Ice Bucket, or Cookie Jar?

Well Readers, this is the weekend Score!  Now before hoards of you leave me comments saying "Its a hot and cold server you twit, not a cookie jar" let me just say I am aware! Haha.  Michael over at Cul-de-Sac Shack first showed me one of these on our trip to Missouri last June. If I recall correctly he got his for $10.00 and I was sooooo envious.  I nearly bought one while in Kansas during Christmas for $25.00 but I'm glad I held out, because the Thrift Gods sent this gem my way for the hefty price or $2.42 !!!

 ("The Penguin Hot and Cold Server" named for its decorative design)

Let me tell you when I dived for this Patricia thought I was crazy, but I knew what it was. As soon as I laid eyes on it at Value Village I knew it was coming home with me, the price was just an added bonus! I don't knwo much about them, but i know they are a product of the 1950's and came in chrome and copper/bronze. At first it looked a little grungy, but as I found out while cleaning it was just a thin layer of hardened dirt. With a little scrubbing this thing almost looks brand new, ITS SO SHINY  the chrome plate doesn't have any pitting or rust marks and the Bakelite handles and knob aren't chipped. There are a few minor scratches, but other than that its perfect!

Aside from the last name "Owens" scrawled across the bottom, it says-

West Bend Penguin Hot & Cold Server

A Product of 

West Bend Aluminum Co.

West bend, WIS U.S.A.

Patent No.

2,349,099

DES, 127,279

I read somewhere that this promises to keep ice cold for up to five house, and food warm for up to two hours.

So now my question to you Readers is, do you think this should be the "Ice Bucket" for the Bar? Or should it become the new "Cookie Jar" in the kitchen, replacing a ceramic "San Francisco" house cookie jar that my mother made long ago (that we religiously forget we have cookies in.) I'm pretty sure We'd never forget about the cookies if they were left in here! Either way it will provably end up on top of the Pyrex Cabinet on display with my other hot and cold warmer and "I Love Lucy" coffee percolator for a while...

Well What do you think?!

-Mick-

Oh-ho The Well's Fargo Wagon Is A Commin!

Oh Readers, Don't let it pass my door!

 (I'm currently up to my ears in 1912 In Meredith Wilson's "Music Man")

But a lot of neat things have been arriving in the mail!   Like these five "Golden Foliage" wine glasses to add to Our Others in the bar.

(More of the "Don Draper" glasses!)

Most exciting, is this hand delivered postcard given to us by one of our new up and coming member Melissa (Star of White Christmas. If you'll remember she made her "Mick's debut" as one of the "sisters" here at Thanksmass.)

On the picture "Mickey Jordan" (pointing to Mickey Mouse), and "The Casablanca, Not to original... its only a model"

She writes...

"  Mickey & Patricia, Disneyland used to sell 

and send mail with a postmark that said

Disneyland. But as times change, no more

postmark and no more stamps. so I didn't send this

from California. But this is your own

official Disneyland Postcard. And yes, 

this is me sticking it to the man. I

wish we could travel back to 1955 and

see Disneyland in it original form. Even

Now Main Street has so much history

of the past. It's fun to wander through

the shops and see some "old" memorobilla.

Basically Disneyland with Mickey & Patricia

would be a ball!  I miss you guys and

can't wait till Prom 1958. Love you guys"

-Melissa & Chris Francis-

Thanks Melissa and Chris! I always love it when friends send us postcards, since this one talks about an upcoming event it will be going into the Hat box-O-Memorabilia along with Miss Casablanca's Postcard from London this summer!

We'll I'm off to catch the wagon the show opens on the 27th of Jan and I've got lots of painting to do!  As Always I will have a sets post later. Hope all of you have a happy Friday!

-Mick-

Blog Snobs...

"Don't Fret, there etiquette for everything Gideon"- Milly Pointipee

To Whom it my concern, a few tips for blogging.

#1: If someone comments out your blog, you at least out of courtesy, could comment on theirs. (blog providing)

#2: If someone follows your blog, its best to be nice and follow theirs back....

#3: For goodness sake its a FREE BLOG, lets not get carried away with out egos.

And 

#4: Can't we all just be blogger friends?

-Mick-

Dance Invitations - A Lost Art!

Well Readers,
With March 16th steaming towards us, the "Casablanca Prom Committee" and myself are gearing up for the big dance!  The Pink and Yellow invitations you see are hand made, only eight in existence- these are for people who don't have Facebook or (usually older) and get a written invitation... Our colors for the dance being Pink and turquoise, we have the nifty pink invites for the girls in the turquoise envelopes, and the yellow invites (because they didn't have turquoise construction paper) for the guys!

The design is supposed to be that of a paper lantern, whenever I think of spring paper lanterns and garden party's are synonymous. The design is actually from a 1927 California High School's Junior prom.  When we Googled "Vintage Prom Invitation" and this is what popped up. I was amazed and overjoyed at the fact, some one from the Junior Class of 1927 had kept this all these years!

  (Not only an invitation, but a dance card as well)

Well  I'm sure, SOMEONE out there could have figured out an easier way to do this, however I had no patience and needed them asap to hand out on Saturday!  So I printed the picture out in a 5"x7" and cut the first "lantern" out of construction paper. Then with Patricia's help I cut out seven more and used a sharpie marker to make the design. of course the sharpie marker bled through the back of the paper, so we cut another set of lanterns out to glue on the back. We had originally planned to just print out the info and glue it on the face of the lantern, but that just looked all kinds of tacky... SO I made a make-shift light desk.

Out of a bed lamp, and the glass door of my trophy case. Then tapped the paper over the light, turned the lights off, and hand copied the lettering with a fountain pen.

THEY TOOK FOREVER TO FINISH, but the end result would fool you into believing that I have wonderful penmanship! (It really is a lost art!)

Both front a back sides too about 30 minuets each to do, that's right- just about an hour for each invite. So these babies are KEEPSAKES!  And not that I've flaunted our up coming party fun-

-Your Presence is requested,

Friday march 16, 1958

Please R.S.V.P. via Email.

(If any of you Bloggers would like to join us! )

-Mick-

Official!

-Mick-

Is There Anything Pyrex Can't Be?!

Well Readers,
The Most amazing thing has happened!

If you will remember I scored  the neat little metal sleigh on my Thrifting Extravaganza  and yes what you see in said sleigh is a Pyrex Fridgie #502. Now, this happened totally by accident, I was packing things up to go to the Casablanca and I thought "I'll send the sleight out there to pack away with all the other vintage decorations" (Which by the way, never seem as festive coming down as they do going up) so I sat it on the pile wrapped in its plastic bag.

 Well next I pulled another 502 fridgie out (as a gift for a friend) and without even thinking sat in top of the sleigh.

 The I must have felt what the guy who said "Hey, lets put peanut butter and Chocolate together and see what happens..."  MUCH to my surprise they fit almost perfectly together!

(OH. MY. GOD!)

After the 45 second mind-gazam had passed, I knew EXACTLY what I wanted to do! I ran over to my storage unit, and grabbed a blue 502 that had been dishwasher abused, and had lots its color and shine.

(I'm provably going to some form of Pyrex Hell for this...)

Three coats of paint, and an overnight dry later, I had a perfect looking fire engine red 502!

Then when I went to the Lake with friend Bryson on Friday, I gave the sleigh three coats of gold spray paint and let dry. I grabbed the lid from my good 502 in the kitchen. 

(Ta-Da!)

I LOVE this one of a kind coffee table creation, that I'm calling "Santa's Pyrex Sleigh" !

(I have waaaay to much time on my hands...)

-Mick-

The Atom Pop!

The NEW Sensational Atom Pop corn popper!
Okay, okay... I know that I JUST blogged about scoring this thing on our Missouri Adventure but Thursday night we finally got to see it in action!

(Meet our Atom-Pop Models, Savannah & Patricia)

They read the instructions to me while I operated, this advanced and modern piece of technology.

I poured in the 1/2 cup of corn...

Followed by 1/4 cup of cooking oil...

Finally I covered the pan and placed on high heat...

AND THEN we stood around the stove entranced by that the aluminum pot, staring so intently and in such silence- you would have thought it was an Atom Bomb we'd just put on the stove burner rather than a kettle of corn... then about five minuets in we start to hear-

The popping went on for about three to four minuets longer and then finally, teaming with anticipation- we took the State-of-the-Art containment shield (I.E. the lid) off to REVEAL!

(Ta-Da!)

A perfectly popped batch of corn, enough to feed about four people!

("SUCCESS!"  Cry the Atom Pop Models.)

("And it's so Tasty Too!")

"Simple enough for a child to use, Designed for modern living." 

- Quin-Craft Product, Fredonia Kansas 1952

Hands down one of my best $2.00 purchases yet!

You can read even more about the history and fun of this thing at its website.

http://atompoppopper.com/home.html

-Mick-

A Hunting We-A-Went!

(The $3.00 Libbey Carousel Glasses Michael gave to me!)

 As a simi-spur of the moment activity, while on vacation  I made plans to meet up with Michael and do some thrifting in Kansas City MO. So Friday while my family hit their yearly stops, Pat and I loaded up with Mike and away we went- leaving no thrift/antique store in Independence MO untouched!

(Missouri Michael & Patricia)

Before we even got going, Michael gave some things to us, he scored a set of six Libbey Carousel glasses and gave them to me! Along with a box of Frankoma plays and Tupperware for the Casablanca-

He also gave to us (what I'm pretty sure is) the bottom bowl for a Chip-N-Dip in the same "Gold Leaf" pattern as our Don Draper Glasses Thanks Mike!

Gifts exchanged, we headed out armed with a hefty list of thrifts from none other and then Master himself, Mr.Stan Williams of or better known as The Elegant Thrifter!
The First stop was Thrift World , and everyone cleaned up. Mike showed me these glasses for $6.00

Which are also Libbey, and they compliment the Carousel glasses and when you put the two sets together you get...

(click to enlarge)

Don't they look fun?! Haha we are stacking up quite the collection of bar-ware, I cannot wait to use these!
Now I just need to find some old wire drink caddy's to store them in. Other finds included -

Vintage in the box drink coasters! $1.98 and they look like they've never been used but sadly the "spongy" part of the coaster has started to dry rot. I think it will be an easy fix and I'm going to replace the "sponge" with matching colors of felt.

 (Soon to be fixed!)

Another find I was thankful to come across was these Serving spoons. After searching for what seemed like forever and almost giving up and buying some brand (obviously new) looking ones at walmart and then viola` there they were!

(For $0.98 no less!)

The liquor spigot between the two spoons came from the next stop Charity Thrift also for $0.98  and Patricia found the smallest glass that matches the "Libbey Gold Leaf" pattern, for $0.66 now we just need 5 more to match!

(Ta-Da!)

Next Stop: Browns Emporium Antique Mall This place had LOTS  of neat stuff for great prices. lots of cool things to look at, and I ended up walking away with this piece.

Continuing our "Mad Men" finds, this art deco "Toucan cigarette holder/ ashtray" is the exact same one that Don Draper has on his desk in Season one. Next we took a tour of "Gordman's Department store" (it was fantastic) then on down the road to the Salvation army. Michale scored this so-over-the-top-tacky its cool Christmas thing (I wish I had a picture of it, go over to Cul-de-sac Shack  and get him to show you!) and I found a tiny sleigh.

(I have a Santa the will go perfectly on this!)

We also found an in the box "Atom-Pop" Popcorn maker for $2.00, So I snatched it up and you had better believe we WILL be using this at the Casablanca!

The pan had burnt popcorn on the aluminum, but later down the road at another thrift I found a bottom with no top that was sparkling clean so I'll just use it!  After that we went a few more places and I bought a few things here or there, I picked up a few pieces of Pyrex to give away as presents (I even broke a piece of glassware in the DAV thrift shop) Patricia laughed at our last thrifting spot as Michael and I both sprinted to the back of the store (to get to the good stuff first) while I yelled "You're a GROWN MAN Michael! I'm just a CHILD!" (while I, an equally grown man ran right beside him) Haha we had so much fun and after a long day of thrifting, we were all tuckered out.

("I want this chair!")

We packed up our kills finds, and headed back to meet up with my family for dinner. It was a wonderful day and we had so much fun  fighting tooth and nail for Pyrex  hanging out! Hope all of you had  a great weekend of finds!

-Mick-