I love Flea Market shopping this time of year where I can feed my habit of vintage Christmas collecting!  Here's a few things I found yesterday.

 Two Possible Dreams Santa's - they were made for Lenox.  The Possible Dreams Santas have been around since the 1980's but only recently did Lenox get in the picture. Picked these up for $5 each. They sell for much more on Ebay.

I never realized that Corning Ware had ever made a Christmas tree pattern.  I bought these for $1 each. What a find!  I love Corning casserole dishes for baking.

Below are some products of my past flea market shopping experiences.

The ornaments on and surrounding this tree were either purchased by me at yard sales or flea markets or gifts given to me by yard-selling friends.  And below is my collection of Lefton and Napco Christmas girls. They've all been flea market finds over the years.

Merry Christmas!  Hope your Christmas season is filled with all the joys of the season. 

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas! At least at Yard Sales

Just when I was beginning to think I was never going to find anything good at a yard sale or flea market again, a beautiful day in coastal North Carolina proves me wrong.  It's going to be in the high 80's today here at Holden Beach - not a day you would be thinking about Christmas.  It's hard to think of the jolly old man in a red suit in a heat wave in October, but today I lucked up on a community yard sale and everyone had Christmas "junk" they were selling - at least that's what one woman called it - and you know the old saying, one woman's junk is.....  Well it did turn out to be a treasure to me.

I couldn't believe it when I saw this Dept 56 village store with a $4 price tag on it.  I didn't even try to dicker - which is so unlike me!  I looked it up on Ebay and one just sold for $116.  Love bargains like that.

 At the next stop I found this Mr. Christmas Carousel.  It was marked $10 and I asked her if she would take $8.  This is the one who said "I need to get all this Christmas junk out of here".  Well, she did have some junk, but not this.  I always buy Mr. Christmas things - they're made well and they hold their value.  One like this just sold for $99 on Ebay.

I will probably keep the village piece for my own collection, but I'll definitely be selling Mr. Christmas.  He will help feed the coffers for my flea market addition for awhile.   I found a few other bargain finds, but these two were my favorites.

This is the time of the year I love to yard sale.  The air is crisp and clear and people are starting to pull things out of their attics - it's been too hot in the Carolina attics during the summer months.   I've been so slack in my blogging, but  the book I'm writing has made some serious headway.  I thought I was finished with it, but I keep going back and deleting and adding.  The changes are all for the better though - I'm hoping to have it published by Christmas!!!  It's Christian Women's fiction - and when you're writing for fellow Christians or even non-believers, you need to get it right!   I need all the prayers you can send my way!

Happy junkin' everyone! 

Blue on Blue

My favorite color has always been aqua blue.  I find myself being drawn to it when I shop for clothes, bed linens, towels and well, just about everything.  I use a lot of it in my eclectic decor throughout my house.

I recently put together a little vignette using those colors on a small table in my guest bedroom.   Birds, a scarf - turned table cover and a Victorian couple all have bits of aqua.  But my most favorite of all is a little Fenton ruffled dish that belonged to my Mother.  I use it to hold mismatched earrings.  I've found so many little one of a pair earrings in box lots of jewelry that I buy at auctions or yard sales.  I can't resist the bling - even if it doesn't have it's match.

You'll find another touch of aqua blue used in my kitchen in this post titled Vintage Linens on the Line.

There's just something about that blue that makes me happy!





 Linking today with Anything Blue Friday

Flea Market Saturday! Joseph Originals

We had a beautiful 70 degree plus day in the Carolinas today - one of those perfect days for treasure hunting at the Barnyard Flea Market right outside Pineville.  Hubby and went off on one of our short day trips yesterday and when we do that I usually feel like I've missed a day of my life!  Even though I'm having fun, I'm not home, therefore, a real day hasn't gone by.  I know that doesn't make a lick of sense to you, but indulge me please.  Also, neither of us has slept well this week and were very sleep deprived this morning - we're normally up and at the market by 8 a.m.  It's not necessary to get there earlier because it's a late market.

This morning, being sleep deprived, I didn't wake up until 8:56 - sounds much better than saying 9 o'clock doesn't it.  I wouldn't want y'all to think I'm a sloth!   I came in to my office and got on my computer just taking my time about waking Hubby up.  I even looked at the local weather feature on Yahoo and saw that the weather for today was to be in the 70's and the weather for Sunday would be a little cooler, but still nice.  And I wondered why they just skipped from today (FRIDAY - in my mind) to Sunday.  Why didn't they include Saturday I thought.  For those who don't know me, I am a true blonde, mind you.

Hubby finally drug himself out of the bedroom at 9:30 and said, "Why didn't you wake me.  We should have already left for the flea market?"  I thought to myself - wow, something is wrong with him, he's too groggy to know what day it is.  Then it hit me!  It IS Saturday - Duh!  So we both got ready and headed out to the market with low expectations - all the good stuff would be gone.  And we were beginning to think we were right - couldn't find a thing!

As we were walking through the last building, we walked by the booth of a vendor we had known slightly who had died suddenly about six weeks ago.  There had been a wreath on the pull-down door for several weeks in a row, but today there was a new vendor inside.  I just wandered in to see what she had and got very excited when I saw a lot of the old "Made in Japan" Victorian ladies and couples that were sold back in the late '40's and early '50's.  I'm a sucker for those things!  And it's all because of the story I told on the blog I wrote last year titled Time Travel - Favorite Things.  There were lots of things I wanted to buy, but with me trying to clear out some things, rather than bring in things, I now only buy to sell - mostly....  There's some things you just gotta' have!

The first thing that caught my eye was this lady with a parasol.  As I was turning her upside down to see her hallmark, the lady gasped which made me quickly realized that the parasol was a separate piece.  If I had broken that little parasol, I would have had to pay for a pretty piece with a broken parasol - glad she gasped!  Isn't she pretty?  I paid $10 for her and hope I can at least double my money.  If not, she has a good home here!  She's much bigger than most pieces I've seen from that time period - a whopping 12" tall!

Then there was this adorable Joseph Original girl playing the piano.  It's a music box!  I paid $10 for this one and will easily get $30 - maybe more.  She still has her Joseph Originals sticker on her skirt and one on the bottom of the musical carrosel.

 And my very favorite was this Joseph Original music box playing a lullaby!  Wouldn't this be an adorable gift for a new mom!  She'll go in my Etsy shop also.  I need to do a little more research on her - couldn't find one just like her on-line.

 And I can't forget my new picnic basket.  I bought it for $10 brand new and it's collapsible - great for taking food to church dinners, etc.  What a bargain!  And besides, it was perfect to carry all my little treasures in that I bought today.  It kept them from getting banged around in the plastic bags she put them in.

I sure was glad I got the pleasant surprise that it was Saturday and not Friday.  What a beautiful day to go flea marketing! 

A dry spell

I apologize that I haven't posted anything in quite a while.  I've started back on a novel that I had let lie dormant for a while, so that's taking up a lot of my time.  Plus it's been quite a dry winter for finding treasures at our local flea market.  I've found a few little pieces - some nice vintage costume jewelry - including these little Christmas pins.

I also picked up this adorable "pin dish" with lid.  It's from the 1950's and made by Rosenthal. 

 And I love this little Josef Original Christmas angel below.  She's missing a wing - but aren't we all...

And finally - I'm going to start looking for vintage doors and make a little outdoor sitting area in my garden like the one below. It would be the perfect place to sit on a sunny Spring day with my writing notebook.  It's made of linking old doors into an alcove with even an old door for the roof.  Doesn't that look inviting?  It makes you want to sit a spell, doesn't it?

Blessings and have a great week!

A Weekend for the "Birds"

It's getting so hard to juggle my working weekends with my love of treasure hunting, but this past weekend I hit the jackpot!  Well, maybe just a small jackpot, but I was pleased nonetheless.

This is the last weekend we'll be opening our seasonal business at the coast and things were slow enough Saturday that I could leave Hubby in charge and run off to a church yard sale.  I found several neat things, but here's two dishes that I really loved.

This one is part of a seasonal series of decorative wall plates by Ganz.  They made one for each season and this one's called Winter Forest Tree.

This next one is a dish with a Hen & Rooster scene that I've seen on different porcelain pieces over the years.  It's a scene by H. Arndt and the plate manufacturer is Theo Ruhn, Bavaria Germany.   I collect chicken themed items, so I was excited to get this.

And since Thanksgiving is around the corner, I'm posting another little item I found.  This is a pilgrim boy and girl figurine and I found an old glass to make a cloche scene.  It's by Sebastian and it's called Little Sister.  I have several things by Sebastian, so I was happy to get another.  It made a pretty little addition to my Thanksgiving table decor!

See, it doesn't take much to make me happy!  I'm looking forward to my free Saturdays from now through May - just so I can go treasure hunting!


I'm linking to "Let's Dish" and Vintage Thingy Thursday today!

Crystal Pine Tree, Shiny Brites and all things Christmas

It's my favorite time of the year to go treasure hunting!  I love it when I spot yard sale type vendors at the flea market downsizing their Christmas collections!  And I'm a total hog about buying and keeping it for myself, even though I'm supposedly buying it to sell on Etsy or Ebay.

Last winter as I was packing up my huge collection of vintage Christmas items, I started sorting through to see what I can do without.  Mind you, it was not an easy task.  Many things that I put in the "sell" box by the end of the day went back into the "keep" box and I ended up with only one tub of items to sell.

Here's a couple of the items that I decided to sell.  This first one I bought two years ago for a great price from an estate sale.  I listed it on Ebay last night and it quickly got it's first bid of $49.50 and it has six days to go.  It is adorable and in wonderful condition.  It's from the early 1940's and the box is so collectible because of the appeal of the vintage graphics.

Isn't it adorable!  I love how the sides of the box show different scenarios of where to display the tree!  If you're interested, it's Ebay item number 121009335816 or you can view the Ebay auction here.

I also love this old tree topper star.  It is red and white with snow flocking on the white.  When you plug it in it lights up a warm red glow on the sides and the little dot in the middle.  This I also found at the flea market a couple of years ago for $2.  Hoping it will bring at least $10.

There's also some old USA made and Shiny Brite ornaments mixed in a box.  I collect Shiny Brites in the aqua and pink colors to go on my tinsel tree, but the others I picked up over the years may just be Ebayed this year.  Here's a couple of them with the vintage boxes.  I probably have fifteen more boxes that I'm saving that I put on my regular tree each year.

I am so excited about getting back into my flea marketing adventures.  Our seasonal weekend business at the coast is about over so attention flea market vendors!  This Flea Market Junkie is back in business!

I would love to get comments on what Christmas collectibles you look for each year in your treasure hunting adventures.