Lobster Shorts antiques, vintage

Antiquing – One Winner

Antiquing is a fun adventure. I went to the St Jacob’s Market Road Antique mall. I can spend hours browsing through the stalls. I usually stay in the aisle and peak in. I’m terrified of breaking something. I’m clumsy afterall. I documented the things that caught my eye and that I loved the most. I’m going to post the photos of my favourites. There is one winner in the bunch. I hope you enjoy guessing which one I take home. I’ll post the winning item at the end.

These beautiful paperweights were mentioned in my last post. I love the blue one most of all, the colour is stunning. I’m sure the most sought after paperweights are the ones without air bubbles, but I loved this one. I could stare into that deep deep blue for hours. The purple one is pretty too.

This tomato tea pot set… would I buy it? Not in a million years, but it did make me smile. Adorable, fun to look at, but not my style. I hope someone else more whimsical than myself finds it and takes it home. I hope they laugh about it with their friends whenever they use it.

In this stall it was the two perfume bottles in the back that I liked. Both are very cool. The spikey one has been carved to look like a building inside the stopper and the other I love it for the big chunky stopper. How can I resist a showy stopper?

These pretty peacock feathers

This gorgeous inkwell stationery stand! I believe it’s brass. This would be so beautiful on a desk. As someone who loves writing letters, this would be a great addition. Something I look for in antiques besides being beautiful, is the need to be functional. I want to use it.

I have no idea what these are, but they look neat. The tag said something about wine, or wine glasses. Seriously, what are these?

This super creepy shelf of ceramic serving ware. I can’t really fathom why I find them so disturbing, likely the lumpy shapes. It looks like the stuff of nightmares and I like it.

These beautiful wine glasses. The colour! Whoever put this shelf together is an artist. I love the way they paired everything together, the green and blue, the brass. I want to sit in a room like this and take it all in (sipping wine in one of these beautiful glasses of course).

What wonderfully cool bottles! Also a little creepy. Am I sensing a trend here? Do I like slightly creepy things? Of course I do. I like the way they are grouped together, my favourite being on the far right. The lumpy bottle. I love it.

This clown pin – another creepy cool thing I like.

Glass mermaid candle holders. Do I love them? Yes! Yes I do! I love them. Creepy? Yep. I really want them. I would put them on either side of the silver candelabra I have and they would look wonderful all together. What a wonderful candle light dinner. I REALLY want these.

This pretty perfume bottle with the glass stopper and gorgeous colours.

A beautiful hawk shirt/dress thing. A stunning item of clothing that I would love to own. It’s in fantastic condition and I would love wearing it.

These beautiful bottles. I love the colour of the purple one. I love all the big bottles. I have so many more items I loved and photographed, but this is getting long and there was only one winner… and it is….

This stunner of a perfume bottle! Yes she does have cracks and I love her anyway. The cracks seem to be on the inside only, the outside is as smooth as… well… glass. It’s going to store ink like my other bottle and I’m not concerned about it leaking.

The colours make my heart happy and the stopper has a silicone gasket which should help prevent ink from evaporating. As for the mermaid candle holders, I REALLY wanted them, but alas, they are out of my price range. They were $375 Canadian and they were fantastic. I’m not into mermaids, but I really liked them. One day… if they’re still there.

Lobster Shorts Food, thrifting, vegetarian, weight loss

Thrifting and Ravioli

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!

Lobster Shorts antiques, thrifting, vintage

Antiques, Amazon, and Thrifting. OH MY!

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.

xoxo Lobster Shorts

Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, Plants

Flowers, Cards, And All The Spring Feels

We had a taste of warm weather this week. It’s cooled back down, but the sun is still going strong. I saw my first robin of the year and one of the local florists had tulips. It’s screaming Spring. Come on double digit weather!

I made a couple more cards. I love love love this rain boot cutting die set. You can make shaker cards and different styles of boots with it. Above are a couple examples. I’m not very into shaker cards, so I rarely make them.

The cloud on this rainbow card is too rough, but other than that I like the card. I fussy cut out a cloud stamp. I would like to add some cloud cutting dies to my card making supplies so I wont have to cut them out myself.

I made a lot of galaxy themed mini envelopes, here are a few examples. As you can see I had a couple sailing themed ones on the mix too. They are perfect for gift cards.

Lastly, any my favourite of the bunch, is this high heel card. The cutting dies layer so perfectly. There were more options for the heel and inside lining, but I think the shoes looked perfect like this. I love the new background I used on this card. It’s perfect for sewing related cards, but it’s versatile enough it works as a general background. I’ll post a link below of a video of the supplies I used to make the cards, and where you can find them online.

Lobster Shorts lifestyle

Valentine’s, Long Weekend, and a Butt Load of Cards

This long weekend was a fairly quiet one. My sweet spouse picked us up a bottle of vintage wine and brought me beautiful white roses (one of my favourites). We made a charceuterie board and watched TV.

The charceuterie board was made with cheese from the Cheese Of The Month Club and they were all delicious. My favourite was the heart shaped cheese. We added fruit, veggies, crackers, pickles, dips, and chocolate almonds. It was delicious and low key.

My spouse had a sore back all this weekend, so we spent most of the time relaxing. We went for a walk through the woods for Family Day. It was cold and beautiful. I love the woods in Winter. There are a lot of hills. I want to hike through the woods and take a GT Snow Racer and sled down the hills through the trees (I feel that is breaking an age appropriate line, but sometimes you just have to try things).

I made a lot of cards this weekend. My favourite was the headphones girl and the slim line jar card.

This mason jar shaker was my least favourite. I love the lid, but I’m not very good at making shaker cards yet and I just didn’t like the look of it. I would have liked this better as a flat jar. I’ll post a video of the cutting dies I used below.

Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, happy mail

Mail Haul For The Week Of September 28/2020

This week my Halloween craft supplies came in, just in time for the month of October. It was a mix of cutting dies and stamps. I’m very excited to start playing with them. There was a lot of packages to open so instead of pictures, I did a video of me opening them. I hope to post some Halloween cards soon.