Advent Blogging Day Five and Vintage Finds!

I really enjoy going to thrift shops, second hand stores and garage sales. I can often find exactly what I need for a great price.
A few years ago, when Kevin and I started to expand the plants we started in the house for spring planting, we didn't have a good way to drag 40 different pots from the heated garage to the driveway for hardening-off. Kevin mentioned that he wished we had one of those little red metal Radio Flyer wagons.  I checked the local stores and found brand new ones for about $70....well, I wasn't going to pay that kind of money to move plants around for a couple of weeks, so I found one at a garage sale for $5 and bought it! That was in 2008 and I still use it every spring.

Back when we lived in Rancho Santa Margarita, I used to garage sale a LOT. I sold a lot of stuff on ebay from garage sales! One time, I found an unusual piece of pottery that had a mark on it....so I bought it for $1. I sold it on ebay for a couple hundred dollars...turned out it was vintage Hawai'ian pottery that the Hawai'ian people are trying to collect and bring back to Hawai'i...anyhow, I went out to a couple of thrift shops this week.

I have a couple of projects I want to work on and I needed some candy dishes to complete the projects. I found all of these at a place called, FISH in downtown Carson City. It's a junk shop, or thrift store, and it is jam-packed with all kinds of stuff. FISH stands for, "Friends in Service Helping" and it is a charitable organization dedicated to serving the needs of the homeless and hungry of Carson City and helping them towards self-sufficiency. It's a very admirable organization since they use the money raised from the donations to the store and the purchases to run a Food Bank, a medical clinic and two homeless shelters. I like the fact that they don't just hand stuff out- they actually refer people and assist with job training to help people help themselves.

Back to the project of the day- one of the design blogs that I read had a tutorial for turning thrift store glass into 'opalite' look alike to store jewelry. I thought it looked so pretty that I wanted to try the same thing, but with different colors. Hence, the collection of glass dishes. I paid between 10 cents and 50 cents for each on of the above pieces.

Tomorrow, I'll show you the results of the project- it's looking pretty good, if I might say so- but I had another reason to tell you about shopping at thrift stores today:

This beautiful clear glass dish with no chips or cracks has a beautiful raspberry design on the bowl. It also has a thin gold rim and is marked "France" on the bottom. I paid 49 cents for it....and I found the same one on ebay for....$18.00!

I think at one time or another, we have all had some Mikasa glass candy dishes at our homes! This little beauty has no chips or cracks and was packed in the original box (from the 1980s). I found it on ebay for $14.99! (I have the label for this- it fell off)

Needless to say, I'm hanging on to these beautiful vintage pieces! By the way, 'vintage' is defined as anything that is at least 20 years old...antiques are at least 50 years old. Sigh. I guess I'm an antique, now....