Guess if I’m supposed to have it, it will still be there!

What in the world are these people thinking? I was by no means the first person at this Friday sale, people were leaving with their hands full, and yet this was still sitting on the first table I came to.

The world’s cutest mixing bowl. A batter bowl, no less. Wait till you see the inside!

Even the logo on the bottom is cute.

Oh wait, I remember now, lots of people don’t cook any more, which is why there is a fast food place everywhere you turn.

I admit, I DO have other mixing bowls. (Not the mushroom bowl any longer, it’s winging its way to a new home – in Norway.) But since I bake bread about four times a week, the process is made a bit more wonderful by a bowl like this.

But perhaps a bowl won’t attract everyone. Or even an adorable German Easter egg candy box.

  

But on Saturday, the lady at the first sale where I stopped (make that ‘the shivering lady at the first freezing cold garage where I stopped’ – it was like 29 degrees out) told me that dealers were lined up on her driveway at least half an hour before she opened, peeking in the windows. And yet those dealers left me two Coach bags that were very reasonably priced. Not fifty cents (dang) but still reasonable.

  

The smaller one apparently is a Bonnie Cashin bag from the Sixties.

My next stop, which had been going for at least 45 minutes by the time I got there, had two Wilton 6” cake pans…in the free box!

And in a box of toys I uncovered this beauty.

Not just any pull toy, but a Kouvalias, which are quite high quality. And as far as I can tell, any kid who got one of these adorable ladybugs still has it – I’ve only found a couple of auctions where they were sold, and an ad for Christmas toys in a November 2000 magazine. When you pull her along, her wings go up and down. And it turns out that besides being beyond cute, we’re talking total kitty magnet. I finally had to shove Noll Baxter away so I could take pics.

Then there was the pair of Eddie Bauer wool gloves. Who couldn’t use a decent pair of wool gloves in this climate? Especially for a quarter?

   

Probably most people around here already have a Christmas tree stand. We had one, but the hubs didn’t think it was strong enough for the size tree we’re planning to get this year. And there was the one I needed, for about a tenth of the price in a store.

   

Had fun just talking to people too. At the sale where I got the cake pans and pull toy, a mother and her grown-up daughter were shopping. Mom tried on a pair of sunglasses and asked how they looked. When I assured her they were stunning and wondered who that mysterious woman was, she struck a model’s pose with her hand behind her head. We kept chatting, and I admired her boots and asked where she got them. She said she got them for free, so the two ladies having the sale and I had to have the story. “Well, in August my home burned down, and I lost everything,” she said. Of course we are all riveted. A local store provided some replacement stuff to the victims of this fire (it was in an apartment complex) and they were told they could choose a pair of shoes, and her daughter talked her into this pair of boots. When she told us some more details of the fire, I realized she had lived in the same apartments where my niece use to live – before she was burned out in a fire a year before this one. My niece escaped with all her kitties, but this lady’s kitties were all killed in the fire. But she’s recovering and moving on, and I got to see the picture of their two new kittens.

Met a young couple having a moving sale and got to talking, and found out they’ve started going to garage sales every Saturday; it was driving them nuts to have to mind their own sale instead of going out treasure hunting! I gave them some tips on mapping out a list of sales before heading out, which has turned out to be pretty necessary here. “And never buy anything new!” was my other advice. Actually, it’s okay to buy stuff that’s new…as long as you find it in someone’s garage!

On Friday I stopped at a sale in the neighborhood just north of mine – mostly gorgeous older homes but some MCM beauties too. This sale was in a little cottage probably dating from the Twenties or Thirties. When I arrived I asked the guy if he was having fun yet, and he said he was, even though people had warned him that garage sale shoppers could be very aggressive. “Dang,” I said, “they’ve been talking about me again!” As I looked around, I asked him if he had any twin beds for sale (still need one more pair), and he said he had a pair but they had just decided to keep them. “I guess this is where I have to prove my reputation for being aggressive,” I told him, and he laughed and said I could at least see them. He led me into the house, and luckily for him his twin beds were not at all what I’m looking for. He had a very narrow escape – if it had been a couple of Heywood-Wakefields there’s no telling what might have happened!