bitten by the thrifting bug

My blog friend Kim who blogs at Exquisitely Unremarkable recently blogged about how her thrift store stinks.   She didn't appear to be talking about the smells but the selection and the prices.  Quite a few of her comments were from people who felt the same way about their thrift stores.  I live in the midwest in a rural area so there are several area towns that are often destinations and while we are there for other purposes we usually do a little thrifting too.  We have three very nice goodwill stores with 75 miles of my house.  One town that does not have a Goodwill has a different thrift store and an estate store, a cross between a thrift store and an antique shop.  There is a new Goodwill that just opened, which will be the fourth one in our area, which we have not had a chance to check out yet.  One town has a Goodwill and a Savers.   The Savers is a little bit more pricey but much of the stock is a little bit nicer too.

I never used to be a thrifter. Oh, I used to rarely go to an auction or antique store but hadn't in years.  My youngest daughter took me along with her once, maybe a year ago.  She and her boyfriend's mom were hitting a garage sale (it was advertised as an estate sale but it was a garage sale) and then they were checking out the two thrift stores in the same town.  My daughter was on the search for vintage tableware and decor items.  Her plan was to get a collection established and then do decor rentals for parties and photography sessions.  I ended up buying a plastic bag of crystal salt cellars for a buck.  The next time I went shopping with my sister we checked out the closest Goodwill looking for treasures for Cait's budding sideline.  We both got bitten by the bug and now we nearly always stop when we are in town and almost always find great stuff.

I think part of our good luck might be location but I think the real reason is my Italian Prosperity Jar.  Kim introduced me to the prosperity jar.  Bourbon and kale in a jar, shake it and wait for prosperity to happen.  There was this little disclaimer that you had to loosely define 'prosperity'.  I believe that for me prosperity means great stuff at Goodwill.  I certainly haven't won the lottery or gotten fabulously wealthy.

My sister and I started out grabbing up brass candlesticks.  Cait's theory was you can never have too many candlesticks. When she was getting started I gave her my collection and then we started purchasing ones as we found them.  We found dish sets, glassware, unusual pieces, vintage pieces.  Cait has run out of room to store a lot as she rents with others so until she has more space my sister's and my focus has shifted instead to things that we love.

I now have enough that I can join the ranks of the bloggers doing tablescapes at least occasionally and as a beginner.  Mom's Hobby Farm is a garden/farm life blog.  When I started including garden recipes I created a new blog to segregate those posts.  And when I wanted to include recipes that didn't include food that I had grown myself I put those recipes in a different spot, another blog.  Links to those blogs, The Farmstand Cookbook and The Bakery at Mom's Hobby Farm are at the top on my sidebar.  The last of my blogs on the sidebar, A Dozen for Dinner is where I blog about parties and holidays and dishes.  I added a new tab there called the thrifty table.  Today I posted there about some of my white dish collection.

In the picture the smallest plates are part of a set of appetizer plates.  The rimmed soup plates were a gift from my daughter Nikole and the silverware is my everyday stainless.  Those are the only parts of this tablescape that were purchased new.  Everything else on the table has been found on our thrifting expeditions.  The link to that post is here.

Ok.  Now I have been stalling long enough.  Time to get back to blogging about the farm.

Thanks for stopping by.

Lorri