A Break In The Snow

Snow. This winter has given us snow, snow and more snow. Every few days, we get more. It has not only been a snowy 2014 so far but it has been a cold one as well. We've had a few warm days that have melted some of the snow and then it gets very cold again...and we get more snow again. Every few days...more snow. We decided to take Friday and Monday off and make it a four day weekend. There was only a little snow in the forecast for the next few days. We wanted a nice long weekend. 

Thursday night, we decided to go to Pace Of Wong for dinner. We have passed this place a million times in our lives yet never ventured inside. It opened in 1969 and very little has changed here since then.

There is the giant vertical "Chow Mein" neon sign outside...

...and the horizontal "Cocktail Lounge" sign outside with a neon cocktail glass. Some of its lights are in need of repair but it still looks cool!

The front of "Palace Of Wong". It was cold and Monica was more than satisfied with the number of pictures Rob took. "Time to go inside, Rob!"

The inside was adorned with interesting Chinese decorations

The menu told us that there were tropical drinks served in Tiki mugs

The bar told us that there were tropical drinks served in Tiki mugs

 We got a flaming volcano for two

They gave us very, very long straws to sip our drink

The drink was great, the food was delicious and Monica even let Rob buy this swinging clown toy with "rolling eyes" (it was only $1.95). It was a fun night!!!


Friday morning arrived and it was a bonus day. There were two sales that looked interesting that began on Friday. We decided to hit them both. After some minor shoveling (two inches of snow fell overnight), we were off and running. 

The first sale was about 30 minutes from our house and was run by one of the friendliest tag sale companies we know. They seem to be a growing company with sales almost every week now and most of them interest us. This sale was no exception. Advertised as having "50 years of accumulation" is a way to catch our attention. 

There were some great old appliances in the kitchen...and some great stuff inside the house. Although there were not a lot of rooms, there was plenty of things that caught our interest. We came home with some Christmas items, some old Tupperware and some other fun things.  

After stopping for some lunch, we moved on to stop #2. It was another 30 minutes away from our first stop and normally outside of our typical saling range but, with only two sales on the list, we decided it would be worth a drive.

"Grandpa's Attic". We go to his sales pretty often and, while he rarely has a bonanza of items we want, we seem to always come home with something.

The house had a great old pink bathroom...

...and it had a pencil sharpener in the basement. Always a good sign! 

We found several things of interest here and the price was fine. He knew we drove an hour from home to come to his sale and his appreciates his loyal customers! Even if we found nothing else over the weekend, our saling this week was already a success...but we did have sales on our agenda for Saturday. There were only three on our original Saturday list and, as we were reviewing it Friday evening, the list was knocked down to two. One had postponed their sale. So, with addresses ready, we embarked on day two of this week's saling.

We arrived at stop #1 to an array of signs confirming that, yes, we had arrived. We would soon find out that this sale was being run by the new owners of this house. The former owner was 102 years old and she had passed away recently. The new owners were friends with her family and, because they wanted to gut the house and redesign it, everything was up for grabs with all proceeds going to the decedent's family. It was an interesting story. We would soon find out what an interesting house it was! 

We spent the first 30 minutes in the garage digging through boxes and boxes and then moved to the first inside room where we found plenty more digging ahead of us. 

The floor in this room was great! 

After we finished with this room, our path led us up a little staircase which led to the kitchen and there, on the wall of the landing it was. Our eyes became dilated and we heard, what only can be described as, a chorus of angels from up above because there, on the wall of that landing was...

A Starburst doorbell! 

With screwdriver in hand, Rob proceeded to remove it from the wall and disconnect the wire. The owner said it was okay and that it would only be one dollar for the doorbell! 

When all was said and done, this was where the doorbell once resided. It was now in our box of goodies to take home with us! 

The kitchen had an amazing countertop with shelves which dated back to the 1950's and, like the every counter in that kitchen...

...it was yellow boomerang!

The small dining area had a lot of personality too. There were old speakers mounted near the top of the wall in a couple of places.

There were cabinets made of yellow corkboard material for storage

We loved this dining room chair. There were two of them but the material was damaged on both of them and we were not confident that they could be restored at a reasonable price.

Although there was not a lot in the basement, we did see these shelves which were lined with boomerang contact paper. We searched all through the basement hoping to find a spare roll without any luck but we weren't too disappointed because we found so many great things here at a great price and we had so much fun here...so much fun that we returned on Sunday for another 45 minutes just to search the garage again where we knew we could not get to some of the boxes on Saturday (and found a few more things). 

After this sale, we decided to skip stop #2. It was 45 minutes away and the description of the sale was not that promising. We had both worked up at appetite and decided to go eat at a diner not too far away.

This diner is not all that old but they tried to design it as if it were. They did a pretty good job on the signs and the food was pretty good. 

Here are some of the things we got this weekend:

Some records

Some books and magazines on decorating and designing

Some more books and pamphlets

Vintage Christmas light and decoration boxes

Some Christmas candles

Some Christmas items. The set of five cardboard decorations on the bottom right were Coca-Cola giveaways in the 1960's. The three cardboard Santas on the top right were bank giveaways

A few more Christmas items

Two old Boontonware dishes and a ceramic candy dish

Some ceramic pots for the outdoor garden (and a ceramic "watering" bird)

A vintage barbecue apron

A couple of honeycomb party balls, a box of doggie pads (for female dogs in heat), a beer tray, a set of salad spoons (made in Japan) and a Don Ho glass

A turkey napkinholder (made in Japan), a bobblehead and another plastic football player (made in the 1970's), some Tupper shotglasses (from the late 1940's/early 1950's before they were called Tupperware), a record case for 7-inch records, some clip-on ashtrays and a pair of mateless salt and pepper shakers

A pair of blow mold deer

Coasters, playing cards, vintage greeting cards, a "Pierre Panhandler" postcard, a sewing needle package from Food Fair (with the needles inside), a picture taken of the World's Fair muffler  man in 1964 and some other miscellaneous items.

We spent Sunday and Monday doing chores around the house (after the second trip to Saturday's stop) but we did save time to relax and watch some television. It was a fun four day weekend filled with so many things that made us smile...

...but none more so than just spending our weekend with each other. We know the ducks are smiling too