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.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

The Weekend in Junk: Feeling Blue

First of all - Thank you for all the birthday wishes and collection love! I had a good day with all my family. We had a cookout and then had cake.
My cake was not Cake Wrecks worthy this year, thank goodness!  I got a huge pile of all things pink - pink towels, pink sheets, pink shirts, etc. I washed it all at once and had the most fabulous pink lint in the dryer.
The lint was so pretty that I had to  make a pink doll sized cotton candy out of it.  
I really have no life, I swear.  

I hit a couple thrifts since my birthday.  Drove by a lot of yard sales, but they all looked like nothing but clothes, which is a common site the weekend before school starts.  

Last weeks finds included a lot of pinks.  This week's finds were mostly all blue. 
 It's weird when that happens.  

Large blue thermos, vintage blue magnet board, Audubon Nature Set with rock samples, bird books, etc, an owl lantern (I painted it blue, so that is sort of a cheat). a blue pottery bird and two pieces of miniature pottery for my collection.  

The other side of the magnet board is a great chalkboard.  Two small glass jars with tight fitting lids, a frame that held a cheesy Victorian photo in it and a gaudy beaded plant hanger.  More on that in a bit.  The frame was gold, so I painted it white.  When I went to get it after it dried, it had bled through and turned pink.  Why would gold turn white pink?  A dded another coat and it bled through again.  So, HA ON YOU PHOTO FRAME I painted it pink.  I figured it would bled through purple or something, but they pink did the trick.  HA!

When the cashier picked up the beaded plant hanger, she said, "That's a nice necklace." 
Um, okay?  

I checked back at the SCT for more of that wonderful cat gift wrap, but it was gone.  
I did find a couple more packages with the same designers name on them from Belgium and Germany.

And two big pieces of this pretty gift wrap by Gordon Fraser.  This is one full sheet of it - I cannot imagine wrapping a gift in it.  It would just be ruined.  

School starts tomorrow and Mom's will start to take back over their houses and do some cleaning and decluttering.  The really good sales should start up in a couple of weeks.  The very best weekend of the year in my area is the first weekend in Spetempber when there is a big craft fair and a hundred thousand people drive past my house on the way there.  Yard sales everywhere!  And, it is the best weekend of the year for the booth.  

Bring it ON!

9 comments:

  1. Ooooh, I did not know that would be a good weekend for yard sales as well. Hooray! I need them. I'm starting to get seriously, seriously concerned about having enough stuff for both the booth on that big weekend and the barn sale. I had an anxiety dream about the barn sale -- I got there, it was hours away, and I had forgotten to bring everything I was going to sell! By the time I would drive back to pick it up the sale would be over. PLUS, Amy had neglected to put us next to each other and I couldn't find you! It's like the old school dream, where you show up for the first time for class and there's a test. ANYWAY, I love everything you got this weekend.

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  2. Happy belated birthday. You in full thifting mode it looks great. I have a daughter who will be 30 this year and I was not a teen parent:( That makes me feel very very old.
    Cathy

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  3. i hope your cake was as good as it looked! I love that wrapping paper. So many awesome designs! Glad your day was a good one.

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  4. Looks like you had a very good birthday! I guess that frame was just meant to be Pink! Love the 'necklace' :)

    hugs,
    Linda

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  5. I am late to the party but glad you had a happy birthday ... glad the cake was a success, and I can only imagine that dryer lint projects are going to be showing up all over Pinterest.

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  6. It sounds like your frame was possessed or maybe it just really always dreamed of being pink. Love the pink dryer lint cotton candy! If you start knitting clothes out of cat hair I'm going to start worrying.

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  7. Oh yes, that is definitely a beautiful "necklace". It reminds me of the time I bought a basket full of mercury glass garland and the guy wanted to know what I was going to do with all those "Mardi Gras Beads". Crazy people.

    Have a great week & enjoy getting your house back:-)

    ~Erica

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  8. Great post - you cracked me up with the pink frame and the cotton candy! Thanks for the smiles!

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  9. Happy Birthday!!! Love your posts - and the pink lint! I am cleaning and decluttering because I am moving - into a SMALLER place! HORRORS! But It will be worth it. I can still buy and sell stuff so I will still have fun. You have a way about finding the good stuff - and making it all look good! Keep up the good work and good luck with your Barn Sale.

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