365 Days Of Junk - Day 166

Elpa Automaton Singing Bird

This REALLY is one of my most unique finds/purchases EVER! REALLY! I found this guy at a local Goodwill Store. I picked it up because it was so quirky and even a bit ugly. The bottom reads ELPA made in West Germany. So, I looked it up. What did we do before smart phones?????

Anyway, it turns out that this is an automaton, and these are kind of rare. You wind the key on the bottom, like a music box, and the bird moves from side to side, his tail flicks, and his beak opens & closes while he chirps/sings.

As you can see from the pics, he is a red bird and is covered in real feathers. The cage is metal, probably brass, with a whitish band around the bottom. There is purple velvet on the bottom inside of the cage, and some artificial greenery in there too. Awesome find, right?

365 Days Of Junk - Day 165

Metal Serpent or Dragon Candle Holders

These are metal serpent or dragon shaped candle holders. I'm not sure what kind of metal they are. Maybe wrought iron that someone painted black. I'm really not sure but they were too fantastic to pass up (especially when I only paid a few dollars for the pair).

365 Days Of Junk - Day 164

Orange Balloon-Shaped Vase

This is an orange glass vessel of some sort. I guess it's a vase. It looks like a balloon to me. What do you think? Maybe like a water balloon? Do you see how the top looks like the opening to a balloon?

365 Days Of Junk - Day 163

Pocket Knives

This is a find that I really wish my maternal grandfather was alive to see! He would have loved them, and probably even had some like them! (I am a total sucker for items that remind me of my childhood and particularly of my grandparents!!!!) It is a lot of pocket knives. They were all bagged together, in a ziplock bag of course. There were 14 when I purchased them, but only 13 are pictured. I let Alex have one. Some of them are marked and some are not. I think 2 are Boy Scout knives. The one that Alex wanted was a Craftsman (I think). I found them in a thrift store and they were such a steal! I paid less than $20 for the entire lot of them!

Here's a good tip: a lot of times, you can get a REALLY good bargain when they package items together. It usually means that the individual pricing them items was unaware of the value of the individual pieces. That's just between you and me... OK?

365 Days Of Junk - Day 162

Vintage Osterizer Blender

This is a vintage Oster Beehive blender. It's chrome! I think it's a good mate for the Hamilton Beach stand mixer.

365 Days Of Junk - Day 161

Vintage Hamilton Beach Stand Mixer

I love cooking, even though you can't really tell it from this blog. So, I also love finding vintage kitchen items. This is a Hamilton Beach stand mixer, with all of the parts. And... It works! And... It's chrome! How fantastic is that?

As If By Magic, A Whale Appeared

The other night, I was playing around painting on heavy duty art paper, instead of canvas. I was just painting abstract shapes, when this whale appeared almost out of no where. I love it when that happens! Does that ever happen to you?