Thrift / trash-picking Thursday

It's Thursday (the day after trash day in my neighborhood) so that can only mean that it's time for another installment of What Heidi Dragged Out of the Trash! And this week's find is:


Two perfectly good plastic faux-Adirondack chairs, with foot rests! I've looked them over and there is absolutely nothing wrong that a good squirt with a hose won't fix. Can you believe these were out in the trash? Yipes. They were at the same house where I scored all the flower pots a few weeks ago. Apparently those are some seriously wasteful people living in that house, eh? I'm going to keep a close eye on their trash in case they decide to throw out any expensive electronics or $100 bills.

My neighbors threw out a ceiling fan and a cute metal window box the same day, both of which I would have rescued if I didn't already have a fan in every room and three such window boxes on my back deck. And two weeks ago I trash-picked a giant roll of brand-new chicken wire, although I didn't photograph it because a picture of chicken wire is just not that interesting. But really, I was psyched to find it because I had been talking to my dad about using chicken wire in my garden just the week before, and now I don't have to buy any! Plus I can use the extra to make one of those cute chicken-wire frames I've been seeing around blogland.

And as it is Thrift Thursday, I thought I'd show a few pics of some recent finds.


The vintage pearls, brown earrings, two Christmas pins and the wing pin were all found at the same sale. I'm completely in love with the Christmas tree pin--it reminds me of the big Czech glass trees that I saw in Omaha last year. This is the new star of my vintage Christmas brooch collection! The pearls are great, though the clasp needs a cleaning. The silver wing pin has me intrigued. It has the letters W A R D and is engraved with an inscription on the back. I can't figure out what it is from, though I've done quite a bit of Googling already. Does it ring a bell for anyone out there in blogland?


And of course, more vintage ornaments and a box in good condition. This morning there was a sale advertised at a senior center in a neighboring town. The ad sounded rather promising and you know about my old people = good vintage junk theory, so Maren and I drove over. I'm afraid it was a bust--tons of stuff, and all I bought was the box on the right and the crystal necklace pictured above. The sale was rather disorganized and a good portion of the items were still in boxes. Normally that doesn't bother me, but the mess combined with tight spaces, a whiny toddler and gale-force winds made it most unpleasant. Oh well, there's always next week!