A sucker for watercolors

Okay, I admit it ... there should be a self-help group for people who fall in love with one particular item and don't care what form it comes in.  For me, it's watercolors.

I saw this one at a yard sale over the summer, and even though it's no longer "in" to have these kinds of images around (that form of Country is sooooo passe these days), I fell in love with this original watercolor of a young girl.  It's just darling.

I don't yet know what I'm going to do with it, but it's just so sweet.  Don't you agree?

Aren't they adorable?

As I've mentioned before, the yard sales have been few and far between. But for some reason we were blessed with fantastic weather this past weekend, which caused a bunch of people to have sales--even though they hadn't advertised them.  (Maybe I can just sniff them out.)

The best stop, though, was in Wolcott at the Presbyterian church's rummage sale.  Look what I found!

And here's the back side of the poppies.

And the back side of the rose mug.

I want to believe that these are hand painted. (One of them is signed.)  But I'm just not sure.  Sadly, the cups themselves are cheap.  (They look like Fire King, but they aren't marked.)  But who cares when you can drink out of such lovely mugs.

My latest junking find . . .

Ohh look what I got last weekend at one of the (very few) sales we found.  They're getting few and far between this time of year but I was so pleased to find this beauty.

The lady who sold it to me told me she used to have a lot of them, but got BORED of collecting them.  Her loss, my gain!

Harvest Festival Report!

Goodness, where does the time go?  I just realized I went to the Sodus Harvest Festival almost two weeks ago.  Well, here's the report.

My friends and I wanted to get there early because for the past two years we've arrived near lunchtime only to find that the apple crisp has been sold out.  So guess what--there was NONE this year!  Not only that, but last year we had the most amazing Mexican food sold by a local (authentic) Mexican restaurant.  They didn't show up, either.  (And they don't appear to be listed on the Chamber of Commerce brochure, anymore ... and since this was a chamber function . . . .)

After wandering around, we decided to buy a bag of kettle corn.  Before I could take a picture, we'd gobbled it up.  (Oops.)  But I did find a copy of the logo on line.

Since nothing much was happening, we inspected the contestants for the biggest pumpkin contest.

Believe it or not, these are the small ones.  (above)

We figured that big boy in the back was the winner and got to talk to the guy who owned it.  (He was quite proud, and rightly so.)  All the "contestants" were going to be lifted by a crane and dropped to earth to smash into a million bits.  What fun!  (NOT!)  In fact, the guy told us he had no intention of letting them smash his pumpkin--not after all he'd done to grow it. He intended to take it to church to let the kids climb over it until it rotted.  (Then he'd cut it up for the seeds.)

So ... that was the fun (?) of the Sodus Harvest Festival.  Will we go next year?  Why not?  What else have we got to do on a cold and rainy weekend in September?

Waste not, want not . . .

Every year my next-door neighbors plant tomatoes next to their house. At least five plants.  Every year they pick one or two of them and let the rest of them rot.  Every year I vow I'm going to go over and steal them.

(So far I haven't.)

What a waste.

And add a layer of butter . . .

Okay, I admit it.  I collect far to many things.  But if you collect small items, they don't make quite so much clutter.

Something I've always been attracted to are butter pats.  They're just so darn cute!  Here's one I found at the Pultneyville Community Sale a couple of weeks ago.

Since I'm a sucker for blue-and-white china, I had to have this.  Cost:  $1.

In case she gets thirsty . . .

One of my favorite coffee-table books is called Extraordinary Touches for an Ordinary Day, by Jo Packham, which is basically about putting together sweet guest rooms.

One of the things mentioned in the above book was adding a small carafe and glass.  I've been looking for one for years and finally found one at the big Pultneyville Community Sale (which seemed to have been put on mostly by people like me; antiques dealers who were no longer in business and selling off their former stock--cheap!)

I found this little hand-painted beauty.

My sister-in-law comes to visit every now and then.  I hope she enjoys our guest room.  I've tried to make it pretty and comfortable.  Now, if she gets thirsty in the night, she won't have to get up in search of water.

A little bit of summer ... all year long

I love church sales.  The beauty of them is ... they happen all year long (but mostly in the summer).

I saw this little urn filled with silk roses at a church sale.  It had a price tag of $2.

Isn't it darling?  I know come winter I'm going to long for my garden ... but with this little beauty, I'll have a touch of summer all year long.

Just for fun

It's the end of the season and the yard sales are drying up.  But as a last hurrah! Pultneyville, NY puts on a community yard sale in mid-September, and that's where my junking buddies and I went this past weekend.

The free boxes were great!  I got a book of New Yorker cat cartoons and a tiny book of walking tours of Scotland with gorgeous photography.  At one sale, they had copies of Mad Magazine for a dime each.  I bought two (with Harry Potter spoofs) and now I wish I'd bought every copy.  I haven't laughed so hard in years.  (I'm getting a subscription!)

One of my purchases was just for fun.  These little quilted cubes.  Aren't they cute?

I'd say that the above picture is about the actual size of the tiny, hand-stitched cubes.  I'm going to hang them on my Christmas tree this December.

They came with a little cross stitched draw-string bag.

This picture is smaller than the actual size of the bag -- but not by much.  It, too, will find its way to my Christmas tree this year.  And the price for these three handmade items?  Twenty-five cents.  Some people just don't value hand-made items.

But aren't they darling?

My biggest purchase

When I was a dealer in an antiques arcade, my bread and butter was "smalls."  For one thing, they didn't cost a lot, and I usually sold enough to make my rent.  Period.  Profit?  If I made one, it was usually less than $10.  I stayed in the business for so long just because I enjoyed the thrill of the hunt.  And I still do.  I just buy a whole lot less these days.

So, what was my biggest purchase this summer?  A pitcher and ewer.  (Did you ever notice how many times the word "ewer" is used in crossword puzzles?)

Anyway, this one is a beauty . . .

. . . or it was.  What you can't see are the cracks in the back side of the pitcher.

So why did I buy such a flawed pitcher?  First of all, I LOVE brown transferware.  I had a yellow pitcher and ewer sitting in the same place in my guest room for years, but it was something someone made in ceramics class.  Mind you, it was pretty nice, and it had yellow flowered decals.  But it wasn't an antique.  I bought it in the hopes that one day I'd have an antique one to put in its place.  The yellow one cost me $4 at a yard sale in Oswego, NY.  This one came from a yard sale in Fair Haven, NY.  The woman was downsizing for a move to Florida and was selling her treasures.  When I saw the price tag on this ($5) I knew I had to have it, cracks and all.  She figured it was at least 150 years old.  I'm not so sure . . . but it's got to be at least 100 years old.

I love it.  How about you?

New for the garden

For years I have begged Mr. Ivy for a burning bush.  I know, I know--why didn't I just buy one myself?  After all, in the spring I wanted hollyhocks and I bought two fine specimens (which REFUSED to grow, no matter how much I watered them or how much Miracle Gro I gave them), and I bought myself a very robust honeysuckle plant, too.  But I didn't think to buy myself a burning bush.

Well, my begging (nagging?) did not go unnoticed and on Tuesday Mr. Ivy presented me with a burning bush. Only it's green.  And it has rained for two days straight and who wants to plant a bush in the rain?

Still, I'm hoping that by next fall my bush will look like this.

What's new in your garden?

Toil, toil, today ... with hot dogs and potato salad on the side

I don't really need it . . .

Every week or so I get an announcement from Replacements Ltd. telling me they have GREAT PRICES on my good china.

The only problem is, we have different definitions on what's a great price. Great price for me is CHEAP. Great price for them is "your order could buy me a new Mercedes!"

My china is Royal Albert's Silver Maple design, which has been discontinued for years.  Many years ago, my grandmother gave my mother a tea set of the pattern and the truth is my mother wasn't exactly thrilled.  But I loved it from the day I saw it and I was thrilled when Mum gave it to me after I got married.

But it was only a tea set.  Cups, saucers, cake plates.  So one year, with my work bonus, I bought eight place settings.  Not the additional serving pieces, just the dinner plates, cups saucers and yet again cake plates.  Since then I've bought a few odd pieces--and I do mean odd.  I now have a bon-bon dish, a sugar and creamer, 1 salt shaker, 1 egg cup, and 2 small platters.

For all the years I have been receiving those emails, I've longed to get a teapot that would go with my good dishes.  The fact that I only use the dishes once a year (because I'm not putting them in the dishwasher, and during a big family dinner, I don't have the time or room (in my tiny kitchen) to stack and hand wash them.  So once a year it is.

And no teapot.

Oh, but I want that teapot.  I dream about it. I visualize how I would rearrange my entire china cabinet just to accommodate it.

Then I look at the price list and say:  $189 (plus shipping) for a teapot you will never use?
Get real, girl!

Somewhere there's a spendthrift inside me just aching to bust loose.  But until that teapot comes down in price (or hell freezes over), that isn't going to happen.

What frivolous thing  have you been denying yourself?

Happy Anniversary To You!

The yard sales weren't quite as good this week, but as the junking season starts to wane your faithful correspondent and her chums (who seem more interested in coffee and doughnuts than the thrill of the hunt) went forth to forage and once again triumphed.

The first score was this darling little petal dish . . . or is it a shell?  And is it a soapdish or is it a condiment dish?  Who knows.  I just know it's CUTE!  It's post-war Made-In-Japan.

At the same sale, I found these steak knives.  Actually she had four packages of them, and I scored two.  They're made in Japan, too, so you know they're probably 20 or more years old, but in mint condition.

And then I got this 25th Anniversary bone-china (made in England) tea cup.  The truth is, we'd been to this sale at least twice before.  The last time I was there I decided not to get the cup, but as it was still there I figured it was meant to be.  And since it was only a dollar -- why not? 

I figure if I turn it around, no one has to know that it's a 25th Anniversary cup. And if I hold onto it long enough, I'll have been married that long anyway.

I also bought myself a little ivy rubber stamp for a quarter.  It's terribly cute and for a quarter, how could I miss?

So what do you think of this week's treasures?

Greetings! Cards a Plenty!

As I mentioned earlier this week, the sales last week were terrific! I got all those lovely dishes ... but I also bought a HUGE box of old greeting cards.

I am a SUCKER for memorabilia from the 1950s and early 1960s, and these cards sure fit the bill.  The entire box (and it was a BIG ONE) sold for only $3.  I swear there must have been several hundred cards in the box.  Not all of them were keepers.  But I sorted through them and made three piles.  Those I wanted to keep, those I'd be willing to sell, and those that would go in my next (catch-and-release program, if I may borrow the phrase from the Yardsalebloodbath blog) yard sale.

Inside the big box were many smaller boxes of greeting cards.  One of them was totally devoted to welcome-to-the-world baby cards.

Isn't the above card darling?  Sadly, the ribbon didn't scan as pretty as the rest of the card.  Or how about this one?

Don't you just want to pick up that baby and kiss it?  And what about this next one?

Wouldn't you want to be this person's secret pal?

Or how about this . . . ?

There must have been at least 10 "thinking of you" cards.  Isn't this doggy card sweet?

This house card was die-cut, so that the roof and chimney are part of the card, but the pink skyline isn't.

There were a whole series of these thinking-of-you cards with the gingham background. And there were a whole box of "satin"card like the one below, printed on some kind of pseudo-satin fabric.  Lovely. Just lovely.

The scanner just couldn't do the following birthday card justice.  The "front" side" of the card (the right side) has lovely sparkles, but I scanned the backside as well because ... well, you just don't get cards like this nowadays.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the cards in that box.  There must have been over 500 cards--most of which are not that remarkable.  But the ones that are (about 100-150)  are exquisite

Or, at least I think so.  Maybe you would, too.