Vintage Sesame Street Books

I have always loved Sesame Street, but since my nieces were born, my siblings and I have been sharing our old Sesame Street toys with them and singing songs from the 80s. How can you go wrong with Ernie's la la la song and the Manamanah guys?

I recently came upon a huge throng of vintage Sesame Street books from a combination of a school booksale and Value Village. For 20 cents I picked up a great condition copy of this old colouring book:



I think it's so clever how they have called it the Museum of Monster Art and the drawings inside are hilarious for kids and adults alike.

I really like the idea of Bert being the serious, judgemental fellow while Ernie is such a fun-loving goof.



Speaking of Ernie, I found a "I Can Do It Myself" book in great condition.



But the real thrill for me was when I came upon the old version of the Sesame Street Dictionary... in perfect condition for $1.99!



I understand the book was originally published in 1980, and a reprint was issued with a new cover in 2004 showing the nouveau popular guys, including Elmo. I love how each page is so colourful and has both humour and educational content. The illustrations are great.



I am tempted by the idea of a craft project with featured Letters of the Alphabet. I imagine this as having the Letter Bar across the top and rectangular cutouts of say, 6-8 dictionary terms under that letter. I think if they were neatly arranged under some photo matting and put in a plain frame, it would look great in a kid's room either on the wall or on their door!



This would involve cutting up this great book, so I don't know...

Christmas in May

A couple weekends ago, we had a nice outing at St. George's school "Mayfair". St. George's is an all boys, high end private school in the lush Dunbar neighbourhood in Vancouver. This is no regular school fundraising event. They were selling raffle tickets where the grand prize was a $40,000 BMW Coupe!

The fair includes many components - a midway for kids games, the international food fair, tents dedicated to plant sales, book sales, homemade baked pies, a "fashion mall" with lots of lightly used brand name clothes, and my personal favourites, the Marketplace with art, jewellery, household goods, and toys.

Aside from the delicious Apple Crumble pie that we brought home, we scored some great deals. My favourite find was a bag of wooden Christmas ornaments. Look at the cute faces on the angels!



Now that we are starting our new home together, I am really excited about building up my cachet of ornaments for many Christmases to come. These remind me of ones we hang every year at my parents' house. A bagful of these bells and angels was mine for 50 cents.



Hubby also scored a great find. He and his brother always pined after a slot car set when they were kids, but it was just too expensive. We definitely didn't have that problem at Mayfair, as we spotted a big cardboard box labelled $3 on the side that contained a double loop set with remote controls and a yellow Mustang. We know this is the Artin Wheels of Fire set because we found the exact same set at a Salvation Army store in February with the original box... but no cars... for $10.



So for a total of $13 we have gotten ourselves a set that would have cost a couple hundred dollars brand new. Woohoo!



We also picked up a couple of other knicknacks like some supplies for my edible gardening project. I picked up a little terra cotta pot for 10 cents and it's happily housing my Little Marvel heirloom bush pea seedling. I also got a bright blue melamine tray that is perfect for holding my seedling trays!