Went Junking!

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, for Mother's Day my only request was to get to visit some new to me antique shops and thrift stores in the Phoenix area. I picked up some fun pieces yesterday! Today, we decided to go see my mom and take her out to dinner for Mother's Day. It's always tricky heading over there for that reason, since she doesn't have a phone so you never know if she's home or not. Sure enough, we pulled up and her van wasn't out front. I could not believe our bad luck! We decided to drive around and hit a few thrift shops in the area and then come back later. I found a few more things.

This is my haul from the past two days.

From top left - a bubble bowl for $2.50. I usually see these for about $10, so this was a real bargain. The larger pieces are hard to find for less than that.

A small bowl for a Sunbeam mixer - I actually already have this exact bowl, but I stained it using the immersion blender on blueberries. Whoops! This will replace that one and the old one will go back to Goodwill. It's one of my most used pieces.

A compote - this is the more opaque milk glass that I normally don't buy, but it is a perfect match for the cake stand I received as a gift AND it was only fifty cents. It was filthy dirty and that's why I assume it was marked so low, because they're NEVER that cheap.

A pillar candle stand - if you ask me, this looks like a teeny tiny cake stand. I bought it for sixty cents and will use it for photographing cupcakes.

A vintage Glas Bake loaf pan - this is so much smaller than a regular loaf pan. It's funny to see how much our standards have grown in the past fifty or sixty years as far as food is concerned. I don't plan on using this for baking. As a matter of fact, it is currently full of various frames for scrapbooking and living in my craft room. It was a dollar or two, I can't remember.

A vintage Sunkist citrus reamer - I scored this one for twelve bucks. I've seen them that cheap on eBay, but then you have to factor in shipping, so really, this is the lowest price I've seen. I've seen them at antique stores for as much as $75, which is totally ridiculous. I know, I bought a citrus reamer a few weeks ago, but it's a much more delicate piece, and I can just make out a hairline fracture in the glass that has me worried about it. It will be comforting to know I have a backup since I've been using it so much lately.

Four serving dishes - I got all four of these for a buck fifty. It wasn't until I got home and laid them on the counter that I realized that one was missing. I've seen these before, and they're usually priced really high. I also know that there is supposed to be a wooden base for them. The sets are usually incomplete though, which is why I didn't realize there were supposed to be five. I'll be keeping an eye out for the last one, and maybe the base.

Shell ashtray on silver pedestal - I've seen these shell ashtrays before, but never with the base attached. In fact, I saw one later that day at a different store from where I found this one. I paid six bucks for this because I thought it was pretty. I have it in my bathroom and use it to hold my rings. Apparently it was used as a soap dish in a former life as well because I had to clean some soap deposits from it!

Stainless steel toast rack - YES! I've been hunting for one of these, but the only one I've come across was sterling silver and sixteen bucks, which is way more than my cheap self wanted to pay for a novelty (to me) item. I spied this bad boy on the bottom shelf of a Salvation Army and about wet my pants when I saw the .99 price tag. 40% off the entire store means I got it for the whopping price of sixty cents.

Vintage pastry blender - this is another item for which I've been searching for a while. They're fairly common, but usually the paint is flaking from the handle, or they're rusty, or they're priced ridiculously high. I found this one for five bucks at the same antique store where I got the typewriter for $5. It's in excellent condition and I look forward to getting to stop using my wire whisk to do that job.

Not a bad haul, huh? I got all that, plus the vintage Italian typewriter, for around forty bucks.

After we checked out the last store, we headed over to my mom's place again. Of course, the van still was not there and we were really bummed that we drove all that way and she wasn't home. Then of course I started to wonder if maybe she had moved and not told me. I wouldn't put it past her! I decided to take a chance and just knock on the door to be sure some dude wouldn't answer.

Well, guess what? She was home, and had been the whole time! She had her van parked at a friend's house due to some issue with it. I'm glad it all worked out. She got to hang out with the boy, and we took her out to dinner and dessert. We just went to Coco's because she wanted pie, and then when we got there she was worried that she wasn't dressed properly because she was wearing jeans. That's a good sign that you don't get out enough if you ask me! I told her to relax, it was just Coco's and anyway, I was wearing jeans too.

It was seriously us and a whole bunch of elderly folks, which was pretty funny. I think the waitress was so used to just having old folks there that she would forget about us not being that old. My husband ordered fish and chips, so she asked him which ones. He replied that he didn't realize there was more than one kind on the menu. She says, well there's the regular dinner with soup or salad, and then shows him the page, or this one without, and shows him the second option. It was on the over 55 menu on the back page! I about died because I wanted to tease my husband that he was old, but I refrained. Then my mom started going on that she was old because she's turning fifty this year. I assured her that she wasn't, but she was exclaiming that she had gray hairs so she was TOO old. So there. I told her she was merely middle aged and she got all pouty.

My mother was a grandmother at 34 and she's just counting the days until she can join AARP.

She did give me something too:

Aren't they cute? They're only about four or five inches long, and appear to be made of brass. I love how the handles are made to look like bamboo. The knives are actually sharp too. I hadn't washed them yet which is why they're all grubby in this photo, but once we washed them they were very shiny. How cute will they be in little serving dishes for appetizers?

So now we're home, and I need to go put all my stuff back on the kitchen counters. Yay fun! I also need to get up and shower for church tomorrow. Let's hear it for noon Mass!