Glass Confession #2 ~ It Isn't Always Pyrex

True, Pyrex is my first glass love, but I've branching out just a tiny bit lately. It started when a few Glasbake pie plates came home with me, and then some sweet embossed custard cups, and then these Fire King bowls grabbed me at the glass museum parking lot sale:

What can I say?  They were yellow and only $1 a piece.  They've been well-loved and I will continue to use them.  I'm insisting that they not go into the dishwasher despite their less than pristine exteriors  (things were so much easier when we didn't have an automatic dishwasher!).  They are a lovely size and feel wonderful in the hand ~ they remind me of Japanese rice or soup bowls in their shape and heft.

Sunday another non-Pyrex piece of glass came home with me.  Really, who could leave home a Glasbake covered loaf dish?

It's in perfect condition, no chips at all, and with my coupon it was only $3.50! I don't need it for baking but I do think it will look great filled with vintage sewing notions.

Glass Confession #1 ~ I Like the Clear Stuff

I love pretty much all Pyrex.  Yes, that means I collect clear as well as colored/patterned Pyrex.  I found these two custard cups (425 and 426) this morning for 15¢ at a rummage sale.  I had to scrub a tiny bit of mauve paint off the smaller of the two, using a toothpick and Pampered Chef plastic scraper, but now they are clean are ready to add to the cupboard.

In August I came upon a mother load of clear Pyrex pieces at my favorite thrift; all were vintage and ranged from pie plates to covered casseroles to utility dishes.  It was a 50% off day as well!  Someday I will start photographing those pieces and post them to the blog.  There are all in the pantry waiting to be used; I do use just about all of my Pyrex (at least all that I can get to, as I have more than I need, of course).

Completely unrelated to glass, I collect vintage hand-embroidered linens.  These lovely birds and flowers were found at the Assistance League thrift shop here in town, which is where I have found most of my pieces.  My collection is still very small and I have decided not to troll online auction sites for more; I like to think I am rescuing these pieces from obscurity and giving them a good home.  As a person who does handwork I know the amount of work that goes into such pieces and I absolutely hate it when I see them at thrift stores, cast away by those who don't know their value (sentimental, not monetary).

A Little Friday Pick Me Up

We just got home from a week of vacation at the beach; however, it was a week with absolutely zero thrifting.  No consignment or thrift shops, no yard sales, and no antiques stores.  Oh, the shops were there, but this was a family vacation so we spent our time at the pool and beach.  I convinced myself that any Pyrex I might have found would have been ridiculously overpriced since we were in such a tony area.

After lunch today I told Papa I wanted to go to one antique mall and offered to drop him home first, but he came along with me.  I was determined to come home with something Pyrex and toward the end of my shopping I came across these two little babies.  They are lime green 080 individual casserole dishes and I found them in the same dealer booth where I found my 2.5 quart Daisy casserole dish.  I'm starting to know which dealers have Pyrex regularly.  These weren't a bargain at $4.95 each but they go for more than that online, so I feel okay about it.  I almost never see colored Pyrex at the thrift store.

These will be perfect for individual apple crisps or meat loaves.  The clerk wrapping my package suggested leftovers, but I had to laugh and tell her that I am past pretending that I will ever have enough leftovers to fill all the Pyrex I buy.

Caught!

Uh oh!  When I joined The Pyrex Collective this week I had no idea that this blog was going to be linked to.  After all, I have lots of other blogs, LOL.  Anyway, today I was visiting all of the linked blogs and I saw one called Warm Bellies and I thought to myself, that's sounds awfully similar to one of my blogs and lo and behold, the link brought me here.  And now I feel like the person whose mother-in-law stopped by without calling first because I sure as heck wasn't expecting company!

So the blog is rather boring right now ~ the template, the colors, the dearth of pictures.  I can only promise to clean it up soon and be ready to go closer to the end of September.  Oh, I'll post before that because I love to blog (and I love when bloggers update daily), but I am terrible at getting photographs posted.  Really good photographs require dragging out a very large camera and then transferring the photos using a CF card reader.  It's too much trouble, really.  Someone should make a fantastic digital point-and-shoot with a pop out USB connector like the Flip video camera has ~ nothing to carry or lose.

That photo up there?  It's an iphone photo of my first piece of colored Pyrex.  At least, I think it was my first piece, or at least the first piece I purchased for myself.  I'm pretty sure I let a Spring Blossom Green loaf pan leave my home many years ago just because I didn't really know what I had, or I didn't care because I wasn't interested in colored Pyrex at the time.

I chose Daisy for my first piece because I happened upon it at Goodwill and it was yellow.  It is as simple as that.  This piece was my lone piece of colored Pyrex for at least a year, and then her big sister the 2.5 quart covered casserole joined her, and then I got caught up in collecting Pyrex refrigerator dishes (known as fridgies), but that is another story.

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 2, Day 3

Academics: Assigned Reading, Literature, Math, Grammar, Spelling, Writing, US History, Free Reading

So far Spelling City seems like the best spelling program ever invented.  Daily my boys are jumping up and down excited to get their spelling time on the computer.  This is the first year we have ever not fought over "spelling", since early Waldorf-style "spelling" didn't require any testing.

The real test, of course, will be whether or not their spelling actually improves.  Right now they are breezing through easy Dolch word lists, but that is the only way I can evaluate where they are in their spelling, and eventually we will get to harder words.  I did sign up for the premium version so that I can see how they are doing.

I don't feel too badly that they are doing their spelling on the computer; a friend told me that her 3rd grader also types in spelling words during testing, and that their local school doesn't focus on penmanship at all.  It's a school with good funding, I surmise, as my MIL's school doesn't have these devices.  I still haven't found out exactly what they are called; they have no monitors only a small display that shows the words typed.  This Calcuscribe might be it, or maybe the Neo2 from AlphaSmart.