Neosho Finds #4: Cook Books and Crafty Things

Let's wrap this thing up, shall we? Here are the last of my wonderful finds for your viewing pleasure. Let the craftiness and cookin' commence! Mom found this great folding sewing basket for me, since I've needed one to hold my embroidery works-in-progress for some time.


These are two vintage circle skirts, both with busted zippers, which I'll use for their awesome fabric. They were a quarter a piece.


I found four Aunt Martha's transfers and some vintage pipe cleaners and trim. All of it cost less than $2.


This vintage homemade gingham pillowcase may become an apron, and I'm sure I'll find some use for this scrap of pretty terrycloth. The adorable vintage slippers were only 25 cents. I have so much respect for knitters, as I have no patience to learn much besides the most basic of techniques, and even then it feels seriously awkward to wield those two long needles. Maybe it's because my Grandma taught me to crochet granny squares when I was a girl, and though I'm not very skilled, the gentle undulations of the wrist, and the pencil-like grasp on the hook just seem more natural to me. My awesome friend, M, is another story. She's the one who finally showed me what I just couldn't grasp from looking at diagrams in knitting books that might as well have been written in Chinese, for all the sense they made to me. She knitted Sugar Pea four of the most darling little umbilical cord hats you ever did see.


I got a few pieces of basic fabric (not the vintage haul I was hoping to make), a bag of scraps, and this old plastic sewing machine accessory box full of presser feet that do all sorts of fancy things, if I can figure them out, and if they will work with my Elnita. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Lookee at all these vintage patterns that I got for 25 cents each!


This little doggie pincushion was made in Japan, and even though his old straw stuffin' is poking out of his tummy, I had to give him a home on a little shelf in Sugar Pea's room. Or maybe he's a donkey. It's hard to say. I stuffed him in a grocery sack, along with bunches of other stuff, at a church sale where everything you could cram in a bag was $3.


Don't ask me what I plan to do with this vintage brown and silver wallpaper. Just know that at four rolls for a quarter, this awesomeness needed to come home with me. Gift wrap? A framed wall panel? Tear-away panties? The possibilities are endless.


I found these two old BH&G books for a buck a piece at the nearly tinkle-inducing scout troop sale last Saturday.


At one really good sale we hit in Neosho, I found seven cook books and recipe pamphlets dating from the 1920's through the 1940's. All of them are in excellent condition, and not one was over a dollar.



Okay, Dollfaces. I told you I was saving the best for last, so I know you've been nearly breathless with anticipation, waiting ever so patiently to see what my most special find would turn out to be. Well, as I told you, the Christmas magazines are one part of what I consider to be the greatest treasure I discovered. Here is the other: four McCall's Needlework & Crafts dating from 1966,1967, 1970 and 1971. You already know the story behind them and the amazing price. Can you stand it? These things are chock full of vintage craft ideas and directions, ranging from the gorgeous to the downright hilarious.


I will be sharing plenty of gems from their pages, and maybe a few laughs, too. These beauties are going to provide hours of enjoyment. Astronaut helmets made from bleach bottles, a headboard created with crochet and embroidery hoops, animal beanbags, and more crewel embroidery than you can shake a yardstick at, anyone? Heck, even the ads are a good read. Did you know that in 1967 it was perfectly acceptable (and apparently legal) to advertise mail order pet monkeys for $18.95 in the back of ladies' publications? Neither did I, Dollfaces. Neither did I.

Neosho Finds #3: Christmasy Things

Are you ready for more thrifty bargains? I must say, Sugar Pea is the one who really made a haul. I bought her more than 30 cute, name brand outfits (none over $2.50), several pairs of shoes, lots of nice toys, stacks of books, a bathtub seat, a vintage baby backpack she can ride in, and these fun finds: a vintage Fisher-Price Happy Apple a bargain at $3, since they can go for 3 or 4 times that on eBay, a vintage children's record player, also by Fisher-Price, that still sounds great, and this cute little squishy lamb, dated 1974.


On the holiday/party front, I found a package of wild west party favor bags, some vintage party squawkers, and a bag of assorted Valentines for 30 cents, several of which were cute 60's vintage.

I have begun a serious quest for vintage Christmas decorations. Sure, I have a few already, but I've never gone all out on decorating in December because it's always been just Mr. Sweetheart and I, and it seemed like such a chore to take down and pack up all the baubles each January. Trust me, when you have a young 'un, Christmas takes on a whole new sparkly, candy coated magic. I feel compelled to bake cookies, make candy and deck the halls with fabulous (and fabulously tacky) vintage lovelies. I already have a small collection of old pink and turquoise ornaments, and these little floral picks were irresistible. I must have walked back by them six times, not really ready to fork over $3 for them, but wanting them so bad I could taste it. I finally asked the lady if she would take $2 (something I rarely do), and she agreed. I still think that was a little too much, being the thrifty cheapskate that I am, but I needed them. I also needed these two sequiny peaches, picked from a bushel basket of bejeweled fruit for 50 cents each. Why did I need them? I don't question the vintage gods when they tell me to buy something, and neither should you.


Some more ornaments for my collection. The whole lot set me back a buck.

These ceramic cuties were an exciting find. The sleigh and stocking cup were hand painted by some crafty lady years ago, and the Lefton bell was only a dollar, and makes such a pretty sound. It's hard to say what the first two cost, as they came from one of those great church sales where nothing is really marked and they just quote you a price for a huge box of stuff you gather up. I made a killing at this particular sale, and the whole fabulous mess cost $11, which included Sugar Pea's record player and a bunch of stuff you see here, plus the best stuff I'm saving for last.


These two heavenly felt creations were from the same sale as the pink floral picks and peaches, which Sugar Pea and I stumbled across last Monday. It was a good day to be in the market for Christmas. The sweetness of this carefully beaded and sequined stocking someone lovingly stitched for their Mama just melts my insides, making me well up with love for my own Mama, and hope that I can be half the mama to my little girl that she is to me. The Santa puppet will be fun for us to play with together. Sugar Pea and I, that is, unless you just want to, Mom.


Ok, Dollfaces, I told you I was saving the best for last, and I consider this next find to be part of said "best", but because I don't want to split these up from the other Christmasy things, I'm giving you a sneak peek. My mom found these while I was in another room of the church sale, and we calmly and quietly squealed and gave each other the secret, big-eyed look we get over a really great find, so as not to draw attention to our delight, and therefore cause price gouging. Here are three Better Homes and Gardens Christmas Ideas magazines, dating from 1958, 1960, and 1962, and three magazines called New Ideas for Christmas from 1957, 1962, and 1964.


I actually own the 1960 BH&G issue already, and consulted it heavily for vintage decorating ideas when I won first place and $100 off our rent in our apartment complex's Christmas porch decorating contest last December. I've even made some Sweet Potato Balls with marshmallow middles from one of its recipes. I knew what a treasure trove of ideas and vintage inspiration these magazines contained, so my stomach dropped when the church lady looked at them and said, "We were going to charge a little more for these than the other magazines, because of their age."
Oh no. Here comes the part where they jack the price up because they see I'm interested and maybe these old magazines aren't trash, after all, they think, but something valuable and collectible worth big bucks. It's the unfortunate side effect of the eBay phenomenon that every goober with some old junk for sale thinks he or she is sittin' on a gold mine. I waited. Would it be $3 a piece? $5? My mind raced as I calculated what I would be willing to pay. I could handle a dollar a piece, maybe a buck fifty, much more than that would be pushing it.
"How about 3 for a dollar?", she asked.
"Yeah, that'll be fine," I replied coolly.
Thirty three freakin' cents each. You read it right. I nearly messed myself, Dollfaces, but I didn't because I was in The Lord's House, and that ain't proper. Plus, it would have taken up valuable bargain shopping time to clean myself.
I promise to share some great Christmas ideas with all of you, when the time comes. And very soon, I'll share the rest of my finds with you.

Neosho Finds #2 and Other Thrifty Bargains

We've returned from Arkansas, where Sugar Pea's Great Grandma and PawPaw spoiled her rotten, buying her several nice hardback books, including Good Night Moon, The Runaway Bunny, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a very cool Dr. Seuss collection called Your Favorite Seuss, which I couldn't have been more excited about if they had bought it for me, and many others. She also came home with a highchair and three toys, one of which is a gumball machine by Fisher-Price that the little genius has already figured out how to work. Next up, she will defeat Suri Cruise and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Chuck Norris style with repeated roundhouse kicks to the head and face. She's really something else. In the last few weeks she's learned to gargle saliva in the back of her throat, prompting me to dub her "Enemy Mine" for the time being.
Yesterday morning she and I strolled over to a massive rummage sale put on by a boy scout troop in the vacant grocery store in front of our apartments. As we approached the entrance with a banner that read "50 Family Sale", I'm not ashamed to tell you I almost tinkled myself with excitement. There was a lot of junk, but hidden in the bad 80's clothes and religious books, we found some real treasures, like this neat table, held together, not with nails, but with wooden pegs, a steal at $8.


After our initial haul, we returned just before closing time to see if they were making deals, and, sure enough, they were. Everything was half off, so I got this fondue pot, which came in its original box, for only $3.50. It will coordinate with the red one I already have. I had wanted this one on the first trip, but was unwilling to pay the $7 they originally asked. You see, I very rarely ask anyone to take less on a garage sale item, so if I come across a really large sale where I want certain items that are priced too high, I will ask how late they plan to stay open, and return then. If things haven't sold, people are often willing to slash prices so as not to have to haul the left over junk away. This only works if you can live without whatever it is you have your eye on. If you love something, buy it right then, because someone else may love it too. I also found this fondue cookbook. Now, armed with recipes, a pot for cheese, and one for chocolate, I can finally host my first fondue party.
We've actually been to two good sales since we returned from Neosho, so I'm just going to work those finds into our regularly scheduled thrifty bargain broadcast.


I got 4 cut glass drinking glasses for a quarter a piece, a cut glass ring holder, also for a quarter, and this pretty vase with pink flowers accented with rhinestones for only 75 cents.


This trivet, made of sea shells, is intended for the kitchen, but will make a cool doily for my bedroom dresser with some other sea shell art I've collected. It was a quarter.


This cool vintage fabric covered box with blue flowers, vintage contact paper covered recipe box, and vintage photo album totaled 60 cents. I plan to use the boxes to hold office supplies and the photo album for business cards.


As I've previously mentioned, I am in desperate need of shoes, and these never-worn sparkly vintage numbers barely dented my pocketbook at $1.


I believe this pretty necklace is made of some kind of coral, not quite sure though. It and the gold leaf pin were $1.50 together.

These vintage clip on earrings for 50 cents may be reincarnated in some, as of yet undetermined, craft project.

I scored some new additions to my vintage beauty product collection.


I'm always thrilled to find vintage professional products, and these are my first haircolor bottles. The Roux Silverwyte is the kind of product that gives old ladies blue hair, and the company still exists today. The Noreen color rinse jars still contain the powdered dye that a beauty operator would mix with water or some sort of activator, I suppose. Interesting note: the Silverwyte bottle is dated 4-14-55, and I purchased it on 4-14. Also, I was with my mom, who was born in 1955. Oooooh, spooky. Someone call Sylvia Brown.

I couldn't resist this vintage Lady Sunbeam electric razor, which really is an objet d'art, if you want my opinion.


I'll be back soon with lots more to show you, so stay tuned, Dollfaces.

Neosho Finds #1: Kitcheny Things

I'm back! Despite pouring rain, frigid temperatures, fierce wind, hail, and even a few snow flurries, we came home with lots of great garage sale finds. In fact, I found so many fabulous things, I'll have to split them up over a few posts. For the first installment, I'll show you the kitcheny items. I got two brown Frankoma mugs for $1 each, some wine glasses my bar was lacking, along with six brown cups and a Japanese cup covered with green mushrooms, both of which I have in mind for an upcoming craft project. I bought this large DeForest of California set for $2, and shortly after, Mom found a lazy susan to go with it. I don't usually go for the late 60's yellows and oranges, but I thought it would be pretty on a Fall table, especially since the four serving dishes are so leaf-like. Did I mention it was only 2 bucks?
I fell in love with this old chrome coffee pot, which cost me 75 cents, and this slick 50's decanter, which came in at a whopping quarter.
This hand painted wooden bowl was a steal for a quarter, and the painted terra cotta owl was $1. Both are for my vintage Mexican themed teeny tiny kitchen.
This isn't even a third of my thrifty finds from this weekend, but the rest will have to wait for another day. We're headed to Arkansas to visit Mr. Sweetheart's Grandma and PawPaw, so I'll show you more when we return. Trust me, it only gets better from here. I'm saving the best for last!

The World's Largest Flower Box of Junk

Boy, oh boy. The weekend I look forward to all year has finally arrived! It's time for the 19th Annual City Wide Garage Sale in Neosho, Missouri. This is the largest garage sale in the Show Me State, and every year my Mama (my favorite junking buddy) and I go to stay with my Aunt Dee to get up at the butt crack of dawn and shop till we drop. With hundreds of garage sales all over the town, the population doubles for the day. You can drive to a neighborhood, park the car, and walk to a dozen or so sales before moving on to the next street. It is impossible to visit every one. We get pretty serious the night before and have a strategic planning session with a newspaper, a highlighter, and a map of the city, where we stop just short of smudging black grease paint under our eyes. This year will be the first that Mom and I, along with Sugar Pea, will be able to make it a two day junkstravaganza, shopping the early bird sales on Friday. I'll have lots of thrifty finds to share when we return from The Flower Box City, so get ready, Dollfaces.

Decorate and Separate

Every piece of furniture I own was purchased at a garage or estate sale, much of it by my cool mom, who has a great eye for the mid century pieces I love. She's out at the sales regularly, and often calls to tell me she's found something she knows I'll like. Although our decorating styles are a little different, much of my talent for pulling a room together was learned by watching the way she combined garage sale finds and thrift store bargains to make a room feel really special. From her I learned that it doesn't take big bucks to have a beautiful home, in fact, those older pieces, picked up cheaply, almost always have more character, and are more well-made than anything being manufactured today. At her knee, I learned the joy of a day spent bargain hunting at garage sales, and the thrill of finding just the right piece for just a few dollars.
Two books that I draw a lot of my decorating inspiration from are Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Ideas, copyright 1960, and the 1956 edition of The Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book, both, incidentally, given to me by my mom. What can I say, she really knows my taste! Here are some ideas from those books for separating larger, multi-purpose rooms using various room dividers.
"Create a hallway and announce your color theme, too, with a handsome homemade divider. This one is made of pre-coated Venetian blind slats interwoven between plastic clothesline, anchored top and bottom. Choose your own materials, include all the colors in your scheme." Everything old is new again. This looks very fresh, don't you think?

Here are two ideas using Danish Modern wooden shelving units.

I used to have a beautiful piece, similar to the one above, that I was very attached to, since it was the one piece of furniture that my mom had saved from when I was a child. It had been purchased at our favorite thrift store, way out in the country, called,....wait for it...The Country Thrift Store. We were on a first name basis with the older couple who owned it, and many, many things in our home had come from there. In 1986 we lost almost everything in a terrible flood, so we have no heirloom furniture pieces. This piece, purchased shortly after the flood, was the closest thing, for me. When my mom and step dad downsized a few years ago, I couldn't bear to part with it, and so it came to live with Mr. Sweetheart and I in our three bedroom rental house. It was such a beautifully crafted, classic piece of furniture, so wrapped up with memories, that I imagined passing it down to my future children, who would cherish it as much as I had. Then we had to move to our current second floor apartment, and after several back-breaking attempts by Mr. Sweetheart and a friend of ours, the massive thing just wouldn't budge. It was too big to fit up the stairs, and it was gouged, scraped and ruined by the attempt. I put on a brave face for the friends who were so graciously helping us move, but I cried the whole hour it took to drive it to my mom's to be put in a sale. It seems silly, I know, but it was so much more than furniture to me. Its pull out desk had held important papers and the stacks of bills we could not pay. The doors below were where we kept those first few cds we owned when they still came in tall, flat cardboard boxes. It stood next to the phone on the wall where I got my first call from a boy. Later, in a new house, it held my mom's colored glass collection, which I remember staring at after I heard the news a childhood friend's heart had stopped at the tender age of seventeen. So many memories, so much life happening while it solidly stood by. Things are just things, though, and they can be replaced. Family and friends are the things we should cherish most.


Speaking of friends and decorating, I got my first gift from a blog friend a few days ago! After my comment on this post over at Tikiranch, the kind proprietor sent me several different sizes of a print he made for me of the Lady of Flame. Does it get any more thoughtful? Go check out his fun blog. He always has such great vintage advertising items to share, and he made two awesome robots that you've just gotta see.

This Is What It Sounds Like When Baby Chicks Cry

So, a month or so ago I was at my local drugstore when I noticed the most charming little Easter product. It was an egg that would sprout a small flowering plant seedling that you could then re pot. "How lovely," I exclaimed, as I forked over a hard earned $2.99 for the Snapdragon variety. Upon my return home, I noticed that it was manufactured by a company with the rather ominous name of "CobraCo." "Curious," I thought, as I tore open the shrink wrapped egg to get to the instruction sheet inside, which read, "Before opening shrink wrap, gently crack open top of egg." "What a silly mistake," I said to no one in particular as I began to decorate the boring white egg with carefully placed polka dots, the whole time imagining how darling it would look with a tiny snapdragon sprouting from the top. It would be as if a dainty fairy had cultivated her garden in an Easter egg shell that had been discarded by a sweet little boy in a sailor suit as he played in the meadow. In just 7-10 days the tiny green tendrils would begin to poke their curious heads through the soil, stretching to find the life-giving sun, a true miracle of Nature and a symbol of new life...
LIES!
Curse you CobraCo! You have made tiny chicks cry. One month to the day later, and still no Snapdragon. After all that gluing back together and daily watering, too.

It was Sugar Pea's first Easter, and here is what was in the basket the Easter Bunny brought her: a sippy cup, a pair of tights, a vintage Bambi book (that was in good shape until the used bookstore put a big, black X on it to mark it for a $.25 sale, dang it), a thrifted French vintage sunhat and bloomers for our upcoming trip to the Floribama coast, and a rubber duckie that lights up with different colors and flashes when you put it in water. She can now have bath time raves in the kitchen sink. I made an Easter Bunny cake based on this recipe, but instead of carrot cake, his yummy bunny insides were strawberry and he was covered in homemade cream cheese icing and pink coconut. I also took creative license and made his tail with, what else, a snowball. Since the recipe only calls for half of the cake batter, I used the rest to make cupcakes. I colored the icing green and put green coconut grass on top of each one. Then I perched Peeps on top, along with some Whopper eggs they laid.
Please pardon the bad photos as I took them late at night in my kitchen, just in case Bunny and the Peeps didn't survive the hour drive to my mama's. Fortunately everyone lived, and here they are, ready to be devoured.

Rhinestones Are This Girl's Best Friend

You don't know you know who Manuel is, but you do. He has left his stamp on our popular culture for over fifty years. Johnny Cash's black? That was him. Those flashy jackets worn by Dwight Yoakam and Marty Stuart? Manuel again. He is even responsible for a lot of the work that went into one of the most famous suits Nudie made, the one covered in marijuana leaves and pills that Gram Parsons wore on the cover of The Gilded Palace of Sin by The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1969. Manuel worked for the influential Nudie Cohn for fourteen years, beginning by doing embroidery work, and soon collaborating with celebrities to design and construct the suits of their dreams, as head tailor. He also became Nudie's son-in-law. When he and Barbara Cohn divorced in the mid 1970's, he opened his own shop in North Hollywood. He later opened Manuel's Exclusive Clothier's in Nashville, and continues the tradition of western couture today, with custom suits ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 dollars. Manuel:Star-Spangled Thank You Tour is this immigrant's way of thanking the U.S. for his successful career. It's currently being exhibited at Gilcrease Museum, and is well worth the seven bucks. Manuel supervised the design and construction of fifty red, white and blue jackets to represent every state, each one a work of art depicting elements from that state's history and culture. Covered in beautiful embroidery and plastered with rhinestones, these jackets are a sight to behold, several of them rotating on mechanized stands. It doesn't get more over the top than this, and I love it. Also on display, and the highlight, for me, was Linda Ronstadt's skirt, blouse and boots and Emmy Lou Harris' jacket made by Manuel for the cover of Trio, one of my favorite albums of all time.

On top of the great stuff we saw inside, the gardens surrounding the museum were in full bloom with azaleas that sucked the breath right out of you, they were so damn beautiful.