Happy New Year and Many Happy Returns!!!!!

I'm back!! Happy New Year Everyone! And Merry Christmas!! 2014 was a blessed year and I see many exciting things on the horizon! Today we had a snow day with -40 wind chills and several inches of snow, this is the view of my kitchen window. I urge you to check back often as I have many very interesting projects in the fire. What are you anticipating this year?

The holidays lent itself to a bit of thrifting, my mom gave me a round paperweight with flowers in it and I found this one to match. I also found a big honeybee necklace for the shop, a bow and arrow pin, a brass parrot for the shop, and a set of some swanky glasses that I haven't decided whether I will keep them or sell. Maybe I will enjoy them for a little while. Look below for a few other items in The Furnace Room! And speaking of shops, check out my good friend and cousin's new blog 2014things.blogspot.com she is getting rid of 2,014 things this year to declutter her house and her life :)

Art Deco Paste stone ring

1890s Victorian Rose Gold Ring

1960s candle holders

Throwback Thursday Vinyl: Boots by Nancy Sinatra

I picked this little number up on my thrift trip for a scandalous 75 cents at an antique store in Galesburg, IL. It's fabulous. The delicious Nancy Sinatra is the ultimate razor sharp blond bombshell who could hold her own in 1966. She covers everything a teenager was feeling in the 60s high on the drama of love, lies, and loneliness. What surprised me were the Beatles, Dylan, and Rolling Stones covers on this album. These tracks are ultimately given the Nancy Sinatra camp stamp but what makes me laugh is if the artists weren't pleased with them, who would dare insult the daughter of Frank Sinatra. You better prepare for a swift boot print on your face. Besides the obvious title track that is one of my all time oldie favs, "In My Room" is a dramatic affair that makes me want to stand in my house like I own the place and the cover of "As Tears Go By" is a dreamy serenade. Definitely pick this up if you get the chance and support your local record store.

Happy Fish, First Fridays. and Ribbon Records!

 

Friday night my cousin and I partook of CIAO First Fridays in Peoria, but first I had to make it out of her home filled with swanky vintage treasures from her latest road trip to northern Illinois. Happy Fish Sushi was our dinner of choice, a cool little joint in Campustown with super fresh sushi, although the tables are a tad too close together and there is that awkward moment where you feel like you are dining with the strangers next to you and you almost reach for something on their plate :) Carrie and I highly recommend the Miami Roll and the White Dragon roll.

 

Our next trek was Ribbon Records, a new favorite of mine, you will have to excuse the impressionistic photo I took below, but it is jam packed with bins of used records and the coolest vintage clothing collection you will find outside of a big city. This is a must see hole in the wall in Peoria. You can listen to music at your leisure as well!

 

We then traversed the artist studios of the Murray Building on Walnut street (Ribbon Records is in the first floor, artists are on the next 3 floors). We met Ken Hoffman, Ken Tiessen, Tracy Frugoli, and a few more very talented folk. Our night ended under the stars eating ice cream and discussing our life's passions. It was a pretty stellar Friday.

 

Carrie wants this lamp.

Impromptu Life and Luna Moth Wings

 

Lately I've been taking a breather and planning my work schedule as I see fit, which has been a bit nice to say the least. I went for a short nature walk on my parents' farm and found this tattered luna moth wing. A luna moth features prominently in one of my stories and they seem so other worldly to me.

 

While working at home my mom showed up on my doorstep and offered to take me to get a haircut, lunch and a little impromptu thrifting. How could I refuse, we went to two of our usual jaunts and they did not disappoint. All in all I think I spent under $12. You can see all my wears in my Etsy shop! coleblk.etsy.com

 

I even found this, its from the 40s or 50s, the backing is a butterfly wing and the the glass is painted on the inside with an island scene.

Thrift Stores Are the Bacon of Shopping...

Sorry for my absence, my cousin Carrie and I went on a thrifting road trip and it did not disappoint. We laughed our way through Springfield, the Quad Cities, and Galesburg, IL. We were led on some wild goose chases and experienced lots of bargains, screaming babies, chatty hotel neighbors, one man motorcycle wheelie popping fist pumping shows, PMS ice cream outings, Gumbo Ya-Ya, would-be yogurt bandits, singing horrible 90s music, Bad Girl Video and Fat Cat's Tattoo lounge, a license plate that said WHO AM U, drive-in movies, paying in pennies, forgetting to eat lunch, and Willy Wonka saying "tell me how you're going to try and eat a salad." It was a magical journey.

  

The Sangamon Antique Mall in Springfield, lotsa junking fun.

The Route 66 Drive-In, I highly recommend this!! We saw Fast & Furious 6 (bleh) and Star Trek Into Darkness (woohoo!!!!)

 

Coasting through small towns scouting out garage sales, that is the best way to get deals.

 

Totally misleading, don't always trust the signs, they had a wooden tv table painted like a watermelon for $20. No thank you! Where's the quarter table?!? 

 

Oh heck yeah, ice cream, cures everything...except diabetes.

 

My haul! Lots of fun treasures! I've already listed some in my shop, coleblk.etsy.com. If you want to check out some of Carrie's treasures, check out swankyladyvintage.etsy.com. 

Always remember: "Thrift stores are the BACON of shopping, antique stores are the STEAK!"

Oh man. Siamese Cats and Peanut Noodles

"Oh man." Those were the only words that came out of my mouth in between stuffing it with this dish. Spicy Chinese Peanut noodles. This recipe is super easy and amazingly delicious (another recipe from the orange book, thank you Renee). I ended up making this for dinner because I saw a bottle of cider vinegar in my cabinet and couldn't remember what I bought it for. Then I saw the peanut butter and pasta and my memory miraculously returned. And it contains garlic and cilantro, any argument against this dish is invalid...if you have a peanut allergy just skip this post. Also if you are distracted by the two felines, you should be because they are cute. But don't get too attached, they just sold this week and are destined to become a Mother's Day gift for someone in North Dakota! Happy Friday.

Sharks, Salmon, and Spiced Carrots

 

Saturday I had an impromptu visit to Goodwill where I picked up this 99 cent treasure. Jaws is one of my favorite movies and I could not resist this tourist trap impulse buy. I will be using it for eating ice cream...yes I eat ice cream from cups and mugs. Unlike bowls, mugs have handles so your fingers do not freeze off while trying to enjoy your creamy load of fantasticness.

 

Tonight I tried a new way of cooking salmon, it was good but not great. Even in a sealed foil packet the salmon was drier than usual. I may try to make some sort of salmon spread that I found on foodily to rescue the leftovers.

 

To accompany the salmon I made spiced sautéed carrots; they were better than the salmon and had an unexpected flavor. Spiced with cumin and cinnamon, they were smoky and mildly sweet, I may add a touch more salt and garlic the next time around. They were very light on the oil. I'm all about adding more vegetables to my diet, especially carrots. What is your favorite vegetable recipe? Please share it and perhaps I will try it and feature it!

Eastertide, spring on the wing, and adventures on the horizon

Sorry it's a little late in coming but Happy Easter Everyone!!! We're still in the octave right? So it's legit. I had a wonderful Easter weekend, I'm in two different choirs and we sang every day, it was splendid to hear the jubilant songs return, but most of all it was good to take a step out of the world and focus on spiritual matters. When Easter comes around, it's like falling in love with God all over again and knowing that He never ends. In the past year I've experienced moments of great joy, the kind of joy that pierces your soul but ties everything together with an unbreakable golden thread. I found this feather stuck to the elbow of my coat the other day and the sight of it just puts me at peace.

You are never too old to get a visit from the Easter bunny, okay I get visits from this little guy every day and he blesses my home with homemade black jellybeans in abundance (word of warning, don't eat them!). My mom still likes to give me an Easter basket, and hey who says no to free candy. Although, I had a major Fringe moment, I gave my mom a bouquet of tulips for Easter and guess what was in my basket? Red Vines. Those faithful few of you who watched the show will know the significance. 

 

Though I'm trying to eat a bit healthier I couldn't resist making this, after all the brie was expiring, see I had an excuse. It was so delicious and so easy, brie baked in crescent roll dough! My friend MaryAnne at lifeathaven.wordpress.com made me a jar of homemade mulberry jam. MaryAnne I apologize for waiting so long to open it ha ha! but whenever I thought of mulberries I would think of bird poop on the farm but the jam was delicious with the brie :) Also my friend Renee gifted me a lovely cookbook when I moved into my new house and I've decided to work my way through it Julia Child style, because there are so many healthy recipes in it that would spice up my diet more, thank you Renee.

As far as recent adventures, they have been relatively low key but memorable. I had a really beautiful and deep conversation about the nature of art through the eyes of faith, cafeteria food, travel, and the seeds of ideas that have the potential to bring change to the world with a friend that I met last summer. It's those kind of conversations that linger with you for days and replay in your mind. So many conversations are electronic these days that I savor the face to face encounters. I also got to catch up with a college friend last night that I hadn't hung out with in almost a year and our night was filled excellent food, The Hobbit, playing records, laughing at old photos and simply enjoying each other's company. Then came this morning's adventure, after barely any sleep I made it to an estate sale at 7:30 in the morning with my cousin in crime, Carrie of swankyladyvintage.etsy.com. We were giggling the entire time. Above are the treasures that I found, she found a crazy load of vintage swizzle sticks among other wonders. But we laughed the hardest at the Salvation Army run we made after the sale where we happened upon...adult...footie...pajamas, the worst part, we bought them. We plan to do a Macklemore inspired photo with them, they were too good to pass up. Even the cashier thought no one would buy them, but of course she was wrong. She admired our jovial sport and told us to "keep on laughing". 

Looking ahead, with my Indiana Jones hat in tow, with the warmer weather I foresee road trips, hijinks, bonfires, and the great unknown. The best thing about this hat is not that it was $2, it's that it makes me want to drive up to one of my friends say "Get in the car, there's no time to waste" and screech tires to make our future into something spontaneous and worthy of talking about for years to come. So I ask you, what is your next adventure?

Gross but worth it...

Tada!! There really was a pearl inside, (no, it did not have "stupid american" written inside thank you very much co-worker Jeff). Getting to this lovely little gem was no picnic, I had to drain the 60 year old can of formaldehyde, then grab the rubber gloves and butter knife to fish it out. Let me just say, I do not know how people eat oysters, makes me shudder. But lo and behold, after much prodding and twisting this shiny little thing appeared. So here comes my existential metaphor for the week: life is a lot like an oyster, mysterious, the future is tightly closed from us, but if we take the initiative and our trusty butter knife to make an earnest effort through all of the muck and messy stuff, we may find a pearl for our efforts. I challenge you to keep going for it, what is the pearl that you are striving for?

ET, A Pearl in a Can, and a lotta dreams

So....I went to an estate sale, if you can't already tell that by the menagerie of oddities on this table. So many treasures. This was one of those sales where they post the photos of what to expect on the web, right away I spotted a few things I was going for and they were already mine! BACK AWAY FROM THE E.T.! I got up super early before work to go, normally my mom would join me but she's off galavanting with her sisters in Cali. The owner was a really great quirky lady with a penchant for 100s of salt and pepper shakers, a pinball machine and two carnival funhouse mirrors in the basement! I snagged this lot, the house was packed and I was #47 so I wasn't getting the prime time stuff (plus I'm cheap as can be so I peruse the corners and dig in boxes). I can't wait to give my dad the MASH calendar for his birthday, it was for the last year that the show ran and Joyce, that's her name, marked the date of the last episode in it. There is even a foldout poster in the middle! The whales are for Carrie at SwankyLadyVintage, the scarves and West Germany set are for Etsy, so is the pixie girl, I have to get her out of my sight before I keep her for my very own. 

Seriously if you don't like E.T. you must be slightly dead inside, go back to your hovel and find a glowing heart already. I reached around a lady who was blocking my way looking at something else to snag him. I've never seen this one before and simply wanted him for my collection, then I saw online that some guy on eBay is asking a ton! He's mine, mine all mine, I just have to keep him out of the sun.

The West Germany set was a major find too! So thrilled! All in all my lot cost $12.85, which seems low, so I tallied up all of the items again and realized I was mischarged! I actually owe them $5!

This had to be the oddest item I found, which says a lot given my collection above. This is a souvenir oyster from Japan, preserved in formaldehyde, it quite blatantly says "DO NOT EAT ME" on the labels all around. It contains a pearl in the oyster, and when you shake it you can hear the shell rolling around. I WANT TO OPEN IT! I must fulfill what Joyce could not! It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would buy a bucket of geodes on the Spoon River then crack them open to see if we had crystals, except I have a feeling that this is going to smell like sophomore year biology class. I will keep you updated to let you know if my $1 was well spent!!

In the land of quirk and Batman

For those of you who aren't aware, I run an Etsy store. I have for the past 4 years. Not the kind of venture to quit my day job over but a fun side business. I sell a little bit of everything, mostly things that my mom has parted with. She is the notorious jewelry collector of our family, she used to buy junk bags of jewelry, take the few good pieces and give me the rest. I started selling it and little things that I would pick up at garage sales, estate sales, flea markets and hand-me-downs. One of the coolest things I sold recently was a Batman ring from 1966, I sold it to one of the biggest Batman collectors in the nation and he had the matching bracelet but had not acquired the ring. I was thrilled! Also the Danish modern vase that I picked up at a garage sale years ago sold to a boutique called NEST in New York. Everything has a story and it is so neat to see where they go from here. And yes that is a thermometer tie clip, I picked that up in California at the end of last year and it was about 90 degrees outside. Whew, one hot deal!

Dang it, another estate sale

I know, it's a sickness sometimes. In celebration of my birthday my mom, aunt and cousin met up at an estate sale. Needless to say I bought more than I should have but it was very useful stuff. My loot included an entire box of vintage pyrex for $6 (most of which I will be keeping because I actually cook with it), a vintage globe, a bar mixing set, another bag of weathered baseballs!, and a cocktail book. My cousin and I broke out in a fit of giggles as we postulated the fact that one day someone will be rummaging through all of our treasures/junk and taking it home with them. We then proceeded next door only to find more treasures, particularly in The Junk Room, it was dirty and full of miscellaneous debri which one was forced to dig through. My buy of the day had to be this little bag of random Star Wars ephemera, which included 3 original figures from the first movies. The child inside leapt with excitement. I GOT ADMIRAL ACKBAR!!! IT'S A TRAP! Yes Admiral, thrifting is a trap indeed.

Stocking the Shop

My mom recently unloaded some new treasures to put in our Etsy shop. I'm kind of a sucker for collecting jewelry, it's small, and sparkly. Need I say more? My vast collection can be confined to a few shoeboxes without completely overrunning my house. Jewelry is so interesting to me, because rather than something that someone owned and had in their house, they wore it. It lived on them, went with them to glamourous parties, remained with them day-to-day to commemorate a loved one, celebrated a special occasion, perfectly completed an outfit, or left them aghast after receiving it from an eccentric aunt. Jewelry boils down the essence of an age and tells a story. And I collect it all, from Victorian lockets to art nouveau lavalieres, kitschy pins to garish clip on earrings, Rosaries to cocktail rings.

Boom! Done

BAM! I finished the chair and I didn't even have to reupholster it. Surprisingly enough, I fabric painted it with that t-shirt paint, it's still a little stiff but I figure that it will soften a bit with time. It is going to look great with my basement redo. True it has its little flaws, like the three holes in front, but i just painted over them and the paint magically sealed them ha ha! And actually they aren't as noticeable when you see it in person.

I love my Mother...

I love my Mother, she is the epitome of generosity and she has the finder power to boot. She can't resist picking up things or giving people oddities from her own personal collections. Almost every time I visit home or she stops by she drops something off. Yes. The big-eyed cat, owls, locket and bracelet were left on my counter just the other night. The chair, well she took me to Teen Challenge, this hole in the wall thrift locale where if nothing is priced then you name it. I got this awesomely ugly chair for $5 and I've been nearly unable to bring myself to sit in it but I couldn't help but like the form. It's my fixer upper project of the month, and it's nearly done, just wait until you see the transformation!!!! I will definitely be sitting in it now :) Let's turn this Ethel into Edna Mode.

I have several exciting projects in the works for this Labor Day weekend that I will post after the weekend is through but for now I thought I'd post my whopping $6.99 splurge at the Goodwill yesterday. For those who don't know me, I have a shoe fetish. I'm not usually a fan of animal print but I couldn't resist and I think I'm going to wear them to work just for kicks, life is too short for boring shoes. The sun is shining here in Illinois and today consisted of Mass, lots of singing, visiting with friends, and lots of painting. I hope your Sunday is an uplifting one :)

The Mother of All Estate Sales

Growing up, I was obsessed with pirates and buried treasure, Pippi Longstocking, Peter Pan, and The Goonies were no doubt my roll models, and I'm sure my jewelry collecting mother had a lot to do with it as well. At 26, that pesky obsession has never really disappeared, it has simply taken on a different form. I now deal in vintage goods and jewelry in my shop and striking "gold" has a different meaning. My cousin will concur that many people give us strange looks for our unusual picks we define as treasure. Last weekend we happened upon the mother of all estate sales, the kind that come around every few years that are unbelievable. These people saved everything! 17 rooms chock full of "treasure"! My cousin and I shook with excitement and I began filling our arms with amazing bits of bric-a-brac that either we "had" to have or stuff that we knew others would take into their own collections. It was like something out of a dream, and no joke, I dream about estate sales-probably latent memories of all of the ones that my mom took me to as a toddler. All in all, I obtained a Polaroid camera with film still in box, a bag of antique baseballs, a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry, a fire popcorn popper, a clear dome umbrella, a plaid umbrella, a 1958 home design magazine, 7 vintage books, a Bakelite cake cutter, a Vietnam War ammo pouch, stackable German drinking glasses, a wind-up Pac-Man toy, and the "gold" a bag of vintage Halloween masks including original C-3PO and Chewbacca masks from 1977. One man's trash is this girl's treasure.