DANCING ON SATURDAY

The lady at the bagel place handed me my change, and something didn’t look quite right about it. I'd given her a fiver, and she gave me back four ones and some change. That’s about how much I think a bagel and cream cheese should cost—but not how much it does cost! I told her she’d given me too much back and gave her two of the ones. “I don’t know what I was thinking about,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re thinking you want me to buy a whole new wardrobe at yard sales this morning,” I told her, and she laughed and said I probably could.

Those extra two bucks would almost have covered my expenses this Saturday. Another day of minimal purchases, but a way fun outing nonetheless. Ummm, mostly fun. I managed to drop my bagel (cream cheese side down, of course) onto the front of my shirt not once but twice as I drove along. I was wearing my Queen of Fifty Cents shirt, the one with the big Q on the back that I picked up a few weeks ago. I think the cream cheese will come out, but if it doesn’t—well, the shirt cost fifty cents, so no biggie.

Saw several of the regulars. Carol, the white haired grandmother who buys toys for her grandkids and stuff for her son’s classroom (he teaches grade school in LA), was at the first sale I stopped at—and several others as well. The paper mache artist (don’t know her name) was there with her mom. Her mother always stays in the car but participates in whatever conversation is going on by calling out the window. She says I look exactly like her friend Alice, and since she can never remember my name (perfectly fair since I can't remember hers!) I've suggested she call me Not-Alice.

Part of the fun on Saturday morning is that you never know what you’ll encounter. Okay, that’s true of every day! My second or third stop wasn’t a huge sale, but everything was neatly marked with prices (unusual around here, usually you have to ask). I told the lady and her daughter I could see they had worked really hard to prepare. The mom laughed and agreed, then mentioned that their sale this time wasn’t just to clear out clutter, but to help pay for a dress for her daughter to wear in Irish dance competitions. “She’s getting pretty good, but I had no idea how expensive this was going to turn out to be,” she told me ruefully. I love Irish dancing (well, who doesn’t) so I asked the girl, Maggie, if she would dance for me. She demurred for a moment but her mom encouraged her, so she stood up straight and launched into a wonderful step dance. She was just delightful, and when she finished and I had applauded, I asked if she could do it again while I filmed her. I gave them my blog calling card and said I'd love to show Maggie dancing. So off she went again. I chimed in with a little mouth music and we were all grinning like fools when she finished. When I edited the film, I followed the real performance with a slow motion version. Here is my film Maggie Dances.

Now, a morning with a sweet girl dancing for you is wonderful enough, but at one of the last sales I met this lady.

She was having a great time playing her finger cymbals, and told me she’s started taking belly dance lessons and absolutely loves it. Yes, she can make that coin belt jingle! I pulled out the camera and snapped her picture, and she said oh, I should have been wearing my red hat. So I grabbed it off the table where it was for sale, and we shot again.
I mentioned meeting Maggie earlier and she said she had really wanted to do Irish dance, but there were no classes nearby, so she tried belly dance. Looks like it was meant to be.

My $3.25 this Saturday went for mostly practical stuff, like a bottle of dish detergent!
This vintage tablecloth is pretty stained, but hopefully the oxy cleaner stuff will work its magic once more.

I bought these mini-bundt pans to use with my latest cookbook.
I think I wrote about it before. Because I found a digital scale for fifty cents a while back, I got interested in cooking by weighing the ingredients instead of measuring, which led me to a book called Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. The beauty of this system is that you can make any amount, so I thought I'd try some small batches of cake batter in this pan. Though we do our best, sometimes it's hard for two people to eat an entire cake before it's past its prime (she wrote, as she took the last bite of slightly stale almond meringue cake from several days ago). My husband brought home three baskets of strawberries from the farmer’s market yesterday, which is going to inspire me to try these pans.

Found a couple of the tennis visors I like to wear in the car.
And finally, in the entertainment department, I picked up a copy of The Princess Bride, which I've always intended to read. Love the movie and have been told the book is way better (as they generally are).

Favorite overheard conversation of the day:

Mid-thirties guy to his wife or maybe sister as they sat in the garage, minding the sale: “Do you remember Mark Bindler from high school?”
She: “Maybe.”
He: “He’s a plumber now.”
She: “What did he look like?”
He: “Dark and handsome.”
She (enthusiastically): “Oh yeah, I remember him.”

PETS AND PAINT ON A PARTLY PITIFUL DAY

I think everyone expected today to be blazingly hot and wussed out of having their yard sales. The pickings were plum pitiful! I'm awfully glad I didn’t rush to get to the one neighborhood sales advertised on Craigslist. Pulled into the tract and on the first street passed one little boy selling a few toys he had laid out on a TV tray, then around the corner found three houses in a row with sales. As I pulled over to park I heard a shout of, “Mouse Lady!” and there was Nancy, the garager I wrote about back in September (where you can find out why she called me Mouse Lady).

I felt a tad disoriented because I was sure this was not the address where I'd seen her the last time she had a sale. But right away I found out why. “My husband got laid off and our house got flooded—all on the same day,” she told me. Now that was a rough day. “We’re staying here with some friends while the house gets fixed.” The entire downstairs must have mold removed and new drywall. Sounds awful—as does the unemployment.

I also saw another Saturday morning regular whose name I don’t know. She had a hip replaced in June and this was her first day back on the trail. She looked great and said the surgery and recovery had gone very well.

I’ve just decided I have no problems in my life! Secure job, pretty darned good health, nice husband, green convertible, sweet pets. And a delicious dinner in a little while of green beans we actually grew (we’re so proud of ourselves!).

Speaking of the sweet pets…I had to bite my tongue this morning to keep from saying something rude. I was chatting with a couple of guys at their sale about dogs—they had three generations of Golden retrievers hanging out in their garage. Chloe is 11…
…her daughter Jasmine is about 9…
…and Jasmine’s son Andy is 6.
I mentioned that both my dogs are mixes, and that Edward is a Springer/Rottweiler/shepherd mix, which I can never say with a straight face. Sounds like it could be awful, but Edward is a fabbo dog.
And it's okay for me to chuckle over his hybrid parentage, but this guy started going on about what a shame he’s not a purebred Springer. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Springers, but you couldn’t find a better dog than Edward—and he has none of the genetic problems that many breeds display. But I just gave their dogs a final pat and headed off before I said something unbecoming to a Queen—even if my kingdom is only Fifty Cents!

BTW, our Lizzie asks me to thank everyone for their good wishes after her recent surgery, and to let you know that the growth they removed from her mouth was benign. Whew!!
I spent a whopping $3.10 today and brought home:

A Smith & Hawken denim skirt, which I will probably shorten from the waist, as it currently drags the ground.
Still has its embossed hang tag, so must not have been worn. I went to their website when I got home to see how much it would have retailed for, and discovered they have just announced that all their stores will close by the end of the year. No more Smith & Hawken.

Coldwater Creek floral jacket of linen and rayon.

Glass snowman to display at Christmas. Thought it would look cool with a candle inside, but candles need air to burn. I'll have to watch out for some of those little LED candles.

And lastly, a bag of freshly picked lemons. Sorry, no picture, they’re in the fridge! The lady seemed very concerned that I get the fullest bag. I used one on angelhair pasta for lunch and it was so juicy and good!

Didn’t find this at a sale, but my thriftiest treasure of the day arrived in the mail. A couple of weeks ago I ran across an announcement that Glidden was giving away free paint, and I hurried to their website and asked for one.
IIt arrived today, a whole quart of interior latex. No idea what I'll do with it, but surely something will just beg to be painted robin’s egg blue someday soon!

THRIFTY INDEPENDENCE

I took one look at the yard sale ads this morning on Craigslist—or perhaps I should say I looked for the ads—and realized there was no point in even cranking up my car’s engine. So I've been having a lovely quiet morning at home, considering what to blog over. My first thought was to share past thrifty finds that are red…


…or white…


…or blue.


But then I started thinking about this being Independence Day. Independence is a big deal with me. I love knowing I can take care of myself and my loved ones. And a big part of feeling independent has been freeing myself from the retail world. I don’t watch television, which means I see fewer ads than practically anyone else in America. (Wow, freedom from advertising—there’s something to cherish!) I manage to conjure up enough things to want without having Madison Avenue nagging me to Buy More Stuff. And knowing that with a little patience I can find practically anything second hand has certainly freed our finances. Of course there are times when we have to buy something in a store in order to complete some task (my husband’s car can practically make the run to Home Depot without a driver by now!). But all of my ‘fun shopping’ takes place on people’s driveways, not at the mall, and if you’ve read much of my blog you’ll know how much fun I can have for very little cash!

There’s another freedom aspect to shopping second hand as well—you simply do not have to worry about your stuff. If it gets broken or stained or lost, who cares? I always think about a very nice pair of artist-made ceramic earrings I bought for (you guessed it) fifty cents. I wore them often, and then one of them disappeared. Looked everywhere, couldn’t find it. Dang, I said, but hey, they had cost fifty cents. Then the day we moved out of that house, we were loading the dryer onto the truck, and there was my earring underneath. Evidently our cat Buster had been playing kitty-soccer with my earring—out of the bedroom, across the hall, through the kitchen, out the cat door into the garage, down three steps, and SCORE under the dryer! I still have those earrings, and every time I wear them I get to think of our sweet Buster having fun with them. Our memories are worth more than anything we can buy in a store.

Thrifting lets me have far better quality possessions than I could ever afford if they were new. And I can enjoy them without having to worry about insuring them, or working overtime to pay for them, or having to keep spending on dry cleaning them. Gosh, I'm feeling more independent by the minute!

And even though garaging was a bust this morning, I actually did make it to a couple of sales yesterday. Both were moving sales run by delightful people it was a pleasure to chat with. Cute little Chelsea was the official greeter at the first.
Her owners clearly adore her. They told me she came from the pound, and the day after they got her everyone went off to work and school. Little baby Chelsea managed to escape from the back yard—and went and sat on the porch waiting for her new family to come home. Evidently she knew this was a great place to live! And when she rides in their pickup, she puts one front foot on the arm rest and hangs the other over the door, like a trucker on a long haul. Her family is moving to southern Oregon, just a few miles from where I had my first library job over 30 years ago. I bought this nice cashmere sweater from them, which I'm hoping my hubs will like. He’s worth gambling a dollar on!
The family having the other Friday sale is moving to Nebraska. I sure people move to Nebraska all the time, but you don’t hear much about it in Southern California! The lovely mom in this family, Leslie, is an artist. We got to talking about vintage stuff and she showed me a couple of great vintage handbags she’d thrifted. In one of them she found a couple of old movie stubs that were printed with a movie star’s face and a fortune like you would find in a fortune cookie. Have any of you ever seen anything like this? I'd love to know if this was a practice in movie theatres at a particular period. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me (always a mistake!) so I can't show you what they look like. But I was telling her how much I've enjoyed having this blog, and she said she’s been thinking about starting one. So Leslie, when you get your blog going you’ll have to post about your cool ticket stubs so we can all see them!

MOVIE MADNESS! A TRIPLE FEATURE

I'm in the mood for a little non-thrifting post...though I suppose there could be a thrifty angle. Let me see...okay, when I'm editing my little films, I'm not out spending any money, and what could be thriftier than that?

It's kind of like Pollyanna playing her Glad Game, isn't it? Finding a thrifty aspect to any situation.

Anyway, I wanted to share some films with you. First is one I made for work. (Isn't it amazing that we can all make films these days, and share them?) I've often mentioned the children's librarians I work with--the ones I buy stuff for at yard sales. Thought you might enjoy seeing a couple of them in action. We put together a little film to promote our summer reading program:



I think they did an awesome job, and it was all ad-libbed. These are amazing women to work with, as is the whole bunch. In fact, I bet the children's librarian at your public library is pretty wonderful too, and I hope you'll go by soon and tell her how great she is!

I guarantee our next feature will have you laughing and remembering your grade school days. I've mentioned in here before that my husband is a professional storyteller. He was part of the San Francisco Fringe Festival last year. This is an excerpt from the show he did there: The Fire Safety Assembly.


I met this man forty years ago this summer. He made me laugh from the first time we said hello, and he's still doing it today. Yes--lucky me!

Our final feature today is the latest in my ongoing epic series Noll vs...Our cat Noll was born on my birthday, and we suspect he was a Golden Retriever in his last life. Yes, he retrieves like a champ. Way better than either of the dogs. Here he is in action.


Noll's favorite thing in the world is a crumpled piece of paper. There's frugal for you!

WHEN TWO STRONG WOMEN GO GARAGING

My resolve to buy only things I will use right away seems to be getting stronger! I passed up any number of items at today’s yard sales, buying only 6 items. And four of them are to give away! I feel so strong.

The hardest thing to resist was all the vintage hankies. I saw wonderful examples at so many sales. At one house, the hankies had been embroidered by the lady’s grandma, and finished with fine tatted or crocheted edging. She said she has inherited so much stuff, she can't keep it all. She and her husband have ended up with a large amount of family correspondence as well, including the letters his father wrote to his mother when he was in Okinawa during WWII. I suggested they’d make a wonderful addition to family holidays and events. If they were mine, I'd sort them by date, and at Christmas or whenever I would read aloud one or two of the letters from fifty years ago.

Actually, it's just as well my spending was light. We had a humungo vet bill this week. Our sweet Lizzie went in for a little surgery, getting one of those large old-dog lumps removed. They cleaned her teeth as well, and that’s when they found a growth by her tongue. Vet thinks it's benign (though I'll breathe easier when the biopsy results are back) but getting it out required removing a tooth and some bone. She’s feeling a bit punky. (I had similar dental surgery once and she’s being a far better patient than I was!) But she’s an eager eater at mealtime so I think she’s doing well.

My friend Marcia went with me today. We got around two neighborhood sales before we pooped out and went for breakfast. Her favorite deal was a box of Agatha Christie books for five bucks. Plus she bought a book for me—thanks, Marsh! But really, the best deal of all was just meandering from sale to sale, chatting with folks. This fellow might have been the highlight of the morning:
George is eleven years old and quite a character. We both got to hold him, which Marcia especially needed, because she is currently without any kitties at her house. She needed some fur therapy. George was happy to oblige.
These cute older guys were at the first house in the first neighborhood sale.

We petted and chatted. When we finished in that tract and drove by again, the young lady looked up and gave us a big wave. She looked delighted to see us once more. This is why I like yard sales so much more than retail shopping!

Charlie the Cocker Spaniel thoroughly enjoyed the butt scratch I gave him. So much that when I stopped, he plopped himself down on my foot so that a) I couldn’t move and b) I could conveniently keep scratching!
This handsome pair are Sasha and Doc, two Swiss Mountain Dogs. Their owner was thrilled that I knew the breed, and they’re so rare around here I was thrilled to see some in person. Like the Bernese Mountain Dog, they are used in Switzerland to pull dairy carts. Over here they mainly dispense affection.

I spent all of $4 today, and brought home:

A couple of fun things for my children’s librarians…bunny ears
and a handmade armadillo. Surely someone will be doing an armadillo-themed storytime one of these days, right?

This nice box will be a prize for one of the participants in the Summer Reading Program I run for our administrative staff. They get an entry in the raffle drawing for every book read during the summer. In August we’ll have a potluck breakfast and draw for the prizes—most of which come from you know where!

I'm not sure if this item will be a reading prize, or a gift for our friends with dachshunds, or be resold. Still in their box with the $29 sticker on them.
How could I resist a set of crystal dachshund knife rests--no matter how strong I'm feeling?

Must have been a gift, for as the Queen of Fifty Cents always says, if there were no gifts there would be no garage sales!

Marcia paid for this Jasper Fforde book when she was buying others for herself. She’d been laughing over one called Born to Kvetch, so it had to go home with her.
This little frog has magnets in his feet. I just liked the way he can cling to a finger
and I think he’ll be happy with the other frogs in our house.
Okay, maybe I wasn't so strong after all, but he was a dime--and he needed a good home!

Lastly, I found this nice clock, new in its box.
I still need one out by the pool. The one I bought in early May turned out not to work, dang it. I know that yard sale goods are definitely a buyer beware situation, but shoot, if it doesn’t work, either don’t sell it or mark it as not working. I wasted two whole dollars on the other one. And you know what I can do with two whole dollars!

Anyone have a spare Roomba battery? I'm still crazy about my Roomba from last week, but the battery is pretty tired. It's not holding much of a charge, and I think that’s just age. So I'll have to bite the bullet and replace that soon. Then Noll kitty better be on his toes!

RAIN, ROBOTS AND TOTEM POLES

A terrible thing happened while I was out garaging on Saturday.

I had to put the top up on my car.

Yes, my friends, it rained. Practically unheard of here in June, and certainly unwelcome on Saturday morning! Weather was fine when I started out, then it began to mist, but I took that for the normal ‘marine layer’ we see a lot of. But the mist was having such a good time it got more enthusiastic until I had to concede it was more rain than mist.

So I had to raise my roof. Dang, I hate when that happens!

This is not to say I did not score. One thing in particular still has me bouncing in excitement. I found a Roomba! Yup, one of those robot vacuum cleaners.
The box was dusty, but when I got it home and unpacked it, the thing looked like it's barely been used. The extra Virtual Wall was never even unpacked. I plugged in the charger and fed it for several hours, then tried it out. It works! It's a hoot! It sings a few notes to say hello, then starts circling and bumping and sweeping, making its way around the room. You have to clear cords and small rugs out of the way, but with bigger rugs it just rolls on and sweeps those too. The pets were agog at first.

But they quickly decided it was not dispensing food and ignored it. It's the first model that came out about seven years ago. A bit noisy, but much less than my Electrolux. It doesn’t automatically go to a docking station to recharge like the new models. But I absolutely detest vacuuming (which is obvious from the amount of pet hair you will usually find in our corners) and now I have a robot to do it for me. So I'm totally jazzed. Isn’t it funny what makes us happy?

Other than Roomba (I need a pet name for it. Any ideas?) I scored a few useful items. I found another mug to try out…
Not sure it's as large as I want, but I like the color (chocolate brown…I think I need to go make some cocoa…) and oddly enough it's a very close color match for this find:
A new pair of Crocs—and they’re Mary Janes! I know, how could I possibly need more shoes. But these will actually let me get rid of a pair of gardening clogs I've had for over 15 years. I haven’t been using them much because they’re not as comfortable as I like my shoes to be. Now I can let them go. And the Crocs are handy because when I get hot working in the yard, I like to just walk into the pool and cool off. With these I don’t even have to take them off!

And speaking of gardening, last week I bought those tee shirts to make do rags for my husband to wear on his head when he’s working in the yard. Then kept one shirt for myself. Well, we now have a lifetime supply of knit fabric to use, because I found a gray knitted jersey sheet to cut up. No picture. Just think sweatshirt gray fabric. You got it.

When I asked how much it was, the lady hollered at her daughter standing in the garage, “Hey, don’t you want to keep your top sheet?” The girl hollered back no. Lady shook her head and told me, “None of my kids will use a top sheet on their beds, just the bottom sheet and a blanket. If I put on the top sheet, they just lay on top of it." I said it's like the duvets used in Europe, they’re just being very cosmopolitan.

It was a morning for color matches. I picked up a gray waffly shirt at possibly the friendliest yard sale of the month. Their signs were terrible, almost didn’t find the sale, but the people were so filled with happiness over arranging their castoffs and talking to strangers on their driveway that I kind of wanted to hang out for a while.
My last find is for a colleague at work. She asked me months ago to keep an eye out for a denim skirt for her. Which naturally meant that all denim skirts were immediately taken off the yard sale market; haven’t seen one for ages. Then this one appeared.
It's a Calvin Klein. I think it's about her size, and I figure the wrap styling will let her adjust if needed.

My total outlay was $27.75. Pretty good for a morning that included a working robot!

Favorite comment of the day: I was chatting with three or four folks at their sale about how heavy the mist was getting, and they noticed a car slowing down to ogle their sale. Then the car turned around and came by again, which they thought was both funny and peculiar. “Why don’t they just get out and come look?” one of them said. I ventured that sometimes people are looking for something specific, like furniture. One of the ladies nodded in agreement. “Oh yes, or totem poles.”

Totem poles! If I were looking for totem poles on driveways in Southern California, I would probably assume I could see them from the car. Yup, makes perfect sense.

DONUTS AND DACHSHUNDS AND A GREAT BIG Q

I think my memory is getting better. I have a cryptic note from this morning’s garaging that looks like “pot pound” and I've been wracking my brain over what that means. No, I didn’t run across anyone selling pot by the pound out of their garage, or see any cute little children pounding on an old pot (always so much more fun than an expensive toy). After some musing I have finally realized it's supposed to be potpourri—which tells you a lot about both my memory and my handwriting. I ran across someone selling homemade potpourri this morning, which I think is a first in my saling experience. I asked her if she has lots of rosebushes and she said no, just the one. Her rosebush must bloom more prolifically than any I've ever had, or else it took her a long time to gather all those petals!

A few blocks away I stopped at a sale that didn’t have much, but the lady was so darned nice. I asked (as I often do, it's a good ice breaker) if she was having fun, and she said most sincerely that she really was. “I love doing this,” she said, “and getting to say hi to everyone.”

A condo community was having a neighborhood sale, one of those sponsored by a local realtor. Around here this means that the realtor does the advertising and puts out signs, and usually goes around giving donuts to all the participants. I suppose this generates business for them, that folks are more likely to call the realtor who gave them donuts when it comes time to sell their house. So I was in one of the little garages there this morning talking to the two ladies having the sale. A neighbor stopped in and offered them some grocery store donuts, saying that the realtor was nowhere to be seen and it didn’t look like they’d be bringing the donuts around. My goodness, our feathers got fluffed! No donuts! They were being funny about it, but they really did expect their donuts. One of them grabbed her cell phone and called the realtor! Turns out she’d started her donut deliveries in the back of the community rather than the front and would be there in a bit. That sounded better, except… “Oh no, all the good ones will be gone!” said one of my ladies. “Oooh, yeah,” said the other, “nothing but glazed!” A nearby neighbor listening in said, “Could be worse, could be Hostess donuts.” And another called from her garage, “Hey, don’t knock Hostess. I am not picky when it comes to my donuts!”

I was still chuckling over the donut indignation a few minutes later when I ran into the realtor in question. I was talking to another lady about how it's always the thing you think no one will buy that goes first. She said yeah, someone actually bought her painting that was a portrait of her dachshund. In mock horror I exclaimed, “You sold your dog’s portrait?!” (which had us both giggling) when up steps a perky blonde with a stack of Krispy Kreme boxes. She must have heard what I said but not the context (i.e. joking), because she gave me a very startled look. And then of course I kept running into her about six more times. I wanted to tell her to hurry up and get those donuts to the ladies up front before they wore themselves out fretting over them.

At another garage in that community, the husband was standing in the driveway, waving people in. “My wife’s making deals,” he kept calling. “Get in here, there’s a lot to love!” He must have been on autopilot, because even when no one was near he was still barking like a carney.

Actually his wife was making deals, and one of the deals was that petting the dog was free! This is Foxy Brown.

She is a beginning Splash Dog—that sport where the dog leaps from the end of a dock into water. Here’s a film clip, in case you’ve never seen it.

Probably the most unusual conversation I had this morning was with a woman whose husband got a melanoma—in his eye. I've never heard of this, and she said it's very rare. She described the surgery, in which they detached the eye from the muscles and packed it with radiation material for 5 days, then took that stuff out and reattached the eye. (I love the way total strangers tell me the most amazing things.) Her hubby is doing fine. I don’t know whether to be terrified that there’s one more awful thing I never knew about before, or elated at the advances in medical science. Hmmm, it's Saturday, the sun is out…I vote for elated!

I spent $10.50 today and came home with:

A new stock of magazines—fifty in all! The newsstand value would be over $200. Here’s a sample—the rest are all Martha Stewart and Real Simple.
Dachshund bookends
A cute shirt and capris
Seven CDs
Two of the CDs came from a sale that had a handsome dark red coleus by the porch, and I scored a couple of clippings for my garden. Hope they grow—coleus are usually pretty cooperative.
A set of dragons for Chinese New Year. I'll give these to a children’s librarian, won’t they be fun as part of a book display?
Eight really really cute greeting cards, each still in its protective plastic sleeve.



And two shirts. I was looking for heavy t-shirts I can cut up to make my husband new ‘do rags’ to wear when he’s gardening, and these looked like they’d work.

But then when I got home and looked at the gray one, I realized this is on the back:
What else could that Q stand for but Queen of Fifty Cents? So I'm going to remodel the neckline and start wearing it on Saturday mornings. I'll find another tee shirt for Steven’s do rag next week. I can hardly wait to look!

P.S. This has zip to do with thrifting…I've been learning to use our video editing software, and I finally succeeded in putting a film on Youtube! Here’s our cat Noll Baxter in his Youtube debut.