Thrift Store Finds

I stopped at the thrift store on my way home on Thursday, because my dad wanted me to look for teaspoons. (The stores he had been looking at were out, I knew this one had lots in the past, and I love stopping at thrift stores!) I thought I'd share some of my fun finds with you. :)

Cookie Cutters:

I have an awesome gingerbread recipe, and enjoy making gingerbread houses at Christmas. (When I have the time and space, that is!) There was a bag of cookie cutters for $2.50, and I could tell it had some I wanted... like the Christmas trees. (Useful for both separate cookies, and decorating the "houses".) I didn't need as many as were in the bag, but I didn't want to ask if I could break the bag up, and I think that copper tree would cost around $2.50 by itself if it were new. I think the duplicates would make fun Christmas tree ornaments if I tie a ribbon around them. :)

Thread:

The bag of thread spools was $1.99, and I bought it for the cool old wooden spools... they would also make awesome tree decorations! The newer thread I've added to my stash. Again, the whole bag was cheaper than a single spool of decent quality new thread. (The spool of purple thread is puzzling... it looks hand wound or something!) I'm a bit undecided about the Aero thread spools... their thread is still in excellent (and thus usable) condition, but they'd also make great ornaments.

Canadian Social Studies Atlas:

I love atlases, especially old ones. Although old ones are out of date, it lets you know what the world looked like at that time. (This one is copyright 1952, last printed 1953.) For a while now, I've been wondering what was where Israel was just before Israel was created.

In 1815, it was part of Turkey! That doesn't quite answer what it was around 1940, but it was still interesting.

Another fun fact. People often wonder where my online username, "Noricum" comes from. Well, here's a map:

See that province just above the boot of modern-day Italy? Around where Austria is these days?

Well, that's the Roman province of Noricum. (Of course, *I* discovered Noricum by randomly flipping open my dictionary, looking for a reasonable username that wasn't already taken.) My heritage is half Austrian. :)

One of the fun things about this being a schoolbook is that you can make guesses about what different homework assignments were.

I think one of them was to count all the indian reservations (IR) in Manitoba. (The student missed a few.)

Other fun facts in the atlas:
Routes of the crusades:

Routes of the explorers across the oceans:

Routes of explorers across Canada:

There's *lots* more fun things too!

This isn't all of what I bought at the thrift store... I bought a few neat pieces of cutlery for myself, three more neat pasta bowls (probably actually soup bowls, but I use them for pasta and salad), a nice plaid shirt that doesn't wrinkle when washed, a few cute buttons, a tin with mallard ducks on it (that will make a nice gift for my dad if I fill it with baking), and a sturdy wine bottle opener. (My neighbour bent my wine bottle opener, and so returned it bent, plus a rusty one she found somewhere.) Including my dad's spoons, I spent a whopping $15.03. Definitely cheap entertainment!

Gingerbread!

Woo hoo! I did it! A gingerbread treehouse! Check it out:



My friend Moni came over to help me... I always need extra hands come assembly time, and Moni enjoys crafty stuff too. Here she is adding lederhosen to the little gingerbread people:



Aren't they cute in their lederhosen?!:



I'm looking forward to more crafty time with Moni when I've quit NC for good... thanks for helping Moni! :))

Snow update... although the last dump of snow was soft and fluffy, there was a lot. It took the three of us another 45 minutes to shovel out this morning, and we weren't sure whether Moni would be able to make it over. We've run out of space to put the snow from the driveway, so after clearing the back walk, I shovelled snow from the yard above the driveway to farther back. Now, instead of having to hoist the snow about five feet, we only have to hoist it about half that. At least, until we've shovelled more snow there. :P

I made more progress on the raglan pattern. I have it all jotted down in scribbles, and now just need to type it up. Oh... and give it a nifty name... raglan sweater sounds so boring. I've decided to call the purple stripe sweater "Vertigo" (because of the vertical stripes). Any ideas on cool names for the raglan? For those who've forgotten, this is what it looks like:



I'm thinking maybe "Evelyn", but that's just a random name, and doesn't mean much.

Oh... and thanks for recommending Blackmore's Night, Marvie! I finally listened to clips on iTunes, and I'm definitely going to buy the CD on my next Amazon order! Wow... it's exactly the type of music I like! (Of course, I like lots of types... but certainly not all types.)