Lobster Shorts thrifting

Thrifted Silver Candelabra

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.

Lobster Shorts cooking

New Plants – Burger Salad – A Thrifted Shirt

It poured rain for most of the weekend and we spent a lot of time indoors. We went out for breakfast with friends and I wore the top I got from the thrift shop. It’s really cute and I like how it fits. I found a lot of wonderful things, I’ll post the video link below if you want to see what else I found

On the way home from breakfast, we stopped at Canadian Tire to get some things for around the house. I ended up in the plant department… of course.

The scrappy plant on the left was on clearance for $0.49. I have no idea what it is, but it looked sad and near death. I wanted to rescue it. The middle plant might be a fish bone cactus and the right I’m hoping is a goldfish plant. The two to the right were $4.99. The little pots were so tiny and would dry out too fast.

I didn’t have very many small pots, so my hoya on the right graduated to a bigger pot before it should have, but it will be happy in there. I don’t love the two pots on the left, they are nursery pots, but they’ll work for now. The mystery plant has been put in indirect sunlight, and the other three are in a sunny window.

My rock tumbler completed the second week of tumbling. The rocks are very smooth but still dull. They’re now halfway done.

The rocks are back in the tumbler with Step 3. Steps 1 and 2 were gritty, while Step 3 is more powdery. It’s back on the tumbler for another 7 days. It’s so fun to see how they change. Jay decided putting bolts in the rock tumbler isn’t a good idea. He felt the threads were getting too beat up in there, but it was fun to try.

I’m trying to eat healthier (although I ate a bagel while I wrote this) and instead of having a burger, I experimented with turning a burger into a salad. It was good! I will be skipping the bun in the future (maybe not weekends though). I used a Beyond Burger and pan-fried it and used the spatula to turn it into little pieces. For the salad dressing, I used two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, one tablespoon of avocado oil, around 1/2 tablespoon of Dijon, some salt and pepper, and half a shallot. In the salad I put in tomato, cheese, and romaine. I put a dollop of hummus on the top and a spattering of spicy mayo and had it with a scoop of potato salad. Jay loved it too. We did notice how sweet the potato salad was because of the really vinegary dressing. I didn’t even realize they would have put sugar in there. I loved the salad and will be making it again. It’s a super easy meal for commuting days – skipping the potato salad.

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 thrifting, vintage

Thrift Store Finds

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.

Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, decluttering, Food, weight loss

Breakfast, Cards, and Organization

This weekend the weather was beautiful. It’s finally starting to feel like Spring out there. The mornings were frigid and the afternoons were warm, which I hear is great maple syrup weather. For the big weekend breakfast I made scrambled eggs, with air fryer home fries, blueberries, and humming bird cake.

The humming bird cake came from Kitchen Smidgen and it was delicious. We’ve had it before, it’s one of the best things they make. Eggs and home fries are my favourite weekend splurge. I’ve been sticking with the weekday intermittent fasting. I’m still down three pounds, which is not bad since my birthday week benders of surprise dinners and a couple bags of chocolate eggs (that are gone now). I had gained back the weight and lost it again.

My bathroom drawer finally irked me into decluttering it.

It was a non-functional disaster. My bathroom drawers usually end up this way. Nothing organized, just dumped in a pile in the drawers. Before the pandemic, I was scouring the antique shops looking for decorative boxes or tins to tidy them up. I haven’t been back to one since the virus, I’m not sure they are even open. On Friday, I went on a 12km walk, during that walk I ended up at the MCC Thrift Shop in Kitchener.

This chocolate tin was there for $2.00 and ended up being $0.50 at the check out. It was perfect because the drawers aren’t very deep and this tin is thin. I put all my make up into it. It holds a lot

The drawer looks a million times better. It’s organized and functional.

I’m thrifting a couple things. A facial massager and a makeup bag. I’d like to refinish the bathroom vanity, it has a lot of superficial damage, but that’s a project for a different day.

I made some cards this weekend. I’ll post a video below of what I made and the products I used to make them.