East Or West?

Another week passed and another weekend was upon us. We regret always wishing the week would go by quickly but we make up for it by wishing the weekend would last longer than it should. This kind of evens things up, right? The weekend is our favorite part of the week because we have two days off together and, hopefully, lots of saling opportunities. 

Our first task was to go get some blow mold snowpeople Friday night. On Tuesday, Monica spied an offer, on Craigslist,  for free blow mold snowpeople to the first person who responded to the ad. The response to our email was that someone else had responded first and that they said that they would pick them up on Thursday but, if they did not show up, that they would email us. On Thursday night, we received an email that the first respondent was a no show. We quickly told them that we would be there Friday evening at 6 pm and we arrived on time to claim six new members of our Christmas blow mold family. There was a dad and a mom and four snowchildren which represented their family years ago. The kids have all moved out and the mom never cared for the blow molds anyway so they were now ours. They are not all that old but that doesn't matter. They are still great!

We discussed our search of the ads during the week and our efforts resulted in six sales of interest but we would never make all six. Three of them were to our east with the closest being forty minutes away. The other three were to our west and only one of them was less than a thirty minute car ride away. We would have to narrow our list down to three sales and head either eastward or westward but not both. None of the sales seemed to be great but we had a better feeling about the westward sales. Only one of them was on their second day (whereas two of the eastern sales were on Day Two) plus our western adventures would land us close to Monica's childhood house and that would give us some time to visit dad. It was decided. Westward it would be. 

Sale #1 was a privately run sale that was described as "60 years - vintage contents". There were no pictures so we did not know what to expect. There was a garage to search first and we spied three banners hung on the wall of the garage that we really liked so those became our first finds of the day.

The living room had this cool clock that was not exactly our style but it was cool, nonetheless.

The kitchen was cool. It had some great cabinets and a cool, old exhaust fan in the wall. Unfortunately, our search in the house did not result in any other things of interest and we left the sale with just those three banners.

We decided to stop for breakfast before driving the thirty minutes to sale #2. The sale was run by someone we knew thirty years ago who sometimes runs estate sales with her husband. The house was previously occupied by a 100 year old woman and we were anxious to see what was there even though it was the second day of this sale.

Our first stop was in the basement which was huge and required us to use our flashlights to search the darkest corners.

There was a mounted pencil sharpener down there. That is always a good sign! 

This old metal laundry hamper was sitting down there, no doubt once built into the wall of a bathroom. It looked out of place in its current resting place.

The main floor did not have much so we traveled upstairs and found this long hallway with many doors. We were happy that there were ghost girls riding tricycles towards us. Once we knew it was safe, we continued our search.

There was a fourth floor whose only access was via a very steep and narrow staircase. We climbed it and found this old antenna installed INSIDE the house instead of on the roof. We wondered if it provided good reception in its heyday. 

We did not find a lot here but we did find a few things. We left with a great pink bathroom scale, some books and a pair of dresses; one a vintage one for Monica and the other a more recent (1990's) dress for Sharon, our mannequin. Monica felt that Sharon needed more dresses.

Our third and final stop was at a sale run by a tag sale company that we know and were shocked to find that there was still a line at 12:30 in the afternoon! There was nothing about this sale that told us that it would be good but we did see a couple of old Christmas things in the pictures and we figured that it was worth a visit, especially since it was only ten minutes from the second sale.

After a thirty minute wait outside, we finally entered the house. The house was small and the tag sale company was only allowing a few people in at a time, hence the line. We went to the basement first and found this great little kitchen in a room behind the basement bar. It had great cabinets, an old, small stove and old red countertop.

Monica searched behind the bar while Rob took a picture. It looks like we both got into this picture!

We found a few things in the basement and a few more things upstairs where there were some Christmas things. The son of the decedent was also there. He told us the story of the naked plastic doll that was in with the Christmas decorations. He was of Lithuanian heritage and he explained that it was an old Lithuanian tradition to secretly hang this doll on the tree of any couple hoping for a baby. With any luck, a baby would be born to them that year. The son, aside from being Lithuanian, was also of Polish heritage and his wife was of Hungarian and German heritage. These four nationalities, coincidently, is what Monica's heritage is and so she was listening intently to this story. It should be of little surprise that the doll came home with us. We also brought home a record, a few other Christmas decorations, some old Tupperware parfait glasses and a few other things.

We concluded our day of saling by visiting Monica's dad and then coming home to relax, barbecue and then relax some more. We had lots of chores and errands to do on Sunday and we managed to find time to get them all done and to barbecue too. 

Here are some things that we found last weekend:

Our free blow mold snowpeople

A record

Some books

An old starburst doorknob backer and a vintage safety pin...with a duck!

A vintage dress for Monica...with clouds

A dress for Sharon, our mannequin, with dragonflies, koala bears and more. She will be the envy of all the neighborhood mannequins with this dress! 

Vintage Tupperware parfait glasses

Pennants from the 1950's

A vintage Detecto pink bathroom scale, Aside from a little dirt which we can easily, this is in mint condition! On a scale of one to ten, how much do we love this. Ten! 

 The Lithuanian "fertility" Christmas doll

Some Christmas things

It was a great weekend filled with lots of fun!

Our garden is still going strong. The morning glories have expanded all over the place, so much so that we can't even weed around them without harming them.

Their reach has even extended to the garden flamingos!

And Sharon got a new dress which she will try on as soon as she gets tired of her summer outfit. Everyone here seems happy nowadays about our adventures amongst the ducks.