Weekend Junk Finds: Small town thrifting edition

I mentioned in last week's Junk Finds post that I was visiting my grandparents and hoping to get in some small-town thrifting while I was there, and I did manage to do a bit! I've said it before, but thrifting in this little town can be frustrating. There is one little thrift store (and two stores in the nearest town 17 miles away) but it has an attached 'boutique'. They skim off any of the decent donations or anything that looks remotely 'old' and then put a ridiculous price on it and throw it in the boutique. The other branch of this store in the nearest town is even worse--they don't have a boutique, but they regularly put ridiculous prices on things, especially when you consider these are tiny, poor, rural towns where the only 'big' place to shop in the whole valley is the ONE Wal-Mart store. Oh, and they did recently get a Dollar Tree and a Family Dollar, which are pretty big developments if that gives you any idea of the retail options. So charging $9.75 for a set of 5 mugs at the thrift store, just because they look 'old' (they were Glasbake, nothing special) is pretty obnoxious in my opinion.

At the same time, I did manage to find four items in the store which combined cost me $1.05.

Apparently the people in the store who pull 'old' things for the boutique aren't always on their game.

This beautiful old transferware platter is crazed and yellowed and has a few chips here and there, which only adds to the shabby perfection. It was 10¢.

This tiny little dish (a fingertip bowl?) is similarly brown and crazed. It was 20¢.

And you know I'm always thrilled when I can find any Lu-Ray, especially when it is PINK! and a PLATTER! and marked 50¢!

The fourth item didn't make it into the pictures, but it was a little bottle filled with loose pink and green mercury glass beads. That one was 25¢.

I also found some crafting materials:

Not exactly what you would normally classify as supplies, but if you've seen the July/August issue of Country Living magazine, you might guess what I'm planning to make! If you don't have a copy of the magazine handy, you can see a peek here.

By the way, after my last pity-party post about the Fourth of July, I had not one but two wonderful invitations extended to me and my family from dear friends. We ended up having a really fantastic day and even got to see fireworks! The Mister started a new training course yesterday morning that goes straight until the 27th with no weekends off, so unfortunately he's not going to get a break from the relentless work schedule we've been dealing with since June 11th. This was not exactly the summer vacation we were hoping for, but I guess we'll just have to make the best of it, right?