thrift store find

Saturday Dick and I visited the thrift shops on Poway road. Neither of us really had any particular purchases in mind. We were considering the possibility of finding possible furniture projects - maybe something mid-century that we could fix up, but no luck there. So instead we fell into our regular thrift store routine.

Usually, Dick can't help but peruse the electronics - finding old film cameras, slide projectors, kitchen accessories, etc. There was a time when he collected film cameras and accessories. But now I think he enjoys just looking at them for the most part.

I, on the other hand, can't resist going through the coffee mugs. There's something that intrigues me about the kinds of things that people throw away. Of course there are the obvious discards that have company names and logos. While those don't ordinarily appeal to me, Dick recently found a mug with the original rainbow Apple logo. Being the Mac fan that he is, he uses that one at work. I'm always surprised to find the mugs that say "Worlds Best Dad" or the ones with sentimental poems on them. You have to wonder - did someone struggle with the decision to donate it? Was the original recipient of the mug even aware of the fact that it was given away? Was there a tragedy where everything in an estate was donated?

We once found one with fun, colorful cartoon graphics saying "Friendship is a rainbow between two people." The sweetness of it was just too much to resist. We do our best to make our manliest male friends drink out of that one whenever possible. And perhaps the best find ever was the pink mug filled with drawings of bunnies. It is only on close inspection that one can see that all of these bunnies are doing unspeakable acts (the kinds of things we expect from bunnies). I think the thing that made that find the most surprising was that we found it in a thrift shop run by a Christian church.

Saturday I found this one. I love it's simplicity and even I like the fact that the design isn't completely straight. It makes me wonder where it came from. Who used it before? Why did they trash it? While I'll never know the answers to these questions, I will enjoy drinking my tea and coffee out of it for years to come.


To take the photo above, I placed the mug on the tall armoire in my bedroom because I liked the light there. However, I'm just barely too short to get the angle I wanted. And standing on my toes was a little too shaky for the available light photo I wanted to take. So I grabbed the closest pair of high heels I could find and slipped them on to get the shot. It was only afterward that I glanced down and realized how silly my feet looked. Grungy pants, two very different shoes, and my not-so-impressive self pedicure. I don't really know why I'm sharing the image. I guess I just thought it was amusing.

For those of you who don't know me well, don't worry about the red mark on my right toe. It's just a birth mark. :-)

Have a great week. Try seeing the beauty and amusement in ordinary things around you.