I went thrifting recently and found a heavy, silver-plated candelabra set. I’m assuming they are antique, I’m guessing. I’m also making the assumption that because they are very heavy, they are good quality. Regardless of whether any of that is correct or not, I love them.
They came lightly tarnished
and coated in dust.
I spent some time polishing them.
There are some really hard to get to places. These arms(?) have ridges that I couldn’t get into. I’ll try Q-Tips next time. There are a few places where the silver is damaged and has a small knick.
They came out quite nicely and are currently displayed on the kitchen table with grey candles.
With the weight of them, they are going to work perfectly for outdoors. I won’t be worried about them getting knocked over as easily.
One thing I wasn’t aware of, was that the middle candle holder is designed to hold a bigger thicker candle than the outer parts. I had no idea. I also don’t know where to get this thicker candle. I am keeping my eye out for two spiral candles. I think they are thicker and would possibly work. I had no idea taper candles come in multiple sizes. I looked on Amazon, but they only list the candle length, not width. Alas, that means more adventures searching the thrift shops!
On a side note, my spouse just called our dog a wet swampy donkey, and I can’t stop laughing.
Disclaimer. I am not a medical professional, nutritionist, or anyone with any business giving diet/nutritional advice. This is my own personal journey. When it comes to yourself, seek the advice of a medical professional.
I found something out today and I’m annoyed. Hello Fresh comes packaged individually for each dinner and sometimes extra food items that need to stay extra cold are left out to be in contact with the ice everything is shipped in. Each bag has the number of calories per serving on it and I thought that the calorie count included everything in the whole dinner. I started making the sesame salad recipe for that evening’s dinner, I looked at the calorie count and it said 240 calories… What? I knew the Beyond Meat patty that was included in the dinner would have had around that many calories by itself. There was no way. I looked at the calories on the Beyond Meat package and it was around 300 calories per patty. There were two patties! LIES! So what I think is happening, is that Hello Fresh is only listing the calories in the bag and anything extra you need to add has its own separate calories. I’m so annoyed. The calories should be listed as the whole dinner. I get why they wouldn’t add the oil you use from your own kitchen into it because you can use whatever oil you choose and they wouldn’t have access to that info… but when it’s an included ingredient and it’s part of the recipe!? – Add it to the calorie count! Grrr. That means my calorie counts are under for the last two days, I never added oil either. Now I know and can adjust for the future. Don’t get me wrong, I love Hello Fresh and will continue to buy it, but that’s annoying. Also, no wonder I didn’t find the last two days very difficult.
As for what I ate today and the calories (this time the count is more correct), it started out with my usual egg on an English muffin and black coffee. I ran out of avocado so I had the sandwich with cheese. Pretty good, but I do love my avocado and missed it. Lunch was chili in a can, the same kind I’ve been having repeatedly for lunch, Sprague brand from Costco and really good.
On the way home I stopped at a thrift store hoping to find a teapot. Mine was broken over the weekend. I loved it and I’m so hopeful I can find another one. This one was special because you could heat it with a tea candle and your pot of tea would stay hot for hours. I really loved it. I did not find a replacement teapot, but I did find clothing items and these pope mugs! I did not buy the pope mugs, sorry.
Dinner was sesame salad from Hello Fresh, it was really good and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the calories right now. There were almost enough calories left for a dirty matcha latte. I knew I’d go over a bit but I wanted one.
I make my dirty matcha latte with a shot of Tia Maria Matcha, a cup of whole milk, and a teaspoon of matcha. It was pretty good. I prefer the latte sweetened with maple syrup and not Tia Maria, but sometimes I want the naughty version. I’ll post my daily calorie count in the chart below. I couldn’t find the calorie count for Tia Maria Matcha, so I used the calories for Tequila Rose, I figured they would be similar.
I’ve been thrifting and I’ve found things I love. I found fabric, kitchen gadgets, a wooden box for a future project, and, thread. For this post I’m going to focus on the two pasta gadgets I found and if you want to see the rest of the items, you can see them in the video I posted above.
I’ve had pasta on the brain lately. The last week I’ve been eating a lot healthier and I wanted to indulge this weekend. One of my favourite finds was this ravioli maker. It was five dollars and was a two-piece set.
I put it through the dish washer and it came out discoloured, but I’m sure it’s still fine.
There is a recipe on the back of the box, but I went with one I found online. I made sweet potato ravioli from Whitney Bond. I used both her pasta recipe and the sweet potato filling. It was SO GOOD!!!! 100% make again for us.
I didn’t read the instructions on the maker and didn’t realize I had to oil the ravioli maker plates first. You can see by the ravioli on the left how important that step was. I was super frustrated after the first batch. Everything stuck and I couldn’t get them off without mangling them. Lol, I remember saying to my spouse “No wonder this was in the thrift store. It sucks”. It didn’t suck. It was fantastic (once you oil it). After I applied oil to the plates and tried again it made a huge difference. The ravioli popped out so much easier. I still have to use scissors to separate the raviolis, but they came off the plate wonderfully.
To flavour the ravioli, I toasted walnuts in the pan and then heated up butter and tossed the ravioli with the butter sauce. I think the recipe site used the same ingredients for the sauce, but I just tossed this stuff into the pan and guessed at the measurements. I added a couple dollops of goat cheese to the top of it, but the goat cheese really wasn’t necessary. I’ll probably leave it off next time.
The spouse and I had a lovely lunch date. I even lit up the newly polished candelabra for the first time. It would definitely be more romantic for evenings in the dark, but I was too excited to wait. There will be many more romantic candlelight dinners in the future for this candelabra.
There was some dough left to try in the other pasta maker. This one was four dollars and I was really excited to try the macaroni plate. This thing sucked. It sucked bad. The pasta didn’t go through the plates very well because it kept getting sucked back up into the tube and not extruding. It could be as simple a case of the recipe I used was not meant for this extruder, but I’m not going to try again. It’s going back to the thrift store. And hey, they don’t even need to retag it!
I went on a bender and I loved it. I love antique stores. I could spend hours browsing through an antique mall. There are so many hidden treasures. Shopping at a thrift store is like that too, but cheaper. I could happily do either one That is how I spent last weekend. I will post a video of the treasures I found, below.
I found some amazing things. I’ve been looking for a candelabra for months now. I found this one:
I found it exactly as you see it, in a pile, for $28.00. I originally wanted one with a lot more detail and possibly in brass, but this one was in pretty good condition and it looked like it could be polished to like-new condition (I will post it again once I polish it).
I’ve been hoping to find a silver-plated brush/comb set in good condition. I did! It was in FANTASTIC condition!!! The brush seems to have ALL the bristles and the mirror is intact (and yes I fully plan on washing it and using it). I have plans to make a proper box for this brush set (also for a future video/blog). It was $12.95 and I was so happy I found it. I think it’s beautiful and I can’t wait to make the display box it deserves.
I spotted this tiny little perfume bottle for $1.99. It was full of a super strong perfume. I found this out when I opened the bottle in the car. It gave us a headache (both of us are sensitive to artificial fragrances). I’m going to wash it out and use it for essential oil blends I plan on mixing myself. FUN!
My other fantastic find (the above are all from Cobbletoq Antique Mall in London, Ontario) are these keys. I bought the very bottom one, the one that looks like it belongs to a queen. I’m 99.9999999% sure this key opens a lock to somewhere/something magical. It has to. I have a thing for unique/old keys and this one fit. I like to pick it up and imagine all the magical locks it opens.
This was one of the items I didn’t buy. It was from Memory Lane Antiques, in London. I have been looking for a soup tureen for years. It was only $15! It was huge and it was an almost, but not quite. I’m not into cherubs at all. It was so close to perfect, and just enough to make it a miss. Such a shame. I think someone else will love it very much though.
I bought a few more things that I posted in the video above that I didn’t take photos of. There is a set of salt and pepper shakers and an inkwell, from an antique shop in Grand Bend (Dale’s Antiques, I believe). My spouse really liked that store. He bought a vintage hook set to put the dog leashes on (I will have to give an update on our rescue dog! Yes we still have him and he is an angel. He’s in his furever home).
Also shown in the video is a sprouting jar. I don’t know why I felt the need to get another one, but I found it at a thrift store. I have a sprouting lid for mason jars and it works fantastic, except for the seeds that gel. They don’t drain in the mason jar and I think this will work much better.
As for the Amazon purchase, I bought a fog machine. It’s a strange item (which is probably why I loved it). Every year I plan on going all out for Halloween and every year I miss the opportunity. Usually, I run out of time. I have a fog machine now (although I still haven’t tried it to test it out) and I’m going to make a go of it this time around. I will decorate like Halloween vomited a spew of tacky, oversized decorations all over my home and it’s going to be incredible. As for the real reason I got the fog machine: A slightly creepy, nighttime, summer tea party, with fog. And hey, the candelabra fits in there too! I think it will be fantastic fun.
I spotted this beautiful teapot in the window of my local thrift shop during the lockdown and it stopped me in my tracks. I love vintage silver tea pots and this one was so unique to me. I’ve never seen one with a candle holder on the bottom, I was intrigued. Tea gets cold so fast and I love it piping hot. I wanted it.
I had to wait a week before the store opened and I could to pick it up. When I arrived at the store there was a lineup. A line up at the thrift store! I was surprised. I knew there were lineups in the cities, but I wasn’t expecting that here in my small little town. I waited and worried that it would be gone when I was finally able to get inside (I waited over 20 minutes in the line). I wouldn’t even look at it while I was waiting because I didn’t want to attract attention to it. I was in love with this teapot.
This is how it looks after three hours of polishing. I was elated that it was silver. I spent $6.00 on it! It’s still not glossy and mirror shiny yet and I’m not sure if it ever will be. I don’t know enough about silver to know these things. I’m going to polish it again in the near future and see if I can polish the rest of the dull and dark spots. The worst is the little cup that holds the candle, unfortunately you can’t really see it in these photos.
It’s not a 100% match to my tea set, but the whole of it is quite eclectic, the tray being from a different set as well. I don’t mind, I love it. I consider it a complete now. I wanted the two pots, one for coffee and one for tea. I have used it and although it didn’t keep the water piping hot, it did keep it warm/hot, which is good enough for me. It worked like a charm and I so love it. The neck of the teapot is on the slim side and I can’t get my hand in to wash it, but a bottle brush works and also stuffing the dish cloth in there and shoving it around works just fine too. I’m so happy I found it.
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