Forgotten treasures

                                             Cleaned out some closets and found some treasures I
                                                                 had forgotten about.

                                              I never pass up a vintage Christmas record album

                                   I think I just might frame the Little Drummer Boy album cover!

     I love vintage tin containers too and trash can under my computer desk and the bread box holds stuff 
                                            my girls made when they were tiny tots and in school.

Finding my vintage mojo

                                           Been in a vintage treasure finding slump here lately.
                            But, I did find this sweet little angel a few weeks ago at my local ReStore.
                   She was only .25 cents. I have had the blue Ball jar and the buttons for several years.

              Last weekend I found a few more treasures but I keep forgetting to take photos to share.
What did I find?  I scored a vintage blow mold santa and a faded, chippy yellow step stool or it could be
a vintage childs highchair and a cool vintage ladder.

Thrifted in Thirteen!!!

It's rare that I have a splendid idea anymore.
But today,  after reading a post at the Yard Sale Queen Forum about giving gifts
that were thrifted, I thunk me a thought!!

How fun would it be for family members to draw names on New Years Day and then spend the rest of the year treasure hunting for gifts at yard, garage or estate sales.

It would be cool for each family member to make a wish list for things they would love to have that is  vintage or secondhand, then fold the list and write their name on the outside.

Like for instance my wish list might look like the following:
Vintage fabric
Vintage baskets
Vintage holiday cards
Vintage frames
Vintage Kitchen items; cookbooks, aprons, recipe boxes, teapots, etc
Vintage holiday stuff like Shiny Brights, small Santa, Snowman, Pumpkin, Ghost, blow molds.
Pretty much anything vintage would be fun for me to get.

 Now, my mouth would drop open for sure if I could score one of these

Even gently used items would be great to give.
Cute lamps, throw rugs, dishes, cookware, curtains, photo albums, scrapbooks and scrap-booking supplies,sewing notions and material, crafting supplies, scented candles(never been used)
recipe books, recipe cards, games, toys, books, movies, or something to add to a collection.

The possibilities are really endless for what can be bought new with tags and never used at yard sales.

Hmmm, I think I will email my sisters and my brother to see if they want to participate in what I think would be sooooooooo much fun to shop for and to open up at our family gathering!!


So, Happy New Year,  here's hoping that this year's Christmas loot can all be Thrifted in Thirteen.

Goodbye 2012

 This year sure did go fast. I can't believe tomorrow will be the first day of 2013.
Vintage treasures were few and far between, pretty much non-existent actually.
So my year in review is a very short list indeed. Here is my list.
Stoneware Snowman Cookie Jar!

Yep, that's it. Pathetic right?

I did find a few pieces of clothing and a pair of black, round toe pumps,
but the shoes were a little bit too big, so yesterday I gave them to my oldest daughter.

The one that got away?
Last weekend I was perusing the free ads on Craigs List and
spotted a chippy, white, vintage chest-of-drawers. Much like the picture here.

I was truly chompin at the bit to go load up that wonderful old piece of furniture
but it was located on the curb in two counties over.

Such a sad situation and I will be haunted by such a dreamy vision probably for years to come.

Hopefully the New Year will be blessed with lots and lots of amazing vintage treasures!!

May your New Year be Blessed with love, laughter, health and some MAD-MONEY for all those yard, garage and estate sales this spring, summer and fall.

Good golly Miss Molly it has been a long while since I have updated this blog! This past summer was spent sans internet connection, so I found myself at my local library every other day to pick up a ton of books to read. Plus I did a lot of day dreaming too. Oh to have this house would most assuredly be a dream come true. I'm a huge Gilmore Girls fan and absolutely love Lore and Rory's house.

I already have the front porch all decorated for Halloween!!

Some blissfully beautiful fall day I will ride a vintage bicycle just like this one!!

Farm life and feed sacks.......

Ginny Helphinstine Reeves grew up on a farm in rural Fleming County and has fond memories of her mother and grandmother putting feed sack material to good use.

Ginny’s recollections of rural life bring back fond memories of her mother and her grandmothers cooking and sewing and how her family made “many a garment” with feed sack cloth.
“In grade school about all I wore were feed sack dresses. Mother would save the material and send it to aunt Tootsie in Harlan, KY, she was an excellent seamstress, still is”, Ginny said. “If she had your measurements she didn’t need to see you, so even though she had a large family of her own she would make all these feed sack dresses for my sister Fran and I and send them to us by the time school started. So my sister and I had all these feed sack dresses for school. Everything was ironed back then. Even our dish towels were made from feed sacks. That’s the way it was for everyone in our community, we made do with what we had. I have dried many, many dishes with those feed sack towels”.

Collecting and trading different patterns of feed sack material was a favorite pastime for farm wives.
“Sometimes daddy would go to the store without mother, and when he did she would bring out a piece of material for him to find a piece to match, if they didn’t have it you would find someone to trade with”, Ginny said.
When Ginny was in the fourth grade she made her first apron.
“My first sewing project for 4h-H was an apron made out of feed sack”, Ginny said. “I worked on it for a long time to get the stitches real small. Christine Hurst and Mamie Morrison were 4-H leaders back then and came to the lunch room at Goddard school and helped us cut our patterns out. Miss Mamie would say” now Ginny you gotta make smaller stitches.
It seemed like I worked on that apron forever, trying to get the stitches as small as possible. I still have that apron."

A Pocket full of Memories

I love vintage aprons.

With each well-worn apron there is an interesting story of a woman, her family and the life she lived woven deeply within the fabric.

My collection consist of aprons that belonged to mamaw Petitt, my great aunt Frankie(mamaws twin sister) and Kevin’s mamaw Jolly and some were bought at estate sales.

Mamaw was a janitor at the Bethel Elementary School and the pockets on the aprons she wore held everything from buttons and pieces of string to chewing gum and a dime for each of us kids to spend at break time.

My siblings and I all remember the pocket with the comb and how mamaw would grab us as we walked through the school hallway for a quick comb-over.

Those handed down garments that were worn often by family have a certain kinship attached to them and when mamaw passed away it was an apron we each wanted as a keepsake.

With each vintage apron comes a story of a woman and a family and the life they lived.

For me aprons worn by women from an era long past are such tangible pieces of history, a collection of journey’s actually.

I wonder about the person who once owned the aprons I find at estate or garage sales, what she was like, how she chose to raise her children, what her favorite activities were, what her home was like and the kind of meals she cooked.

Collectors have found uses for their vintage aprons that go beyond merely displaying them on a few pegs in their kitchen.

Some ladies are opting to make curtains, swags and cozies from their vintage aprons to add a real down home feel to their kitchens, baths, and pantries.

Someday I will figure out how I want to use the aprons have to decorate my kitchen, but right now they are tucked away for safe keeping.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that “old-time apron” that served so many purposes.

Treasured Cookbooks

Some came from yard sales, others were borrowed from family members, yet to be returned, some were gifts that kept adding up.

But I never set out to start a collection of cookbooks; it just kind of happened.

What started as a way for me to learn some much-needed kitchen skills, slowly grew into one of my most treasured collections.

Tattered pages from years of turning to favorite recipes stained with vanilla or some other ingredient fill my mind with visions of favored treats, recipes that our family continues to turn to during the holidays or for any family gathering.

Those handwritten recipes makes me think of special family gatherings, the food and the laughter, loved ones who are no longer with us and how their recipes will always keep their memory alive.

'48 Fords & "good junk"!!

My Dream ride!!

Remember the television sitcom “Sanford and Son”? It was that very show that fueled my interest in being a junkie and awakened a truth within my soul that would surface many years later.

Sanford and Son starred Redd Foxx as Fred G. Sanford, a 65-year-old junk dealer living at 9114 S. Central Ave. in the Watts neighborhood of southern Los Angeles, Calif., and Demond Wilson as his 28-year-old son, Lamont Sanford. Sanford was a sarcastic, stubborn and argumentative antique and junk dealer, whose frequent money-making schemes routinely backfired and created more troubles.

I enjoyed the hilarious antics created by the show’s characters, but it was all the “good junk” Fred and his son had piled up in the yard and all through their house that intrigued me the most.

I am not sure when the fever actually hit me, then again I have come to believe I was born with the love for “junking” and that trait was directly inherited from my daddy and his people.

Daddy has always had several jobs at one time, one of which included making extra money from scrap metal that he would load up and deliver to a junk yard.

One time my little sister April and I had this idea that we would paint “Sanford and Son” on the door of Daddy’s old tan pickup truck but changed our minds after thinking about the trouble we would get in if we pulled such a stunt.
To be known as a junk collector back then was taboo, believe it or not!!

Truth of the matter is year’s later I would come to realize how much I love junking and I still dream about driving around in a 1948 Ford or Chevy or a Dodge, loaded down with some "good junk"!

Mamaws Biscuits

When I was a little girl sometimes my siblings and I would spend the night at our mamaw Petitt's.
Every morning at the crack of dawn mamaw would wake all six of us up for a hearty breakfast before she left for work as a janitor at the Bethel Elem. School.
This is when I learned to love me some good hot coffee!!
Before the sun even peaked through mamaw was in her kitchen stirring up a batch of homemade biscuits.
In the corner of that kitchen was an old stool that held this lard can full of flour, mamaws rolling pin, the biscuit cutter,(made from a tiny tin can) and her flour sifter.
What I wouldn't give for one of those tiny fluffy biscuits today!!
Below is all the original stuff from mamaws kitchen.