Weekend Junk Finds: Small town edition, now with more Jadeite!

I know I've been neglecting my blog lately, but the truth is that things here still continue to be difficult and it's hard to feel like blogging. The laundry room floor situation is still not resolved (we're 3 months in, in case you're keeping track) and has in fact gotten WORSE, if you can possibly believe it. All those times when I was trying to be optimistic and chirped, "Well, it could be worse, right?"--apparently I was right about that.

This past weekend alone: on Friday afternoon, a few hours before an event I'd been looking forward to for months my babysitter called and cancelled because she was sick, leaving me scrambling to find another. The Mister worked all weekend long, we had both an unexpected $700 car repair on Friday and an unexpected $170 computer repair on Saturday, all of which culminated in me having a sobbing breakdown last night when I couldn't find any of my photos from 2011-2012 on the computer. I'd like to think I've been pretty tough through all the crap I've dealt with lately, but that was the one thing that finally reduced me to tears. I *think* my sweet husband may have located them, tucked away in a folder with a weird name, but I'm still not 100% sure. And the external hard drive that was supposed to be backing up everything has apparently not been plugged in for quite some time. Needless to say, we have signed up with Carbonite.

And then the capper? Last night as I was reading bedtime stories to Maren, Porter was in my bathroom, decapitating lipsticks. He got through four of them and tried to dump four lip glosses down the sink as well before I caught him. Today's fun? I get to have my very first cavity filled. I made it nearly 35 years without one but if my luck was going to turn, I'm not surprised that it did it now because why not add that to the list? Oh, and I'm developing a nasty canker sore on the same side as the cavity, so that should be fun.

Seriously, I need a vacation from my life.

And if you made it through all of that whining, you deserve a treat! How about some Jadeite?

I spent most of our Spring Break week staying with my recently-widowed grandmother who can't live alone. I managed to sneak away to the thrift store for a few minutes one afternoon between errands, and these Fire King beauties were my reward! I actually gasped audibly when I saw them on the shelf. This thrift store has a "boutique" attached and they skim off any halfway-decent or 'antique' donations so they can charge a higher price for them in the boutique. How these escaped that fate, I'll never know but I was thrilled to find them!

I found a few other goodies on that trip as well.

The lidless Tom's peanut jar was from a different thrift store and actually was not much of a bargain, but I snagged it anyway because I have plans for it. The three Fire King Kimberly mugs were from the same store as the Jadeite bowls.

That same store also produced a handful of vintage seam binding (which I've been using frequently in my recent crafting) and a pair of vintage games. The Children's Hour game is adorable! There are actually three games inside the box:

--An elephant board game complete with an cool, graphic game board, little plastic elephant game figures, and an elephant head spinner.

--Some sort of card game with animal cards that have cute illustrations

--and a darling fishing game with little alphabet cards and a wee fishing pole. Sadly, the instructions are missing so I'm not sure how to play any of these cute games.

I have high hopes that this week will be a better one. We do have rain and snow in the forecast and cold temperatures expected for the entire week which will do nothing positive for my mental state, but I know we desperately need the moisture here. We're having a big event for Maren in less than two weeks so I need to start party prep, a task I always enjoy. I'm hopeful we'll make some progress on the basement disaster. And perhaps we'll get through the week without something expensive breaking or my 3-year-old destroying it. Cross your fingers for me.