Church Sale Season

That's right...church sale season. 'Tis the season when so many churches run their biggest sales. Lots of churches have other sales during the year too but this month brings the biggest sales and we comb the ads to find as many as we can. Parishioners donate what they no longer want so the churches can sell them. We want what the older parishioners have loved for decades upon decades but no longer want. We want them. We will give those special discarded items a loving home. 

Our first stop was at a church sale that Monica calls the ultimate sale. She has been going to this sale for decades in all types of weather conditions. One year, there was a heavy snowfall and only three people were there when the sale opened. Monica was one of them. This was only Rob's fourth visit to this sale. There is always a line inside waiting for the doors to open. Although we usually try to avoid lines, this sale is the exception. We were here an hour before the doors opened and we were probably 35 people from the front of the line. When the clock struck 10 am, the doors opened and it was a mad scramble...as always.

When the smoke cleared, we did our second and third searches (things magically get uncovered) and Monica could calmly pose for a photo. While the haul gets a little smaller every year, we did manage to get some great Christmas items and a few other assorted goodies at a very low price. We even managed to get large case of magnetix for Monica's nephew and niece for only $3. It probably cost anywhere between $35 and $50 brand new and they LOVE these! 

 After breakfast, it was time to move onto stop #2, another church fair. This one was in Monica's home town and we have been here many times before. It was less chaotic than the first sale and less productive too. We picked up one set of pearls for Monica and nothing else.

Our third stop was an estate sale in Rob's home town. It was advertised as having 50 years of accumulation.

There was the mounted pencil sharpener in the basement! Good sign! There were many rooms to search. We found one Putz house, a cookbook, some records and an old Easter cake mold.

Stop #4 was not difficult to find. It had a large painted sign out front. The terms "vintage" and "Christmas" were in the same sentence in the ad that we saw and that was good enough reason to place this stop on our list.

There was a bar in the basement that Rob searched behind. He always does...

...and the basement was completely cluttered as was the rest of the house. It was a digger and we like those. Unfortunately, there really was not a lot that we liked though we did come away with some cool records and a few other items.

Our final stop was at another church sale. We were here for their previous sale just a few weeks ago and found some great Christmas items. This time around, the pickings were not as plentiful but we did get a few Christmas salt and pepper shakers and a skunk shaker who was missing its mate but will, nonetheless, find a happy place in our home.

Here are some of the things we got on our Saturday adventures:

Some records

A few more records

Various Christmas items: ornaments (we liked the box a lot), a large Santa cookie jar, some salt and pepper shakers , a Putz house, a ceramic "noel" , some cake toppers and a Santa pin. The clasp on Monica's favorite Christmas pin became dislodged so this find had perfect timing! 

A New Year's Eve noisemaker, an old can of "Pick Up Stix", a honeycomb Easter egg, a rubber duck, various ceramic pieces and a set of pearls. One of Monica's sets of pearls broke a few weeks ago. Again, great timing to find this! 

More die-cuts to celebrate the February president's birthdays, a cookbook, an old paint brochure and an Easter two piece cake mold, just like the one Monica had as a kid. We will use it to bake something next year! 

We spent Saturday night visiting Monica's uncle in the hospital and spent Sunday on our continued efforts to finish our Christmas decorating. We think we only have about five hours left until we are done! It was a busy weekend but a great one simply because it was a weekend spent together...and that is enough to make the ducks amongst us smile.