HUSBANDS AND DOGS AND DEALS

I had a surprise companion for garaging this week—my husband! In years past we always went out together on Saturday, but getting up early is way harder for him than for me. (Are all couples composed of one morning person and one night person?) Over time we’ve developed other routines. Nowadays he gets up after I leave and does the grocery run to the farmer’s market and Trader Joe’s. I hit the regular grocery store on my way home, so by noon on Saturday those errands are finished.

But this week he set the clock, got up early with no fuss, and even fixed us a great breakfast. It was fun to have him along, and I was extra glad he came because of one of our finds—didn’t have to wonder if he’d like it or would be asking me, “Where do you plan to put it?”

It started out as a doggy morning. First stop we met this cute Buster:

Don't you want a face like that hanging out at your house? Got into a movie conversation at this sale—seems we’ve all been on a documentary kick with our Netflix viewing. We recommended Man on Wire and Abel Raises Cain to them, and their recent fave was one called Coma.

The next place had a little yap dog yapping at us through the back yard gate. I noticed they were selling a magazine on bulldogs and commented that that was no bulldog back there. The lady promptly went in and got Bailey!
She said everyone always thinks Bailey is a boy (not!) and her friend helping with the sale said, “Well, yeah, ‘cause she’s so ugly.” “She is not!” I returned, and told Bailey not to listen to her. Somehow we got to talking about dogs shedding fur; her owner said that Bailey’s coat must have at least 10 layers, each one a different color. I asked if she’d ever used the Furminator tool and she started to laugh. “Oh yes,” she said. “The back yard looks like a fur bomb hit it when I use that.”

We continued on our way, and as we turned into the next tract on my list I commented to my husband that this was the first time I'd ever turned here. I've been garaging over 7 years in this area and had never seen a sale in this spot. Turned out to be 4 sales on the same block, and number three held the jackpot. As we walked up I noticed a pretty nice set of patio furniture—wicker settee, two chairs, glass topped table—and we both liked the look of them, but I said they would likely be pretty spendy. So as we were looking at the other odds and ends for sale, and I casually asked how much the furniture was.

“Ten bucks,” the guy said.

Picture me checking my ears, since I couldn’t believe I'd heard him right. “Um, did you say ten bucks?” That’s right, he said. Two seconds later Steven was sitting in one of the chairs and I was trying out the settee. Our eyes met for a brief moment. I pulled out my billfold and handed over two fives. Deal! Or I guess I should say, steal!

Of course then we had to figure out how to get them home. We loaded one chair in the back seat of my convertible and promised to be back for the rest asap. Made a few more stops on the way home (the folks at the next sale were suitable impressed when they commented on our chair and we told them what we'd paid for the set). When we got back to the house we tried putting the chair in the back of Steven’s Civic; didn’t go all the way in but with the hatch left open it would work. We caravanned back to the rest of our furniture, loaded the chair and table in his car and the settee in mine (yes, I did look like the Beverly Hillbillies, all I lacked was some banjo music playing) and headed home again. The cushions are a bit faded, but I can make slipcovers for them. We feel very posh sitting out there now; feel like we need to invite people over for margaritas.
We spent $21.25, and of course half of that was the patio furniture. The rest went for:

Two CDs

Four DVDs

A puppet for a door prize

Seeds—I'm hoping my cats will go for this grass and leave my ornamental grasses alone.

A dozen candles for the lanterns in the yard

Van Gogh notecards

Four nice kitchen towels.
I'm rather bemused by the tags on the beige ones. Thank heavens they were carefully woven.

And a cookbook. This was only a quarter, and I figure at that price I can cut out the few recipes I want to keep and let the rest of the book go. I bought the seed packets at my last stop. This lady’s mother has Alzheimer’s and keeps buying seeds at Walmart that she can't use, and forgets and buys more in a few days. She does the same things with cards, which was the other thing for sale. We talked for a while about aging parents and failing memories and hard times—she also was laid off her job recently. I mentioned that I've always found something good comes out of our bad times. She grinned and told me that once before she’d been laid off, and finally found a new job. The first day she was being introduced to people, and one of the guys recognized her from high school, and they ended up getting married. Just shows ya!

The Glass in the Gardens

Everyone who left comments on my last post telling me that the Dale Chihuly glass exhibit at the Phoenix botanical garden would be fantastic really knew what they were talking about. And your comments about taking pictures…well, I did an interim download to my husband’s laptop that we took with us, and I had over 250 pictures at that point! For you to be properly amazed you must know that I rarely remember to take pictures. We’ve taken whole vacations and never removed the camera from the car. But this time I practically wore out my pocket taking the camera out. (And I'm going to apologize in advance for the sideways pictures below. Blogger keeps turning them and I can't figure out how to fix it.)

Saturday morning was perfect—clear blue sky, warm but not hot, nice breeze. We started with breakfast at Butterfield’s Pancake House (we recommend it!) where they have very tasteful—make that tasty—light fixtures:


When we got to the garden, I got excited before we even entered the place.


Once inside, the first piece was this depiction of the sun:
I had been a little afraid before we got there that there wouldn’t be enough pieces to make the trip feel worthwhile. In fact it took us about 4 hours to see everything! Here are just a few of the pieces:










This work, called Saffron Tower, is visible from the entry road, and we noticed when we got close that it is in fact a neon piece.
So on Sunday evening (after a truly fabulous dinner at Ristorante Arrivaderci, also highly recommended) we drove back over to the garden hoping to see the neon lit up. It was amazing, I'm sure I was squealing and bouncing up and down in the car (I have a very sophisticated reaction to art, you know).

It was about 40 minutes before they closed, and people were leaving in droves, so we strolled in to see a few things again in the dark. It may have been even more wonderful at night.

On Sunday my companions went to a baseball game (spring training is in full swing). I opted to have some time to myself, and was driving back toward our hotel when I spotted—you guessed it—a yard sale sign. It was now Sunday afternoon and I figured there would be nothing left, but I went to check it out anyway. Didn’t buy anything but had a lovely conversation with a nice lady named Ann, who gifted me with a bag of lemons from her tree and some hollyhock seeds. She also told me there was a craft fair going on not far away, so I headed over there. As I got in the car, I noticed something we don’t see on the streets of the OC too much:
Haven’t been to a craft fair for a long time (garaging takes care of all my desire for shopping) and I was amazed at how huge this thing was. I bet there were over 100 vendors, it went on and on. I didn’t buy anything (you know I’ll see a lot of it on a driveway someday for fifty cents!) but I had a great time talking to an artist named Linda Gill who makes these incredible art dolls.




We had one of those conversations that started off with her telling me how she makes the dough she sculpts with out of Wonder bread and glue, then she gave me a hunk of it to play with, then we moved on to lord knows what, until about 40 minutes later I knew all about her kids and their shenanigans and she knows all about my blog. I’m hoping she’ll start her own blog about her dolls, because she told me by the time she finishes making each one she knows all about that character’s life, and what their kitchen looks like, and the plants in their garden. I'm betting it will be fun to read each one’s story, and will even help sell her art!

So the whole trip was pretty darned wonderful. And I'm wondering what effect it will have when I head out garaging this weekend. Will I be expecting fabulous art on the driveways of Orange County—and will I find it?

FAIRIES AND IBISES AND CALLING CARDS

I liked the Thrifty Chicks’ idea of leaving calling cards at the yard sales I visit. So early Saturday morning I designed my cards. Fiddled with them until they felt right. Told the computer to print.

I'd like to, the computer said, but you’re out of black ink. I changed the black ink cartridge. (Note to self: go down to the kitchen and put ‘black ink cartridge’ on the shopping list so you’ll have a back up.) That’s better, the computer said, and sent through the five sheets I'd asked for. But the black ink didn’t print.

I took out the new cartridge, shook it—sounded like ink sloshing around in there. Put it back, tried another sheet. No black ink. Took it out, pressed on the place where the ink comes out with a piece of paper. No marks on the paper. Smooshed it some more until some ink marks showed, put it back in printer, tried again. No black ink on paper.

At that point I gave up and went garaging, sans calling cards but with friend Diane. Calling cards are a good idea, but a friend is even better! And on Sunday I tried again to print my cards and they came out just fine. Guess the universe was averse to my starting this just now…but I'll be ready for the next time!

Have you ever noticed, as you’re going from sale to sale (or thrift store to thrift store, if that’s your venue) how a theme will develop? You keep seeing the same item or motif over and over. There was one Saturday a couple of years ago that was Backstreet Boys Day. Everywhere I went there were posters and t-shirts and CDs emblazoned with their faces (is it just me or do they all have impressively chiseled jaws?). This week’s theme turned out to be fairies. Yes, fairies as in little people who live among the flowers and do magical things. At our first stop we opened an oblong blue box and found this inside:

I wish my photography did justice to the details.

I did some searching when I got home and found that these are carved by lasers, guided by a computer. I’m still completely in the dark as to what that actually means, and it must not be terribly difficult because these pieces are not expensive even new, lots available online for about ten bucks. Neither Diane nor I are particularly fairy aficionados, but we both liked this. I ended up buying it, feeling a little guilty because I felt like D wanted it too.

And then at the very next sale we found another one! It was about half the size of mine (and about half the price!) so D bought it, and we spent the rest of the morning marveling at finding two of them.

Then we kept seeing fairy motifs everywhere. Books, jigsaw puzzles. Probably the cutest was the pair of gauzy fairy wings for playing dress up. We resisted those however!

We were even more excited by the trio of ibises walking across the road. There was no traffic so we stopped to watch them strut. I see herons and egrets fairly often, but I think these are the first ibises I've seen here. They were probably white-face ibis, since those winter in this area. Gosh, garaging is educational!

As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the various pets we encountered. One was a beautiful gray cat named Motor, so called because of his loud purr. “When he was a kitten,” they said, “his purr was bigger than he was.” Motor was a fair sized cat, so he grew into his purr. While I was petting Motor, I heard nice background music and commented on it. “Oh, that’s from next door,” they said. So as we left I saw the next door neighbor in his driveway and called out that the music was great. He said he’d been fishing in Mexico, and the hotel was playing this over their loudspeakers, and he’d bought 5 CDs, he liked it so much. “Let me play you my favorite piece,” he said, so we wandered into his garage. He skipped ahead to his favorite, which turned out to be a polka. As we stood there talking about the music, we noticed there were dozens of wooden whirligigs in his garage. Turns out that when he retired, he taught himself to make these things. He has over 80 designs he makes and sells. He pointed out his fish skeleton design. “It's usually ladies that buy that one,” he said. He also paints rocks, and we got a tour of his back yard to see some of his rock fish. And all the while, the Mexican polka bounced along in the background.

We also enjoyed meeting lovely Hannah, a black lab and heeler mix:
She had been spayed the day before, and her owner was trying to keep her quiet. But Hannah didn’t care that she’d just had a hysterectomy—she wanted to play ball! Her owner told us she had won a free spaying on a radio call in show. Otherwise she didn’t know how she would have afforded it. Turns out this nice lady is one of the many, many casualties of our meltdown economy. She lost her job and hasn’t been able to find another, and for a time was living in a tent. Now she’s in a small travel trailer, parked by a relative’s house. We could see how much her dog means to her in these hard times. She told us she had a number of friends—former friends—who pressured her to get rid of her dog, telling her she couldn’t afford to keep her. As Diane said, that’s someone she won’t be needing to call anymore. I've always maintained that I would live in a tent before I gave up my pets, and here was someone who has done it.

I spent $10.35, and besides my laser fairies I brought home:

A couple of gifts for friends and family—a fun visor for someone who drives a convertible…

…and these cute pj pants for someone who would live 24/7 in flannel if she could.
Nice green tencel shirt for me.
Bar of French soap with shea butter in it.
Two new candles for the lanterns in the yard.
A Sunset gardening annual.
Fun necklace. Needs cleaning, and I think I'm going to remove the little tube pieces.

Lizzie liked it and wanted to try it on. I told her she can wear it the next time she has a date.

A DVD.
Some cleaning goop.
Have to admit my eyes deceived me. When I picked up this box I could have sworn it said Oxy Cleaner, and I've had good success with Oxiclean, the stain remover stuff. So I bought it. Imagine my surprise when I got home and saw that it says Orange Clean. Can’t blame my glasses, just got new lenses a few weeks ago, so it must be my brain!

And finally, this should make a fun door prize for some lucky children's librarian.

Next week I most likely will not be garaging, because we have a little vacation planned. We’re driving to Phoenix with my husband’s brother and his wife to see this Dale Chihuly glass exhibit at the botanical garden there. Of course, if we pass a yard sale sign on our way from the motel to the gardens, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the car just automatically turns where the sign points!