What is a monkeybox?

When I was a little girl, we had a pet monkey named Amanda. My Dad worked in the produce business, so each night he brought home that days culls in a big box - spotty cucumbers, pithy apples, limp celery, moldy oranges and the like. We called it a monkeybox. It was really just trash, but my Mom would take each piece of fruit and trim it, pare it and cut it up to make a beautiful fruit platter for Amanda. Even though it was deemed trash by one, it still had life left in it and was good for the purpose we needed it. That's how I live my life - thrifting, yard saling, looking for another's trash to be my treasure.

Friday, October 10, 2008

I Prefer Lime

I found a few sales today on the way to and from the Library. I found only a few things, but I am happy to find a few good things and not bring home a ton of stuff. Plus, the prices were oh, so dirt cheap today.

The print is a very old "A Thought Of Mother" poem - so sweet with great old graphics along the borders. The book is Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The metal box has these great old dividers with metal Alphabet tabs. The pile of dice aren't that old, but they will fit into my crafty supplies and some will make their way into my "Junkreator Packs". The Bingo Cards were 25¢ at one sale, but everything else in the photo (plus the letters in a photo to follow) only cost a total of $1.00 at another sale.
The dividers pretty much fill up the box, so there's not much room for filing much of anything. I think there must be a craft use for those tabs and not just a utilitarian use. I love that there is a separate "Mc" tab for McDonald, McPhearson, etc.
Tom Sawyer has great old color plates strewn about inside. I just love old books. I would rather The Bean read an old copy like this that the new ones at the Library. It makes you appreciate how old the story is and how many people have enjoyed it in those years.
These letters were in an old cigar box and were quite dirty. I washed them up and they are as good as old. (!) Each letter is about 2" tall, so they are a good size. I can see all sorts of fun - Holiday words, collage art, swappy fun and more with these.
I had recently purchased two very small Pear Gourds that I intended to crack open next Spring and attempt to grow. But, I like my little pear gourds so much that I didn't really want to crack them open. Lucky me today when I found all these Pear Gourds at a sale for FREE. Hopefully I will get them dried out and ready for next Spring with no problem. For now, they are part of my Happy Fall Ya'll decor.

Okay, let's talk Jell-O. More specifically Jell-O molds. I have a fish shaped mold and a heart shaped Jell-O mold in my kitchen that hung in my Mom's kitchen my whole life, so it means something to me. But, I never really gave copper Jell-O molds another thought. That is, until today when I spied a bunch of them at a sale. (A sale, in fact, that was at the house directly behind my house. And there was a sale directly across the street from my house too. I had to go saling today! It was a sign! A Yard Sale Sign!) Oh yes, back to the Jell-O molds.....

There was a box chock full of old Jell-O molds. Four wreaths including one with roses.

Four typical Jell-O molds - I think the one with the acorn in the center is kind of neat.

Three different watermelon molds, a fish and what appears to be a bale of hay, but certainly isn't. Is it? Maybe it's cheese?

Two pineapples, a cluster of grapes, a lobster, a clover and a diamond.

Jell-O for every occasion!

These are my favorites. Love the cherry heart, the little birdie mold and the bunny mold. Those are keepers. The rest will be sold. I got all 27 molds for $5.00. I don't even know if they were worth buying, but seeing the whole collection sitting out in someones yard made me sad. Someone worked awfully hard to amass those Jell-O molds. And, now I have the whole darned collection. Time to make some Jell-O. I prefer Lime.

5 comments:

  1. I LOVE those jell-o molds. I collect them!! If you are going to sell them like you mentioned....let me know because I see a few that would have a great home in my collection!!

    Thanks!
    Emily

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  2. I used jello molds for some of my silverware windchimes. I sold all of the lobsters I could make, I had the sq./bird and sq.w/grapes too. The copper lined ones might sell on Ebay.

    Love those letters, I will have to post a pic of the shabby ones I found this past summer.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I have sold them on eBay and made pretty good $$, but it's been several years. I don't think that they sell as well now but I have seen them used in various crafty ways. I'm about to make a windchime out of one, using copper cookie cutters as the chimes. As creative as you are, I'm sure you can come up with something fun to make. Just be sure to show it to us, if you decide to make something!

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  5. I love the letters, very cool! can't wait to see what you do with them!

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