Why I'm Glad the "Estate" Sale Sucked!!

Yes, you read that right -- the estate sale (and I use that term very, very loosely!) was a total bust. Oh sure, the pictures on Craigslist looked SO promising. Of course, after doing more searching, I see that those are the same pictures this person had on Craigslist back in OCTOBER. So, needless to say, the items in the pictures weren't still at the sale. I did manage to find 4 books from the late 1800s and early 1900s, which I snagged for a $1 a piece. I should've asked the dude running the sale for some reimbursement for the gas I wasted driving up there. I'd never been to that area before, except when I would pass by the exit on my way to western MD or West Virginia and I've always said I wanted to go through there and see what it was like, so I guess I had that chance eh? It's a charming little area and I think it would be most fabulous to live up there -- lots of hills and land and horse farms. So pretty!


After leaving the waste-of-time sale, I switched on the GPS and put in that I wanted to avoid highways and headed back in the general direction of home. I love just getting out on the back roads and seeing what's out there! I ended up in Clarksville, MD but couldn't remember where this cute little store was that I'd passed one other time and googling didn't help either. I tried calling my friend, who coincidentally works in Clarksville but he didn't answer his phone so I headed on through and back towards Baltimore. I knew there was a "thrift shop" at this church in Catonsville and I've been meaning to go so that's what I did. 

It was a cute little "shop" with lots of clothing and some knick-knacks and whatnot. I found a few holiday items, some great vintage tupperware and tons of vintage kid books! Yay! Plus, they were having a special discount that day wherein you pulled out a slip of paper from a bag & got an extra % off of your total. All of my goodies came out to $3.75 with the discount but I gave the lady a $5 and told her to keep the change. It's for the church so I didn't mind giving her the extra money. The church was having a roasted pork dinner that night and the entire building smelled so delicious -- I have no idea how those ladies were able to work in there all morning because after being in there for 20 mins, I was STARVING!! 


I left the church & decided to just drive down the road a little further and see where it would take me. I came up to an intersection and knew I'd been in that vicinity before, only coming from another direction. I remembered that there was this great little park with lots of trails just down the street and that was the next item on my agenda. This park is never busy, which is a plus!! I've been there a few times before and have seen maybe 3 or 4 people there with their doggies walking the trails but I love that it's almost always empty. I parked, grabbed my Vera Bradley backpack which I've converted into a camera bag and set off to take some pictures of the last of the leaves! 

I was the only car in the parking lot except for an employee and they soon left. He did stop me on his way out and told me that the main part of the park was having a celebration for its namesake -- Benjamin Banneker. Mr. Banneker was born a free African American in 1731 and was an astronomer, mathematician, almanac author and farmer, amongst other things. So, this was a little celebration in honor of his birthday. Unfortunately, I spent too much time on the trails and was late to the party so I didn't go. You can read more about Benjamin Banneker here.

The trails were empty, which is how I like them, and since it had been a while since we'd had any rain, they weren't muddy! Yay! I'm going to go back sometime soon and do some geocaching I think. Anyway, it was a great way to spend 45 or so minutes and the colors of the trees were so amazing. The sky was that deep shade of blue that always reminds me of the morning of September 11th -- you know, that deep, dark blue without any clouds in the sky. It was the perfect backdrop to the bright yellow leaves. 

I saw lots of little birdies flying through the woods, heard something that was praying was a squirrel and generally had a pleasant, relaxing time just meandering through the woods. I took the shortest of the trails because I have this thing about being alone in the woods, which probably comes from watching too many episodes of CSI with the ex. I didn't feel comfortable traipsing all through the trails and since it was getting to be 3:00, it was already getting dark in there & I certainly didn't want to be in the woods after dark! 
The rest of my afternoon was spent running various errands and getting ready to go out dancing with my friend. It was a lovely start to the weekend and I'm so glad I spent some time in nature since it's cold and rainy today and I'm sure all of the beautiful leaves will be gone by tomorrow!! So, even though the estate sale was a bust, my day ended up being so wonderful & that's just the reminder I needed -- sometimes the best things in life aren't things that can be bought! 

A Pictureless Blog Post

Good Saturday Morning my vintagey people! How's the weather where you are? It is another cold & frosty morning here in Maryland. I LOVE THIS WEATHER! It's actually colder now (31°) than when I got up an hour and a half ago! This is great weather though -- cold & crisp & crunchy first thing in the morning and then it warms up to around 60-65° by late afternoon. Perfect fall weather. And it's been nice & dry so no leaky basements. Yay! Did I mention there's still some color on the trees? Yeah, I'm thankful for that. Two years ago, it snowed on 18 November. I'm looking forward to winter and to snow but I really truly hope that we don't get another 5 feet at once this year. Unless of course I have a snowblower to help out because I don't think I can go through that again! Of course, with my current um, situation, I'd gladly accept being snowed in ALONE for a week or two. Now, if the reverse were to happen, I would be absolutely MISERABLE. Ah! But, like I said, there's no snow in the immediate future so I don't have to worry about that yet.

So, as I said before, this is a pictureless post. I'm sorry!! Unfortunately, I have no pictures I can add to this little blog post -- I am sorry to say I still haven't sorted through that big ol suitcase I bought at the estate sale two weeks ago. I did actually open it up and start to go through it but I ran out of time! That's how it always works, right? I mean it's not like I could just open it and not actually read through the letters and cards and before I knew it, I'd been sitting here for 2.5 hours! I think my plan of action is to pull out some big ol manila envelopes and put like items into those -- one for Christmas, Valentines Day, Birthdays, Easter, etc. Then one for letters -- there's a lot of letters! There's also various other pieces of ephemera like a few drivers licenses, business cards, greyhound racing stuff. It's going to be exciting to finally get it sorted but I think it's going to take some time!

So, today I'm heading out for a 28 mile voyage in hopes of snagging some super great deals at this big ol sale that's being promoted as an "estate" sale and claims to have 2 big ol barns PACKED FULL of crap! Yay! The person running this sale cleans out estates and said that most of the stuff has been sitting in storage for 50+ years. There's pictures on Craigslist and it looks promising. So, I'm going to go the the ATM, get a little bit of moohla and then head on over to this sale. Wish me luck -- the ad said something about vintage Christmas and one of the pictures shows a Shiny Brite box (yall know I can spot a Shiny Brite box in a picture full of misc crap!) and the ad said lots of items were $1. Please, God, let the ornaments be $1/box!!

Hope you're having a swell weekend and that you find lots of great vintage goodies whilst out & about today!

Impromptu Road Trips

As I'm sure you know if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, I love road trips. To me, there's nothing better than getting in the car & just driving. It's so exciting to be on the road with no real plans and no expectations. Unfortunately, gas is still ridiculously expensive (to me anyway) so I don't do this very often. Maybe if I drove a more fuel efficient car, I'd get out there & do more exploring but since I drive a gas hog SUV which only gets 250 miles on a tank ($48 to fill, btw), I'm mostly combining errands these days and trying to limit my gas consumption! 

Anyhow, this past weekend instead of going to the DC Big Flea, I stayed in Baltimore. Well, on Saturday anyway. Sunday, my friend and I woke up sort of late and then headed out for what was supposed to be a day of browsing antique stores up in Havre de Grace. He assured me that he didn't need to use my GPS as we left the Sonic where we'd stopped for lunch. It became quite evident that we were heading the wrong direction to pick up I-695 but the scenery was so nice on this road that we just kept going. 

Eventually, I found part of a Maryland map in the pocket on the back of the seat and I realized we were nearing Westminster, MD, which is a gorgeous little town not far from the Pennsylvania border. We continued our drive into Westminster and then over to Thurmont where we made a quick stop at Catoctin State Park. This park is so beautiful and I can't believe it's so close to me and I've never been there before. It was cold and we weren't dressed for any outdoor activities so we enjoyed the drive through the park and vowed to come back and do some exploring soon! 

After leaving the park, we headed into Hagerstown, MD where we stopped for a caffeine break at the Sheetz gas station. Once we loaded up on junk food & coffee, we made our way down through Sharpsburg and Antietam and into Harpers Ferry, WV. My friend had never been to those parts of the states before so it was nice to see him experience it for the first time. The leaves were just beautiful!! I thought for sure that it was going to be all brown & dead but I was pleasantly surprised to see lots of color still on the trees. 

We visited some of the historic buildings in town and took a walk across the bridge which goes over the Potomac River. Well, we only made it about half way across the bridge because I am terrified of both bridges and heights and was starting to feel a panic attack come on so I quickly turned around and go the hell back on solid ground!! 

Of course with the time change on Sunday morning, it was starting to get dark around 4 so we decided to get back in the car and head towards home. I'm so lucky that I have a friend that really enjoys just getting out and doing things like this. And I'm lucky that I live so close to such beautiful areas that are within an hour or two drive from here. So, I missed the DC Big Flea and all of the holiday goodies but I had an amazing day with someone that really makes me happy and I saw beautiful scenery. I'd say it was a pretty good way to spend the day, wouldn't you?! 

No Tricks Just Treats

Vintage-y Peeps!! It's November -- can yall believe that? I can't. This year is going so fast!! I had planned on blogging last Saturday so I could show off my fabulous big ol Gurley Jack o Lantern candle I found thrifting a few weeks ago. Sixty measly cents! Alas, I decided around 2 that afternoon that I simply must dress up for Halloween (well, that night actually) and went off in search of a costume! I was a caaaa-ute little Scottish girl and as soon as I get off my lazy you know what and get my cord to my phone, I'll upload a picture of me in my costume. 

Anyhoo, earlier on Saturday I went to a yard sale. It's the first one I've been to all year. Yeah, kind of missed out this spring/summer/fall. Just too much going on in my life to go saling. This one was so fabulous though that I am almost regretful that I got there so late in the day. However, I managed to get some of the most amazing things I've ever found at a yard sale. 

Lookie, a whole box of ephemera to sort thru:

But you know what's better than a box to sort through? Hmm? Lemme tell ya. It's having a whole gigantic suitcase to sort through:

As I was talking with the person having the yard sale, I found out that the majority of the items for sale were from her late aunt & uncle. The aunt had passed away some time back but the uncle had died recently. The lady was telling me about her aunt and how she'd ran a brothel in DC back in the 30s (?) and 40s. She'd been married 3 times and she and her last husband were married for an incredibly long period of time - something like 40 or 50 years if I remember correctly. 

Anyhow, as I was going to check out, I asked her how much she'd take for the smaller box of ephemera and she asked me if I'd looked in the luggage. I told her I'd seen the luggage but didn't look in it. She said "well, there's a ton of this stuff in there. Let's go get it!" so she did just that! I sat on the pavement and started digging through the suitcase and finding tons of things I absolutely had to have. After 15 minutes or so, she came back over and offered to sell me the whole dang thing! Now, I did something I never ever thought I'd do. I paid a princely sum of $50 for the entire suitcase plus the other box of goodies. I almost died having to part with that kind of cash but to me, having the luxury of being able to search through it all in my own time was worth the price. I am not even exaggerating when I say that there are thousands of pieces of memorabilia in this suitcase -- pictures of the aunt and uncle are various jazz clubs in DC, tons and tons of letters written during WW2, hundreds if not a thousand cards from all of the holidays. ACK!! 

Somehow, I've managed to resist the urge to dig in to all of this wonderfulness until now. I've got the entire afternoon and I'm planning on sorting through it all! Like the yard sale lady said "it's kind of neat that you're the first person to go through this stuff in years". I am so excited. Another yard sale patron asked the lady if she wasn't sad to be getting rid of all of this family history and she said she'd had a lot of family members die in recent years and she just couldn't keep it all. She also said she had a ton of boxes in her attic that have more of this stuff, from various other family members. I gave her my card and told her to please contact me when she gets around to sorting through it all. 

I cannot keep all of this stuff, no matter how much I want to so I'm going to go through and keep my absolute favorites and then decided what to do with the rest of it. I think a few pieces will go to the Christmas swap I just signed up for today. I've never done a swap before but I'm really excited to participate in this one. 

So, this weekend is the DC Big Flea and I think I'm going to have to make the 60 mile trek to go check out all of the awesome Christmas goodies. The Baltimore Big Flea 2 weekends ago was kind of a disappointment so I'm hoping there's more vendors & more Christmas goodies in Chantilly! What do you all have planned this weekend?? 

Let's Play a Game!!

I like to call this little game "What's in the Pot??"

   

Any guesses? Hmm? 

(BTW - Don't you looove my vintage Club pot? I swear I use this pot more than any of the others I own. I'm so glad I found it at the thrift store last year. I found a smaller pot a few months ago & hope I can find more soon)

Okay, here's another clue. Let's peek inside the pot, shall we?

Hmmm. Melting butter. Yum! Well, browning butter, actually! 

Another clue, this time it's more Butterprint Pyrex!

 

 Surely by now you've guessed that I was making Rice Krispy Treats, right?!? Oh, but let me assure you that these weren't just any ol rice krispy treats. Nah. These were the most scrumptious Rice Krispy Treats that I've ever shoved in my pie hole. And, in case there was any doubt, I've shoved a lot of rice krispy treats in my mouth!! 

I found the most delicioso recipe over at this blog - Seddyblog and had bookmarked these to try "someday". Well, that day just happened to be today! It's hot as a mother outside, it's 80° in my house, it's been raining all day and I've still been in a semi-bitchy, poor pity me mood. So, I cheered myself up by making these amazing treats. 

I'm glad I had the willpower to take a picture before I dove in. Yeah, I'll admit -- I didn't even wait for them to cool before I started scarfing them down! And I totally licked the pot clean and the spatula too. It's just been one of those days! 

Here's the recipe:

1 stick of butter (original recipe called for unsalted but I used salted & they turned out perfect!)

10 oz of marshmallows 

6 cups of Rice Krispies

1/4 tsp salt (I omitted this since my butter was salted!)

1) Melt butter in a thick bottomed pan over medium heat. Let the butter continue to melt until it's a nice golden color and smells nutty. The original recipe said that the butter would have brown flakes but my pot is dark & I didn't see flakes. I didn't want to take a chance of it burning though! 

2) Remove pot from heat & stir in marshmallows until melted. Mine didn't melt all the way before the pot/butter started to cool so I put it back on low heat for a few seconds.

3) Stir in cereal until thoroughly mixed. Sneak a few tastes "just to make sure". Forget that there are pieces of cereal & marshmallow on your oven mitt, take mitt off, place under arm whilst opening the backdoor to let yapping dog inside. 

4) Realize your stupid mistake when you go to get oven mitt and realize it's now glued to your arm pit. Scrape off already dried marshmallows and rice krispies from arm.

5) Pour what's left in the pot into a greased 13 x 9 dish. Smooth it out with a greased piece of parchment paper. Or, do what I did and use the leftover greasy wrapper from the stick of butter! 

6) Attempt to wait until treats have cooled before you start to devour. Go ahead. I bet you $10000 you can't resist eating them all warm & gooey! 

 

 

Cookies, Colds and Crazy Ass Ex's!

Hey guys. After another two month hiatus, I'm going to try to get back to blogging on a regular basis. I shall start this post with a picture of some of my favorite things on the planet:

Vintage Pyrex!! Is there anything better?? I think not. Well, that's not entirely true. One thing that is better than vintage pyrex is thick, chewy oatmeal raisin walnut cookies, which is exactly why I had 5 pieces of vintage pyrex on the counter to begin with.

I decided last week that I really needed some of these cookies so I went in search of a new recipe online and found one here: SmittenKitchen. I added more walnuts than the recipe called for and also didn't chill the dough and I think they turned out AMAZING!! This recipe made 30ish tablespoon sized balls of dough.

 See the finished product? Don't they look yummo? Yeah, they were. I just polished off the last 3 a few minutes ago. Now, before yall go thinking I chowed down on all of those, I have to let it be known that I bagged up 18 of them and took them to a friend. So, in reality, I only ate 12 cookies. Since Saturday. Which in my opinion isn't too bad. Plus, they were semi-healthy with the nuts and oats and fruit. LOL Like the way I justify that, don't you??

And you know it's a labor of love to use Pyrex since it can't be washed in the dishwasher. It's worth it though because look how pretty it is when it's all clean and sitting there drying on the counter. I may or may not have let it sit out for a few days just so I could stare at it every time I went in the kitchen!

                                                        So.......

 

The last 8 weeks have been insanely busy!! I went to SC back on 15 September for 14 days. It was the first time I'd gone anywhere all summer long so it was definitely a much needed break. Unfortunately, the day before I left for SC I started getting a cold and by the time I made it to SC I was terribly sick with bronchitis. So, instead of spending my time down there having fun & visiting everyone, I spent the majority of the days and nights curled up in bed, hacking my lungs up. That was miserable. In fact, I'm still hacking a few times a day and it's been FIVE freaking weeks. And my sinuses are still all congested too thanks to seasonal allergies.

And in other news....

Things here at home have been so stressful. I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown at the beginning of September, which prompted my visit down to SC. I'm *still* looking for a damn job. You know, one that will afford me to move out without having to eat at the soup kitchen or live under a bridge. It's impossible to find a job! And I'm stressing out about everything. Living here at this house is becoming increasingly hard, despite my best efforts to keep the peace and keep my distance. I'm routinely called horrible names, made to feel like crap, having to deal with his emotional abuse. Most of the time I'm able to ignore it but I won't lie -- sometimes it gets to me and I find myself just crying uncontrollably. I just really need some good thoughts and/or prayers that I'll find gainful employment very very soon. My only other option is to move back to South Carolina and I desperately want to stay in Maryland. 

And with that.....

I'm gonna go. I need to do laundry, clean the house, do the dishes, edit pictures and try to list some stuff on Etsy. Oh, and stop by and catch up on blogs!! I can't wait to see what you all have been up to the last 2 months! 

Vintage Playing Cards

Hola, my vintage-y peeps. Today is Thursday which means it's time to share things for VTT, hosted by Colorado Lady. Yay! I love Thursdays. Not just for VTT but because it's also 25% off day at the Value Village, which is where most of these great items came from.

Today, I'm sharing with you my collection of vintage playing cards. Well, I don't really "collect" them so much as I buy them to turn around and sell, but they do spend some time in my house so I guess we'll just pretend that it's a collection!!

I think the first set I ever bought was the cute little Beagle cards above. I just loved their sweet faces!! And these roses? Meh - not really my thing at all but they were in a baggie full of other items so they are here too.

I don't really care for these lilies either but somehow they ended up in my cart, in the bag and in the house. I should probably redonate these & get them outta here!

Now these flowers? These funky, bright flowers that remind me of embroidery? Yeah, these I like! I think I've sold them all though so all I have left are the memories. I'm okay with that!! Less clutter, ya know?

I bought these duck cards a few months ago and I just love them. They're manly! And the colors are so bright. I mean they're a little too manly and too country for me to ever display them in any way but they're for sale in my Etsy shop and someone else can enjoy them! lol

These are my absolute favorite cards ever! I just love the colors and the horse and the spunky little blond riding said horse. They came in a velvety box which was supposed to have another deck inside as well, except with a boy on a horse but there wasn't a full deck of those. I wish I would've kept a few of these for myself as they'd look fab beside the pastel color horse show ribbons that I picked up at the thrift store a few months back!!

And finally, I just picked these up today! I love vintage bird prints so these are just a super fab find!! I haven't checked yet but it seems like they are complete decks and it's going to be awfully hard for me to part with these. I love how the bird on the right looks like he's hollering out to his birdie wife "hey, where the hell's my dinner?" hahaha

So, there you have it  -- most of my vintage playing card collection. I love cards even though I don't play any card games. Just seeing them around reminds me of my late PaPa. He was always sitting at the table playing cards. I can still picture being a little girl and going to his & MaMa's home and pulling open the drawer in the kitchen and seeing stacks of cards all rubber-banded together. Aww! Of course he never had any of these fancy schmancy cards!! No velvety boxes of cards, just the regular packs you'd buy at the checkout at Revco. I'm definitely more partial to the nice boxed sets though.

Thanks for visiting me today for VTT. I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of my fabulous thrift store finds!!