freshvintage

Hello, Toots!

The first day of the Vintage Home Annex is tomorrow, so I was scrambling to make sure I had enough things to sell. (If you read this blog regularly, you know I must be insane. I could never possibly run out of things to sell.) I ran to a Gooddeals and a couple of yard sales.

My favorite find of the day: a soda fountain dispenser for chocolate syrup. I filled it with water to make sure it works, and it does! The base is ceramic and marked Hygrade Hall on the bottom.

I also found a little HandyBreeze fan, an old paper puncher, wooden dovetailed paper tray, and a red metal tool tray.

And that folding ruler next to the fan has been magically transformed into a star!

Does anyone recognize these game pieces? Each tile had a plant embossed on the back. Some of the pieces say "Hot Number", along with a number between 100 and 500.  There are a few Bingo pieces thrown in there, as well.

I love these old photos and postcards, particularly the one with the seashell border that says "Souvenir from Wilmington, DE". Wilmington is located on the Delaware River, which is not exactly a beach town. The smokestacks from the Salem Nuclear Power Plant really put the kibosh on any type of beach blanket bingo.

I bought a bunch of letters and postcards that were all from the same family. I'm assuming that the family was Jewish, since there were a few beautiful "Happy New Year's" postcards and greeting cards with Hebrew writing.

Some of the letters were written in Hebrew as well. Well, I'm assuming that it is Hebrew. If anyone can recognize the language in the letter below, please let me know.

And who couldn't love someone who opens a letter with "Hello Toots"? I only have the first page of this letter from 1944, so I don't know who sent it. But the "Toots" is all I need.

Vintage Home Annex

I mentioned in a previous post that the freshvintage sisters would soon have a new venue for selling our vintage finds. We are happy to announce that we will be one of the dealers in the Vintage Home Annex in Paoli, PA!

   

The story began when Sue from Vintage Rescue Squad came all the way from Virginia to visit us at Renninger's. She told us about a great store called Vintage Home that was only ten minutes from my workplace. How the hell did she know about this store and I didn't?? Anyway, I stopped by Vintage Home a few weeks later and chatted with two of the three owners. Sue was right - their shop was right up my alley. Lots of unique vintage goodies and painted furniture. It just so happened that they were looking for dealers for their new "annex", which is actually the former location of their store, just a half-block away.

Starting on Sunday, November 25th, stop by Vintage Home Annex to find our antiques, vintage kitchenware, toys, games, prints, suitcases, frames and just about everything else you've seen here. Erin and I will be working at the shop a couple of Sundays during December, so hopefully we'll get a chance to meet you if you stop by!

And to all of those readers in the U.S., have a Happy Thanksgiving! We will be spending Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my brother, three sisters and the brood of fifteen grandchildren. Eleven of those are ages five and under. It will be a loud day. We all might need a drink or two to drown out the screaming.

What a perfect segue to the "dishes" that I will be contributing to this year's dinner...the Apple Pie Martini and Pumpkin Pie Martini. Every year, we end up bringing too much food to my mom's. So, this year, I thought I would volunteer to be the barmaid instead of bringing another sidedish that ends up getting scooped into the trash when no one is looking.

Pumpkin Pie Martini
Mix 1 oz. Vanilla Vodka
1 oz. pumpkin liqueur
½ oz. Bailey’s Irish Cream
a splash butterscotch schnapps

Shake, then pour and sprinkle with ¼ tsp. pumpkin pie spice. For added effect, rim the glass with fresh lemon juice and crushed graham crackers.

Apple Pie Martini
1/2 oz Vanilla Vodka
1/2 oz Apple Liqueur or schnapps
1/2 oz butterscotch schnapps
1 dash cinnamon schnapps
Apple slices

Pour ingredients into cocktail shaker and add crushed ice. Shake vigorously. Strain into martini glass and garnish with apple slices.

Enjoy!!

Colleen's Boardwalk Memories & Erin's Finds

Next week is my birthday and the week after next is my husband's. We celebrated by spending Saturday night in Atlantic City. I showed him all of my old haunts...the Claridge casino where I worked one summer, the street corner where I got maced by a pair of hookers, and the spot on the boardwalk where armless and legless Celestine played songs on a Casio keyboard with her tongue while laying on a gurney. She survived 42 years with a debilitating condition that essentially left her a quadriplegic, she had four children, made a decent living entertaining tourists with her tongue (hehe) and then, sadly, was hit by two cars while riding her electric gurney down the middle of the street.  I can't make this shit up, folks.

Anyhoo...Erin had a much more productive weekend than I did. She bought lots and lots of cute things...

A wooden stool, aqua metal cake carrier, loaf tins, a small green fan, old pie tin, spools, wooden bowl and a brass candlestick...

the white wooden box on casters with the decals is my favorite find. The red metal chair on top of the box is a Jack-n-Jill Kiddie chair (just like this one).

She also found two potato chip tins, another picnic basket (a perennial favorite of ours), a few children's books and a pair of child-sized red chairs.

Did anyone see the latest issue (Dec/Jan) of Country Home? On page 74, The JunkMarket gals, Sue & Ki, create a coat rack out of a pair of old skis. Erin is all set for that project!

When Avonatrons Attack

Oooooooh...a red metal lawn chair. I never pass these up if the price is right. It took a whole magic eraser to get all the crud off, but it cleaned up pretty well. And these always seem to sell quickly (once again, if the price is right). I've sold five of these chairs in the last few years, and every buyer had a nostalgic story about the same chairs on their mother's or grandma's or aunt's porch.  Hey, I'll be happy to listen to your sappy story, as long as you're giving me money.

I also bought an old chalkboard and a metal paper tray. Erin bought me the locker basket and the big wire basket at a local antiques store that is going out of business. She has been scoring some great finds lately. We live about an hour from each other, so we don't go to the same thrift shops and yard sales. Which is a good thing since we would probably have a few pushing matches over who-found-it-first. Actually, we wouldn't push each other - we would probably just pinch each other in the leg. That's what our mom used to do to us when we talked in church.

The top of the wooden bench flips open. It must have been used in a school because it is very heavy duty and has pencil and pen marks on it. This is going straight to my "paint me" pile.

I found a small child's mug by Harker Pottery's CameoWare. It has a circus elephant on one side and toy soldier on the other.

Here is an enamel drawer from an old Frigidaire refrigerator. This was from one of the first fridges that featured a separate fruit & veggie humidity drawer called the Hydrator.

I bought these at Goodeals, which I've talked about many times before. The price of items goes down 10% each week. These 20 fair ribbons from the 1940's were nine weeks old, which means that they were thisclose to being free. 

Most of them were blank, but these five ribbons listed the prize category on the back: Knitted tablecloth, string beans, pears, celery & tomatoes:

Another Gooddeals find...this big 12"x13" picture book from 1933 that was illustrated by Roy Best. He was well-known for his illustrations of pin-up girls. There aren't any pin-up girls in here, just lots of adorable children dressed in their country's traditional clothes:

Look at the illustration on the front of this Avon Territory Record Book. That snappily-dressed sales rep must follow the arrow and stop at EVERY house on the street. She's like a robot. An Avonatron. She's got lots of switches and lights under that tweed suit.

And she needs to record everything about her first sales call at each house. And her second call. And her third call. No wonder the company's been around for so long...those Avon bitches were relentless!

    

New Old Shoes

Jenny from Yard Sale Bloodbath bought these shoes for a dollar at a yard sale in Seattle. Sadly, they were too small for her.  I had always liked this style of Born shoes, so I commented that I would gladly buy them from her if they were my size. Through the magic of the interweb, I now have my new favorite pair of barely-worn, very comfy shoes. Many thanks to Jenny for shipping them off to me! Be sure to visit her blog - Jenny and her friends are great at describing the details of each yard sale they attend...and even take a picture of their trunk at the end of each yard-saling day (that's where I spotted these shoes).

After a second look at that photo, those shoes look enormous...almost clown-like. But my feet are a very petite size 8. Should I mention the size of my dear mother's feet? I'd better not - she might get mad at me. But you can read about it here. And be sure to read the comments on that post.

P.S. I have some big news in the works! My sisters and I found a great place to sell our vintage finds. More details in a future post.

No More Wire Hangers

I spent $48 for everything in this post. These items are from a couple of yard sales, a thrift store, and a little antiques shop that opened inside a local mushroom warehouse. Have I mentioned that I live in the Mushroom Capital of the World?  There are definite pros and cons to this. On hot summer days, the smell of compost can singe your nosehairs. Chris and I have often debated whether an odor was coming from Maeve's diaper or from the air that we were breathing. On the flip side, we can buy big fat portabello mushrooms at low, low prices.

On to my finds...

It's hard to tell from the photo, but the chippy white wicker hamper is about 30 inches high. The two black things with the glass shades appear to be some kind of primitive candle sconces. They are handmade, and the shades are made from a glass bottle that was cut in half.

Two hot babes in small gilded frames....

A couple of tablecloths...

Here's a pretty DeJonge print with an aqua background in an old frame. I'm keeping this one for myself.

Have you heard about these old wooden advertising hangers? They are hot!! A few people on eBay are selling lots of 20-25 of these hangers for $50-$90 per lot! Not bad, considering you can walk into ANY thrift shop and find tons of them. Just make sure that they have advertising on them. It seems that the hangers from big-city hotels are the best-sellers. I found these on the floor at a local thrift shop (the same one that sold me $500 worth of legos for $12). I asked how much they cost, and the lady told me that I could have them for nothing. My sister Erin found ten FREE hangers at her local thrift store and put $2 on each of them at Renninger's. They all sold. That was an easy twenty bucks!

I'm scheming to show up at Goodwill with a car full of plastic hangers, and ask the manager if I can replace all of their old yucky wooden hangers with my brand-spanking new plastic hangers. I'll tell him that I'm on a volunteer mission for the "Down with Ugly Wooden Hangers Society".