Summer Fun Thrift Share Giveaway

For the second week in a row, I'm a day late with Thrift Share Monday, but Tuesday isn't too far off the mark so I'm just going to roll with it. Congratulations to Ryan for winning last week's giveaway for the mid century teak snack trays!  You can check out her thoughtful, honest, and periodically self-depracating posts about life and family over at her blog The Woven Moments.  She has an engaging writing style and I always look forward to what is coming next (one of my favorite posts - and one that I think every new mother, or friend visiting a new mother, should read - can be found here).

I haven't done any new thrifting between last week's Thrift Share post and today (I will share some goodies from recent thrifting adventures that I haven't previously posted, though), but I have been by Goodwill donation centers several times.  This past weekend Running Man challenged us to clean out the garage.  Although it started as a family affair, I have to shamefully admit that most of it was stuff that I had accumulated from one place or another and shoved in the garage to deal with "later"...procrastination, the bane of good intentions.  After soccer games wrapped up on Saturday Running Man, E2B, and Princess Wonder dragged everything that was just sitting on the floor (insert properly abashed look here) out into the driveway. I don't have any before pictures of the garage (they were too quick for me), but here is a picture of the embarrassingly large quantity of stuff once it had been dragged outside.

This doesn't even include all of the play equipment that we had stored on shelves and in drawers (much of which found a new home after the weekend). 

This is only one of several piles that was destined for Goodwill or the free/too-good-to-throw-away section of the local dump.

When all was said and done, I took three trips to Goodwill, one to the free section of the landfill, one to a family member's house to share goodies like a wagon and trike that my kiddos had outgrown, and - trying to purge with a purpose - I ventured to a variety of other places that I thought could make good use of the many things we weren't using.

Now that I've shared my junky garage clean up, onto those previously thrifted finds I promised.  The first is this little saucer.  It is a bit hard to tell from this photo, but the leaves on the flowers around the edge are green and robin egg blue.  I am a sucker for robin egg blue on vintage dishes - it just makes me happy!  I bought it because I bought a pair of tea cups some time ago that I had hoped would coordinate with this saucer, despite the fact that the patterns are different.

I'm not crazy about the design, but I really dig the colors!

They look okay together, but I think that I need to keep searching for a better match.  Does anyone know what either of these patterns are?

I found all of the books pictured below during the same trip.  Fostering empathy and compassion in my children is one of the most important things that I think I can do as a parent so I'm interested to check this pair of books out to see what they have to offer.

"A Thousand Small Sparrows: Amazing Stories of Kids Helping Kids" (you can read the story about Sparrow Clubs USA here) and "Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades (from a training kit for early childhood educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance Project)

These are a blast from the past - I remember the Mr. Men and Little Miss series by Roger Heargreaves from my own childhood.

Miss Intrepid is a particular fan of this series, so I was thrilled to find these three.    One of them might remind me of her just a bit (I'm looking at you, Little Miss Chatterbox!).

This next one was one of those finds that made me stop in disbelief - and then rush to the shelf in excitement - when I saw it.  I first read about the Tightwad Gazette on Apron Thrift Girl's blog.  After seeing this post I checked a copy of this three-in-one volume out of the library and really enjoyed perusing it.  I couldn't get through it in the time allotted to me as a borrower and I have been keeping my eyes open hoping to find a copy for myself that I could look through at a more leisurely pace.  So, as you might imagine, I was thrilled to see it sitting on the shelf at the thrift - I fully expect to recoup my $3 with some of the thrifty ideas just waiting to be discovered inside!

"The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle" by Amy Dacyczyn

And now for this week's giveaway - a pair of vintage roller skates made by the Globe Skate Corporation in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.  They are in excellent condition and I bought them about a year ago at my local Goodwill thinking that I could teach the kids to skate.  Fast forward to this past weekend when I found them, used only once in all that time, during our purge in the garage.  Could I use them to teach the kids to skate?  Absolutely.  Is it likely to happen?  Despite my best intentions, probably not.  Plus, we're not the most coordinated bunch around here, so in the absence of anyone expressing a serious interest in learning to skate we'll not risk any sprained ankles for the summer.  Which leads to this week's giveaway.  These skates are really fun and funky and I want to pass them along to someone else who can put them to good use this summer, even if that means using them for purely decorative purposes.

The skates measure approximately 3" wide and the length can be adjusted from about 8"-11".  The red leather straps appear to be original and are in great condition.

I tried to do some research on the Globe Skate Corporation, but other than eBay and Etsy listings for other vintage skates, I came up with a blank.  Does anyone know anything about the company?

Gratuitous red wheel shot because they're beautiful and they remind me of the wheels on the roller skates of my youth.

The simple mechanism on the bottom of the skates that allows you to adjust the length.

If you would like win these skates for yourself or a friend, please leave a comment between now and midnight on Saturday, June 11th.  I will randomly select a winner (we've been employing the have-a-kid-pull-the-winner-out-of-a-hat method around here) and notify them by next week's Thrift Share post. I'm linking up today to Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday (congratulations to Selena for her five year "blogiversary"!).

Happy Tuesday, friends!

"I have recently taken up two new sports: roller skating and ankle spraining, in that order.  I am getting quite good at both."  ~Miles Kington