Treasure Hunting

Jake and I love summer for many reasons, one of which is yard saling. We take it very seriously. We scour the ads on KSL and Craigslist to make a list of the ones that will be held on the day we've chosen. Then, I stalk all of the addresses on Google street view (I know, creepy) to see which houses look like they would have the nicest stuff. Then we prioritize them based on this assessment, the location, and the starting time. This is how we map out our route. Once the hard work is done, it's time for the fun! Yard saling is like hunting for hidden treasure; unfortunately, the treasures are usually hidden amidst heaps of grimy junk. Hand sanitizer? Yes, please. But it's all worth it when we get our hands on a great find, like these Pyrex bowls.

We got all four for $4! That's only $1 for each bowl! The next weekend after this yard sale find, we went to the antique mall in Springville. We saw several sets of three bowls just like the blue ones we bought (only in a different design), and the cheapest ones were $30. We got ours for a tenth of that - what a steal!

At the antique mall, we also found the perfect additions to a project Jake started a long time ago. He came up with the idea to make little lamps out of jars from Ikea. He did some soldering and whipped up the circuitry for the light - it has a battery and a little switch to turn the LED on and off. He attached this to the lid of the jar, and we were planning to hide the inner workings by frosting the inside of the glass jar. This didn't work out quite how we planned. The frost paint ran like crazy. This is what it looked like without the frosting:

We weren't satisfied. You can see all of its insides. So at the antique mall, we picked up these guys:

They're called insulators, and apparently they were used for telegraph wires. Now that the telegram is a thing of the past (WHY IS THAT STOP), people go out to gather them for sale at antique malls. We think they look really neat with the screw threads and the green-blue glass; the shape reminds me of a lighthouse. We bought two of them, and guess what! They fit perfectly on the jar lids that Jake had attached the lights to. Voila! These lamps are way better than our original plan.

This is what they look like during the daytime on our bookcase:

And at night (sorry this picture stinks):

Day:

Day and on:

Night!:

Treasure hunting is so much fun!