Magpie Ethel

Junking With Mom....Good Luck Charm

Friday I did not have a plan to hit any sales. I did not see anything that looked enticing and my Mom and I decided to head down to Amity, Oregon to clean and tend the family graves for Memorial Day.

The only junking I KNEW I would be getting was meeting up with a dealer that sold me some pixies a couple of weeks ago.  When I bought the pixies from her, she said those magic words "I have more at home".  Friday I met up with her and got the rest of her stash.

Beyond that I wasn't expecting any junk. I was wrong. First my Mom and I passed an old concrete yard.

I did a u-turn and stopped.  I ended up getting a bunch of old concrete. Luckily we were driving my Dad's truck, so loading it up was not a problem.

I love this crusty old swan with the tiny swan beside it.

I got the large pink mushroom to join my little kewpie friend.

I was shopping out of a "graveyard" section so most of the items I bought had some damage. The dings on the deer's ears did not bother me.

I really liked the larger goose and could't leave his little goose friend behind.

I got a giant frog.

I got a concrete poodle which will head to my garage sale. I hemmed and hawed over getting this bunny, but am glad that I did. I love the little flower detail on the head and am going to paint it pink and let the paint weather with age. She also is wearing an apron and there is a little bow at the back.
See the little flowers detail?

These are both plastic, but they came from the concrete place.  The mushroom was $3!  The sheep is a blow mold and dated 1989.

I go on and on about my "someday beach house" and these will go live there.

The concrete adventure was super.  My Mom and I had a great time.  We decided to hit one antique mall before we went to tidy up the graves.  I usually find an item or two at this particular mall, but this trip was an exception.

I added to the pixie count for the day.

My deer radar was on.

It was a good day for junking.

I think my Mom ended up being a good luck charm for junk.

My Mom and I are headed to Farm Chicks in a couple of weeks, and I hope her good luck charm for junking continues.  Thanks for a super day Mom...you are the best!

 

Neglected

I have been on a crazy treadmill of life and have been neglecting my blog. First I had the busy times of the Christmas season and shows.  During that time my aunt (67) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She passed away in early February and since that time I have been working on her estate sale.  The sale is this weekend and I am more than ready to have it behind me...it really is a huge amount of work.  I already have a bunch of posts that have been swirling around in my head.  I miss sharing more than just the collection challenges and my estate sale finds that seem to have become all that I can manage lately.  Cross your fingers for the sale this weekend...I have lots of treasures to unload.

Happy Day

p.s. The shell photo?  My aunt lived overseas in the Marshall islands and scuba dove. She collected shells and she also crafted with them.  She had a closet full of bin after bin of shells. She also had shells on display. I have never seen so many shells at an estate sale in my life.

Annual Huckleberry and Rummage Sale Weekend

Prior to Labor Day weekend is always my annual huckleberry picking overnight with my Mom and a couple of cousins. We spent Thursday picking berries for about 7 hours.  We did well and brought home lots of huckleberries.

We spend the night in a local hotel and the next morning we hit the annual rummage sale that the town of Trout Lake puts on.  It is a fundraiser for scholarships for the local high school...a good cause and I usually find a treasure or two.  My mom and I also junked on the drive home.

The vintage enamel store scale was at the rummage sale.  I thought it was pretty nifty.

It is a Dayton scale and the enamel is in great shape. I wish I had more kitchen counter space to use it for display.

I have been on a roll with Halloween lately.  Lucky once again. A sucker for the original price tag.
Christmas was good to me.
The three boxes of ornaments were full of fun patterns and designs.

A blowmold Santa and 6 vintage curtain panels.

A couple of crazy vintage grape clusters. (garage sale bound) A crusty old tool box.

Vintage shot glasses. I especially like the smaller ones that have crazy eyes that are painted on the inside so they look like they are wandering.

A Sea Lion Caves mug and a tin mug (for Kate), a recipe box and a pair of vintage sunglasses.
Rocking my new vintage sunglasses. Thumbs up to huckleberry picking and rummage sale finds! Happy Labor Day Weekend!

You can read about the past two huckleberry/rummage sale jaunt here and here.

Coastal Road Trip

My good junking buddy Amy and I took a quick little coastal junking road trip earlier this week. We left early Tuesday a.m. and headed to the northern Oregon coast. We spent the day hitting antique shops, thrifts and any spot that looked like it had potential.

Amy dragged me to spots like this. She had been here before.  Hobo Junction in Long Beach, Washington with the nicest fellow running it.  There is a path to the front door past all those floats!

This playground bobble horse enticed me. I would love one of these in my yard...but I have no spot for one.

We ate clam chowder. We ate ice cream. I made Amy climb the Astoria Column.  She had never been there before and the 164 steps to the top reward one with a magnificent view.

We both found fun stuff. We spent the night in Seaside, Oregon and woke up the next morning to junk our way home along the Columbia River. It was a beautiful sunny day on the coast and junking was fun.

Treasures from our trip.  No rhyme nor reason to what I came home with. The two pink shutters will become a project.

I found two of these old bunny racks.  I have one that I display with my Easter goodies that I found this past year.  I found these in TWO different shops in the same city.

I also found this cowboy style rack which I had not seen before.

A tin dollhouse complete with candy striped awnings.

With all those charming details inside.

My spun head radar was on when I found this bag of heads in Astoria at an antique mall. A putz style house (that needs to be flipped), an old ironing board (for my shows), a lone salt cat shaker, a Christmas list box and a couple of rolls of old wallpaper border.
I love the graphics on the old wallpaper border rolls.  These were found in Long View at a darling shop called Elizabeth Hue Mercantile.

I also found two chippy metal stands and a turquoise cake container. Another road trip junking adventure!  Short but sweet and with its rewards. Hurry for summer trips like this!

 

Estate Sale Friday and Graduation

I had a tiny window on Friday to hit estate sales. I hit two. The first one I hit was a family run sale and they opened up early with only a couple of us there.  I always ask when I walk in a sale where the Christmas is.  The woman answered me that there was room of Christmas upstairs that was really full. As I walked (bounded) up the stairs I had visions of a room of great vintage Christmas...and me the only one there!  Sadly, her very full room was for the most part mediocre modern stuff.  I got a couple of things, but luckily the second sale was better!

Some old baking cups (for crafting) a couple of boxes of teardrop shaped ornaments and a fun recipe box. I seemed to have the Midas touch with all the gold colored holiday tidbits.
Gold leaves with original price tags attached.

I seem to have found a smidgen of pink.  I love these teeny pale pink light bulbs.
On Thursday a friend came by and gifted me with a vintage Santa. The Friday estate sale had me finding his twin.  I also found a fun tree topper.
One of my favorite things was this box with old holiday rubber stamps.  I think they are fairly old. (I think they would stamp better if I had a new stamp pad...mine is a bit dried out)

A good couple of sales.

I did not hit any sales on Saturday.  I had a special event that was MUCH more important than estate sale land.  Ben graduated from college!

Such a proud mom today.

It WAS a HAPPY DAY!

 

Crawl Space Treasures

Here are my finds from Aunt Tillie's crawlspace.

A box of old Christmas lights. There are lots of strands of lights and a few scattered reflectors. I will remove the bulbs and use them for projects. I won't use the old light strands as the old wiring scares me.

A good amount of old white garland and a few more Christmas lights with a fun shape.

I did bring home some of the Avon.  I liked these old empty powder containers.
I also brought home some of those plastic flowers.  I use them for crafting.  Mary Jo and I found a pair of these great green pottery pots..one for her and one for me.

A wonderful old galvanized unused waste can with lid.
Old gardening catalogs from the 1950s and early 60s. The graphics are spectacular.

Women's magazines from the 1950s.

An old metal cooler (with a great spigot but no lid) and a slew of old cottage cheese container lids.

I am excited to sort through the box of lids. There are a huge assortment of varieties and graphics.

Some old tie around uniforms Mary Jo thinks were from a canning company that Aunt Tillie worked for. Great label at the neck.

I did take one pair of work gloves from the two boxes that we uncovered.

Some old metal trays that came with mosaic kits. As I said before I was hoping for a crawl space of vintage Christmas.  My heart pitter pattered when I pulled not one, not two, but THREE boxed ALUMINUM CHRISTMAS trees from the space.  At first in the dark crawl space I thought the box said Angel PINK...I about keeled over when I thought they were PINK trees. I then realized it was an E and not a K in pine.  I will take the silver kind tho!

In addition to the trees in the boxes, there are either one or two more stands and branches.  I need to put them together and figure that out.  Grand total..four or possiblly five trees!

FIVE revolving tree stands. 3 in the original boxes. 2 large and three smaller.

One electric color wheel!
Mary Jo wants a couple of the trees, but I took them home to make sure they are complete.  What a crawl space adventure.  I could not believe the aluminum tree hoard. Aunt Tillie did well with those. 

Well my crawl space dream has been fulfilled. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Digging through boxes with no idea what they contain is a big rush.  I am so delighted there was some vintage Christmas. I am ready and waiting for my next crawlspace invitation!

 

Exercise is Good

Every week I walk with my neighbor. We walk the same route. Today there was a dumpster on our route. They were cleaning out a house where and elderly couple had lived.  I climbed up to look in the dumpster....I saw old Shiny Brite boxes.

My neighbor and I ended up each carrying home big cardboard boxes full of multiple boxes of balls.

No indents or fancy balls, just lots of simple Shiny Brites in good colors.  There were some modern ornaments that went into the Goodwill bag. There were also old Christmas light bulbs in the dumpster.

I don't think my neighbor had ever been dumpster diving before..she was a good sport to add that to our morning routine!

A walk with a reward!

p.s. I did ask the workers for permission to grab from the dumpster...the two young men doing the dumping told me to take whatever I wanted!

Annual Huckleberries and Rummage Sale

You may remember a post from last year when I went huckleberry picking.  My mom and a couple of cousins went again this year. This year I was tuned into the fact there is an annual rummage sale in the small town we pick huckleberries near.  I wanted to hit the sale when they opened so my mom and I left Portland at 5:30 a.m. to hit the sale before picking huckleberries for the day. I don't think I would make a special trip just for the rummage sale, but since we were already heading that way it made sense to leave early.

My early morning drive was rewarded.

An old child's wicker chair and a couple of baby blankets.

The blankets have sweet graphics..they are faded so hard to see in the photos. Bunnies and bears playing instruments.

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary.

One lone box of Christmas ornaments in turquoise with indents on some. A Shawnee bird wall pocket.
A bunny planter for Easter and a cream ware goose wearing a hat for my collection. A ceramic owl vase for Halloween decorating. A vintage Disney Halloween costume of Cinderella. The little homemade paper cat was stuck in the box as well.

The costume has some staining on the front, but does have the original crown.

I like the black and orange box.

Sometimes I buy non-vintage items at sales.  I did that at this rummage sale. I am always using padded mailing envelopes for Etsy sales. I scored new envelopes..10 for a QUARTER. I bought 70.

The rummage sale was a good start to the day.  We met up with my cousins and hit the forest to go pick huckleberries.  We picked for 5 hours.  Huckleberries are small and don't add up super fast in your bucket. (that ia a quarter to help with size)

Those efforts sure made one tasty huckleberry coffee cake for breakfast Sunday morning. I also froze some and squirreled them away for the winter months ahead.

Vintage finds and fresh huckleberries..a good weekend!

 

 

Summer Jobs - Forest Fire Fighter

I posted about my daughter Kate, the other day and her summer job as a camp counselor.

Today is Ben's 15 minutes of fame. This summer he is out with a forest fire fighting crew.  I had issues with this summer job choice at first with the danger aspect.  He is 21 and will be a senior in college this fall. He is an adult. This is a unique summer job that he had the opportunity to do.

Here he is minus his hardhat and pulaski that he carries.

Ben often works a 14 hour day. His crew can work for a two week stretch and then he is off for 48 hours. It is hot and hard work. He carries at least a 20 pound pack when he works. They get up at 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning to start their day after sleeping under the stars each night. (Some crews all carry small tents with them.  Ben's crew for the most part sleeps under the stars).  They feed them really well for their dinner meal.  The meal is usually catered and last week he had steak one night and cornish game hens the next. I think they need all those calories and hearty meals with their hard physical days.

I am SUPER proud of Ben. It is hard work, but he is enjoying the challenge and being outdoors. He is learning a ton. His first fire he was on the lodgepole fire in Idaho doing mop up. He is out on another call now, in Eastern Oregon.

He has been really good about calling each night and setting my mind at ease with his safety. It is interesting to hear what they do and so far each day differs.

I have also paid more attention than ever to forest fire information. Oregon had over 10,000 lightning strike in a 24 hour period the other day! It is also mind boggling the number of crews out fighting fires during the summer.  I am a walking encyclopedia of forest fire facts. 

I am hoping I can have both kids home for a wee bit this summer before they head back to college in September.  Camp counselor and forest fire fighter...good kids.

Summer Camp

My daughter Kate is away at camp. She is a camp counselor for the summer.  Kate has gone to the same camp since elementary school (YWCA Camp Westwind, on the Oregon Coast).  She always wanted to be a camp counselor and this is her third summer doing just that.  She has also been a counselor with our local Outdoor School program. Outdoor School is part of our public school system where middle school students go to camp and high school kids volunteer to be counselors.  It is an awesome program.

With all this camp experience she has gotten quite the collection of wood cookies that campers and counselors make and wear.  PEEP is her camp counselor name.

I always try and send her some goofy care packages while she is away. I was inspired by the project from this post on Happy Loves Rosie blog.

This is my variation.  I used the giant size marshmallows. Food coloring is used to decorate the marshmallows so you can safely eat them. 

I was thinking she could use them for some crazy S'mores fun.  If not they are sure to just make her laugh at my efforts.

Miss that girl when she is away for the summer.

XO Peep.  Love you tons.