Saturday, March 07, 2015

Buttons!! and other things.

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Not much happening around here, I've been bummed about a couple things, just trying to keep myself busy by working.
I've been trying my hardest to save money lately and have been very good about not spending money on things I don't need, until today.
I got a $30 Amazon gift card for Christmas and finally spent it at the end January. I bought Taste of Home's Easy Weeknight Dinners (I had picked it up at the library and loved it so much I had to buy it), the movie Ironclad, some Lindt truffles and this box of candy:
I have to say I wasn't very impressed with it, it was ok, but I wouldn't have bought it for full price, the best was one of the snowmen had a gingerbread truffle inside, and it really did taste like gingerbread.
Two weeks ago, I picked up some flowers for $5, I decided since I was sick of snow and the dreariness outdoors, I needed a little color, so I bought them:
 I know the ones on the left are a kind of lily, there are some carnations that you can't see, I think the white ones are mums and I have no idea what the giant green pouf is, but I bought them because of it.

I took down my winter/snow decorations last week sometime, and put up my more colorful spring/summer decorations. Even though we've only had about 3 snowfalls this year, I'm sick of the snow, I need color in my apartment.
Yesterday started the warm-up in temperatures around here. We made it to mid-40's yesterday, and there are 60's in the forecast for next week. I know everyone's ready for it. I was going to wander downtown last Tuesday when I was out, until the weather decided to coat all flat surfaces in a very thin layer of ice so you had to basically skate everywhere, so I went today. Basically, I just wanted to buy some buttons, and I was not let down. Here's what I bought:
 A baby spoon and fork, a single button and a jar of buttons.
I know these are bad pictures, but I was trying to show close-ups of what's on these utensils and makes them so cool. They are silver baby utensils, the spoon:
 says Birth Record at the top and then has Thomas printed in the wide bar, and Aug on the left side with 1975 on the right and 25 in the bottom loop.
The fork:
says Birth Record of at the top and then has Thomas inscribed in the wide bar, under that it says weight and has a scale with lbs under one side and ozs under the other, it has a 9 for lbs, and 1 for ozs inscribed on it. there is a ruler in the middle that says inches on it and a 21 on the ruler. There is mo on the left side of the ruler day on the right. There is an 8 under mo and 25 under day, and then in the middle it says year and under that it has 75. I see on the back they say wm rogers and IS, I do have a couple of wm rogers bowls, so it's cool to see they made other interesting things too.
They are very cool, but kinda hard to read, the name is the easiest to read and the numbers look engraved but not by a professional. I wasn't going to buy them because they were $4 each, but I'd never seen anything like them.
Here's the contents of my button jar:
 And my favorites from that:
 And some close-ups of those favorites:
 There were a few glass buttons, like those rectangular ones at the top of this picture, some neat metal ones. I especially like the white ones with crystals.

Quite a few cut MOP, I really like the MOP buckle at the top there, and the itty bitty ones right next to it.
This one was my favorite of the lot:
 It's plastic, but still pretty cool.
I'm always jealous of the bags of buttons Kathy at Kluless picks up, but every once in awhile I find some really good ones in the jars I pick up. She always finds some really cool things (and some weird things) in hers. The store I went to, is called Tangerine Zebra, (they're actual site is www.tangerinezebra.com but that leads you to their facebook site, and I know if you're not signed into facebook, you can't see it), they are about the only store left here that's only antiques. I used to think they're prices were a bit high, until I started looking at the jars of buttons they have. This one seemed a bit high at $9, but I think there were a ton of good ones in it.

 I thought I'd show you my collection of favorite buttons that I have. I have some buttons that I just hoard (others I actually use), and then I have my all-time favorites:
Mostly they are vintage, but there are some newer ones as well.
 And some close-ups:
 There's a lot of metal and plastic in there, some sparkly ones, and combination ones.
 More combinations and sparkly ones, you can also see the corner of one of my silver bowls filled with other metal buttons.

I thought it might be nice to show some pictures of stuff I didn't buy, but caught my eye:
 A nice Iowa State chamberpot, I saw this and thought of Bargain Hunter, she's always saying how she finds a lot of chamber pots and soup tureens and people get confused as to which is which. I know this is a chamber pot because it only has one handle, I'm wondering if the person who painted it thought it was a soup tureen (they have two).

 This was a vintage record player, I thought the pattern on the case was cute.

This was in a different store, more of a resale store, but they have antiques sometimes too. I thought it was a beautiful mirror.

And this living room set was very interesting, I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the same household, maybe not the same room, though.

And this vintage typewriter. I find myself drawn to typewriters, I think it would be cool to have a collection, whenever I get my own house.

I suggested to my mother that we go to an antique mall a few towns north of here for spring break in a few weeks, I hope she has the time, I haven't been there in so long, and sometimes it's just nice to look.

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