The Apron Queen has a great meme called "Vintage Thingies Thursdays." Since I just thrifted some awesome vintage stuff, I thought I'd participate this week. I'm only going to show you one of my finds, in the hopes that I can use the others in future weeks:

This is a Transogram Great Moments in American History pencil-by-number set, complete and still wrapped in plastic. I haven't been able to find it anywhere online, so I'm not sure what year it is from, but it looks like Transogram stopped operating in the early 1970s, so I'm thinking maybe mid-late 60s? Anyway, it is very cool. I'm tempted to rip it open to see the pencil-by-numbers inside, but have so far resisted. I got it for $.50 at the bins.

It's Vintage Thingies Thursday again, hosted by the Apron Queen!

Today I give you "Imported Novelty Angels." I have no idea how old these are--the box isn't dated--but they are old enough for "imported" to be a good thing. They are incredibly cute, hand-carved and hand-painted, and though the box is worn, the angels themselves are in great shape (most of them were wrapped in what I take to be original tissue paper when I got them). The angels are another Goodwill find, and I believe they were $0.99. I actually bought them a couple of years ago and they have been hanging around amusing me since then.

If you have any idea what these are or from when, please leave a comment, I'd love to know!

Today I bring you another vintage thingie mystery.

What you see here is a set of five tiny (2" square maybe) plates I picked up the Bins for I think $0.15 each. They are stamped on the back with "Mosa Maastricht Plateel." While I have been able to confirm that Mosa is a Dutch ceramics manufacturer (and they made some really cute stuff, check out the Wilma design on this page), I haven't been able to find out what year these plates are from, or even what they are intended for. The look more than anything like a children's tea party set.

So once again, I bring the question to Vintage Thingee Thursdays participants--what are these? Are they vintage, or are they just cute?

Hello Vintage Thingies Thursday-ites! I missed you last week!

I actually have some new vintage finds that I need to get photographed so I can share them, but as I haven't gotten there yet, this week I'm going to share one of my first vintage thrift collections.

What you see here (I think) is a set of early 1970s pie plates, with the recipes for the pies written on the plates themselves. This is actually only part of the set of these I've collected--I think there are 8 in all. Does anybody remember having these when they were new? I asked my mom, but they weren't familiar to her. I love the look of them, especially the cherry one. Plus I'm a big pie-maker, so they get occasional use.

I got the whole collection of these at the Goodwill, for I think around $2 each. They had very dusty plate hangers on them, so they had been on someone's wall. No decorative uses for me, though--PIE!

This post is republished from last winter. I thought it would make an excellent addition to Vintage Thingies Thursday.

This is probably my favorite photograph ever. It was taken in a photo booth in a train station one night around midnight, in 1945. In a world where the second great war in a generation had just ended and prosperity was beginning, the woman in the picture was 35 and just married. She's my grandmother, and in a few weeks she will be 98.

In my memory, she has always been old, but looking at her now, I can still clearly see the woman in this picture. Both her beauty and her will, her iron spine. I can see, in both the old woman I know and this young woman, how she came to make it almost all the way through college before the measles took her eye sight, how she grew up working the land, how she cooked in logging camps. How she raised three children to be fantastic people. How, a decade or so after this picture was taken, she moved her young family across several states, away from where they lived near a nuclear testing facility, because she didn't think it right to bring up children somewhere nothing would grow.

The man in the picture, her husband, died before I was born, but lives on in legend as a bare-knuckle boxer during the Depression and a teller of world-famous bullshit stories. I think I would have liked to know him.

Today's VTT find is a new one--I just thrifted it at the bins on Tuesday evening (for the low bargain price of $0.39). It was in a bin with a bunch of empty modern perfume bottles (Clinque's Happy and Elizabeth Arden's Red Door were among them), as well as a few vintage bottles in less great condition.

It's an empty bottle, once containing Avon's Delagar Royal Dove perfume. The sticker on the bottom says that it was made in New York in 1960. There is still a faint perfume smell (nothing I'd want to wear), but isn't the condition of the bottle amazing? It's clear glass at the bottom and the dove is frosted pink glass.

My plan for this is to carefully clean it out, then fill it with my essential oil blend, either for my own use or to give as a gift. The bottle is just too great to not be in use, especially given that it's nearly 50 years old.

I am sick in bed and nearly missed Vintage Thingies Thursday! Glad I remembered in time, as I have something especially appropriate for this particular pre-election Thursday:

This Jimmy Carter match book was given to me by a co-worker, who found it while cleaning out his 90 year old mom's house. I'm not sure if it's from the 1976 or 1980 election cycle, but my suspicion, given that it doesn't say "re-elect," is that it's from '76.

Make it a Democratic year. Indeed. Don't forget to vote!

In celebration of the first meet-up on this blog of two favorites, NaBloPoMo and Vintage Thingies Thursday, I have a good one today!

The photo you see here is of my lovely mama, dressed in her Halloween costume for this year. Is that not the coolest costume ever? I adore that my mom still dresses up. This costume, in particular, was inspired by the school bond initiative they were trying to pass at the school where Mom works. And it passed by a SEVEN vote margin! How's that for your vote counting?

Mom didn't dress up to get out the vote alone! This picture shows her co-conspirators (a good family friend on her right and my aunt Joan on her left) and the other side of their signs.

Clearly these costumes are meant to represent something vintage, but that's not why I am showing them to you today. There IS something vintage in them (besides, of course, the lovely ladies themselves). What is it? Guess in the comments and I'll update later and tell you!

Update: If you want to know what the vintage item is, it's after the break!

This is one of those things that I just couldn't not buy, even though I have absolutely no use for it. A new-in-box 1965 Pelouze Trimaway Diet Scale Kit. It includes an information booklet ("the complete precise dietary control guide for those who have a trim look in mind"), a small, not-very-accurate scale, a plastic measuring cup, and a plastic bowl in 60's neon orange.

Who weighed their food in 1965? I thought that horror was a recent invention? To those VTT who were alive then, do you remember anything like this being popular, or is this thing unusual?

For more VTT fun, see the Apron Queen!

First, an announcement: Vintage Thingies Thursday has a new home, at the blog of Coloradolady! Thanks for hosting, Coloradolady!

Now, what I have for you today:

I picked up this inlaid wooden box (which is, for some reason, very difficult to photograph) at the bins. It's small--about the size of a pack of cigarettes, or a bit wider--and I originally thought it was a really cool old cigarette case. When I opened it, however:

I found the inside was blue velvet, with a small indentation, as if something should rest there. The first thing that came to my mind was a monacle, as it's about that size and shape, but really, a monacle box? I didn't think much on it, though, as I was very interested by the objects I found inside.

There are two stamps, one American, one Danish. I did a Google search, but couldn't find either of them. I found some 5 cent stamps with Washington on them from the 60s, but they are different than this one. Any stamp folks out there who can help me?

The really crazy thing, though, is the tiny locket. You can't see it very well, due to my poor photography, but it contains two very old looking pictures, one of a man, one of a woman. If my history is right (and honestly, who knows?), the pictures are late 19th century.

What do you think? Any ideas on the origins or timeline of this strange box and its contents?

Editing to add: Thanks to a tip from Coloradolady, if found the US stamp--turns out it is this one, which was made from 1916-1922!

I have another mystery for you!

Last week, I thrifted a box of doll house kitchen furniture. There is an original shipping label on it from Sears, saying that the furniture cost $17.92 and the shipping was $0.39. There is no indication of a furniture brand or anything that I can find, though.

This is the set. It's painted wood, and includes a table, two chairs, a fridge with a top freezer (the freezer has a sort of wooden shelf in it as well), a unit with a sink and cupboards underneath, and a unit with a stove with electric burner stickers, an oven window sticker showing a pie baking, and a bottom drawer.

I forgot to get a picture of the box by itself, but you can sort of see it in this detail from a larger picture:

So what do you think? Anybody recognize these pieces?