Yellow is my spirit color!

Happy Monday y'all! I hope you had a fabulous weekend! This past Saturday Jason and I went out on the hunt and I ended up with a lot of new yellow things! Our first stop of the day was the Showplace for the Antiques Extravaganza of North Carolina.

I saw the sign for the show driving home so I figured, why not check it out. My biggest fear was that it would be nothing but what I call "old lady antiques," aka Victorian, dark wood, carved, and seriously overpriced junk. However, upon immediate entry for $6 I found that this was not the case. There were of course plenty of "old lady antiques" but there was a lot of other pretty cool things to catch you eye. After turning the first row, we ran smack into this:

At first site I had an immediate freak out! I couldn't believe that this amazing fireplace that I'd oogled on the internet was here in the flesh. So I started snapping photos like crazy, of course! I figured the price was outrageous, so I did not even bother asking, but the dealer was quite nice. In retrospect, I suppose I should have just asked although I'm not sure where it could find a home in the house (we already have 4 non functional fireplaces!). Next up, there was a book dealer set up that had tons and tons of interesting, quirky, and local books. There was even a huge section on collecting, everything from condom wrappers (yes, I saw it for real) to bottles. I picked up two books on retro/vintage kitchens. The first is called "Atomic Kitchens" which is full of vintage ads for kitchen appliances/gadgets and colorful pictures. The second is "Kitschy Kitchen Field Guide," which lists kitchen gadgets from tupperware, salt and pepper shakers, cooky presses, etc. and their average prices. It's pocket sized, perfect for the purse, and filled with super neato kitchen goods.

It even has the Mirro Cooky press that my grandma and I brought back to life for a test spin two weekends ago. According to the book, it is valued at approximately $25 while the online auctions I found list it about $45. Either way, the Mirro cooky press made for an fun and yummy afternoon. At some points, it was definitely a learning experience trying to get the dough just right but in the end the cookies were delicious and bite sized. Okay, back on topic here!! We rambled on through the show, until our next stop with a gentleman that was selling cases and cases of Cracker Jack toys, pins, and other tiny sized memorabilia. This was by far the coolest set of items we had seen all day. I'd say we spent about 45 minutes at least, looking through this guy's stuff. Each case was just a bit smaller than a sheet of paper and chocked full of goodies. It was so hard to choose! I ended up with these five items:

On the far left is a World War II "sweetheart" pin with the name Mary. He has several of these, including one that, of course, said Mom! These were given by soldiers to their sweethearts. I picked this one to gift to my super hip friend Mary. Next up, the yellow gun and on the far right the yellow bull head. Both of these items I figured would make unique necklaces, especially since they both already have hooks. The middle two owls, I couldn't walk away from! I'm not sure what I'll do with them quite yet, but I may try to make the larger one into a brooch.

The last few finds of the day came from the Mechanicsville Habitat for Humanity ReStore. This store has been a real friend to me! It was here that I found my midcentury complete bedroom set for a mega steal of $300 bucks last summer. So I try my best to hit up whenever possible. I scored this dijon mustard colored ottoman:

That's right, for a whopping $3.50! What a steal! Also there I scored a cute (and yellow!) pot. It was pretty pricey compared to the ottoman above, at $2.00.

The last find for the day was a literal truck load of Flor carpet tiles that were nestled in the back corner of the ReStore. Talk about a score!!!!! I drool over the Flor catalog each month, and have a lime green rug in my dining room constructed from Flor tiles. I couldn't decide which ones to buy so I ended up only taking home two beautiful yellow tiles for $4.00. However, today after work I stopped back by and picked up an entire box of yellow and lime green tiles for $67 bucks! For the leap year, the ReStore was giving 29% off boxed up carpet tiles. I'm already planning ways to used the tiles- office, living room, dining room! Will post about them as I use them! Here's a close up of a yellow tile to give you a sense of the color, yellow of course..

I only wished that there were stair tread carpet tiles at the ReStore as I started another larger project this weekend too...more soon on that!

Have a wonderful week!