THRIFTING IN THREES

The fun started with the yard sale ads on Craigslist. One was dubbed the “Can’t Stand My Neighbor Garage Sale” and the ad encouraged you to “come and see how my neighbor continuously takes pictures as I have my huge garage sale.” Another billed itself as the “Garage Sale of the Year” and promised both a bounce house for the kids and hundreds of adult videos “for any fetish.” Now, there’s an appealing combo! Gosh, somehow we managed to miss both those sales, wonder how that happened…

I had companionship on Saturday—my friends Marcia and Jan. Jan had asked if she could apprentice herself to me for a morning; she’s stopped at sales before but said she’d never gone garaging on purpose. She’s planning to do a sale for her parents this summer to help them declutter, so she was doing market research.

We were greeted at our first stop by this handsome tiger, ready to hop onto a bike or skateboard.

The lady having the sale didn’t seem to be quite so ready. At least twice we picked up sweaters and when we asked the price, she said she didn’t really want to sell that and took it away. Of course she also told me she had worked until 3:30 in the morning, then come home and set up for their sale. Probably the lack of sleep talking.

Next we headed for the first neighborhood sale of the year, where we met this guy.
He said he just loves going to sales, so his family made him this shirt for Christmas. He lives in Long Beach (about 20 miles away) but thinks the sales are better where we are, so he comes down each weekend. But he always gets lost. I get lost all the time too, but these days I don’t say I'm lost, I claim to be taking a mini vacation.

Our favorite overheard conversation was at the sale where the guy was trying to move some old Avon hair tonic. Bottle was shaped like a dune buggy, and as we walked up he was taking off the cap to demonstrate that the contents were still good. Well, perhaps not good—but certainly potent! As soon as the lid was off that smell hit us like a brick, and we were several feet away. His price was a dollar, and I offered him a dollar not to take the cap off again. He was trying to sell it to a man who had a boy about twelve years old with him, and we heard the kid ask his dad what it was. “It's hair tonic,” dad answered.

“What’s hair tonic?” asked the boy.

We all agreed that some of this week’s sales were just “too proud of their stuff” as Marcia says, with prices higher than any of us thought reasonable. But there were enough real bargains to make us all happy. Jan’s finds included fresh picked avocadoes and brand new artist designed linens. Marcia walked away with a wedding gift food processor that had never been used and a wonderful hand woven wrap, among other goodies.

I spent $12 for:

Door prizes for the next meeting with my children’s librarians, some baseball items for our Summer Reading Program


and an unusual hat.
A vintage mohair sweater I hope to resell

Fun bowl to replace the one I keep at work that I broke recently, boo hoo
Two felted wool baskets
A couple of papercraft tools
A caftanish garment to wear over my bathing suit this summer
Satin brocade cloth with tasseled corners. Marcia said it would make a good Christmas tree skirt, so that’s what I'm planning for it. I figure eight months to cut a slit, hem the edges and add a tie or two is about right.

This was originally a candle holder, but my husband has repurposed it as his bathroom glass.

Here’s my big ticket (three bucks!) gamble for the week: a mosquito inhibitor. It uses a pack of scented stuff that supposedly keeps the mosquitoes from being able to find you, and the guy said it keeps flies away as well. We had such a fly problem last year (and mosquitoes arrive in droves to feast upon me, while totally ignoring my husband) that I thought I'd give it a try. I want to be able to get my ten-bucks-worth of enjoyment from the patio furniture we bought last week!

And lastly, four brand new mouth blown glasses.
I love the little bubbles in the glass (the name on the tag is Ruby Fizz)
and I really love getting them at a 95% discount from the store price!

My favorite item that I didn’t buy this week:

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?