Kentucky Lake Treasures

One of the best things about early spring at the lake is walking along the shoreline while the lake levels are still low.  They haven't started raising the water to summer pool yet, so we like to walk the shore and see what kind of treasures have washed up since last fall.

Yesterday we walked about 3 miles and found some good stuff.  Want to see?

Chablis was loaded down with goodies....

A nice boat seat cushion, 2 boat buoys, a huge fish basket, a bucket, 2 fake owls....

another bucket, assorted fishing lures and bobbers, a 1964 Pepsi bottle in really good condition, a glass Gatorade bottle from the mid 1980's, an old mason jar, a brown bottle of some kind, a cool looking blue beer bottle and an old tin "Mr. Peanut" lid....

And a gorgeous turtle shell.  This one is a beauty!

I love walking around and looking for treasures.  I never know what we're going to find.

Estate Sale Finds March 16, 2014

I love the arrival of spring - mostly because that means that the garage and estate sales will be starting up again.  I don't know about you, but I love digging thru other people's old stuff.  I can't help it, but if I'm driving down the street and I see an Estate Sale sign, my head whips around so quickly that I need to go visit the chiropractor.  Is there a garage sale with piles of junk  treasures spilling out onto the driveway?  Yep, you'll find me there, happily digging through boxes and dragging who knows what to the back of my car.  Sigh.....  I'm a junker and I'm afraid that I've passed the disease onto my daughter as well.

This weekend there were several estate sales in our area, so armed with small bills and my GPS, we took off, giddy with anticipation.

Here's what we found this weekend.  A wooden magazine holder that we've already filled with old license plates and a really great old crate.  I love crates that have the original wording on them...

.....and a great graphic on the side gets my heart thumping.   This crate was sitting in a back corner in a basement and was filled with a bunch of junk.   The crate wasn't even marked for sale, so I emptied it and offered to take it off their hands.  Can you hear my heart wildly beating?

I haven't seen a wooden cheese crate in awhile and the lid on this one moves easily.  The wooden shoe stretcher was a fun find and reminded me of the old shoe makers shop that I used to visit when I was a kid.  I picked up the metal power tool box because I loved the graphic on it and it's already filled with some of my own hand tools.  And I have a hard time resisting any type of Pyrex.  This bowl was an Americana edition and is headed to the lake house.

We found this oar standing in the corner of a garage.   It's colored with magic marker and is ugly as hell, but with a few coats of paint, this is going to look great!   I'm picturing it hanging over the kitchen cabinets at the lake house.

The small square is the top of a wooden crayon box.  I wish the box itself was there as well, but truth be told, this box cover was inside the aforementioned wooden cheese crate.   Probably my favorite find of the weekend was these 3 frames.  Chablis had originally picked them up because the frames are gorgeous - dark, well seasoned and sturdy wood.  I snatched them out of her hand and was excited to see that the frames held original Riverboat pilot's licenses, dated from 1948, 1952 and 1961.  A very cool find!

I always like finding old license plates to use in various projects.  Here we picked up 2 from the Illinois bi-centennial year and a couple of out of state plates.

 I fell in love with this old syrup jar.  I'm going to use it for sugar.  It cleaned up spotless too.

And finally a small cast iron egg pan.  This was in terrible condition, crusted with grease and rusted beyond belief.  Fortunately, I know how to clean them up and this beauty is now sitting in my kitchen, waiting to fry up some over-easy eggs!

So that's our finds for this weekend.  It's the thrill of the hunt -  I never know what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I see it.  I'm always saying "Oh, I can sell this" and then I get it home and end up keeping it for myself.  Is that a sickness?  Does anyone else do that?

Treasures Are In the Eye of the Beholder

The other day when we were beach combing on the shores of Kentucky Lake, it got me to thinking about the different little "treasures" we find there.

We find a lot of sea glass, or maybe I should call it lake glass.  I was asked why we find so much of it here.  I mean, Kentucky Lake is not an ocean, so why do we find so much of it here?  There are actually only 2 specific beaches here that we seem to find it on.  At one time there were several different towns on the land where Kentucky Lake is now located.  Starting in 1938 they built the dam, emptied the towns and flooded the region to form Kentucky Lake.  I'm guessing that some of the glass is from the homes and businesses that used to be in this area.  Another possible explanation is that this is a very recreational lake.  There is a lot of camping on the shores, tons of boats on the lake, and lots of people who, unfortunately, toss their pop and beer bottles in the water.  At any rate, here's some (just a fraction) of the pieces we've picked up....

This next picture shows what looks a lot like an arrowhead, crinoids, (which we find by the hundreds) and a piece of quartz.....

The crinoids are interesting.  They are fossils and you can read about them here.  They look like little cheerios.              We take the crinoids and string them into necklaces, which we found out are actually called "St. Cuthbert's Beads."

We also find a lot of shells, although they aren't nearly as plentiful or as beautiful as the ones I find in Florida.  We still use them to decorate picture frames and wooden boxes....

We also find geodes on occasion.  It's fun to look inside them and see the tiny crystals.

But my absolute favorite find so far is this hunk of sea glass that my son found a couple of years ago.  I know the exact spot we were at when he found it and I can still picture him running out of the water, clutching it in his hand, so excited at finding this for me.    It's the bottom of a Diamond Crystal shaker salt jar, it's a beautiful green color and you can clearly read all the words....

We have gone back to that same spot numerous times, searching through the water, trying to find more, but so far, no such luck.  I just think it looks really cool.

I also like driftwood, so we made this with a couple of pieces and a huge clam shell that we found.....

Another favorite find is my turtle shells.  I placed a quarter there so you could get an idea of the size of them.  We found all of them around the lake, after the turtle had died, and in various states of decay.  We place them in the garden for a few months and let the ants pick them clean, then wash them up.  I love looking at them.

So there you have it - a glimpse at some of my treasures.  Some day I'm gonna be dead and gone and people are probably going to say "What the heck was she collecting all this crap for?"  LOL!  I don't care.  It's what I like, it's interesting.  I'll find stuff and then look it up on the internet and learn more about it.  I just never know what I'm going to find on my next little excursion around the lake.