Thrift Store Treasures

On the way to meet a friend for lunch this morning, I stopped in Poway to visit my favorite collection of thrift stores.

Here are the little things that I brought home:

A painted Easter egg maraca for my son.  It’s filled with pebbles or beans or something and it makes the loveliest quiet rattling noise.

A plastic Halloween bat flapper noise maker.  This is NOT a quiet toy, and as I predicted, he loves it.  I have already warned him against using it near the cat.  🙂

A matchbox-sized wooden shepherd with his flock, his dog and a tree.  This was in the “25 cents” bin.  I LOVE it.

A bag of plastic cookie cutters – the old school kind that I love.  They make an impression on the dough instead of just cutting out the shape.  The fish is my favorite.

Two small spools of pretty cloth ribbon –  because no thrift store adventure is complete without pretty cloth ribbon.  Right?

A small hand-painted blue and white dish from Portugal.  Was thinking soap dish when I first picked it up, but now I realize it’s a little small for that and who wants to gunk it up with soap scum anyway?  Not sure where this will go.

And this little thing.  It’s just a reproduction of something – probably an antique cookie mold – but I love it.  I will have to hang it somewhere that my son won’t examine it much since it’s an older alphabet and doesn’t include all the present day letters.  It’s small – a little wider than a playing card.

I also bought a little plastic elephant and a happy ceramic duck.  They are both camera shy.  (Read that as “my camera sucks.”)

Last week, I picked up this bracelet at Goodwill for just $2.  It has been on my arm everyday since.  Can’t seem to get a good pic of it.  It looks a little like abalone or another shell, but I think it’s just faux something-or-other.  I don’t care about its authenticity.  I keep getting compliments on it.

I picked up this Wilton baking pan at the same store.  I love unusual pans and this one was pristine (hard to tell in my pic).  Turns out it’s designed for making baked crullers/twist doughnuts.  Here is Wilton’s pan info with a link to the recipe.  I haven’t tried it yet.  Will let you know when I do.

My grand total for everything was $13.25.  That’s only a little more than going to a movie, it was spread over several days, and it was way more fun!

Just realized my elephant made it into the pan pic.  Ha!

🙂

What have you been up to lately?  Write a comment and let me know.

♥♥

Spring Break Phone Pix Dump

We actually did a lot over the two-week break.

The child had a bad case of the hives, got really sick, and also lost another tooth, but he rallied for the best parts of his vacation.
He had no trouble inhaling a basketful of candy on Easter morning.

🙂

The rest of our days went something like this…

lunch with Grandma
Inflatable World
Pump It Up
several different parks
a night at the downtown Marriott
egg hunts
and
I guess I’m too tired to remember anything else.
Enjoy the photos!

Oh, I almost forgot!
Husband got a new job.
(Insert great relief here.)
He started yesterday.
So far, so good!

Insert bad family photo here (complete with chinless child and bug-eyed mommy):

I love this next one of my husband.  He’s more than a little freaked out by heights, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying our 11th floor view of the bay and the bridge.

The pools were beautiful.  The smaller one was walk-in warm in the morning.

Next on the agenda?
Back to school this morning and then to the kid’s salon for a long overdue haircut!

What did you do?

♥♥

Jelly Bean Eggs

We made our construction paper Easter eggs this week.

I think we did more this time than ever before.

The first year, we mostly just decorated the eggs.

Now, our tradition is to write on them.

The boy does most of it.

Here are a few of my favorites:

He also made a couple of really LARGE eggs:

I wrote on a few of them too:

We also played with balloons this week.

And we made a bed on the stairs.

What did you do?

♥♥

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!!

(from our little bunny)

♥♥

Easter Pix

A week late, but here they are…

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Happy Sunday!

♥♥

Carlsbad Staycation

The little boy went back to school yesterday.  Yea!

And he did it with lots of excitement and no complaint.  Amazing.

Of course, he usually melts down on day two or three after a break, so we’ll see how the rest of the week plays out.

Last Wednesday, we took a little trip up the road to Carlsbad.  We stayed at the Hyatt Summerfield Suites for a couple of nights and took the boy to Legoland.  It was nice to get out of our stinky cat hair house for a while.

On the way to the hotel, we stopped at the Forum Shopping Center.  We took a walk on the adjacent La Costa Glen Trail and then popped into Gepetto’s to get the boy a few toys for the trip.  He picked out a magnetic dartboard and a small car that lights up.

The hotel was great.  The room was a little bit small considering the amenities packed inside it.  We had a full fridge, a two-burner stove, a small dishwasher, a full set of dishes, an HDTV, and granite everything.  Very convenient.

The king-sized bed was too soft for our taste and our son’s pull-out sofa sleeper took up too much of the room, but everything was really clean and the hotel service was excellent.  We swam in the pool and thoroughly enjoyed our stay.

My only real complaint with the Hyatt might be that the bathroom door had no lock.  Our son doesn’t really understand our need for privacy yet, so that was problematic for us.  There also wasn’t a fan to muffle any noises in the bathroom either.  If you know what I mean.  And I think you do.  🙂

The hotel is small and located a little too far to walk to anything, but Carlsbad is not a difficult place to navigate by car and the distance to Legoland, the beach, and the downtown village is minimal.  There is no restaurant on site, but the hotel does make up for this with complimentary social hours with drinks and appetizers every night and continental breakfasts each morning.

We hit Legoland on day two of our adventure.  The boy wouldn’t go on a single ride, so we basically spent $268 for a really long walk, but it was fun anyway.  There are popper fountains and a great climbing structure that the boy enjoys.  Note in the photos how he passed out for an afternoon nap at the end of the day.  He was pooped.  He hasn’t napped like that since he was two years old!

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On Friday morning, we went to Bobby’s Hideaway Cafe for breakfast.  It was yummy.

Bobby’s is located next door to Buffalo Brothers Guitars.  Husband happily went there while the boy and I went across the parking lot to a botanical wonderland called Plant Play Nursery.

I have decided I would like to curl up inside one of the giant, beautiful, glazed turquoise basins in this place and live there forever.  Plant Play is teeny and charming.  Go, if you’re ever in the area.

When the husband finished his brief tour of Buffalo Brothers, he and his green thumbs wandered over to find us and he got sucked in just like we did.  We bought four plants total and we both want to go back again.  I am still dreaming of a gorgeous old rusty wrought iron trellis I saw.

We headed home after that and finished out the break with egg hunts and an Easter brunch at my mom’s house.  Pix of that tomorrow.  Maybe.

And that’s about it!

Happy Monday!!

It’s good to be back!

♥

P.S.  The little boy continues his movie making.  He doesn’t know the words to the song, but he’s committed to the process!  I sure do love him.

♥♥

Eggs, Crystal Climbers and Julia

Eggs

The little boy is very determined to decorate for Easter.

Everyday, he makes me cut out eggs from colored construction paper – dozens and dozens of eggs.

He scribbles little words or pictures on some and on the others, he wants “Mommy words.”

He frequently interrupts my writing and asks me to add a word or even to write something else entirely.

Because of that, the eggs don’t always make a lot of sense.

He writes his name on most of them and then insists on reading each one aloud.

It has actually been a great way to help him learn some new words.

His reading has improved by leaps and bounds this school year.

He loves this egg activity and we’ve done it every afternoon for a week now.

One day, I felt so wasteful that I pulled my traffic school pages out of the recycle bin and cut eggs from them too.

He decorated their plain sides, but he taped them backwards, so now we have California traffic code on our wall.

I don’t know what he remembers or believes about the Easter Bunny, but he sure has holiday spirit.

He decorates for every season and seems very invested in cutting and pasting and taping and stapling.

Every bit of it goes up on the wall or hangs from the chandelier.

It’s serious business.

As much as I don’t prefer the look of our front room a lot of the time, I am cheered by his purposeful effort to make our house into a home.

He puts his stamp on everything and takes pride in his work.

How can I be bothered by that?

♥

Crystal Climbers

For Christmas, we got him a box of Crystal Climbers from Lakeshore Learning.

He plays with them once a week or so.

They’re not a hugely exciting toy, but he makes the most of them.

Last week, he was quietly playing with them in the front room while I was busy in the kitchen.

When I walked back to see how he was doing, he was just coming down the stairs.

He had gone to get the tape from my sewing table.

Groovy, man.

Getting the tape out of his hair made us both laugh.

Oh, how I love this little boy.

Happy Wednesday!

♥

P.S.  Have any of you read The Reader?  Is it worth keeping in my someday pile?  You know, that’s the ginormous heap of books on top of the piano that I’d like to get to, but probably never will.  I have one friend who didn’t like the book or the movie.  What do you think?

P.P.S.  Julia Child is alive and well and showing her stuff, right in our own front yard.  Lovely.

♥♥