.  Yes, only $9!  The tray does not appear to be an original piece of the set, as there are no markings on it. 


The sugar and creamer are Quadruple-plated by Van Bergh S.P. Co, Rochester, NY, and numbered 468, and apparently date back to the late 1890's.  Parts of them were black when I bought them.  Here is an  'after polishing' picture.  They still need a little work, but here they are after the first go around of cleaning.  I love them, and they look beautiful on the table.



Friday, December 11, 2009

My *Free* Christmas Craft of the Day

No blogging lately - trying to get all of my Christmas Gift Projects finished for the holiday.  I'm a long way off, but I think everyone seems to be in the same situation this year.  We have no specific plans all weekend, for the first time in forever, so I think this will be a sewing and Christmas cookie-baking weekend. 

Here is my Craft of the Day.



I always save the Christmas cards that people send us, in the hopes that I will use them for crafting.  I tuck them away with our Christmas ornaments, etc, and they go in the attic 'til the following year.  Then the next year comes along and I end up throwing them out.  So this year, I decided to go through them all last night, while we were watching a movie (Night at the Museum 2, if you must know).  I found a bunch that had pictures on them that I really liked. So I grabbed some picture frames that we had in a bin, and went to work.  

I really like the one below - it was a card that showed two small boys making snow angels.  I cut the card up to fit the frame.  The picture doesn't do it justice, really - the snow is all glittery and it is really cute.


This next one was also one card that I cut into 2 pieces. 

I liked this next one, it has a folksy look to it.



And, Lastly, my retro-looking card.  I do have several other cards that I need frames for.  Two of the frames had family pictures in them, so I simply tucked the Christmas cards in front of the pictures that were already there.  Once the holiday season is over, I will just take out the cards and the family pics will be there.


The best thing about the craft, is...it cost me NOTHING.  I had all of the materials in the house already.  Yay!  I love crafts like this, that I can throw together on a whim.