three thrift thrive

I love the 1950's. I love the style, the era, the everything. I love the dresses, and the aprons and the houses and the hairstyles. In my mind I am living in that era. I can't wait to put a picket fence at the front of our new house and pansies along the footpath.
I started watching Mad Men not too long ago. (Though my husband and I gave up our tv shows for lent so I haven't seen anything since Ash Wednesday on february 13). I have only seen the first maybe 6 episodes and I know it's about advertising, but I care more about the styles of the show rather than the plot...though I do like the show itslef too.
About a year ago I purchased a working condition pressure cooker from the 1950's from Value Village . It came with the manual and in side the manual are great pics.

my pressure cooker

love it!

I also love tea parties. I recently purchased a great tea pot. It had been sitting on the shelf at VV for about 2 weeks. When I first saw it I thought to myself, if it's still there at the end of the week I'll get it. Then I forgot about it. the next week it was still sitting there so I snatched it up. I feel obligated to have a garden tea party with this. Who wants to come?





I also found this great knee length Guess summer dress. Perfect fit, cute sleeves with elastic buttonholes so that the fabric doesn't pinch your arms or bunch the dress when you lift your arms. A collar that you can pop up (I don't even know if that's cool), a great print, and the best part....pockets! Whoever invented pockets in a dress is awesome and deserves a prize.

Not this

something like this would
 be nice

So I have a new project in mind. This will be one of the most challenging projects I will do, and I'm not too sure if I will be successful. Fritz really wants to have a wing back chair in our new house. The thing is I DESPISE the fabrics on almost all wingbacks that I have seen. They all have this "hotel" fabric on them... you know, that beige or blue or burgundy with a shimmery stripes or argyle pattern in it. Ick . So the plan is to find a cheap/free wing back and reupholster it. I have reupholstered an ottoman,and I could do simple chairs like a kitchen chair. But this is going to be quite a challenge as I need to do specific sewing and piping and such. I have watched a bunch of tutorial videos so I feel somewhat confident enough to tackle this challenge.  Anyone have a wing back they'd like to get rid of?



Side story:
Have you ever seen that Fido commercial about how dogs and owners look the same? Whether it's the owners that begin to look like their dogs, pick out dogs that look like themselves or the dogs begin to mimic the owners is anyone's guess. I always thought this to be rather funny. Then I noticed something...

Salt Sensitive

This has nothing to do with thrifting, but I thought I would share....And I will get to the point after  2 paragraphs or so.

They say when you leave home and start University, you will gain about 15 pounds (6.8 kg) in your first year, Also known as "the freshman 15".  Well I nearly doubled that! During my second year, I decided to do something about it. I went on the unofficial WeightWatcher's pragram. By that I mean I did everything but go to the meetings. ( I'm not going to pay for some to say "you can do it!", when I can just go ahead and do it). The thing with "Diets" including the Weightwatcher's program, is that if you want to maintain the results, you need to stay with the program for life. Maybe not as strictly as when you first began though. The point of WeightWatcher's is that you eat the right amount of the right kinds of food, guiding you with a points system.  I ended up losing 40 pounds on this program, and I have maintained it for the last 6 years because I have never really quit the program. There were some things that I didn't follow in the program, one of them being eating diet products, and the other one of them being replacing regular dairy products with fat free ones. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I grew up on a dairy farm, but I really don't believe that ANY dairy product should be fat free. But that's just my opinion.

A lot of the time when people look at the lable of a food item, they first look at the fat content and or the calories. Though these may be important, it is more important to look at the nutrients it gives you and also the amount of sodium. you need about 1500 mg (a little less than a tsp) everyday in order to keep muscles and such working properly, but if you get more that 2300 mg ( just over 2 tsp) it could lead to high blood pressure which leads to a whole lot of other illnesses you don't want. But if you get too little sodium, it could lead to serious damage also.
(based on a 2000 cal. diet)

So here's the real story realated to my blurb above:

The last day that we were in Disney world, we decided not to pack our own lunches and instead splurge a little by buying lunch there. So at Lunch time we went to Pinochio's Pub or somehting along those lines, I had my nuggets, Fritz had his Burger and fries. Beside us was this family of with three teens, and the one kid had a thing of fries, probably comparable to a medium at McDonalds. Then he takes out a package of salt and pours it ontop of his fries. No biggie, some people like salt on their fries. Then he pours another on his fries and yet another. I'm slightly disturbed already by the amount of salt he pours on what I thought were already salted fries, but then he shocks me even more by pouring two more packets not on his fries, but in his little tub of ketchup! I hope this kid has really good health insurance becuase heart disease is just around the corner for him if that's how much salt he eats!


I'm really into the Blue Menu products that President's Choice offers now. Alot of there foods are low sodium.  Here is a great example. I love corn.  I really do. I buy Blue Menu corn which contains 10 mg of sodium for 341 g of corn. Del Monte ( Not to target them, just first lable  I saw)  has 360 mg of sodium for every 125 g of corn. Lets do the math to make it clearer: (create equal amounts, do some division blah blah blah)

Del Monte: 125 g of corn = 360 mg of sodium
Blue Menu 125 g of corn = 3.7 mg of sodium

What grosses me out even more is Mr Noodles! In one package there is over 1900 mg of sodium and your daily requirement is 1500! I get chest pains just thinking about it or watching other's eat it. However I don't doubt that the kid in the disney pub would add 3 more packets of salt to his serving of Mr Noodles.

I rarely use salt in my cooking either. There are other ways to flavour your food. And if a recipe askes for a tsp of salt...I don't even bother, I've never noticed the difference. Don't get me wrong though, you need sodium in you diet. It's found in a lot of foods naturally. But adding 2 pakets to a tablespoon of ketchup is not a good idea, especially when the meal that comes with the overly salted fries is already atleast 5 times over you recomended daily intake!

Mickey Mouse, Roller Coasters and...Paula Abdul???

A quick blurb about where I was last week:

Last Sunday night, my husband and I departed for a one week vacation to the Wonderful World of Walt Disney in Orlando Florida. We booked everything that we could well in advance and researched the least expensive ways to make this holiday purchase. We booked our flight with Spirit Air... round trip for 2 people...just over $400.(If we did not discover this airline, then we would never have made this trip simply because tickets are way too expensive) found a hotel 5 minutes from the gates that offered free shuttle service to the parks, Rented cars through CAA for 1/2 the prices being offered in Florida and made our own lunches everyday to take to the park.

    We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale at 6 am, picked up our 2012 mazda3  and made the 3 hour trip to Orlando. Of course we stopped at Cocoa beach to look for "banana hammock man"( not sure what a banana hammock is? Google it...see the neon yellow/green one....that guy... shaven and very oily... and long golden locks on his head...like Fabio. My apologies if you were eating)  whom we seem to run into every year , and to sip on a jug of freshly squeezed Florida orange juice.
    With in the first hour of our vacation, Fritz of course lost his credit card. It's a mighty good thing that we have two other wise we would have been in BIG trouble.
    The Weather was expected to be cloudy and rainy. However, the only rain we ever saw was the Monday overnight and the last night that we were there. The rest was hot and sunny!
We spent the next 5 days ( Tuesday Through Saturday) at the parks. 12 hours each park...you do the math. All I can tell you is that we were very sore, tired and Disneyd out by the end of the week.

Do you think I would really pay that for a photo??

The main reason for this post though is to tell you this story:


At the end of the week, we were to pick up our rental car at a location near the municipal airport. It took a 1.2 hour bus ride and a 10 minute walk to get to the location by Signature Aviation only to find out that the Hertz car rental is closed for the day! How on Earth are we supposed to get to Ft Lauderdale???

So we went into the airport jet-fueling place and asked them. They went over our paper work and concluded that we were at the wrong location and that we should be one block over. So we started our walk to the next location only to be stopped after 5 minutes of walking by the aviation tech guy. He offered us a ride because apparently is a 5 km hike in the middle of nowhere. So now we are at the other other part of the airport and our ride has driven off.
"Fritz...I don't know if we are supposed to be here" I say. We go inside and ask the receptionist if this is so and so address. " yes it is" she says.
" Oh good!" I exclaim, " we are here to pick up the rental car that we booked and paid for."
"Alright, " says the lady. "Did you fly in with us today?" she asks.
"umm no...we are just here to pick up the car.."
"well I'm sorry but we don't rent out cars to just anyone. You have to have flown in on our private jets."
"excuse me???!"
     It turns out we somehow found our selves at a private airport for celebrities  to avoid the paparazzi! The receptionist was nice enough to let us use their phone in the pilot room ( with a big leather couch and big screen TV) to call CAA to figure everything out. After a big kerfuffle which lead to first not a single car being available for us at any location to them finding us a vehicle at a local Hertz to be picked up at 10:30, we finally had something figured out. All we needed was a taxi to get to that location. As Fritz was making these phone calls, I sat on the leather couch and observed jets coming in and people being escorted into private cars...I couldn't see who though.

So we go back to the front desk we went.
"Did you get things sorted out?" the lady asks.
"Yes we did. We just need a taxi now to get us to so and so address" Fritz says.
"Well I can call you a taxi. I know a very reliable service."
That's nice of here I thought. The she let us hang out  in the pilot room again. "I'll come and get you when your ride is here. "
So back to the pilot room we go to gaze out the windows at the jets. "Your cab is here" she says not to long after.
My cab is here?? I didn't see any yellow cab or blue and white taxi or anything that remotely looked like a taxi pull in. Either way we went to the lobby only to be greeted by a chauffeur in full uniform with the dark aviator sunglasses and the whole sha-bam.

"Right this way" says the Chauffeur as we are guided to our own private black Escalade, tinted windows and all. "no luggage?"

"No Luggage, "we say. "we'll explain.
So we explained the whole story and the Chauffeur went on about how we should fight for our rights and get our money back. And the whole time I'm thinking" this ride is going to cost our life savings...why coulding the receptionist call the yellow cab???"
"Alright'" we say how much do we owe you?"
"oh just give me $20"  As she writes a receipt for the $90 it would have cost us for the 10 minute ride. "make sure you get this refunded"
Our Escalade and Chauffeur drive off and we are now left at the Hertz car rental. Fritz organizes some things and I go in the to the office.
" I'm here to pick up the car we booked." I say
"Did you book it a while ago?" asks the man at the front desk.
"No we actually just had CAA book it for us about an hour or so ago. They said the car would be available for 10:30"
"well no body called here and we have zero cars available. They still have to be picked up form the airport." Says the man at the desk.
"Friiiitz!" I yell. "CAA lied!... there is no car!"
" I can get you car in maybe another hour." says the man behind the desk.
"That will have to do then" I say. And so begins our trip back to Ft. Lauderdale where we were hoping to spend the day at the beach , but ofcourse we had not enough time for that and so we eventually made our way back to the airport.
At the airport, we pick up our tickets, and head to the gates only to see that we are boarding with Paula Abdul. I never realized how petite that woman is. I could snap her like a twig. But I won't because I like her music.

*** I am of course not discrediting CAA, since they did get us inexpensive rental vehicles... but better research on their part may have helped. Then again...they did provide me with quite the adventure!***

We've got big News!

I bet that at least half if not more clicked on my link expecting to see the words "we're pregnant!". Sorry, but no.  we have other big news:

Several months before our wedding, My then fiance and I were looking for a place to call our own after our wedding. We searched high and low and several times felt like giving up on finding a house and having to rent an apartment instead. However, a month before our wedding we purchased our first house. A quaint cottagey like war home on the Hamilton mountain.  A 729 sq ft home with a spacious backyard, a park in the back. We put work into this house, fixing all the major problems and safety hazards that came with this old home. 

We knew that this would not be a permanent home, probably 5 or 7 years. Almost three years have passed  since this "big" purchase and now we have decided to put our first home up for sale. 

We have been talking for a while about what we would want in our second house, a more permanent house.  and one of the things is one or two more bedrooms and a garage, and a quieter street.  When we looked for these things here in Hamilton, all the houses were either too shabby or our of our budget. So we looked over in Brantford, the next city over. There we found a house with all the features that we are looking for. We have not made the official purchase there yet, as we need to deal with our house on this end. So two nights ago, we had the sign put into our front yard. It was a sad momnet as we didn't think that this time would come so soon, but yet all we can think about is the possibilities and opportunities with the next house ( if we get...knock on wood)

Let me tell you a bit about the "new house" as we call it. the main floor is 1000 sq ft. which is only a tiny bit bigger than ours, however there is more than just a main floor. There is a very spacious loft bedroom which could...if we absolutely had to,  be turned into two rooms. underneath the house is a spacious basement, partially finished with a recroom, storage and laundry facilities, around which we would put up interior walls to create a finished room. In the back yard is a detached garage and underneath it, get this...there is a bomb shelter! how cool is that?? Whats also nice about this place is that not only is the main floor set up in almost the same layout as our current house, but there is a fireplace with a nice mantel in the living room. This house also sits on the corner lot of a dead end street in a quiet neighbourhood and it's only a 20 minute commute to Hamilton so Fritz can keep his job and we can stay at our church

Now let me tell you about the company that is helping us sell our current  home. We are using Comfree to market our place. The come in and take pictures, and advertise the house on their website and magazine and for a small additional price they add it onto realtor.ca  they do not receive commission for this. They receive a payment any where between $300 and $1200 depending on the package you pick. Then you do the appointment bookings, viewings and open houses. They even have a lawyer on their team so that if any legal concerns arise you can utilize him/her a no extra charge. ( this does not include the selling procedures lawyer stuff, though that can be done at a discounted price). If we would have gone with another brokerage, it could cost us upwards of $10,000 in commission, taxes etc. The marketer has a sit down with you and explains everything very clearly. It's a fantastic way to sell your home, and it saves you quite a bit of money. The site is very much like a social network where you can see how many people have viewed your home, how many of those views were by the same person it doesn't tell you who viewed of course)  and there are discussion boards and many other helpful features. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to sell there home to consider comfree.( comfree.com )

So I will post a link here to our home. If you know anyone who is looking for a great little house close to hospitals, parks, splashpads and pools, then please pass this on.

http://comfree.com/home-for-sale-hamilton-ontario-310435

This is "sew" cute

What a terribly lame joke. No On e can help themselves from making puns, and yet I'm sure we all shudder at the lameness anytime one is spoken. (And I'm sure many of us secretly laugh on the inside...I know I just did...and I was the one to make the lame joke!)

This past Christmas, instead of regular Christmas cards ( which seem to cost a fortune by the way!) we did the family photo (myself, my husband and our pup). We not only had the photo's taken for the card but we wanted them to be slightly awkward. So I went to the good ol' value village and purchased two really ugly Christmas sweaters and also one for the dog.

Merry Christmas!
Even Olive had an awkward pose!

It took Ollie a while to get used to wearing her ugly Christmas sweater. I put it on her and she wouldn't budge. I even left the room for about 15 minutes and upon my return, she was still standing in the exact position...not a whisker had moved!
I always this it's really cute when dogs ( whether macho bulldogs or fragile little teacup pooches) wear a sweater or a coat. I know many people out there think it's ridiculous. "dogs have fur for a reason" blah blah blah. I know, they technically don't need it, but come on now, it's cute, or sometimes just funny.
So after seeing a really sweet dog at Petsmart, in a little tweed jacket, I went out and bought some fabric. I then went online and looked up free dog coat patterns, printed it out, enlarged in onto newspaper, and cut my fabric using my pattern.
I used two layers of pink jersey and the top layer is a regular cotton blend with a tweed-ish plaid, brown ans fine pink lines.
After I sewed it all together, I decided that it needed a little hood, just because it would jazz it up a little, plus dogs are really cute when they have hoods on their jackets! Lastly I added a heart decal, off centre on the bum end and added buttons to keep it on.

what a good little model she was!

When I come home

For the last week and a bit we have been house sitting, manily to take care of my in-laws dog, Kiba. So Olive was there also, and she was entertained during the day, while we were away at work or on outings. Today was the first day in a week or so that Olive was by herself for maybe 5 hours. She has toys, a bed, a warm corn stove to sit in front of and large windows to peek into the park behind our house. We place a self constructed baby gate ( not suitable for kids, but good enough for the dog) so that she can not destroy things in the living room, take down the Christmas tree, eat parts of the Nativity scene, the toilet paper in the bathroom or chew apart our rug/couch/cushions/shoes/ and any thing else that might make its way into her mouth.

This morning, before I left for work I removed an envelope filled with old receipts, coupons and other papery items that was weighing down my purse. I placed it on the centre of the coffee table as I rushed out the door so that I wouldn't be late. 

When I came home today I found Olive greeting me at the door. She had busted down her gate, pulled the envelope off the table, and shred everything in it to bits...including a package of instant oatmeal! there was rolled oats all over the rug, under the rug under the couches, and bits of paper everywhere. 

After I had her all settled down, out the door to play in the back yard, I cleaned up the mess, and invited her back in. 

She looked sad for some time after so I thought I would cheer her up by giving her half a "dentastix" (she normally gets half of one each day) As she was busy enjoying that I went into the kitchen to make myself some lunch, and then in the living room I heard plastic being crunched. Up to no good Olive has three whole dentastix in her mouth...sneaky dog!

Oh and last night we woke up to Olive puking. Sometimes dogs get upset stomachs if their dog food gets switched, but Olive had been eating the same food for quite a while. It turns out she had puked up a part of Kiba's toy. :\

So yeah, the post has nothing to do with Thrifting or DIY projects, but sometimes....okay many times, Olive does things that just needs to be shared. 

Costs: high vs low...vs affordable

I did it again...

While many young women leaf through the latest gossip in Cosmo, People, etc, I'm leafing through the latest trends in Style at Home. I love this magazine. But I don't have a subscription since I just read it in the Grocery store at the check out. Or I just go online and read the parts I can without getting the online subscription. You should check it out (styleathome.com).

My favourite section is High and Low where they show a beautiful room with some priceless items in it, then they replace the key items in that room with very similar items at a lower cost. They do a great job with this, however, the only problem I find with their low cost rooms is that I would still not spend that much on one room. I'm sure some people would and it's not a heart stopping price, but for the cost of the room they show, I would have assumed that EVERYTHING displayed in the picture is included in that price. I'm talking about the paint/wallpaper, the smaller items such as all the vases etc. 

What I have done is taken the lower cost room, and found the items on line, either on kijiji, ikea, ebay etc and create the same/similar room for a fraction of the price. (Other items that are similar/possibly even less expensive are out there, so don't limit yourself to just those two or three resources)

 So here goes: 

The high cost room:

HIGH $12,965

Hooker Furniture leather-topped Seven Seas DRESSING TABLE, $1,360, Stoney Creek furniture, stoneycreekfurniture.com. Fruitwood 18th-century CHAIR, $1,875 per set of 2, Convex Dorian MIRROR, 24", $685, Ribbehege & Azevedo, ribbehegeandazevedo.com. Redford House white alder wood Swedish DRESSER, $2,877, restored vintage Liat CHANDELIER in Antique White, $835, Au Lit Fine Linens, aulitfinelinens.com. Wool/silk Dorothy RUG in Blue/Grey, 9' x 12', $3,785, Elte, elte.com. Thai Silk DRAPERY PANEL in Optic White, 50" x 96", $259, large Estate Silver ROD, 6', $95, large Ball FINIAL, $89 per pair, RINGS, $54 per pack of 7, Restoration Hardware, restorationhardware.com. Teal grosgrain 8900 RIBBON (on drapery), $14 per metre, Mokuba, 416-364-5144. Ceramic Antique-Finish garden STOOL in Apple Green, $375, Teatro Verde, teatroverde.com. SCARF, $130, Winners, winners.ca. Vintage Coach Heritage HANDBAG, $450, REmix Clothing, remix.ca.

The low cost room:

LOW $5,040

Solid pine Edland DRESSING TABLE with clear lacquered finish, $249, IKEA, ikea.ca. Josephine CHAIR upholstered in Charlene Wedgewood, $1,164, Ethan Allen, ethanallen.com. Round Soleil MIRROR, 27", $49, President’s Choice Home Collection, pc.ca.Boudoir DRESSER in Country White, $949, Urban Barn, urbanbarn.ca. Hampton Bay Heritage 6-lightCHANDELIER in Antique White, $189, The Home Depot, homedepot.ca. Wool Mia Wallace RUG in Blue/Light Grey, 9' x 12', $1,745, Elte, elte.com. Polyester PT Milano DRAPERY PANEL in Winter White, 50" x 96", $190, pewter Connections ROD, 6', $45, silver Connections Mozart Ball FINIAL, $45 per pair, silver Connections RINGS, $13 per pack of 10, inVU Drapery Co., invudraperyco.com. Teal Herringbone 5700 RIBBON (on drapery), $8 per metre, Mokuba, 416-364-5144. Green ceramic garden STOOL, $150, Pier 1 Imports, pier1.ca. SCARF, $15, Winners, winners.ca. Vintage Kate Spade HANDBAG, $200, REmix Clothing, remix.ca.




the affordable room:

Okay so again there is not pic of the actual room becuase I would have to purchase all these items, paint my walls and take a pic. I don't want to do that every time I do this blog. So once again, take note of the items in the room above and replace with the once below.

dressing table. $49 at Ikea. 

remove the legs from one side of  the  dressing
 table and replace with this. $50  Ikea

chandelier. $35 kijiji

old dresser, add a couple coats of white paint and
 find some old knobs $50 kijiji

upholstered antique chair. $60 kijiji 

mirror. $30 kijiji

fabric for curtains. $20 +10 for rings=$30 Ikea
(seems like a fairly pointless picture to copy and paste!)

curtain rod. $20 kijiji

large  rug. $200 kijiji

green handbag $25 kijiji

scarf$10 Meetups (?) in Scarborough (I found the link on kijiji)

large turquoise vase $40 I could not find anything like that green ceramic stool.
That  in an item that is not often  duplicated So I replaced it with this. Kijiji

Grand total: $600 

One of the key items in both images seems to be that dress form/mannequin, and yet it doesn't have a price. However I found one of those on Kijiji too, though it is black I think it could still look really great in this room. 

dress form $80 kijiji. Although you might find one on the
 side of the road like I did

Also, not included is the wall (paint? or paper?) either way, Rona, has recycled paint, which I think is fantastic, unfortunately it only comes in 16 different shades. However, I'm sure you could find it in a blueish colour and some kind of white and they cost $17 per can so that makes another $35. And you can use this paint for the dresser too. 

All thats left to do is to place some old books ( owned or thrift)  and a storage box or blue/green basket on top of the dresser. And Voila, you have a new room for about $715 that someone else paid over $12, 000 for!

So lets review the costs of all three rooms:

High: $12, 965

Low: $5, 040

Affordable: $600 (or$ 715 if you add the dress form and paint)