Thrifting Finds #38: What is happening here??

We have a saying here in Maryland:  If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes.

Now I'm sure every area has a similar saying, and I'm sure everyone thinks their local weather is particularly variable, but the last month has just been crazy, weather-wise.  We've had snow, freezing rain, sleet, regular rain (a lot), wind, fog, bitter cold, and the week before Christmas, the temperature was 70.  What is happening here??

I'm grateful I don't live in say, Minnesota, where the temperature yesterday was -17F.  That's seventeen degrees below zero.   Not counting the wind chill.  Crazy.

Anyway, things have been cooking right along here at Fondue HQ.  Honey got her stitches taken out (just before Christmas, she had a little goober removed from her neck that turned out the be benign, thank goodness),  all the Christmas stuff has been put away, and I'm trying to get a start on de-cluttering Chez Fondue.  Let's see how long my resolve lasts.

Oh.  Remember the ceramic Christmas tree I got last week with the stupid birds?  Well, I found a local source for regular-shaped bulbs and replaced them.  They were more expensive than getting them from Amazon ($14.50 for 145 of them), but I supported a local business and the woman who sold them to me was amusing.  So I'm happy.

All the dire weather predictions this weekend made us trim our thrifting rounds a little.  Still, I came home with a few things that made me happy.  Before I start, though, here's a question for you:  since the last week of the year is when everyone makes their donations to Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. (for the tax deduction), shouldn't the stores be packed with stuff?  In my experience, everyplace we went had mostly bare shelves.  What's happening here??

Okay, let's go!

1.  Magazine holder!  Yeah, not very exciting, but I can always use another one of these.  Savers had two of them--one was $0.99 and the other was $1.99.  Guess which one I bought?

2.  Max Klein sewing box!  This will replace the one I currently have, which doesn't have the tray insert.  Consequently, everything is just rolling around in the bottom.  I don't know about your monitor, but this looks like a ghastly pea-green to me, but it's really quite avacado-y in real life.  Goodwill, $3.00.

3.  Me in My Kitchen!   Remember the copy of Your Money's Worth that I got a couple of weeks ago?  Well, I found three more volumes from the set at a Goodwill 40 miles away.  Who'd a thunk it?  I haven't really looked through this yet, but my hopes are high for it.  The other volumes I found were Crafts for Fun and Profit and Travel and Leisure.  Had I known that the Goodwill was having a 50% off day, I'd have bought the crafts book, but I didn't, so I, uh, didn't.  Goodwill, $1.31.  (P.S.  Notice the 10-cent price tag from somebody's garage sale.  Yeah, I hate when that happens.)

4.  Doll clothes patterns!  I spotted the Skipper pattern sticking out of a basket of patterns in the crafts section of a Goodwill.  This is not an area I generally look at.  But I picked it up and started rifling through to see if there were any more vintage patterns.  Well, you can see what I found.  One of them is for Miss Revlon and one is for Betsy McCall (I think) and I don't know the names on the other ones.  I got them thinking that they might be worth something on ebay to doll collectors.  Not sure if that's really the case, but at 75 cents a pop, it seemed worth taking a chance.  Goodwill, $0.75/ea.

Which reminds me.  I still have Mom's doll collection.  I should probably do something about that some day.

What I Made Department:

A:  More goop!  Moisturizing goop, that is.  Turns out it's pretty good stuff.  This time around, I used a different scent of baby lotion (Hubby likes it better) and somewhat less petroleum jelly, as I found it a little hard to work in the last time.

B:  Pea soup!  With smoked sausage.  Yeah the picture is kind of unfortunate, but I never claimed to be a photographer.  Suffice it to say that the soup tastes better than it looks.

C:  Roast loin of pork!  I decided we needed to start working on that bigass piece of pork we got last week, so this was the first meal from it.  Yeah, it should look browner and a whole lot better (and I'm not showing you the roasted potatoes that I ended up having to finish in the microwave), but like the pea soup, it tasted pretty darn good.

If there weren't so much candy in the house, I'd have made some peanut butter fudge, too.  I'll wait a little while before I start in on more candy making;  we'd like to continue fitting in our clothes.

Wait!  There's one more thing!

Redneck arm-farting dude!

This is not something I found at a thrift store;  it was brand-new on the shelf at Big Lots.  My question:  Who would buy this?    No, really, who?  I didn't look at the price. This sort of thing just makes me kind of sad.

And that's it, kids.  Linking up this week with Sir Thrift A Lot, Thrifter/Maker/Fixer/Farm, The Nifty Thrifty  and We Call It Junkin