ON THE PROWL FOR THRIFTY GOODIES

My sister cracks me up. Had an email from her the other day in which she was telling me about getting caught up with listing items for sale on her website, then going out and finding more stuff to resell. “I plan on hitting a big church sale today after getting Mom home…I really should stay away from them because I have a pretty good backlog of stuff to list now, but what can I say, it's in our blood, no use fighting it. In fact it's probably affected by the full moon we've had. We are garage sale werewolves!”

So now you know, I come from a family of garage sale werewolves. Instead of pacing through the house, needing to be outside when the moon is full, we get extremely restless on Saturday mornings. And if we cannot go thrifting—look out, we bite! And yes, we’ve been known to infect others. We take someone along with us who has never been to a yard sale or thrift store, and they are so amazed at the great deals that they turn into garage sale werewolves too.

I should have t-shirts made up for us that say “Garage Sale Werewolf” but you know me, it would seem way too expensive! I’m awfully happy wearing the silk and cashmere sweater I bought for fifty cents a couple of weeks ago. As far as I'm concerned, that’s how much clothing should cost.

Being a holiday weekend, pickings were slim today. I thought for a while that not only would I find nothing to buy, it looked like I wouldn’t talk to anyone either. The curse of silence was finally broken by a couple of cute elderly pups. This is Lady, who is about 14
and her housemate Roxanne, who is 19.
Roxanne has had hard times in her life, but got lucky at the age of 10 when she was adopted by the ladies whose sale I stopped at. She’s a little lopsided from losing part of her jaw when the bone got infected, and she’s very hard of hearing, but like most dogs she doesn’t seem at all concerned about her infirmities. Dogs are such great role models! And these two have a real symbiotic relationship. Roxanne tends to dribble food since she's missing part of her jaw, but Lady is happy to clean up the dog food that falls on the floor!

The most exciting part of the morning came at a rather crowded sale where a number of shoppers showed up at the same time, including a couple walking a miniature Pinscher. “Oh,” said the lady having the sale, “keep an eye out for our cat. She likes dogs. In fact, here she comes.” This cat wasted no time checking out the dog on her driveway. She may like dogs, but she made sure that this one knew not to mess with her.
I was expecting hostilities to break out any moment, but both cat and dog decided not to push it. But neither one took their eyes off the other for a second.
Even when kitty got picked up to be petted, her gaze was glued to that dog still on the ground.

As I said, pickings were slim, but I'm happy with what I found. Spent a total of $8.50 and brought home five DVDs.
One is a new addition to the collection, the others will replace old VHS tapes.

My other find was this sweet little hand painted plate.


Love the name of the maker: Hutschenreuther.
As I often do, I looked it up when I got home. Turns out this was a well regarded German porcelain maker begun by a family of that name. Didn’t find this pattern, but there are over 3000 listings on eBay so they made a lot of china over the years! It's about 7” across, perfect for dessert.

Perhaps I should go bake something. It would be a shame to make this little beauty wait to be used.