April - $10 Op Shop Hop

I really want to have a more vintage look this year. To do this I have made the decision to find as much cool vintage stuff as I can in the op-shops. I live in a city with LOTS of charity shops, LifeLine, St Vinnies, Salvation Army and the list goes on and on. I also think I live in a town with some really well dressed, stylish people, so there are some great finds to be had in the op-shops - if you are willing to look.


I think I am going to make Op-Shopping a bit of a hobby. I can afford to buy clothes, this is not a mission to dress on the cheap, I want items that are unique and not on the shelves of every department store. I don't want to look like the centrefold of a mass produced glossy catalogue delivered by a spotty youth on Tuesday afternoons. That is not me and I personally don't think it is cool.  I want to shake it up, keep it fresh and keep my good quality older items (like jeans, coats and bags) and mix them with newer more hip items from various places.


So.... This is my... 

April $10 Op-Shop-Hop. 

Look what I got for under $10!

I snaffled some very cute tan peep toe shoes out of the grasps of a lady whose feet were clearly too big, and she would have had nothing to wear them with anyway. They will be great with jeans or a skirt or even a dress and I shall look into the rule about wearing tan shoes with grey.... They were marked at $4. I also got Baby Cool a 'onesie'. It is in pretty good condition and I love that it has booties - he does not like have socks on. This was marked down to $1!

Now, you may have wondered about the little glass bowls.  This is where the cool comes in, there is a story behind these bowls. 


Over 40 years ago, my parents were married in a white church in the time of cool cars and scary sideburns. Someone gave them this set of bowls as a wedding gift.

Growing up these bowls held prawn cocktails, fish cocktails, trifles, dipping sauces for croquettes and many other things, as you can well imagine over 40 years!


Several years ago, my parents moved from a big rambling five bedroom house into a compact three bedroom duplex. Of course there was not enough room for all their junk, oops, stuff. So, mum started giving away some of her things to her beautiful daughters to look after/have.. I got this set of glass bowls - but as you would expect, over 40 years, not all the bowls survived.


I have used these bowls myself a lot over the years. The big bowl is just the right size for a trifle for 6, sigh, I only had 5 bowls! Before kids and even before we lived overseas, I found one of these little bowls; it was dusty and dirty and lurked in the very deepest darkest corner of a cupboard that housed all the spare mangy cups at a school I worked in. I nearly took it when I left. But that would have been wrong. How could I leave someone else without a full set of these bowls?


So, over the years I would poke through op-shops and markets from time to time looking for another little bowl.  Yesterday, I found one. Actually I found 6! But they were $4 each and I did not have enough in my alotted $10 to buy more than one. When I got to the counter however, the lady (who was, by the way, really grumpy) told me the glassware was half price - so I actually bought two - as you do!


I hope that one day, one of my beautiful daughters will love the story behind these bowls and will tell the story over prawn cocktails or trifles. I hope they appreciate having a spare one too, just in case!

Yesterday's op-shop-hop was fun, but I have a lot to learn. There are some real pros out there who were digging in bins up to their armpits to find the good loot down the bottom - I was not that gung-ho. I had to be somewhere else looking semi-decent.


I wonder what I will find in May?  I may need to have more of an idea of what I want to look for, I don't think I should be buying brick-a-brack every month, I have enough of that junk oops, stuff...