Second Time Around

Part of sustainable living is recycling, repurposing or passing things along that you no longer need or want. For me, even though I really don't like clothes shopping and find shoe and jewelry shopping pointless and quite boring, I absolutely love a good thrift store, second hand store, flea market, yard/garage sale or junk store. And the more disheveled,  the more fun the hunt is.

Just got these two to add to my Christmas decoration collection at an area thrift store for .49 each! I have been having to slowly obtain new ornaments after all mine were stolen a few years ago.

Second hand shopping doesn't have to mean junk!

Old Book

This is when dumpster diving pays off! I picked up a stack of very old books from the garbage.  They must not have been in there long, as they were still very near the top.

I gave an old medical book that was in the pile to a friend who is a nurse practitioner.  Another was a very early 1900s copy of House of the Seven Gables which still had a handwritten homework paper in it from the 1920's. Another was a youth's book from the 1870's. Some little kid wrote a letter to Roy Rogers inside of the cover which is quite a mystery as to why.

Finally, the book Old Christmas. I did a little research on it, and found it to be a first edition of the first American printing! And, while it does have value, I fell in love with the book, and it will go on my shelf.

I'll add that, when I saw the pile of old books, I just scooped them up and looked at them later in the day. As I love old books, when I see them being discarded, I just grab them, knowing what I don't want, friends and family will.

With this pile, it was none too soon, however, as not 5 minutes after I grabbed them, the skies let loose and it poured. Only a few minutes later, and these books would have been soaked and lost!

Christmas in July

As one of the cable stations is doing  Christmas in July programming on the weekends, I thought we could make a contribution as well.

This is last winter, looking out the kitchen sink window, into the back yard, from the 1840's NY farm house.