Jonas And The Pursuit Of The Lamp

This post is for the last two weeks in January. We are almost caught up! 

The fourth weekend of January should have been our third saling week of the year but Mother Nature had a different plan. That plan was named Jonas. The blizzard hit our area in the early morning hours of that Saturday and lasted all day. Up until now, our snow for this winter consisted of one storm and only about two inches of snow. Jonas brought us wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour. It also brought us 26 inches of snow. It seemed like the whole winter was packed into one day.

During the morning, the neighborhood looked peaceful in the snow.

The ground level view from our front door. At this point, we had about 17 inches of snow and the storm was projected to last another nine hours. Luckily, the pace of the snow slowed down.

Since we have a right of way driveway, rather than get buried 200 feet away from the street, we park in a spare driveway across the street. On Sunday, we managed to dig a path to our first car in just thirty minutes!

The drifts were deeper than the 26 inches of snow that fell. Monica is pretty tall yet the snow has her partially buried!

The cars were finally dug out and we were able to move them to our driveway (which is plowed by the owner of the driveway). It didn't take all that long and we owe it all to the good luck brought to us by Rob's lucky Mike Nesmith wool hat! 

We didn't miss any sales that weekend because every one was postponed. We will have a chance to go to every one that made our list at some point in the future.

The last weekend of January couldn't arrive soon enough. The temperatures were very arm during the week and much of Jonas' present had melted. We were very anxious to get back to saling. Five sales made our list of potential stops and we were hoping to make all of them. We knew which sale we wanted to go to first and our goal was to get there just before it opened. An early start was needed and that is just what we got! 

Our first stop was a sale run by a tag sale company who doesn't have too many sales and we have little experience with them. The pictures in the ad showed us an old house with lots of potential. It showed us even more. It showed us a very cool, old lamp that was in the background of one of the pictures. It wasn't a focal point of the picture and it could easily have been overlooked...but not by us. This lamp was the reason for choosing this sale as our first stop. It was the reason for our early stop. We arrived just moments before the sale started and we were let in at the same time as the seven or eight people who arrived before us.

The basement was our first stop and we were greeted by the amazing secondary kitchen. The cabinets were amazing! 

The owner of the house was, obviously, a collector of beer bottles and they were displayed on shelves sitting just below the ceiling. There were a lot of things to look through in the basement and we did! 

The bathroom on the main floor had undergone very few changes from the day this house was originally built. Look and the blue tile and that floor! We spent 45 minutes here and found lots of great things! Oh...and about lamp...

We got it! It was only $10 which we considered a steal! We also brought home some old ceramic figurines, some old Pyrex, some old holiday popcorn decorations and a few more things. We were off to a great start! 

Our next stop was just eight minutes away and was a sale run by one of our favorite tag sale companies. The sale was described as "filled with mid-century modern extras".

The living room had a pair of great vintage sconces which we were definitely interested in if the price was right. Unfortunately, they were not for sale. They were still wired to an active electric line and they did not want them to be removed from the wall.

The basement had this very cool stereo unit that was playing records while we were there. We really don't have room for something like this right now so we never seriously considered buying it.

This vintage refrigerator looked almost brand new. Look at how beautiful the inside of this looks! 

There were a few of these great chairs in that basement. They were all in great shape!

Behold...the basement bar! There was nothing behind the bar of interest though we certainly looked! That wall fan behind the bar was pretty cool, too! 

Unfortunately, aside from the great furniture, bar, refrigerator, stereo unit and sconce, there wasn't much else of interest. We left with one pixie figurine and one record.

After getting some breakfast, we moved on to the third sale of the day. It was about twenty minutes away and run by another tag sale company that we like. There was nothing that stood out in the ad's pictures but we knew that it was an older house and it seemed to be worth a look. Our intuition was good. Standing in its basement was worth the trip alone.

As we got to the top of the stairs leading down to the basement, this is the view that greeted us. Look at amazing floor tile! 

The basement floor was old and amazing! 

The magician's hat wasn't the only great picture tile in the basement. How about this one with an ice bucket, champagne bottle and champagne glass?

How about this "Comedy and Tragedy" tile?

How about this amazing basement bar? The bar stools are amazing. We could display a lot of tiki mugs behind this bar! 

And just when you thought the bar couldn't get any better, you look at the top of the bar and you see it is a boomerang pattern! 

In a small room in the basement, there was a wash room and along its wall sat this little shelf to hold the cleaning supplies.

That little shelf, too, had a boomerang pattern!

The rest of the house was not nearly as fun as the basement (how could it be?). When we left, we were not empty-handed. We left with some glasses, some records and a ceramic dog.

Sale #4 was another fifteen minutes away and was a quiet, private estate sale described as "1970's this and 1970's that". We figured that it was worth a look especially since we knew it was an old house and we know that people are not always good judges of how old things are. maybe this house would be more "1950's this and 1960's that". There was no one else there and the owners seemed a little surprised to see us. Two minutes into a search of the house, we found out that we were a week early and the sale wasn't until the following week! A little embarrassed, we did a very quick search of the house and found nothing other than an old plastic burro which we will use as a decoration at our annual Cinco de Mayo parties.

Our fifth and final sale was located in Monica's hometown and the only reason we had this on our list is that we thought it would be a convenient last stop before visiting Monica's dad. We found nothing other than a wine bottle opener. It wasn't old but our primary one broke the week before so this was a convenient and cheap replacement. From here, we visited Monica's dad for an hour before heading home to continue the rest of our weekend together.

Here are the things we found this week:

Some records

Some Christmas records

An old cookbook

Popcorn Easter decorations

Popcorn Halloween decorations

Popcorn Thanksgiving decorations

A pair of naughty cocktail stirrers, some old holiday cake toppers and an old rubber Santa head decoration.

An old clown wall hanging and an old plastic burro for our annual Cinco de Mayo parties.

Old cocktail glasses and drinking glasses. The two Flintstones glasses are from the 1960's. The Bugs Bunny glass is from the 1970's.

Ceramic figurines. All of them are marked Japan.

Vintage Pyrex bowls

And...the lamp!

It was a great day of saling and one that we looked forward to for two weeks, thanks to Jonas. On Sunday, we finally began the long process of taking down the Christmas decorations. It will probably take us a week but it will be a quicker process than decorating was. Together, we'll get it done quickly. Together, everything is better.