Magpie Ethel

Estate Sale Friday. Not Bad.

I hit two sales today. The first sale I was number four on the list and got in right away.  The second sale I hit two and a half hours AFTER IT OPENED and there was still a line.  Thank goodness not all sales are like the latter.

I did well.  It was a good day.

I found a green wood divided box. I always pick up things like that.  Some sugar bells, pinecone clusters for crafting, a bottlebrush tree, tiny whisk broom, whistles and some cotton birds.  The "Lookies" book has the cutest cover and illustrations.  
The tree topper is plastic, but has some fun details in the indents.

I think the felt Santas are meant to cover a wine bottle?  I have some of the whistle swizzles, but always fun to have more.

This little flocked Christmas fellow with his bird friend came in the original box.  It is a music box.  I think the clips in the back are handmade napkin rings. The fruit and tiny nuts are pretty great (crafting potential).

This crewel deer was just too sweet to pass up.

The old joke magazines were just funny.  (jokes are funny!)  I also got a box of great periwinkle birds that will look amazing with a party hat.

An unused Christmas dish towel.
This packet of Victory garden themed jar labels are super.  Original packaging, great graphic...unfortunately they are ALL stuck together.

A darling Christmas tree skirt.
Those angels just are DARLING. DARLING.
My favorite find of the day was a box of old playing cards.  I think it was a persons collection as there are only one or two of each design.  I have a gazillion playing cards in my collection, but MANY of these I have never seen before.  The best kind of vintage sorting for sure.


A good day.  Nice to be back out in estate sale land.  Happy Weekend.

 

 

 

Collection Challenge #277- Vintage Rubber Ball with a Face

Wow!  It has been three months since my last Collection Challenge...these posts have definitely gone from a weekly post to an occasional series!

I just found a new vintage rubber ball with a face.  That makes three and that makes a COLLECTION.  Time to share...this one is quirky.

I first saw this ball at Farm Chicks last year.  It is rock hard with age and I really, really liked its quirkiness, but I didn't buy it.  A few months later I saw the same vendor at another show and she still had the ball.  I bought it.  I figured if it had crossed my path twice and was still in my thoughts, then it was meant to be.  It also gave me that side ways glance...buy me.

It is marked on the back TOMMY-BO.  I did a little research and he was made in the 1930s by Seiberling Latex Products.  One just sold on Ebay for $38.  I did not pay that much for mine.

After I bought Tommy-Boy, a few months later in estate sale land I found this fellow in a digger sale. Again the ball is hardened with age and the face is frozen into this funny expression.  He looks like he ate a lemon.

Again the ball is marked on the back.  This one is Bo Bo. He is also marked with SEIBERLING Latex Products Co. It also has a patent number which dates it to the 1930s.
This past weekend I found a THIRD rubber faced ball.  I was SO excited as these balls seem to be so random, and also that three made a COLLECTION. This one is rock hard as well, but luckily froze with time with an indent below the face, so her cute features are still there.

Again, she has a name...BABY FACE. She is also manufactured by SEIBERLING and is marked as such.

I think they are happy they found each other.  Tommy-Boy, Bo Bo and Baby Face.  I have no idea if there are others out there to hunt down or if this is as big as this collection will get.  I hope there are more.  I would love a whole pile of these fun rubber balls.
They live in my bathroom.  Smiling at me everyday.


Fun to get another collection challenge posted.  This will still be an occasional series and not weekly...but you know those collections will keep on coming!

Green with Etsy

Just a quick reminder that St. Patrick's Day Etsy will be listed tonight...Tuesday, Feb 23rd at 5:30 p.m. (pacific time).

Lots of green.

Hope to see you there.

St. Patricks Day Goodies Jigging to Etsy

I've been busy with my glue gun and having some Irish green fun.

Spun heads, bingo lassies, leprechaun mushrooms and other fun goodies.

St. Patrick's Day Etsy.  Tuesday, February 23rd at 5:30 p.m. (pacific time)

Hope to see you there.

Valentine Decorating at Magpie Ethel's House

I'm all decorated for the day of love!  I still have my white garland up that I hung Shiny Brites from during Christmas. They were followed by honeycomb bells for the New Year and now foil heart cutouts for Valentine's day.Last year Amy and I were out junking and we came across a HUGE cardboard heart in the garage at an estate sale. It barely fit in her car.  This year is is front and center in my holiday window.  I also found some LARGE honeycomb hearts last year at an estate sale and they worked perfectly with the giant one to give it a little extra fun.

I had to change it up with where I displayed things this year as collections had grown.  My vintage Valentine card boxes got a new spot to be displayed.

I am always thrilled to find a new box or two each year. This year I think I added about 4 new boxes.

This pair of cupids are a favorite that I love to pull out each year. This year I added the old Woolworths banner.  The banner was just the perfect touch for this little nook display.

Perfect.

I found three of the giant honeycomb hearts so one found a spot on this cabinet. Old candy boxes including my cherry themed candy boxes live here.  I also have a couple of my flipped holiday dolls.

Old Children's crafting magazines all for the month of February. It is always hard to get a photo of this shelf of littles with the window behind.  It holds all my little Valentine treasures.  

The cowboy was a great find this past year at $2.
If you follow me on Instagram you already saw this photo.  I love these fun plastic fellows.  Harder and harder to find at a decent price!
I have  a few cupids and some old flash cards that are heart themed.

Vintage baby rattle cherubs.

The framed piece in the background is part of an old sheet of crepe paper that was Valentine themed.  

I have a thing for old metal baking tins in heart shapes.

Vintage heart shaped baby rattles in original packaging.

I have been VERY lucky with Valentine candy heart boxes in the past couple of weeks.  I found FOUR at one sale a couple of weeks ago and another this past weekend.  The giant one was found last year and I can't imaging my husband giving me that much chocolate.  He knows better than that.

House snippets.  Full of Valentine vintage love!

Hope yours is happy.

Estate Sale Friday and a DOOZY.

I went to one estate sale on Friday.  It showed up on Craigslist on Thursday night and had mediocre photos, but the listing mentioned a 90 year accumulation of stuff. I decided to go.  I got there 15 minutes early and they had let people in.  Luckily, there were only about 6 of us or so rummaging through the house off the bat.  It was three floors and not run by a company.  Most stuff was not priced so you had to gather and they gave you a price.  IT WAS AWESOME.  I gathered, and gathered and gathered.  This may have been one of my biggest hauls ever...I could not crop the photos like I usually do to not show my back yard. Long post...awesome sale.

So good and such a variety. I was a sucker for the green of this pottery. The Christmas item in the back is an old catalog for holiday cards.

It is page after page of gems like this.

For Tom's newly redone study I got this super old metal tray table that almost has a medical feel to it.

I also got this painting which I think may go to Tom's study too. The wife of the house was a painter.  Many of her paintings and supplies were in the attic crawlspace.  I think I was one of the first people in that crawlspace and I rummaged through it for a good half hour.  So fun.

I was also the first person to the holiday stuff.  The boxes were all one price.  I would flip open the lid. If it looked good I would add it to my pile. When I got home it was fun to actually look and see what I had bought. Lots of shiny foil garland and big bright colored bells with tails.

There was one box that had an assortment of just awesome holiday.  Vintage leis, a bit of Halloween, Valentines day and old crepe paper.

An assortment of old foiled paper party hats.I bought four boxes of holiday stuff and each one had some good gems inside.  

The ceramic tree has old jewels and jewelry attached to it.  I will be blinging it up more.
Spun head angels on old garland, foil cones, blue garland....just so much fun stuff and crafting potential.

The tree topper would look awesome on a fourth of July tree. The green dishes underneath are tin.  They are made in Hong Kong and have a horse emblem on the back.  I think they are pretty nifty.
Foil bells on a mercury glass garland strand.

I rummaged around in the attic and found all these old frames. I like the oval and circle shapes.  I REALLY like the one on the bottom that is backed with old cardboard with the casket advertising.  I'm going to hang it just like that.  The floral on the other side is backed with foil and is a really pretty metallic bouquet.

The most cheerful umbrellas for Oregon's rainy days.

I got a bunch of luscious barkcloth and a few tablecloths.   I got great old pillowcase that have never been used and still have the original price on them.

The most interesting collection of thread spools. I found it like this.  It almost looks sculptural to me.

Old metal tins for the kitchen. The person liked to have masking tape labels on lots of stuff as to the contents.

I got two of the gumdrop trees that were mixed in with the holiday stuff. I have never seen one in blue before..usually they are clear plastic.The paint tubes were just interesting.  I grabbed the two trays of office pens/pencils etc  and sorted through them when I got home.  I found a TOOTH! If you follow along with me on Instagram you saw some of the other little treasures like a tiny green metal hammer.

There was an assortment of saved wrapping paper.  One of those families who unwraps a gift and saves the paper.  I love this habit and appreciate the thriftiness.  It is good for crafting. Thermoses and old coffee tins.  One of the coffee tins I found was old and had NEVER been opened.  

There were interesting books and other paper items.

I have a ton of old gardening items.  This seed catalog will get tucked in with those.   Some fun paper items to be tucked away for the Fourth of July.

Cutest illustrations ever.

These old ribbed jars are the best green.

I found a bunch of these old glasses from British Columbia.  I thought the colors and font were pretty cool.

I love the old shopping bags from Meier and Frank which was sold out a few years ago to Macy's.  The aquarium was a fun find.  It is my second of this style. 

I am in love with the scene on this old vinyl cloth.  I think it was originally a flotation/air mattress as it still has a blow stem attached.  The fish with their stripes and gingham just make me swoon.

I have been on the hunt for this silly jar for awhile. I've seen it online on other peoples posts or I have seen it in shops with a high price tag.  I found it in the workshop. It is in great condition and I am happy.

I found this vinyl asian themed runner.  I thought it was a shower curtain when I grabbed it.  When I got home and opened it up it is about 10 yards of vinyl with this design.  It is clear and really pretty.  I'm not sure of the original use.

I dug for over two hours.  It was so fun.  I loaded up my car and it was really full.  I thought about digging more and am sure I could have found more, but I was spent.  Definitely a doozy of a sale.  This one will go down in the record books.  So good...so very good.


Just a side note about this sale.  The fellow had passed away in his 90s and his son had inherited the house.  The house had been closed up for 18 years!  It was a neat old house with so much charm and a huge backyard with a little old rock pond.  The story behind the sale is also part of what makes estate sale land so special.  Different from sale to sale and a slice of so many lives. 

 

 

 

Hubby Study Flip

My son Ben is almost 24 and headed back to grad school this fall. I decided it was finally time to flip his childhood room into a study for my husband.  We don't have a huge house, and giving Tom a study was a good thing.  This was a very bittersweet flip as it was hard to remove all those traces of Ben's childhood.  It has made a past appearance on my blog many times, like here, here and here.  

Ben's room was bright green (his choice in grade school) and was decorated with a science and quirky theme. When he left for grad school he took some of his furniture and his bed.  His room had become a catch all for my junk.  It was time to reclaim it for Tom.

I was able to reuse some of the treasures from Ben's room into the study.  My husband and Ben have similar interests, so it was fun to be able to recycle some of my vintage finds in this new space.  We also were able to use lots of stuff I just had tucked here and there...lots of shopping within my house.

I wanted to do a mix of wood and industrial for the room.  I had a few pieces of furniture to work with and wanted to buy as little as possible.  I found the long cabinet at a local shop (Sassaffrassity). It is great for storage.  The black chippy metal shelf I found at a vintage store (Grand Marketplace) and was perfect to add some height and some chippy interest. (ignore the glare from the side...it was a really sunny day)

I got to put lots of estate sale finds to use.  These old fitness magazines are perfect to display with my hubby's weightlifting trophies.

Lots of quirky old books collected and put to use.  Some are from my father in law when he was in medical school.  The forestry books are from my grandfather. This pair of "Thin man" charts are from my kids local elementary school.  I cleaned out and organized the basement there years ago and I got to keep them.  They hung in Ben's room for years.  They are awesome.

My Dad gave us this desk to use after the desk we were going to use (which my grandfather had built) turned out to be too large to fit through our doors.  This desk is just as special as my Dad built it.  Tom wanted to "float" the desk in the room so he could look out the window. The fact that my Dad finished off the back of this desk made it perfect to use this way.  I pulled an old medical cabinet in from Kate's room.  I bought it at an estate sale last year.  I am hoping it goes to my someday beach house, but for now it works really well in the study.

We were able to pull some old pharmacy antiques that Tom had in boxes to display in the cabinet. 

The collection of globes used to be in Ben's room, but works perfectly on top of the cabinet. 

I bought a rug and small chair for the corner.  They were both good deals at TJ Maxx.  The tiny side table was in my parent's attic and my Grandfather made it years ago.  It is a tiny size and it was almost as if he made it for this exact spot.

Fun little family touches. The antlers hung in my grandfathers garage forever.  The coon skin cap Ben wore quite a bit when he was younger.  The Blitz hat was Tom's grandfathers. The boxing gloves were Tom's when he was a kid.

I rehung some old science kits that I found at estate sales over the years.  They decorated Ben's rooms and now the study. Ben had this bookshelf in his room.  He was, and still is a huge reader.  I boxed up a bunch of his books, but crammed a lot on this bookcase.

When Ben was in third grade he had a great teacher who challenged the class with bonus spelling words.  I printed some of those words out and inserted them on little guides on this shelf.  The words have been there for years and are a great reminder of a terrific teacher.

I got these little metal shelves on clearance at Crate and Barrel.  I thought they would work really well to showcase some quirky vintage subject/finds on each shelf.

Vintage tiny flashlights.  Tom has an obsession with flashlights.
Vintage space.  Blue plastic astronaut and space giveaway from Swifts.

A cymbal clanging vintage mechanical monkey.  

One of my favorite things in the study is this neon prescription sign.  It was given to Tom by a pharmacist friend who passed away.  It was in Tom's workshop where you really did not see it.  It is front and center now and looks so awesome when it is plugged in.

I am really happy with how the study turned out.  So nice to have a functioning room.  It also gives me something new to hunt down stuff for in estate sale land.  Just last week when I went to an estate sale I hoped to find some interesting can to use as a planter.  Voila...peanuts tin...and my husband's name is Tom.

 Not only is it a functioning room now, but it holds so many wonderful hand me downs and vintage treasures.  My favorite kind of decorating.  Happy Study!