All Jazzed Up

Friday was the perfect spring day. Perfect, I tell you! Well, except that we didn’t have Judy with us – she is in Hawai’i, so no pity needed! – but that meant we fit nicely into my sporty convertible. (Usually KK chauffeurs us in her comfy SUV.) AND it was sunny, And about 80 degrees. Which of course means Top Down…which is my personal definition of a perfect spring day.

Our first stop was in KK’s neighborhood, which was good because she found one of those tall bistro table-and-chairs set, and it was easy to get it back to her house. (I can get a lot in my back seat with the lid down, but not that set!) I picked up another addition to my colorful-vases-in-the-window collection, though in point of fact this is actually a hand blown aquavit glass.

At least according to the box it came in. A Kosta Boda piece from Sweden. 

It's even signed.

 

Even though it's shorter, I think it fits right in with the rest of the gang.

I also scored a lovely metal peacock yard ornament, which is currently hanging out under our Japanese maple among the maidenhair ferns. 

I admit I’m getting something of a collection of yard ornaments, but hey, this was two bucks. Yes, I am a sucker for a good deal. 

But I’m even more of a sucker for something that makes me laugh. Like these jazz-hands frogs.

 

They came from the estate sale of some folks who seemed to have been into frogs (this was not the only choice) and Nascar racing. (And now my unruly brain is seeing images of frogs at the wheels of race cars.) I’m not sure where this quartet will end up, but everywhere I try them 

they make me laugh.

My last dollar was spent at one of those sales that you think has absolutely nothing for you. Nice folks, friendly chat, but mostly kid stuff for sale. It was at the house of a middle-aged lady whose daughter and two year old boy had recently moved in, so they were trying to get rid of stuff to make everything fit in the 1800 square foot house. Especially since the middle-aged lady’s father is about to move in as well. Four generations! I hope they are one of those families who really enjoy each other’s company. Anyway, we were saying our goodbye’s and heading toward the car when I noticed this box on the driveway. 

And there were indeed Space Bags inside – those storage things that you suck the air out of so your stuff takes less room. 

One extra-large, four large, and three mediums, which I think is pretty darned good for a buck. I had been thinking about getting some, because I want to try them for travel. The mediums should be about right for my small suitcase.  Because my SIL Linda & I are about to go on a trip! (Burglars please take note that neither of our homes will be unoccupied – our husbands are staying behind along with vicious guard dogs. And guard gorillas. Just sayin’.)

She has a conference in Chicago this weekend, and I’m going along. While she is in meetings on Friday…I’ll be touring around Chicago on a Segway! Never ridden one before but have wanted to for years, so this is one of those bucket-list things. I suppose the chance of passing a garage sale while we’re touring is slim, right? I confess I have already scoped out the location of any thrift stores closest to where we’ll be staying.

When the conference is over we’ll spend a couple of days playing. Would love to hear your recommendations for where to go – and where to get the best pizza! And then we are coming home on the train! We will have our own little bedroom with a tiny bathroom, and we are very excited. This is another thing I've wanted to do for years. I've ridden on trains before, but never in a sleeper car. It's probably a good thing there won't be room in my bag for extra clothes, or I'd be tempted to put together a vintage costume for the trip. As it is, I'm sure I'll be feeling very Agatha Christie-ish. Do you think there’s any chance we might take an unexpected turn and end up in Istanbul instead of Portland?

Anyway, since we’re taking the train we want to keep our luggage as small as possible. Hence the space bags. I’ll let you know if they were useful!

April Foolery

You would have laughed at us driving to sales on Friday. Not because it was April Fool’s Day, but because we were all excited over spotting actual garage sale signs on corners. Yup, big neon-bright poster boards tacked up. It's the first weekend since winter began in earnest (translation: it started raining) we’ve seen this; it's been all estate sales for months. But now we’re starting to have days of sunshine, so the actual yard sales will begin to bloom again. Along with my yard!

I picked up half a dozen padded hangers from a free box and a few sewing notions at one sale.

The next place supplied a folding travel hair dryer for a buck. (You already know what those look like, right? Picture a nice new one – that’s right.) 

But the real fun came at the estate sale on the north end of town. It was run by the nice guys I saw at the grocery store one Christmas playing Santa by giving away money to folks who needed it. We enjoy their sales, even though the prices are often higher than we think is reasonable. But they have their pricing blind spots, and the biggie is textiles. And kitchen stuff.

Judy and I were rummaging through a box of miscellaneous kitchen gadgets that were a quarter apiece. I plucked this odd thing out of the box and we puzzled over what it might be. Maybe a wire top hat? I held it over Judy’s head. Nah. Wrong size!

Then I found another section 

and fit them together. Love those wooden feet.

I think it's the holder for a fondue pot, with a lidded cup to hold a Sterno can. Haven’t found any pictures of anything similar though, so who knows. It could hold a serving dish to stay warm on a buffet 

and it makes a dandy plant stand! 

Back in one of the bedrooms I found an embroidered tablecloth, and headed out to pay. Weldon was in conversation at the moment so as I waited to hand over a couple of bucks, I noticed the dumpster there on the driveway. With something pink and yellow sticking out. I poked at it, and discovered a handmade tufted rug, little tassels of cotton yarn stitched to a fabric background. I pulled it out. No stains or smells.

“Are you throwing this away?” I asked incredulously. Yeah, we always have to toss a lot of stuff, they said. I tried to keep from rolling my eyes, thinking you don’t throw away a perfectly good vintage rug until it's still there after the sale. We also pulled out an undamaged cotton & wool blanket that KK took home – it will be going on picnics with her and the grandkids this summer.

When I reached home I tossed my finds on the dining table as I always do. Mrs. Wilberforce immediately went for the tablecloth.

It washed up beautifully, and as soon as I put it back on the table, there she was again.

While she tried out the tablecloth, I tossed the rug on the floor to take a picture. That’s when I discovered the large bunny design on it.

Zoë discovered it at the same time. The bunny is just about as big as she is! 

And she settled right in on HER rug.

It washed and dried nicely too (well, there were some stray pieces of yarn in the lint trap!). And I put it on her favorite chair, where she is curled up even as we speak.

Those estate sale guys may not recognize quality textiles, but my pets do!

Eight...and Counting!

Easter weekend = not a big thrifting time. Judy & I each found something practical at the only estate sale we went to. Hers was something garden-y but don’t ask me what, I've slept since Friday. Mine was a new-to-me quilt to top my (actually) new waterbed. (The old one sprang a leak we couldn’t find, but we bought it nearly 20 years ago so I'm telling myself I got my money’s worth from it.) 

I needed something to brighten up that room after this El Nino of a winter.

Zoë likes it too.

We checked the other few sales but found nothing, and then tried out the new crepe place in town for lunch. (My review: nice folks, good crepes but a bit dry. Some Hollandaise or béchamel would go a long way. I'll let you know how the dessert crepes are when we go back to try them.)

I just checked my calendar, and tomorrow is this blog’s 8^th birthday. Zowie. My blog would be in third grade this fall. (Am I the only one who equates any age with a grade in school?) This is the 430th post, and my statistics counter puts page visits at 546,875, and while I know there are famous blogs out there that get that many visits in a day I was secretly pretty chuffed when I passed the half-million mark.

For a little blogiversary fun, I decided to look back over the past 8 years and pick out one bought-on-a-driveway item per year that I still use and love. And it wasn’t that easy, because I use and love stuff every day in every room of my house that came to me second hand (or third or fourth or more). But here we go:

From 2008:

Quilted fabric cookbook cover. It has been on the notebook I use for stray recipes since July of that year.

2009: 

I had no idea how much we would use these scales. Multiple times a day, mostly for cooking but also for mailing stuff. They cost fifty cents, and even came with batteries!

2010:

Fabulous Fifties lamps. Still use ‘em. Still love ‘em.

2011: 

Four vintage Hans Wegner dining chairs set me back twenty bucks. I rewove the seats. We use them for every meal.

2012: 

This standing-wool rug came with a note explaining its history.

Zoë has been in love with this rug since day one. If you tell her ‘sit’ when she is in the kitchen, she backs up until her hind feet hit that rug, and then she can sit down. But she is NOT going to plop her butt on that bare tile floor!

2013: 

A pair of Reidel wine glasses for a buck leaves you enough money to buy some nice Oregon pinot noir to go in them!

2014:

They rock, they swivel, they’re vintage. I sit in one every morning while Zoë throws her ball off our upper deck and runs down to retrieve it. Best way to wear out a dog, ever.

2015: 

My $3 set of Lincoln Beautyware was quite shabby when I found it, but with a bit of elbow grease they showed their true shine.

2016: 

It's early in the year, but it was still hard to choose just one picture! However, I can tell this hand-painted jacket from one of the church bag sales is going to be a favorite. I've already worn it several times…and it gets a lot of attention!

Thanks for coming along for the ride over the past eight years. I had such a blast looking over my past purchases that I can hardly wait to see what is waiting out there to be found in the future!

Giddiness

I think it was the sunshine that made us all giddy on Friday morning. We get a lot of rain in the winter—it's the Willamette Valley after all—but this El Nino year has seen rain in spades. Let me just say I never want to get personally acquainted with another sandbag.

But Friday was sunny. And our go-to list on Grace Pemberton Smith, my GPS, had NINE addresses on it. Nine! If that’s not a sign of spring…

We started out at KK’s next door neighbors’ sale. The mister has evidently been quite a pack rat and recently realized that he no longer needs all this stuff. Which might have accounted for the big smile that wouldn’t leave the missus’s face! I picked up a pair of felt boot liners

that I think will make warm house shoes. I wonder if I should spread a layer of Shoe Goo on the bottom of the soles. Hmmm, will have to think about that.

Didn’t get anything at the next sale, mostly kid stuff there. But they did like my glasses (I was wearing the ones with the blue frames) so I thought they were very nice young women. Then on to an estate sale that if we hadn’t been giddy before, we’d have become giddy then.

It was the prices that were so wonderful. We didn’t buy tons of stuff, but dang, it makes you so happy to see little pieces of masking tape with 25¢ or 50¢ written on them. 

As soon as we walked up, Judy spotted the wheelbarrow she’s been looking for. Decent size but not too big, a little rusty but who cares. The little piece of masking tape said $1. We couldn’t believe no one had already bought it for that, but it only took a moment for Judy to whip out that dollar bill.

The sale inside was all in the basement. Quite a bit of camping stuff, and housewares from the Sixties, and stuff made by an amateur woodworker. I picked out this tiered metal serving plate

and a cool MCM candleholder (there were two, Judy got one too).

And then I spotted the item that made my heart go pitty-pat. (Isn’t it funny, the things that will do that?)

Handmade pull-apart bookends.

Don’t you love his expression?

Not to mention his tail.

Certainly the price was right.

I noticed the maker had written his name on the bottom, which I mentioned to the lady asI paid for it, saying how much I loved it.

“Oh,” she said, “I think he made that in school. I'll tell him you like it.” And sure enough, when I looked more closely, I noticed P1 on the bottom, so he must have had woodshop during first period. And he got an A!

I think I'll call him Larry. Right now he’s holding library books.

Somehow Larry just sealed the deal on my giddiness. Every time I thought of him through the morning I had to smile.

We continued our adventures, and I got lucky again at an estate sale on the west side of town. Hanging on a bedroom doorknob I spotted these handmade wooden hangers.

They had stickers on them, but no one had marked a price. So I toted them downstairs to ask how much. Which turned out to be a quarter each. Deal. Then I spotted another item with an unpriced sticker, a handblown glass tree topper.

Another quarter. I'm planning to use it in one of my flower troughs on the deck this summer.

Out in the garage, I noticed a couple of ladders. A six-foot ladder has been on my list, to keep at our rental house so we don’t have to tote one back and forth. The marked price was $25 so I called the hubs to see if that was frugal enough. He said yes…so I offered twenty and owned a ladder. (I can rarely resist seeing if the price can go down. Hey, five bucks is a chunk of change. I could buy 20 Larry bookends for that!) Sorry, didn’t get a picture of the ladder, but it looks exactly like the $70 one on the Home Depot site.

Getting a six-foot ladder into KK’s SUV was a bit challenging (she was an awfully good sport to let me cram it in there so I wouldn’t have to drive back for it). But the three of us and two of the people from the sale all shifted earlier purchases and laid down a back seat and slid that puppy in there. And Judy was an awfully good sport to give up part of her back-seat elbow room!

After all that fun in the sun we were ravenous, so we headed back downhill for Mexican food. And margaritas.

And then we were really giddy!