October Inspiration

Half Price Books had their annual dallas clearance sale this wkend-so we went over friday afternoon.
This time nothing was over $2-i guess they made it easier on themselves.  They used to group the books very specifically which i'm sure took forever to set up.  Now it's more 'general' so you have to dig.  The digging is part of the fun.
  I looked at an aisle of "art" then headed back to the vintage table. Well worth the look.  After several hours and looking at all the books we could stand, Gary left with 3.  Me-18.  Like i need more books.  I tell myself when i go to antique malls, estate sales, flea markets-no books.  I don't listen to myself very often.                                                                                                                                                                              

      Here are the 18 that i brought home.  some i wanted for the covers-to use in projects and some for my halloween/children's book collection.

here are my 18 books

        

 On Saturday, we headed out to Canton Tx  for Trade Days.  I haven't been out there in 1 1/2 yrs. The weather was nice-got a little warm at times but mostly pleasant.  We were looking for "parts" to use to make some light fixtures.  Gary wants to try his hand at making some-probably to sell.   Some of the rusty things you see in the picture will go towards those projects.  I picked up a few things for myself too~that's what canton is for :)   In the middle of the picture you can see 2 little rectangles (didn't photograph well)
they are miniature photo's that came from england.  I had never seen any this small before so i had to have them.  They aren't great photo's-very faded but still very cool.

 Walking by a booth i noticed some stacks of books. If you have never been to Canton, this is not unusual to see a pile of books in various booths.  I don't always stop to look but I felt compelled to look here. I looked at a few and as i started to walk away a man told me they were .50 each.  Well, for that price, i HAD to look.  Glad I did.  I found 5 vintage books I figured I could use in art projects-either the covers and/or the pages.  The geography book was just plain cool.  (more on that in a bit)  I took my 5 to the other guy and he said i could have them all for 2.00.  Score!
  Gary and I don't always look at the same pace so sometimes I wander ahead-I found a few things when we weren't together.  He wanted to see what I found.  He doesn't know that you buy during the day~then you show and tell afterwards.  Told him we would look at it all when we got home.   
    When we got home is when i noticed the geography book was printed in St Louis, Mo.  (my second home) so that made it more special to me.  Then i opened it up to see the copyright date.  We figured early 1900's.  Those pages were missing so I looked at one of the maps-1895.  Then i found school papers done by the girl that had the book Zula .  2 other books of my 5 had her name written in them too. (the cover with stripes and the physics book.   That was where i found her last 9th grade report card promoting her to the 10th grade.  another score~ and a letter to her grandmother was in the geography book.

letter dated 1899

These are two of her papers that were in the book.  there were several maps that she had drawn and colored.  (i still remember when my son had to do those)   One of her papers was dated Oct 1st-and we found it on oct 1st...